Michael Bereslavsky: Why Investors love the SaaS industry #145

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Hello, hello everyone.

This is your host, Akhil Jubbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about the top methods to scale and grow your SaaS business and why investors are loving the SaaS industry. Today we have our guest, Michael Berezlavsky, joining us. Michael is the founder and CEO at Domain Magnet, an M&A and micro private equity firm with over 14 years of experience buying, optimizing, and selling profitable online businesses. Michael has been working in the online businesses since 2004, which has enabled him to learn how to effectively build and monetize websites and grow online businesses, and is an expert now in SaaS as well.

So welcome, Michael.

Super excited to have you on the SaaS District show today.

Hi, Akeel. Glad to be here.

So I want to start with the benefits, right? As an investor, you know, we love SaaS. I love SaaS. You love SaaS. Everybody's trying to get into it. The market is growing. We know, you know, We love the predictable revenues, the flexible licensing model, low distribution costs. But from your point of view, what would you say are the most attractive aspects of the model for investors, and why should they be considering this asset class versus some of the other ones, maybe traditional real estate where there's some actual assets behind it? And that's usually the— when we're talking to LPs, they usually come from that route. They're used to investing into big physical real estate projects, and then when they look at SaaS, they see the differences. So I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

Yeah, I think the biggest, most attractive thing about SaaS companies is you just have unlimited potential. Investors could look at the growing SaaS project and consider that it might be the next Facebook, it might be the next Pinterest or one of those huge, huge companies. Because if you have a scalable model and you have a proven track record, Sky's the limit.

So you're currently investing in SaaS and you've also invested in, you know, different, you know, content sites, I'm assuming, right? Some affiliate sites. Why do you like SaaS over the other ones?

Yeah, so we've done a few hundred deals over the past 16 years or so buying different sites, companies. Mostly we focused on content businesses. We also acquired quite a few SaaS deals. So currently we have 3 SaaS companies we operate. It's different. I'd say, first of all, the disadvantage from our perspective of SaaS, of acquiring SaaS companies, is the prices are just a bit higher compared to content businesses, and the difference can be substantial. It's also the supply is a lot lower. It's much harder to find SaaS businesses specifically in our price range, and we right now focus on deals in like mid-6 to low 7 figures in price range. Well, there is a lot more content businesses, but the benefits of course are that they're generally more stable, more secure. There are more things you can do to grow a SaaS business compared to a content business, and the risks are typically lower. With content businesses, with the recent Google updates, it's become really high risk also.

Yeah, I guess also with content websites, I mean, there's some benefits there, right? You have low you know, overall expenses, right? You can either run it with one person or you can have a team manage a portfolio of several content sites, right? Whereas, you know, if you have a SaaS company, you know, usually you need to build a team and, you know, the cost can get expensive, especially if you're getting into development and, you know, building new feature sets. So yeah, I'm curious, you know, you said valuations are the biggest ones. What would you say, you know, what are the differences you're seeing? What's the big gap you're seeing?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, with SaaS companies, it's not uncommon to have no profit. Because you just have to reinvest everything into growth. While with content businesses, it would be quite rare if you have an established profitable content site, it would be quite rare that, like, you usually just don't have as much opportunity to reinvest profits. So you would always be profitable typically. So it's a big difference, yeah. But the downside of content businesses, of course, we cannot grow exponentially. You can grow, you can double it, you can triple it, you can grow it a little bit more and more, but you cannot— like, it's just unrealistic to look at a condo business and say this can grow 20 times or 50 times. It just never happens. While with SaaS companies, it's quite reasonable. Yeah.

