The SaaS Built Between High Prices and Missing Features

All right. I'm here with Ethan, the founder of Planese, who recently got acquired. Ethan, how you doing today?

Yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you, Andrew. How about yourself?

Doing good. I'm excited to hear your story and learn more about Planese. But before we dive into that, do you want to just give a brief introduction of yourself for people that may not know you?

Yeah, of course. So my name is Ethan Roberts from the UK. My main job is actually cybersecurity. So not a software developer or anything, but I'm My main job is cybersecurity, but also on the side as well, kind of serial entrepreneurial. So I kind of like to build products and web applications on the side.

Nice. Tell me about PlanEase. What did it do? What problem did it solve? Let's start there.

Yeah, so PlanEase, it's a wedding planning business. So it was built around making planning easy, a business-to-business model, SaaS, as a software as a service business. So the whole core objective of PlanEase was to make wedding planning much more easier, less overwhelming. The idea was to give kind of people a simpler way to organize kind of what they needed to do rather than overcomplicating it. And I think my main target audience was wedding planners. Of course, it wasn't really kind of the B2C, it was the B2B, you know, kind of the wedding planning sort of folks. It was a small business, but it had the things that kind of mattered, you know, at heart. It had a product, it had users, revenue, costs, and obviously assets that could eventually be transferred to someone else.

Nice. How did you get the idea to bring Pretty interesting, I guess, maybe niche to go into. Did you have a wedding and it was like a mess, or did you just look for something niche?

So I've been looking at different markets for a while, and again, kind of the best businesses come from not reinventing the wheel, is looking at what works, looking at the gap and seeing you can fill the gap, right? So I built Plannies because I like the idea of solving a simple everyday problem and planning something is a lot of people struggle with. I wanted to create something that kind of made the whole process easier, like real pain points. At first, it was definitely a learning experience for me, but then eventually it turned out into a real business with value, which again, ultimately made the sale possible in the end. But no, nothing really came from firsthand experience in terms of frustration or whatever. It was more of a case of market research, understanding what's out there. And I seen a, I seen a gap in the market and I wanted to fill it.

Nice. So you saw an opportunity, you went after it. I like that. How'd you get the first users and customers?

Well, actually, the first set of customers, it was all organic marketing. There wasn't really any paid channels or paid conversions, mainly Facebook marketing, actually, not the paid version, sorry, the ads. It was the Facebook groups. I was testing different ways to get attention and getting people to understand what people actually wanted from the product. However, it's very saturated going out to Facebook groups or whatnot. So you really had to execute it perfectly. And essentially what I did was got a group of planners together who were using different commercial tools and wedding planning tools and wanted to really understand their pain points, gather their feedback, because obviously the best feedback is from the end consumers themselves, right? So once I understood their feedback, there was a consistent occurrence of the tools out there are either really expensive and then the ones that are kind of an affordable entry level didn't really offer what they wanted. So it was clear to me that PlanEase was being developed, but developed around the core focus of giving wedding planners the commercial usefulness, the capability, the commercial capability of the bigger end tools, but also giving it at an affordable price point. So through Facebook marketing, really the Facebook groups, but also reaching out to cold emails and so on through the marketing side. But yeah, I'm not the best at marketing myself. Didn't really enjoy it. So I kind of let the product do the marketing and it was word of mouth from there and it kind of blew up.

Nice. That's amazing. Well, it sounds like you had product market fit. You had happy customers. What made you decide to ultimately sell the business?

So I felt it reached kind of, you know, this point where it had value. It was a bootstrap business. I knew someone else would be able to grow it much better and faster than me. And I also wanted that experience of actually selling the business, having that exit. Definitely a proud moment, something that you'll remember for the rest of your life. But I think it was just a case of I've took PlanEase as far as I can. I've built a real genuine product that users are happy with. And I knew that it could go further. What I did was exited it and I sold it to definitely the right buyer who has the right capital and obviously the resources and assets to really take it further. And I think you can read about exits all day online or whatever, but going through the process yourself, actually, it teaches you completely different lessons.

I love that. How was the process? What was like your expectations going in and what were the first like week or two like?

