My 3rd SaaS acquisition, another 250k+ year, the big bet, and my plans for 2025
A lot has been happening and it's time for an update
Hey friends,
As 2024 quickly comes to an end, I’ve started to reflect on the last year, and draw up my goals for 2025.
I plan to publish a detailed post in early January that will summarize 2024 so this post is going to focus on my current numbers for the year, and some big initiatives I’ve been working on.
Overview of revenue generated across projectBI & Hawkeye Ventures
At the time of writing, my agency, projectBI, and my software holding company, Hawkeye Ventures, has brought in a combined $271,706 USD for the year. The orange indicates the period is not yet complete.
As you can see in the “Vs. LY #” column, we’re just under $1k behind last year’s total.
If you look closer you’ll notice that revenue from SaaS is up $5.7k compared to last year while the agency is down $6.6k.
In the graph above, the red represents revenue from the agency, the purple is revenue from the SaaS apps, and the blue line is the running total across both.
We will close the year up compared to last year,since I’m expecting to collect a few thousand dollars more from the SaaS apps before the year is up. I’m also in late stage talks with an existing client for a new engagement, and have 1 hot lead in the pipeline who might close before the year is over. Overall its been a disappointing year financially since revenue will only be up a few percentage points while the business expenses are up significantly.
I’m going to go into a lot of detail in my year summary post in January why the agency didn’t grow this year, and how I plan to improve the financials moving forward.
Almost done acquiring my 3rd micro SaaS app
I’m in the very late stages (handover phase) of acquiring another SaaS app. I’m going to go into a lot more detail on this acquisition in a future post but what I can tell you at this stage is:
It’s a Slack app
Last month it generated 1.26k in revenue
Usage-based pricing model
It’s a smaller acquisition to the last one, Meet Slack, but it checked all the boxes for me and I’m confident it will be a good investment. It allows me to add a bit more diversification to the portfolio, and will help bring my total MRR across my SaaS ups to $5k.
The big play: Feedio
Feedio is a long story but I’m going to give you the shortest version of the story I can:
I came up with the concept for Feedio in early 2014.
I found a technical co-founder and we started building the service in March 2014.
We spent years building the platform (nights and weekends). We decided to bootstrap the development. We both had full-time jobs and only invested a few hours a week into Feedio. There were periods where months went by with little to no dev work done.
After I became a digital nomad and left Tel Aviv, the relationship with my co-founder started to deteriorate. The relationship brokedown completely sometime during covid and the service suffered. About 3 years ago it went offline. We had over 2k signups at this point but generally low engagement. We failed to monetize the service.
Fast forward to about 6 months ago. I decided it was time to approach my ex co-founder and take full ownership of Feedio. I didn’t want to give up on the idea and I now had the human resources and capital to restart the service and push it forward.
I closed a simple deal with my ex co-founder and Hawkeye Ventures now owns 100% of Feedio.
About 6 weeks ago we started working on relaunching the service and restarting developement work on the platform.
The service is now live and we’ve managed to build some impactful features I’ve been waiting over a decade to see:)
My immediate plans for Feedio are to push hard on development until the end of Q1 2025. We have 3 - 4 major milestones to hit including launching a new and improved onboarding flow, releasing version 1 of our email broadcast feature, and redesigning the entire app.
Feedio will be my big bet in 2025. The plan right now is to push hard on development until the end of Q1 and then start raising a seed round in the $500k - $1.5M range. The fundraise will give Feedio a real shot of becoming a world-renowned platform for content creators and the fans that enjoy their content.
If you’re a content creator looking to grow your audience, consider signing up to Feedio. We need more feedback from engaged users to help us continue to improve the service.
Continued investment into the projectBI pivot
Back in August I published a post that went into detail on why I decided to pivot my agency out of the DTC market and focus again on the SaaS market.
Since I made that decision I’ve invested a lot of time and money into redesigning the website, implementing email automation (via kit.com), working on a strong lead magnet and just refining my entire marketing approach.
I’m now starting to collect more leads but unfortunately they aren’t qualified leads. It’s still a positive change and I feel I’m heading in the right direction. The only way I’m going to scale projectBI is if I crack the marketing so I’m putting a lot of effort in this department.
We still have capacity to take on 2 new SaaS clients, so if you need help tracking, measuring and understanding your product analytics, get in touch.
My goals for 2025
Below is the list of goals I’ve drawn up for next year.
Get the marketing working for the agency (30 organic inbound MQLs generated)
Pay myself from the agency at least 60k
Finish the year with the agency having a net profit margin >30%
Build up 25k in runway for the agency (and don't touch it)
Get body weight down to 105kgs
Build up 25k in personal runway (and don't touch it)
Finish paying off the seller financing loan for Meet Slack
Make all seller finance loan payments for 3rd SaaS acquisition
Finish the year with a salary of at least 90k
Reach 10k in MRR through SaaS
In my year summary post I’ll go into a lot of detail on why I chose these goals, how I’m going to track them, and how they fit into my overall plans for 2025.
Thanks for reading and all the best.
Justin
Love the update and despite the missed expectations on the year, I’m excited for your next SaaS acquisition! Keep fighting 💪