I mean, so you've been doing this, right, since 2004, right? It's been over 16, 17 years. Can you describe from your perspective, like, what's been the difference in the landscape of when you started to how it is now? Can you share some stories there?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, my path has been probably different from yours, I think, Akeel, and from many people in the industry who come from the private equity background, who come from like understanding how this structure works and already working with investors, while I just came into it— well, back in 2004, I was a student. I had no money. And I was just— I learned somewhere that you can make money online. And at that time there was no courses, no one was sharing anything online, like no blogs, nothing really. It was like very much wild, wild west. There were just a few forums and I was reading everything I could find and building some sites and trying to buy some small sites here and there. And gradually, I stumbled upon some things that worked and started buying bigger and bigger sites and growing the portfolio, growing our team. But the marketplace has shifted tremendously. We came from a space where there were no established brokerages or marketplaces or brokers or dealmakers or anything like that to now, we are probably halfway to being very organized, structured market in terms of buying online businesses. So the market has evolved a lot and what that means is that the margins have shrunk. Like 10 years ago you used to be able to find just these incredible deals where you would pay pretty much nothing and then just grow, like just absolutely incredible. Yeah, like I was For example, I had these deals early on where I would buy a website for like $700 and then just make a few small changes and a couple months later it generates $1,000 per month consistently and then just sell it for like $20,000. And, you know, and many similar deals like the websites that I acquired were making $500, $1,000 per month and then just with small things could just grow them double, triple right away. Now it's practically impossible. With SaaS businesses as well, 10, 15 years ago, you could buy them for just 10 times the revenue or the— usually they were priced based on the revenue for the smaller ones. So now it has really changed a lot. The multiples have grown. There is a lot more buyers in the markets. Markets are a lot more mature. There's also a lot more investors, a lot more capital. So I think the biggest shift is the shift from— like now we are in a seller's market where there are a lot more buyers, a lot more people with capital willing to buy quality businesses versus actual quality supply in the market.

Yeah, I agree with that. So, okay, so the tables have turned. So if you've got a product, this is a good time to build something and you'll get offers pretty quickly. Just want to touch base a little bit more on valuations, right? So you understand I understand how SaaS valuations typically pin to revenue growth is a big thing we look at. You have churn, and then there's a bunch of other metrics we look at to determine what the right range is. What would you say are some of the SaaS metrics that matter the most when you guys are evaluating some of these companies? And what would you be paying for a SaaS company today? What are the valuations you're paying in today's market?

Yeah, good question. So there is a big gap that I'm noticing in SaaS valuations. in between slightly low-end businesses in our range and below. And in our range, we buy businesses with probably a maximum of maybe like $200,000 or $300,000 MRR, like $200,000 or $300,000 annual revenues. And we typically focus on profits, so we value based on the annual profits. And generally we are seeing somewhere around 3 to 5x on profits in that range of under In that range of like up to like low seven figures, and and even now like just recently I had a had a recorded an episode on our podcast with with another investor who acquired the SaaS business just last month for 2.4 million, and he acquired it at about five times the annual profit. It was a solid growing SaaS business and he thought it was a very good deal so that he was quite happy with that, the investors were quite happy. So the multiples are certainly growing very fast. But for us, we tend to buy on the lower end. So we try to really focus on finding great deals. So we typically pay no more than like 3x. Sometimes we pay a little bit higher than 3x, but Generally, we we really focus on on on on on making like the slower end deals, and what that means is like sometimes we go in industries that might be like less desirable among among buyers, right? So we are able to get good deals. Other times we just go like really find these private deals where people haven't really considered selling, so that allows us to negotiate better. Other times we just find deals where we can. see things where we can improve really quickly so that it makes sense to pick them up. And the gap that I mentioned is that as you go bigger, and I'm sure you've noticed, Akeel, that once you get to like $1 million annual revenue or something in that range, the relation just changes drastically. Because when suddenly you start looking at revenue, you don't look at profit anymore, and you look at revenue growth, and you look at—

True.

It's all those other metrics and the valuations could be like 5 or 10 times the annual revenue because then you have VCs who are interested and the discussion goes only about further growth, like could this be a billion-dollar company or not, pretty much, versus when you are at the low end, you are just looking at profit and saying, okay, if I'm gonna pay 3 times the profit or 5 times the profit, is that reasonable? So that's really the interesting thing about SaaS companies that I'm noticing.

