Case Studies

We sat down with the founder of Exportly, who recently exited his business and sold through us. Before becoming a Shopify app founder, he found himself as a stay-at-home dad, situated in Australia with his wife and children. With a background of 20 years working for various startups and companies in San Francisco—including Macromedia, which was later purchased by Adobe—he began searching for an opportunity to generate monthly cash flow. The opportunity he seized would ultimately lead him to become founder of the Shopify app Exportly—although it was only a part-time gig, at the time.

Growing and scaling a business is not for the faint of heart. Though it has a similar connotation, scaling is different from simply growing a business. Effectively scaling your SaaS business takes strategic planning and there are certain structures that need to be in place to maintain a growing business, without it falling apart.

Tom Benattar, a French entrepreneur living in the south of France, has lived and breathed the SaaS space for over six years. He made his debut in 2015 when he co-founded SaaS Invaders—a private sales website that provides great deals on various tools, resources and apps designed for startup growth.

Selling your online business is a serious decision for any owner, and the process of seeing a sale through to completion can be intimidating for first-time and experienced sellers alike. Hiring an M&A advisor is a good step in helping to ease the effort, but as with any major endeavor, it pays to be well prepared from the outset. Having successfully sold over 1,000 online businesses, we’ve put together some guidance on how sellers of a content or affiliate business should best prepare for the sale process.

Scaling a SaaS business is a craft that many entrepreneurs can easily take for granted. When one is focused on their initial idea for a SaaS, understanding the SaaS business model, how to develop a product to be product-market fit, and calculating how to onboard their early customers, it is natural to put off the topic of scaling to a later date. Why worry about scaling when you haven’t even proven your product is viable?

Whether you are running an e-commerce business or you are thinking of starting one, looking for useful information and best practices online can be daunting. There are some great books and articles out there, and a whole niche of conferences you can attend to either whet your appetite or tune up your knowledge, but if you are looking for some quick tips, there is almost too much choice. With the help of Arthur Bradley, an e-commerce entrepreneur FE International recently worked with, we have pulled together a list of key considerations for e-commerce entrepreneurs at any level. Bradley is also an author and NASA Engineer and has extensive experience in the e-commerce space.