So yeah, Acquire actually was a fantastic platform. There's a few that I was looking at and obviously the ones that kind of made it much easier was obviously Acquire. Getting it right from listing the business up to the due diligence conversations with buyers and you get a lot of interest, right? And obviously you have a lot of conversations, but I seeing those, you know, conversations weren't really going anywhere, but selling it on Acquire was kind of really useful.

I got another question.

Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

What'd you do to prepare for the acquisition? Would you put any docs together or did you just make the listing and—

Yeah. So I created obviously a data room, a Google Drive, simple cloud sharing capability. It was, I used the stuff that Acquire actually helped with in terms of setting it up in terms of the data room and whatnot, but that was the probably the most frustrating bit, but also I made sure to get like obviously the numbers, the accounts right from the beginning. So once I managed to locate everything and put into a central repository, it was much easier to set up in terms of the data room and Google Drive. So yeah, I did then give the buyers obviously access once obviously the MD signed.

Nice. Tell me about the winning buyer. Was there something in particular about them that made you decide to sell the business to them? Did they have the best offer, highest price? Super easy to get along with, anything like that?

It was the interest. I didn't want to just pass this product on to someone who just wanted the revenue or the income. I wanted someone who actually shared the passion, they're going to look after the customers of the end product, because at the end of the day, they're the one that's paying for the business. So I truly believe in customer satisfaction. So I instantly seen the passion, I instantly seen the interest as soon as I started having conversations with them. I asked about obviously, where do they think they're going to take it next? And their vision was exactly where my roadmap was. The passion straight away from them. So it wasn't really about the biggest offer. It wasn't really, it was just making sure that the customers of Planese were going to be in safe hands.

Nice. What would you say the hardest part of the acquisition process was? Was it due diligence? Was it putting together the data room? Was it transferring the assets? Was it waiting?

Yeah, probably the data room. Definitely the data room. But also I think it's, you've got to be careful in terms of the conversations you have. Treat every conversation as an open conversation, but don't go in with the assumption that this is going to be a buyer. Only see it once they've sent a letter of intent. I think that the most frustrating bit was the data room. So that's definitely my advice for anyone else looking kind of to set up on Acquire is get your data, get your resources together because it'll make the process so much easier.

That's good advice. Did you do anything to celebrate? Did you go out and buy something nice? Go to a nice dinner? What'd you do when like the— To be honest, yeah, well, do some renovations on the house.

So that was nice to kind of put some investments in that, but also just putting it on the side. So holidays, Also kind of, I'm going to be working on my next project as well at the moment. So it's kind of bootstrapping that really, and then moving on to bigger and better things.

Nice. If you were talking to another founder and they were looking to sell their business, what's some advice you'd give them? Maybe like 1 or 2 pieces.

It's definitely patience. Be patient. I know going through exit can be a very stressful process. So I know it's very interesting to see the money straight away land in your bank account from the exit. But once you exited, that's kind of your kind of baby gone, but you've handed it over and it's no longer your responsibility. So I'd definitely be patient, do your due diligence correctly, make sure that you vet the right buyers, but also come up with some morals or values in terms of ensuring your buyers are aligned with your values in terms of where you want to see your product going forward. Because at the end of the day, you worked hard for it, right? You've put in your blood, sweat, and tears and hours upon hours in terms of building that product. It's really important it lands in the right person's hands to really take that forward. So patience.

That's great advice. What's next for you? You have big stuff to share.

Yeah. So I'm moving into a mobile app market, obviously built in, obviously being in the SaaS area, which is a fantastic market, but also want to break into the mobile app area. So I won't say the industry, but this is another service-based type business, similar to the planning stuff, the wedding planning. It's basically for an industry that does their service perfectly. They're fantastic at doing their service and delivering their service. However, the business surrounding it, the admin, and the accounts and so on, and the managing is extremely frustrating. So it's solving that problem for them.

Right on. Well, Ethan, thanks for coming on the podcast. Congrats again on the acquisition. If people want to follow you online and learn more about your story, where can they find you?

Yeah, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn, is Ethan Roberts. Send me a connection invite and yeah, we can chat.

Right on. Well, Ethan, congrats again.

Thank you very much, Andrew. Thank you for having me.

Of course. Cheers.