It's a different strategy, right? One is saying, okay, can we get 20, 30, 40% cash-on-cash return? Whereas, you know, when you're on the growth and you're, you know, you break even or you're not focused on profitability, yeah, the focus is more on the exit, right? You're going to focus on high-level growth and, you know, 2, 3 years, you know, you're going to double or triple the company, you're going to sell for a higher valuation and, you know, everybody wins. So yeah, it's a different game. But yeah, we're getting a deal at 3x, you know, we love that. I mean, it's hard to get anything at 3x these days, especially in SaaS. You know, 5 would be, you know, like the, you know, 4 to 5, 4 to 6. Is what we're seeing, or for EBITDA side. But yeah, generally ARR, you know, 2, 3, even 4x is what we're seeing.

Yeah, we are in a slightly lower range than you are at. So I would say the price range matters. So if you go like a bit of a lower price range, the multiples are usually a bit lower as well. While as you go bigger, the businesses are a lot more established, and the multiples are also higher, and there is more capital.

Yeah.

And what do you think about some of these, you know, new and upcoming platforms and marketplaces like MicroAcquire for SaaS acquisition as a first-time buyer? And I'll say this because, so you mentioned that, that the model, but if you go on there, like there's so much demand for some of these deals. Like, so those deals under $500K, you're going to look at, uh, like they're asking 10x, right? 10x ARR, not even 10x profit. And they're, they're getting offers. So I don't, I don't know what's going on in the market these days, but I find like if you're Under $500 million or $500K, like, I feel the valuation is actually a lot higher. So maybe you're seeing something different and curious to hear your thought.

Yeah, I don't know about that also. Like, we've looked into that a little bit. We've joined it and checked around and contacted many different people, and it was just crazy. Like, people asking for 10 times their revenues. We couldn't find anything like good for us to potentially consider acquiring. I just don't, I don't have the data, so I'm not sure if people are actually buying it like 5, 10 times the revenue for the smaller companies, or if, or if that's just the listing prices. Maybe there is a huge gap between listing and selling prices.

Possibly.

So honestly, I just don't know. I don't have the data. But if you look at the data from like other established brokerages, FE International, Empire Flippers, like the rest, And also through our brokerage, DealFlow Brokerage, we've had a few, we've sold a few SaaS companies. So what we are seeing is like a 4 or 5x on profit for SaaS companies seems reasonable.

But what are some steps you— sorry, consider.

Yeah, sorry. Also, there is a big difference in quality. So, you know, you have like the SaaS projects that have a ceiling, the SaaS projects that are in a specific niche, and then you have the SaaS projects That really can grow exponentially. So there can be quite a big gap between based on quality, based on potential.

And if I'm somebody looking to maybe buy my first SaaS business, right, whether I'm an existing SaaS founder looking to do a roll-up, maybe I own an agency or I'm a consultant or just somebody in the SaaS industry and I understand it and I want to buy my first company, I'm looking into this. What are some steps you suggest them to find a good deal? out there and maybe make their first acquisition?

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, so if you are, first of all, I would not advise like first-time buyers who don't have experience running a SaaS company to really look into buying a SaaS company because it's complex. But if you already have, if you're a founder, if you already have experience, then sure. So I would say just look into capital, understand what is your current capital, What is the capital that you can raise? And maybe start talking to some investors to get a better idea of what is the range, the price range for you based on the capital that you can raise. And then once you have the price range narrowed down, figure out what is the type of business that you want, what are some aspects of the business that it needs to have in order for you to have the most chances of success to grow it. And once you have those 2 things, that's when you can really go to the market, start looking. The best way to find deals, by the way, which is trivial and often overlooked, is just check for your network, especially with SaaS founders. They usually know many other SaaS founders. And the easiest and the best way is just ask your friends, do they want to sell? And tell them, hey, I have this kind of capital. commitments and see who wants to sell. And that's a great way to start conversations. And people might not be ready to sell yet, but they would come back to you 3, 6, 12 months later. And that's how you get the deal. So that's been our experience also.

Yeah, yeah, we've heard that as well. Just throwing it out there and saying, hey, we're looking at this, and somebody refers you over a deal. Yeah, we get that quite a bit. And so when it comes to the financing part, you know, getting your capital in order, What do you suggest for maybe some other unconventional financing? Do you use debt or is it just capital access for some of these acquisitions through LPs or where are you getting most of your capital from?

