Micro-VC for Micro-SaaS: the new frontier
You can always start your business thinking big, starting micro. How?
My name Is Domenico, I love Pizza, and I come from Italy. I’m a Business Analyst in my full-time job, but a micro-entrepreneur during my free time. I have co-built and co-sold 3 micro-startups during the last year, giving me an interesting boost.
What am I going to show you here? I launched a new startup studio in Aug, and I launched the first startup — theaialfred.com.
During the last few weeks, I started thinking about a new model around it with my friend Marc-Etienne. Let me show you in the next few lines.
The Micro-World
I discovered the Micro-SaaS world almost 1 year ago thanks to my friend Tanveer. I discovered the Microacquire Platform, and everything changed.
I will use the Microacquire Numbers for this short analysis (this is not an ADV).
First of all, what is Microacquire? Microacquire is a marketplace for acquiring startups in a very quick and fast way.
Very often the “micro” world is close to the world side projects. Let’s see some numbers.
These numbers are only related to one single month, but as you can see from these numbers they are not so bad! $46 M in acquisitions!
We can also see pre-revenue startups on Microacquire, with an Average pre-revenue acquisition price of $12 k, with average days on the marketplace of 124.
Very often the “micro” world is seen as an escape from full-time work, or at least an ambition towards independent work. I’m seeing a lot of people around it, mostly after the pandemic year (2020).
The Micro world is based on micro products you can build and launch in a very fast way, mostly SaaS.
The SaaS market has grown during the last 5 years, also thanks to easier access to codeless programming tools, such as Bubble.
You can easily build, launch, and sell no code-based tools today. This is what drove me to focus on this market a year ago. I talked about it here: https://medium.com/@gagliardidomenico/after-selling-2-startups-this-will-be-my-next-adventure-spoiler-alert-ed7682882839
If you have enough free time per day, I can suggest you do the same. It could be helpful also for your professional growth.
After almost 1 year in this market, I can say what I have learned about it (this is just my opinion):
- You can launch your micro-saas startup by working a few hours/per week
- You can use no-code tools for launching the first MVP in days!
- You can run a portfolio of micro-saas startups, reducing the % of projects failure
- Do more with less, also in terms of economics for your startup. You can easily have net profit on it
A micro saas product video for you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsZ5DloZJM
From the VC to the Micro Vc
Starting from the micro-saas market, and after selling 3 micro-startups, I have decided, in Aug, to launch a new startup studio: Omega Studio.
At the beginning of this new adventure, my idea was to build, scale, and sell micro-products in a very fast way — like my previous adventures where I co-built and co-sold 3 of them in 8 months.
The main manifesto is always the same:
- The product must be based on no-code tech(when requires)
- The product should be ready in the shortest time possible (< 1 week)
- Validate it, before building it
- The target could be B2C or B2B. It will depend on the product
- The product should scale with less money as possible
- No Marketing ADV — Organic rule
- The product should reach at least 1k/MRR
That’s why I co-launched theaialfred.com, an AI tool for summaries (here is the main article: https://gagliardidomenico.medium.com/you-can-summarize-articles-using-ai-896fc1c29dea)
But, to be honest, something inside me was saying I could do more and more. But the point was: what could you do for doing more when you do not have so much time? And I need to add a point here.
In this story, one main company has had a huge impact on my approach and concept: Fork Equity. What is it?
Their main modus operandi is: acquire, grow, and sell.
They started this adventure by founding products in 2015, as we can see from their website performance section (https://forkequity.com/performance). And then, they started to acquire startups.
Starting from this concept, we’re going to transform Omega Studio into a mix between a startup studio and a VC, with multiple business channels:
- Build micro-saas products, scale them, and sell them
- This process will allow us to invest in micro-saas startups too, scale them, and sell them
- The final step will be the acquiring stage, with the same main goal: the exit in months.
So we’ve developed a second Manifesto, for the acquiring and investing business:
- It should be a Micro SaaS
- It should have MRR > 0 & MRR < 100
- It should be in a huge market
- Accomplish more with less. Frugality.
- It should be not local
- We could invest with an exit Strategy in 6 months OR we could acquire It, scale It, and sell It in 8 months
- If we invest in something, we should act in an Active role
- It could be based on No code tech, or not
For avoiding cash flow problems, this should be the process:
- You’ll build (or co-build) the first micro-product for getting the first traction/views/revenue
- Meanwhile, you can invest (or micro-acquire a SaaS) in a micro-saas startup, getting a % of equity, with an exit strategy of 6 months
- With the cash you’ll get from the exits, you will be able to acquire 100% of a business, scale it, and sell it in 8 months.
- Repeat
That’s why I saw the Fork Equity Business as a very good concept.
That is our roadmap for Omega:
Of course, a lot of things could change month-by-month, but the most important point is to have a very strong vision of it.
Opinions?
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Contact info — you can write to me here
Personal Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/DG_9_6
Omega Studio Profile: https://twitter.com/theomegastudio
