Play It Smart

A managed service provider (MSP) owner stood up at an industry event and complained about an aggressive, demanding prospect. Tarek Meliti suggested the issue might not be the prospect at all, but a lack of opportunities in the pipeline. Tarek has run TDM Group, an MSP based in London, since 1997, mostly serving investment banks, hedge funds and other financial services clients. After roughly a dec...

If a just-in-time supplier is late with a windshield, the entire car plant shuts down, and John Penrod says that supplier can be fined $50,000 every 15 minutes. Customers like that have to stay up. At Transcend Networks, his managed service provider (MSP), that means redundancy and monitoring built so something can fail while operations keep running, plus recovery plans that start from what the bu...

Stuart Millington runs Bluebird IT, a healthcare-focused managed service provider (MSP) in Mandurah, Western Australia. Bluebird started with three pricing tiers, went down to two, and ended with one set of security standards that every client follows. When he told clients "this is our price, this is what it is," the ones who came back to him simply said: okay, I understand. About 85% of his clien...

Shawn Walsh built his managed service provider (MSP) in the basement of his house, grew it to locations in four states with six acquisitions, and sold it to private equity. Within 18 months the buyer had lost most of the clients and almost all of the employees. His diagnosis takes one sentence: they thought they had bought a technology company, and what they had actually bought was a relationship...

Eric Rieger spent six years researching how to sell his managed service provider (MSP) to the people who worked in it, then about twenty minutes signing the paperwork. Private equity had been calling for years. Handwritten letters to his home address, his mobile ringing, six or seven offers in a week once WEBIT Services crossed $5 million in revenue. He turned all of it down, because the people wh...

Georg Dauterman came to managed IT from the other side of the desk. A history degree, a quarter-life crisis, a Mac repair bench, then years running IT inside publishing houses and a Havas ad agency. In 2004 he quit, with a three-month-old at home, and joined Valiant Technology: a Mac-heavy managed service provider (MSP) for creative agencies in New York and Los Angeles, built when everyone else so...

Noah Landow co-founded Macktez in 1996 and is still running it, still independent, and still deliberately not built like the rest of the industry. Most managed service providers (MSPs) chase one stack across every client because that is what scales. Noah spent 25 years reluctant to use the label at all, because his clients cannot be standardised: nonprofits, cultural institutions, organizations in...

A client wires half a million dollars to a criminal. Their cyber policy covers a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred fifty. The plaintiff's attorney does the math and knows exactly who to go after next: the managed service provider (MSP). Joe Brunsman has watched this from every side. He runs the Brunsman Advisory Group, an insurance brokerage in Annapolis built around MSPs, spent fifteen years wi...

Most managed service providers (MSPs) price per seat and then quietly lose money on their smallest clients. Raffi Jamgotchian bills a three person firm for ten. He founded Triada Networks in 2008 and spent the early years taking whatever walked through the door. Four years in he looked back and noticed that of his first five or six clients, four or five were investment firms. He has aimed the busi...

If you are still delivering work yourself, the gross margin on your screen is probably not telling you the truth. Daniel Welling ran an information technology services business for 12 years, took it to around £1m a year in recurring revenue with 200 customers and 15 to 20 staff, then sold it. He now runs The MSP Finance Team, doing management accounting and fractional finance direction for MSPs, w...

“It's the biggest risk to their business, almost certainly.” Dave Lane has run an MSP since 2006, moved it from the UK to Malaga, and then did what most MSP owners only talk about: he stopped competing in the break-fix race to the bottom and rebuilt the business as fractional IT leadership and vCISO work, sold directly to boards. We get into why he could not deliver real business value while his c...

“You can't take AI to court. You have to take a person.” That one line is how Tim Golden thinks about compliance in the AI era. Tim ran a 100% federal-government MSP for 25 years with almost no tools, then turned the compliance work he kept giving away for free into Compliance Scorecard, a governance platform built for MSPs. We get into why the product costs $89 and stays that way, why he refuses...

Peter Moriarty built itGenius, a Google-first, cloud-only MSP, from a $20-an-hour teenage side hustle into Australia's number one Google partner for small business. His growth playbook breaks every MSP convention: he serves the under-20-seat clients nobody else wants, buys distressed competitors at 1-2x profit while the market pays 5-8x EBIT, gets 90% of new clients from YouTube organically, and k...