Yeah, so that's— honestly, I'm not an expert on that. Just these past 2 or 3 years have been a big learning experience on how to raise capital because until that, we've just used our own capital. And what I've learned so far is Just having good deals, having good track records, that's really essential because that's the first thing investors look at. If you have a track record and you can say, these are the deals we've done, this is the profit we've generated, and you can really explain them and you have some history and you have a brand, that's essential. And beyond that, for now, all we've done is equity deals and we've tried different structures. Some were successful, others— and yeah, and we've done— so we have 2 funds. We have a 3rd fund that we are raising currently, and we have 2 funds we are operating, 2 small funds. And we also have a few private investors with different small portfolios with us who we acquire and manage businesses for.

Hmm.

So we are still, I'd say, experimenting with different with different investing structures.

Yeah, makes sense.

And now we— yeah, so now we are doing our first, basically our first group buy where we are acquiring a business just under $1 million with a small group of different investors. So we are sort of mixing in different structures and just still seeing to see what's best for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. When did you decide to launch your first investment fund and how long did you say it would take you to go through that, to raise it? And go through the whole process of completing that fund and then actually closing on some deals after that.

Yeah. So that was about 3 years ago and I knew nothing about raising capital at the time. So the first thing I did was just Google it, how do you raise funds? And then I also asked a few friends. One of my friends was Joe Magnotti, the founder of Empire Flippers. So he gave me some really good advice. and asked a few others. And then I decided that I would just send an email to my newsletter at the time, and I had a small list, and just tell them that this is what I've been doing and these are some results, and I'd like to start doing that with some investor capital. And had a few people respond. And when we spoke, like I did a small webinar, I explained the plan, and we had a few people who were interested. And then in the end, we just picked— I picked one person to move forward with. And we had like a— we started with a smaller deal, and then I did a couple more deals. And then that person had some of his family actually join the deals, brothers, sisters. And then we just put that together into a fund. So once we had a few deals together, we decided that it's time to make it a fund. So it wasn't— so it was the opposite of how funds are usually born. You know, first you, you set up a fund, then you raise the capital. So we just first did one deal and a couple more deals, and then we decided to accumulate it into a fund. With our second fund, it was more of a proper structure that we had a fund first, and then we defined exactly what kind of deals we are looking for, and then we acquired some deals.

And how long did it take you, would you say, to You know, when raised the capital and then how long did you take to deploy it after that?

So with that first fund, it was like a few months until we start— until we had some planning in place and then maybe a couple months until we found the right deal and acquired it and then a few more months to get a few more deals and then like a few more months to actually set it up into a fund. With the second fund, Ours. Um, the second fund, that was a small family fund, and they actually contacted us. They wanted us to run a fund for them. So, uh, so once we contacted, we just discussed it, negotiated, and set it up. With the third fund now, that's been quite a hassle because we are doing it, uh, we are doing it with Assure, we are doing it with a law firm. We've been setting up all the structures in place, and we are So we make sure that everything is compliant so we can accept accredited investors. So that's been ongoing for about like half a year or a year, like a year total in planning.

Yes.

So it's taken some time, yeah. So that's— but that was a learning experience. If the group buys now, that's quite quick. So we just send an email And we already have some of our existing investors like respond and confirm. So I think that's sort of the fastest. Once we have a quick deal, we have an easy structure, we know how we would do it, we would be able to set it up quickly in a week. So what I've learned is we can structure a deal like that in just a couple weeks and then basically execute quickly.

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Um, Cool. So I mean, yeah, it is kind of time-consuming. I understand, you know, even from all sides, right? Getting the investors committed, finding the right deal, structuring it, you know, signing LOI, going through due diligence. I mean, it never goes as everything as planned, but yeah, you have to be— it's a patience game for sure, right?

Yeah. And how do you do funds or do you do like one structure per deal?

