#044: Triple Threat vSaaS Companies, Metropolis's Parking Technology, Quick Sales Tip

One vSaaS breakdown. One biz story. One 'how to'. In your inbox once a week.

Oct 30, 2023

The Triple Threat

Most people don't realize what the leading Vertical SaaS companies are doing right now.

They’re focusing on the *triple threat*— SaaS, InsureTech, & FinTech

Let’s go deeper with examples (I promise you, you won’t regret it):

For the last two decades, b2b technology businesses have mostly thought horizontally: add more software products to capture more revenue.

Roadmap looks like this:

Launch product A, charge $X per user, per month
Launch product B, charge an additional $X per user, per month

Now, more and more technology businesses think about SaaS as simply an entry point, with a low cost, to ultimately add InsureTech and Fintech offerings and scale revenue exponentially.

Let’s look at a two examples:

#1 Climate Corporation

Know David Friegburg from the All In Podcast? Of course you do, he’s a legend.

David started Climate Corporation, a vertical SaaS business focused on farming technology.

Climate Corporation provided SaaS to farmers that helped them understand weather patterns to better estimate crop yields. As they achieved a critical mass of farmers on the platform, a HUGE unlock was adding an InsureTech capability. Now farmers could use their software to:

1) report to their insurance agency in a few clicks

2) automatically insure what they plant / harvest

3) get faster claim payments from their insurance agency

Climate Corp isn’t public, but I estimate this drove A TON of revenue on top of their SaaS offering. They likely could drive even more by reducing the SaaS price and getting a lot of folks to adopt the insurance tech.

Example #2:

Tithe.ly

A vertical SaaS for churches.

Tithely has taken the approach of providing SaaS tools for almost nothing, as long as end users use their FinTech / payments offering.

They charge $100/mo for their ENTIRE suite. And $0 for the “Giving Platform” (payments system). That’s a skin-in-the-game type of offering, where they just want you to commit to implementation.

They likely lose $$$ on the software—BUT it basically serves as their CAC! 🙃

They require you to use their payments product to get the $100/month pricing. This is where they scale like crazy, by taking a big transaction fee ON EVERY donation/payment made to a particular church.

It’s becoming clear that to build billion-dollar vertical SaaS companies, you need to have InsureTech and/or Fintech capabilities.

In closing…

This is why companies are offering SaaS tools as a way to just get in the door. If you’re building in vSaaS, think about TRIPLE THREAT businesses:

Is there a SaaS opportunity?

Is there a FinTech opportunity?

Is there an InsureTech opportunity?

If you’ve got two, you’ve got yourself a big company All three, and it can be a $B biz.

One ‘How To’:

Food For Thought When Selling Your Product Or Service

One Biz Story:

Metropolis

A new wedge I’m seeing from some vertical SaaS companies is bringing to market a novel invention as their wedge product.

Metropolis, is leveraging cameras and AI to eliminate parking stations as we know them. No more will you have to put your ticket into a machine, and pay your credit card.

Instead, just drive in and drive out, and have your card automatically charged.

From here, Metropolis is deploying end-to-end parking lot management software.

I LOVE this wedge approach.

They are going a step further and even buying up parking lot companies to offer a fully integrated solution.

They’ve raised $1.7B in a very short amount of time to do it…

Have a product or service that could benefit our community of thousands of vertical SaaS founders, investors, and operators?

I’ve gotten a lot of inquiries lately and looking for the right partner from a company that can bring value to our readers.

If that’s you, click the link below:

Become A Partner