Gearheart.io

Founders, investors, and startup enthusiasts - you're invited! Join us on April 23 in Palo Alto for a high-stakes pitch competition featuring 5 standout startups, top-tier VCs, and investors-experts from MAANG. 🟢 Seed to Series A 🌐 Industry-agnostic Past finalists - from over 400+ events across 55 countries - have gone on to raise $1B+, representing alumni of Y Combinator, Alchemist, NVIDIA Inception, Techstars, and more. 📍 Silkroad Innovation Hub — 320 High St, Palo Alto 📅 April 23, 2025 ⏰ 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM 📄 Event details - in the first comment. Let’s connect, pitch & build!

The best startups in 2024 didn’t just build faster. They played by different rules. They shrunk their markets on purpose. They turned support into growth. They made AI a company-wide operating system. Here’s how Clay, Goldcast, G2, and Stan broke the mold - and scaled like crazy. 👇 1. Clay: Growth Through Extreme Focus Instead of chasing everyone, Clay narrowed their market to one group: cold email agency owners. They built deep relevance, grew fast, and still had a waitlist after hitting millions in ARR. They ditched the usual sales script with “reverse demos” - letting customers show their process first. Support? Moved entirely to Slack, turning customer service into a product feedback engine. Clay also created hybrid GTM Engineer roles to blur the line between product, sales, and support - speeding up customer success. → Result: 10x growth two years straight and a $1.25B valuation. 2. Goldcast: Owning the Full Workflow Goldcast focused solely on B2B marketers and scaled by building a multi-product platform earlier than expected - covering everything from virtual events to post-production. Their early expansion helped cut churn and increased customer stickiness. Internally, they used AI across departments to boost productivity while keeping burn low. → Result: 400+ customers in 4 years - balanced growth and efficiency. 3. G2: Playing the Timing Game G2 bet early on the SaaS boom by building a marketplace with 180K+ software products. Now they’re doing the same with AI - tracking tools in 30+ emerging categories and helping users identify trusted automation solutions. → Result: 3,600 software companies as customers and a reputation as the go-to software directory. 4. Stan: Support = Growth Stan flipped customer support from a cost center to a growth engine. They built such standout experiences that customers became their top referral source. By investing in service, they created organic virality - and saw an 8x ARR increase in a single year. → Lesson: Obsess over support. It pays off. _____________________________ From the 2025 Annual Report – Hypergrowth Startup Index by HubSpot. Want more insights? Full report link in the first comment.

No-code. Low-code. AI-code. Custom code. Everyone has an opinion - here’s what works (and when). 1. Custom code This is the most expensive route you can take. If you can validate your idea without it - do it. Especially at MVP or early validation stage. Save your money (and your runway). 2.1 No-code Think SmartSuite, Airtable, Noloco, even Excel. ✅ Easy to use ✅ Friendly UI ❌ Limited functionality You won’t build a scalable SaaS here, but you can test ideas and workflows fast. 2.2 Low-code Bubble, FlutterFlow, Webflow. More powerful, but comes with a learning curve. If you’re not tech-savvy or don’t want to spend weeks learning, maybe skip it. Also: ⚠️ It can get surprisingly expensive as your user base grows. ⚠️ Gives the illusion you’re building a scalable product - until limitations hit. ⚠️ You're locked into their pricing and platform decisions. 2.3 AI dev tools Lovable, Replit, Cursor. This is the future - but only in the right hands. Best case? Work with devs who leverage these tools to build faster. If you try it on your own, you’ll be amazed by what’s possible in 10 minutes…Until you hit the part where things get messy (reliability, edge cases, UX polish). 3. One final note: Don’t confuse engineering expertise with product expertise. Writing code is just one part. Do you know how to: - Make a great UX/UI? - Build something intuitive? - Prioritize features for value? - Create a smart product roadmap? If not - find someone who does. Or you’ll burn time building the wrong thing well.