So we've always done deal-by-deal basis. So we've, yeah, I've always done it by group buy. We have investors, we go out We have a list of our called investment club, so people actually apply if they want to be part of that. And yeah, once we have a deal, we circulate it, gather interest, already have some valuation range in mind where we think we can add value. And if we feel like it's a good deal, we go out and make an offer and get into due diligence. But right now we're actually just finished up our deck around raising a fund as well. So I think that's probably the next thing. We're looking to raise about $10 million. And then probably just do that across probably 3 different deals over the next probably year or 2. So we only do, like I said, 1 deal maybe every 4 to 6 months. We don't try to deploy so quickly. We like slightly bigger deals, maybe worth $3 million, $3 to $5 million. And then, but we'll do 1 or 2 a year rather than 1 every couple months.

So a little bit of a fixed strategy. Yeah, that's a good strategy. Yeah, and so what did you find? I'm curious how the times compare. Like, how long do you find it takes you to raise for a group buy once you have a deal?

So it depends during COVID or after, but during COVID it was a little bit of a challenge. I mean, we had a deal and we're like, okay, like a lot of investors were like, hold on, hold on, let's just see what's going on. But after that, yeah, generally, you know, it takes a little bit, you know, let them, they ask a lot of questions, they want to go back and forth. So it could take anywhere between, you know, some will say 2 weeks, but generally, you know, about 6 weeks, I would say before we, you know, there's, you know, commitments signed out, you know, subscription agreement and So 6 to 8 weeks is kind of what we say.

Yes, that seems about reasonable. Yeah. And just to add to that, so the reason I actually decided to start working with investors back 3 years ago was when I had this really good deal that we found, this really amazing private deal for a company that was earning about $150,000 per year in profit and they were selling for less than $300,000. And we just couldn't raise funds quick enough. We didn't have enough cash at the time. And we, like, I talked to a few investors, and while, until we found the commitments, the business was sold already. And it was so disappointing. And you may have had similar cases, you know, so that I realized after that, that, okay, we have to, we have to have some Some investors on board already before you, so that when we find deals, we can do it quicker.

That's exactly it, right? We have this; it just makes your decision a lot, you know, easier when you go out and make a deal. You don't want to, yeah, you don't you don't want to, you know, go through due diligence, you know, waste a lot of time, and then, you know, you can't close the deal. Yeah, so that's that's that's definitely another thing. And also, we're finding, you know, some of the bigger investors we have, like, you know, some family offices. The reason why we went up market as well is, you know, they they want to see a little bit bigger deals, right? They want to deploy a little bit more capital. They want to come in for, you know, half a million, million dollar checks. But they want to see million, you know, in ARR. So, you know, the more sophisticated investors will want to see, you know, more stability, and it seems that's where the sweet spot is that we've seen anyways.

Yeah, so that's something we haven't really worked with family offices yet. Uh, just, just briefly had some interactions, but I'm curious how that, how it usually goes. Do they, um, do they ask for like your previous track record? Are you able to show that? How would they ask that? Have you acquired a similar business before and been able to grow it?

It's like a little bit, yeah. I mean, the track record is going to be a big thing. Um, how have you done deals together, your team? Uh, but I mean, generally, you know, structure is probably the least important. Um, you know, they want to show how you're going to show return, how you're going to add value, and what's your— how are you going to operate it, right? Those are the big things.

So yeah, very good.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, adding to that, you know, what, what are some of the methods you liked? How do you like to grow a business, right? You have a SaaS business specific. Do you have any favorite, you know, playbooks you like to apply? Yeah, sure.

So the big thing for us is we look for businesses that have mostly SEO traffic, so mostly organic Google traffic. That's where we excel the most. So we are able to— we have a really, really professional team on that and my personal expertise as well since I've always been involved in content and organic traffic sites. And that's where we focus a lot of our attention, just reviewing everything, reviewing the content, analyzing it, optimizing things, expanding more and more content, building backlinks, optimizing whatever we can for different campaigns. That's one thing. Then often in our price range, it might not be the same in your price range, but in our price range, many businesses don't— if they have organic traffic, they don't use paid traffic. So that's one thing we try to do. Paid traffic, affiliate traffic, often it's often sort of underutilized. People, if it's a company that's under $1 million in value, there is generally just one founder, there is not usually a team, yeah. And they usually just focus on one channel of acquisition. So what we see is there is a lot of value to add in other channels and at least First, you would start testing all of them, see what works best, and then continue scaling. So increasing organic traffic, trying some paid traffic, some social acquisition, also building up email lists if it doesn't have it yet. And then of course we work a lot more on understanding the customer journey and looking at how we can improve it, how can We can improve the customer experience, add some, maybe some upsells, things like that, and just keep tinkering and improving it.