Dan Taylor built one of the most unusual MSPs in the world. It's Google-only, it serves international schools only, and it runs on a small remote team spread across five countries. No Microsoft, no local market, no office. Then he turned his own Google Workspace audit into a product other MSPs buy, and it took off almost immediately. We get into how he went from Deloitte to a failed recruitment ag...

Marco Hernandez runs a one-man MSP with 140 clients, gets 100% of his leads from referrals, and closes every deal he quotes. This episode takes apart exactly how. Marco was on his way to becoming a lawyer in Venezuela when a computer repair shop tried to screw him. Thirty years later he runs TEK IT UP IT Services, a deliberately solo MSP in the Greater Toronto Area, and he has turned being small i...

Oliver Kenyon is a UK-based entrepreneur and the Co-Founder of ConversionWise, a company specializing in conversion rate optimization (CRO). Under his leadership, ConversionWise has collaborated with over 3,500 brands, including GFUEL, Lotus Biscuits, and Lamborghini, as well as prominent figures like Lionel Messi and Kim Kardashian. He is also the Founder of AffiliateFix, a leading affiliate mark...

In this episode with Luc Arama, you’ll learn: HSBC Innovation Banking’s acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Luc’s feelings about it. How companies manage a debt facility with SVB in both the UK and the US. Why a founder should consider going down the debt route rather than the equity route. At what stages does HSBC Innovation Banking lend to companies. What terms HSBC Innovation Banking u...

In this podcast episode, Alexej and Rand Fishkin discuss the advantages of angel funding over venture capital for startups, emphasizing sustainable business growth over rapid scaling. Rand shares insights from his experience with Moz and SparkToro, highlighting alternative investment structures and the potential impact of AI on search and SaaS industries. They also explore wealth-building approach...

In this podcast episode, we dive deep into Rizzle's innovative journey from a short-form video platform to a leading SaaS for AI-driven video creation. Discover how Rizzle prioritizes product features, manages challenges, and envisions the future of video editing. Hear personal insights on fundraising, team dynamics, and the entrepreneurial spirit from the co-founder with a rich tech background. D...

In this podcast episode we dive deep into Pegasus, a pioneering SaaS platform transforming the equestrian event management industry. Sam, the founder, takes us through the company's vision of becoming the global operating system for the equestrian economy. Learn about their unique journey from bootstrap beginnings to launching with potential, powered by a strong marketing strategy and deep industr...

In this episode, we sit down with Dipti, the founder of CRSTL, a modern B2B commerce network focused on enabling brands of all sizes to go omni-channel. Dipti shares the journey of launching CRSTL, discusses the challenges faced, and the unique value CRSTL brings in the EDI space. Learn about her background, the importance of customer focus, and the strategic decisions behind building and scaling...

In this episode of the SaaS Minds Podcast, host Alex interviews Ishay Tentser, CEO and founder of Timeless AI. Ishay shares his unique journey of pioneering a business on WhatsApp five years ago, which has now become a trend among VCs. He explains how he runs Timeless AI, which integrates WhatsApp with CRM systems to bring all customer communication into one platform. Ishay also discusses managing...

In this episode of the SaaS Minds podcast, we explore the remarkable journey of serial entrepreneur Chris Baden. Chris, a three-time founder and CEO of Flowchat, shares his experience in transforming his latest startup from an agency tool to a standalone SaaS business, achieving $1M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just two years. Discover how Chris balances his entrepreneurial ventures with f...

In this podcast episode, Jeff Whitlock, CEO of Grain, discusses the evolution and innovative strides of Grain, an AI note-taking and conversational intelligence tool. Learn about Grain's unique features, market positioning, growth strategies, and Jeff's insights on navigating the SaaS landscape. Get an inside look at their product's journey, challenges faced, and the importance of innovation in re...

In this episode of SaaS Minds, Alina Vandenberghe, co-founder and co-CEO of Chili Piper, shares her journey of migrating from Romania to building a $30 million SaaS company. She elaborates on her philosophy of leadership, rebranding her title to better reflect her role in guiding her team rather than commanding it. Alina dives into the challenges and strategies of scaling a SaaS company, emphasizi...