What happens when a CEO of a procurement platform sees your work on YouTube? You build a platform that transforms their credit operations. That’s how our journey with bababos began. Their CEO saw a video about the SmartSuite history and thought, “If these guys can do that - maybe they can help us too.” And was right. bababos needed an internal system to manage credit risks, automate decision-making, and track every step of the credit journey for SME manufacturers across Indonesia. So we teamed up - and built ICE (Integrated Credit Ecosystem). Robust, scalable platform designed to manage credit risk with precision. It covers: - Automated credit assessments (real-time integration with CLIK credit bureau) - Advanced collection management with late fee automation and restructuring workflows - Risk monitoring with real-time alerts and payment behavior tracking - Seamless integration with Odoo ERP, Google Workspace, and internal systems - AI-powered financial document analysis (yes, it acts like your in-house analyst) - Analytics and reporting that drive smarter, faster credit decisions 💻 Built with: React, Mantine, Node.js, GraphQL, Prisma, Postgres 📍 Developed by: 1 PM, 2 devs, 1 QA - small team, big impact 🌍 Fully tailored for a specific market Great product, great customer. Thanks to the whole bababos team — you guys are great to work with! Full case study in the first comment. DM me or visit Gearheart.io if you want to build something like this.

This episode of SaaS Club | The SaaS Podcast is powered by Gearheart.io. From 850 rejections to $1.3M ARR 🚀 Oscar Rubio Martín, founder of Lodgerin, went from running a manual relocation service to building a 7-figure SaaS platform helping orgs relocate students & employees globally. You’ll take away: - How Oscar rebuilt his business from scratch after COVID wiped it out - Why he bootstrapped for years before raising capital - What it took to land his first customer after 850+ rejections - The simple MVP fix that unlocked real traction - How he pushed through burnout and uncertainty to keep going Full story in the first comment 👇

The event is only for approved Guests representing venture capital funds. Join us for the In-Person Demo Day dedicated to Military Tech, where cutting-edge startups revolutionizing defense and security will showcase their innovations! This event brings together top-tier military tech entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts to explore groundbreaking solutions in areas like AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and advanced defense systems. https://lnkd.in/ggJKXhxc 📆When: April 10th, 2025, 2:30 pm PT 💻Where: In-person 📍Venue: Stanford Research Institute, 333 Ravenswood Ave Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA

Big SaaS is out, niche SaaS is in. (And the numbers prove it.) In Q3 2024, SaaS deal value hit $3.8B, a 130.8% jump from last year. The big shift? Vertical SaaS now attracts 60% of new investments, while horizontal models hold only 40%. Key insights: 1. Insurtech startups in vertical SaaS see median funding rounds of $15M. 2. Traditional SaaS startups average $10M per round. 3. Customer retention in vertical SaaS is 85%, compared to 75% for horizontal models. 4. Specialized markets come with up to 35% higher customer acquisition costs. Critics are concerned about the high acquisition price and that niche markets could limit growth, raising fears of a bubble. But I think otherwise. Vertical SaaS is just the beginning. As product development gets cheaper, we’ll see even more hyper-focused and niche SaaS solutions. And I don’t think it’s a bubble — retention is spectacular, which means these products deliver real value. The real question is whether these companies should be VC-backed. Not all of them. Many niche markets won’t be big enough to generate VC-level returns, but they can still be great cashflow businesses. If retention is high, it’s not a bubble — it’s just a shift in how SaaS works. Did I miss something?

AI startups are just “wrappers” around existing SaaS functionalities. AI startups are reportedly growing at nearly 200% YoY, far outpacing traditional SaaS growth of 50–70%. They’re also attracting 30% more capital than SaaS companies. AI companies chase rapid growth, promising smarter automation, but critics say many are just existing SaaS products with an AI layer. The debate continues on whether AI is overhyped. But think on this… When the internet got good enough for cloud software, SaaS took off. Now, AI is good enough to automate tasks that couldn’t be automated before — and for less than hiring people. That’s why we’re seeing this huge boom. Why do some still miss the point?

As a development partner, we're especially proud to share this news! Congratulations to the entire SmartSuite team, and a special shoutout to Jon Darbyshire, Tara Darbyshire and Peter Novosel. We truly value our years of collaboration. 🚀

AI will disrupt SaaS businesses like the internet and smartphones disrupted media. Earlier, we had big media holdings. TV, radio, newspapers. We consumed news from those sources only. Different sources for different audiences: sports journals, political TV shows, educational channels, etc. Making good content was very expensive and reaching people cost even more. Now we have social media. Phones with 48-megapixel cameras. As a result, millions of micro-influencers. It’s not enough to have a “sports channel” now. No, you have to have a channel focused on one specific team of F1. AI makes development cheaper, lowering the barrier to entry. I predict it won’t be enough to have, for example, a “CRM for agencies.” There will be a CRM for a “10-people Instagram marketing agency from overseas who work with US customers.” A great time for product creators. Rising time for micro and even nano SaaS.