25: Brian Casel on How to Validate and Pre-Sell Your SaaS Idea

For the next 3 weeks, I’ll be releasing an episode on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to gear up for on April 9th. These episodes will be focused on self-funded, often solo-founders. Some are on the smaller side, while others have ARRs over 7-figures, but they all have valuable lessons to share for any founder. If you already have a team or have raised money, don’t skip these weeks. To succeed as a self-funded startup, you need to be hyper focused and these guests share the tactics that have allowed them to build a business with limited resources. And if you are just starting out, then these guests will help give you a plan of action so you can avoid some of the same mistakes they made. Regardless of where you’re at with your startup, I know you’ll get actionable lessons out of this series. Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with Brian Casel, the founder of Audience Ops, a startup that makes content marketing easier for busy founders, by offering done-for-you services as well as software tools. Most people assume that running a service business means you’re selling your time for money and that it is impossible to scale with healthy margins, but Brian has proven that doesn’t have to be the case. While we get into the ins and outs of how he has productized his services to allow him to grow, where we really dive in during this chat is the process he followed to validate and launch the software component of his business, the Ops Calendar. I’m sure you’ve heard countless experts preach about the importance of validating your software idea by pre-selling it before building it, but rarely do they get into the details. Luckily for us, Brian gives us the step-by-step process he followed to do just that.