Nice. Yeah, I mean, so is your team focused more on the marketing side per se? So I'm assuming this is more SMB self-serve model, deals that have a lot of sales and there's a lot of enterprise-level deals. I'm assuming that it probably wouldn't work as good, right?

We have a mix. I would say it's mostly B2C, so it's mostly like directly customer-oriented. We do like to buy some B2B as well. We do some of that. But yeah, because with SEO traffic also, it's more common to have direct customers.

Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. So last point around SaaS, you know, you talk about this, something you mentioned before, which is The big secret in the SaaS space, what is that? I don't know if you've already talked about it, but what is that secret that you want to reveal to everybody?

Yeah, I would say that's the one that I mentioned regarding the big gap in evaluation so that if you acquire a business that's below a certain revenue structure, then you can really evaluate it based on profit. below a certain range. And then if you are able to really grow it and go above that, on that step where you get the interest of venture capital, of all these different funds that might invest in you for growth, then the evaluation is completely different because then they look at how fast are you growing, how high is your revenue, even if you are not profitable. And so that I think is the biggest opportunity in SaaS right now is if you buy a SaaS company based on a profit, annual profit evaluation, the company that is growing or has the opportunity to grow very quickly, and then you just reinvest everything into growing very rapidly and you are able to increase it maybe double, triple, and then you just go and get— go to someone like Y Combinator or all the other different funds and venture capital firms. who would invest based on a 10x or even 20x revenue multiple. So the gap could be huge. The difference is huge.

Nice. So Michael, I want to switch gears, talk about a little bit more on the personal side, a little more rapid-fire type questions. I'll start with maybe tell us what was your vision with your company Domain Magnet, your portfolio, your fund, and maybe what is your long-term goal with your business at, how you see it evolving over time?

Sure. So initially I was testing things for quite a bit, doing a lot of different things, lots of different deals. I was involved in also— so I was buying and selling a lot of different online businesses, and I've done a bit of everything. So I have like such a wide range of expertise. I pretty much know a little bit of everything. I've done some adult sites at some point. I've like, I've done some like selling physical products, digital products, so like a bit of everything. I've also done some real estate in a few different countries where I lived, like I sold them, like bought, sold, flipped houses. I've invested in domain names quite a bit as well. I've sold hundreds of domain names like premium, ultra-premium domains I still have a portfolio, like a passive portfolio of domain names. And yeah, what I've— so I've experimented with a lot of different things and just to understand what works best for me, for our team. And what we came up more recently with is this kind of structure of just focusing on finding really great deals. And that's where we really excel. Because we have this network we've assembled over the past 16 years of entrepreneurs, people, we have deals coming to us. So we are often able to find deals, better deals than anyone else. And so our structure is really finding those deals, arranging those deals, and then raising the capital for them, and then finding the best people to grow them. And we have that too. And yeah, and that's the objective going forward. So we aim to do maybe 5, 6 deals a year, maybe a bit more if there are some smaller deals as well, and targeting that range from mid-6 figures price range to like low 7 figures. And then after a couple of years, once we feel more comfortable in that range, I think we'll start looking to some bigger ranges as well. But I do think that this range actually presents the best opportunities right now in terms of generating profit. And of course it's different from what you are in because what you're in is you're looking more towards the exit, right? You're looking more towards growth potential. Well, where we are, we look more towards kind of more short-term improvements. So these businesses that we acquire, our plan is usually looking at 2, 3 years ahead and then seeing what we can improve and grow.

