“Selling B2B SaaS is great, but owning assets is better - that's why I went and built Skaling Ventures on my own.”

A portfolio of profitable niche vertical B2B SaaS businesses:

• $1-3M with some ARR growth (~10%)
• logo retention greater than 95%
• limited go-to-market (GTM) knowledge/investment,
• fragmented competition,
• and technical founders.

We discussed how he found the best deal among the 300 deals he looked at.

How he structures deals and what his game plan is 90 days after the acquisition.

How 75% of private equity buyouts are add-ons – and how he does the same.

And much more.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed chatting with Kjael Skaalerud of Skaling Ventures.

Show notes:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:19 - Life as a B2B Saas salesman (strategy: go-to-market)

00:04:31 - Selling software to fund managers

00:09:30 - SaaS, Venture capital - The importance of game selection

00:16:25 - Where was Kjael financially before acquiring the 1st company

00:18:20 - Details on first acquisition

00:23:15 - Structure of the first transaction and Skaling Ventures Holdco

00:25:30 - Lessons learned after the first 18 months as a holdco builder

00:32:45 - First 90 days after acquisition

00:40:53 - Buying and building a business - has it been more painful/harder than he thought

00:42:15 - 75% of PE buyouts are add-ons – “we do the same”

00:47:40 - 5-year holding and reinvestment for growth

00:49:52 - Acquisition number two (under LOI)

00:53:41 - Ways to get better at what you do and build

Follow Mikk/PrivatEquityGuy on Twitter: https://x.com/PrivatEquityGuy⁠⁠⁠

Kjael on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/skaalywag

Kjael's Substack: https://skalingventures.substack.com/

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.