Right. Yeah. Shorter horizon. I mean, it's all valid, right? It's just like buying real estate. You want to be a flipper? Do you want to be a property manager? I mean, they're all good business models, just what works for you and how you want to be involved in that. So there's no—

Yeah, absolutely. So our model is more flipping, but Flipping over a shorter time frame of maybe two or three years, and what I've seen is that most things that we do SEO, CRO, like adding some extra features, all those kind of things, we generally can be implemented within that time frame, and you can get all the results within that time frame. Now, if you are looking for a longer, longer term, you know, scaling and growing a business, that's quite different. That's a different set of skills, different types of businesses, a different structure, and different Yeah, yeah, I agree.

If you were to rebuild and start maybe Domain Magnet today, although, you know, start from scratch, how hard do you think it would be? And, you know, what maybe— what would you do differently?

Oh, it's an interesting question. Well, it depends. Do— what about the capital? Like, do I have money or do I just start from scratch?

Uh, you're starting from scratch today. Like, you have nothing. I mean, maybe you have your experience, you have no money, but you have your experience. But, you know, you don't have maybe that— you have the network, maybe you don't. Like, what would you do? Because you've obviously dabbled in a bunch of things, but you have the same brand, you have the same name, You can go, you just say go. That's all you got to do.

Yeah, good question. I'd say the biggest opportunity with no money or little money is just buying and flipping some smaller sites now. So I would probably start by buying some smaller content sites depending on how much money I had. Could be just a few thousand dollars each or like tens of thousands or even a bit bigger. And then just buying and growing and improving and flipping them. That's how I started. That's what's been most profitable. And then, and also I would look to work with investors right away. I would start working with investors. So if I had all the track record and everything, then I might even just start with that right away, just looking for finding some deals and then getting the capital to go and execute them. So it's pretty much the same thing we are doing, just maybe a little bit smaller because we would have less money.

Makes sense. Who or what, or would you say some of your favorite resources? These can be books or maybe people. This could be mentors or people you follow that you'd say have been the most instrumental to your success over these last few years and helped you a lot on your way.

So it's an interesting question. To be honest, I don't have any at this point. I've had different people that I used to follow and I have a pretty big network at this point and many people that I interact with on a regular basis. We also have our masterminds and different group calls. And I learned from everyone. I learned quite a bit from you right now actually from this call.

Yeah.

So my approach is just learn wherever you can. But also I think beyond a certain point, once you have enough experience, you have to just trust yourself mostly, trust your own judgment, trust your own sort of gut feeling. And that's the best way to go. So once you have accumulated enough experience, enough expertise in the industry, then yeah.

Okay. What does success mean to you today? I mean, you've had quite a bit of a track record, kind of all over the place, dabbled in a bunch of different ventures. And this could be whether it's personally, business, financial, life, no right answer. How do you define it?

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, for now, success for me is different from what it used to be. So now I look more at having a balance. The balance between business, balance between the personal life, balance between the stress of doing deals and also being able to rest and relax and take some time off. And also the balance between the deals being a win-win for everyone. So we try to make sure that the deals are good for the sellers, good for us as buyers, good for investors so that everyone benefits. And the customers as well.

Nice. Awesome. This has been good chatting with you, Michael. I appreciate you jumping on the SaaS District show today. If anybody listening in wants to reach out to you or just wants to talk, where's the best place to get in touch and learn more about you and Domain Magnate?

Yeah, sure. So check out our podcast, the Domain Magnate Show, where we talk— we have weekly or biweekly podcast episodes we release and we talk to different business owners. buyers, sellers, people who run portfolios of businesses and different industry leaders. And also you're welcome to look me up on LinkedIn, on Facebook, look up Michael Boryslavsky, Domain Magnate, and feel free to send me an email, michael@domainmagnate.com. I'm always happy to reply.

Okay, awesome, Michael. We'll add all those links in our show notes for people to check out and also check out your podcast. Thank you so much for jumping on today.

Thanks, Akeel. Pleasure to chat. Cheers.

Thank you all for listening in to this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at horizoncapital.com, and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please DM us on Instagram or LinkedIn @HorizonCapital and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again, and hope to see you on the next one.