Why Most SaaS Startups Fail After Building the Product | Alex Boyd

Alex Boyd discusses his shift from running high-stress agency models to a "buy, build, and hold" strategy for profitable, niche SaaS companies. He emphasizes that with the rise of AI and "vibe coding," building the product is no longer the hardest part of a SaaS business. Instead, the true moat lies in distribution, go-to-market execution, and maintaining the messy, unglamorous aspects of software like integrations, support, and customer trust. He also explores the immense power of a founder-led brand over traditional paid acquisition. By consistently communicating defensible, well-crafted ideas online, founders can generate significant pipeline with an ROI that paid ads simply cannot match. Boyd argues that mastering large-scale communication is an essential executive skill, whether or not a founder uses AI to help draft content. Finally, Boyd touches on how AI is reshaping organizational structures by automating low-effort, repetitive tasks. This allows companies to run leaner with higher-effort individuals, ultimately boosting revenue per employee. However, he warns against automating crucial front-end customer interactions, where human trust and reputation remain paramount.

Discussed in this episode

• Why transitioning from a stressful agency model to a buy, build, and hold SaaS strategy offers better work-life balance and cash flow.
• The reality that building software is no longer the hard part, exposing go-to-market and distribution as the true bottlenecks.
• How acquiring boring, niche vertical SaaS products with established distribution offers better defensibility against AI disruptors.
• The danger of running enterprise software on fragile foundations without proper support and integration infrastructure.
• The massive ROI disparity between organic founder-led brand building and traditional paid ads for SaaS acquisition.
• Why mastering defensible, large-scale executive communication is a non-negotiable skill for modern founders.
• How AI tools are eliminating low-effort, repetitive jobs and driving up revenue per employee in leaner organizations.
• The critical mistake of over-automating front-end customer sales touchpoints where human trust and accountability are required.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Introduction and career shift
2. 3:15 — Leaving the stressful agency model
3. 7:30 — Acquiring niche vertical SaaS companies
4. 10:45 — Building the product is commoditized
5. 14:20 — The necessity of go-to-market execution
6. 18:00 — Founder brand ROI versus paid ads
7. 21:15 — Defensible executive communication skills
8. 25:00 — AI changing org charts and productivity
9. 28:30 — Rapid fire and final thoughts

Key takeaways

• Building SaaS is easy; distribution and go-to-market are the true moats.
• Founder-led brand dramatically outperforms traditional paid ads in niche SaaS.
• Do not automate crucial front-end customer sales touchpoints with AI.
• Constantly building pipeline solves 90% of your business problems.
• AI eliminates crank-turning jobs, driving up revenue per employee significantly.

Transcript

I think what has become exposed and was always true is that the building of the tool was never really the hardest part. Most cases, I mean you launch your product and then what, right? You can't charge someone thousands of dollars a month and have it break. You have a social security number and reputation to lose.

That's what people are buying. Organizations pre AI, you need to have people doing 60% effort just because someone needs to turn that part of the wheel in the machine. Pipeline solves 90% of your problems. Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagine.

We have two, not one, but two special guests with us today. I'm going to give the most important one the intro first. We have Alex Boyd with us. Sorry, Jake.

He's the co-founder of Wild Front and a multi-time SAS founder who shifted from building for exit to buying, building and holding profitable companies. He's exited multiple ventures, scaled revenue teams, and now runs a growing portfolio of SAS products and investments under one mandate, sustainable cash flow. We're going to talk about long-term thinking in SAS, the power of founder brand, and what it takes to build durable assets instead of chasing short-term hype. That's guest number one.

Guest number two, Now, I'm kidding. Guest number two is Dale decided to go be on a boat, I don't know why. He thinks that's more important than spending time with Alex. We have Jake back in the house, holding it down, keeping me on track and making sure I don't fuck things up.

Sorry, bad word. Jake, welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be back. I my my goal is to eventually just slowly take over from Dale and then people just start admitting that they like me more, so we'll see what happens.

All right, let's rock and roll. I like it. Let's have some fun. And Alex, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Good to be back. It's been a while. It's been a hot minute.

So, Alex, you've um, I mean, you've had quite a journey and and a lot of successes in your career and and and you've exited several companies. But now from our conversations with you and and and and looking, you know, and research, it looks like now you're more focused on a a buy, build and hold motion. What kind of what changed your philosophy from what you were doing before to to now having a holdings company and and having this different approach to to business? Um, or is it different?

Yeah, I mean it's there's some similarities for sure. Um, I've I've never been someone who enjoyed the like kind of eat ramen for 10 years and then hope for a big IPO type of thing. That was never my style. Um, and yet when you don't have any access under your belt building a company that cash flows, um, my first one was a services company, an agency, it's a pretty stressful business model to run.

Um, No. Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't you guess? Some people are cut out for it.

Some people they're okay with that. They're just I think cost them differently. It's hard. Dale's not cut out for it.

It's I think all of us go through that phase though, right? And Alex, you probably know it better than any. Like there's days that I'm like, wow, like this was great. I got to help five or six different clients and I was involved in a million different things.

And there's days that I'm like, man, I got five or six people asking for my time. I don't have 35 seconds. I need to see my wife. My kid's walking through the door and all I could do is like wave at him.

Like I my my mind is about to blow. Services is hard, especially when you are the service. Very. Yeah.

Um, so I don't, um, I pretty much swore off of building agencies. Um, it's not that we would never provide a service again. Yeah, I know. We always say that.

Um, but uh, I just it it's it's less of what I'm interested in doing. And so some of what I'm doing is similar. Like I'm I'm doing a little bit of coaching here and there, but really on my own terms, um, not as a service, but just for the companies that I'm an investor in. Um, which just feels better.

It's a sort of a better relationship when you're like a partner and not asking for a fixed portion of cash flow. Um, and yeah, so I enjoy the like the psychographic motion that I have now, which is just far fewer meetings, first of all. Um, there I used to have eight to ten zooms on my calendar many days. Now, you know, it's most common that I have none.

Which is nuts. I'm so jealous. How how do we get no no zoom meetings in a day? Oh, yeah, we stop doing a service company, right?

That's the point. I mean, there there there there there is this whole we're building software thing, but I I move on. Um, I I do I you said something interesting that kind of like got me thinking. Um, you said it's less of what I'm interested in now.

And is it Alex, is it that you always knew you weren't interested completely in in in doing services for the remainder of your career? Or did that journey teach you more about what you're interested in and lead you to this? Um, so when I was I was actually going to join someone else's agency early on and do the operations part that I then preferred. Um, that didn't work out.

And I was in my mid-20s and had no idea how that you should read what you sign before you sign it. So I ended up having to make that mistake. Yeah, I had to basically be abandoned and pay a six-figure settlement which forced me into a business model that had higher revenue. So I was I actually had bought in 2017, I bought sales upscourse.

com and I was going to make like how to design your salesforce courses. That was my like, I'm going to do that next thing and do a little bit of consulting on the side. So I was never intending to build an agency. I was just sort of forced into it and then I was like, well, we're here, you know, let's build it.

Uh, and so, yeah, I kind of was just like had a good attitude about it, but it was never what I set out to do. Um, fun times, you know, it built a good reputation. I mean, revenues in is like a good name now, you know, and so that's cool. Uh, great domain too.

I was just like, I'm very happy with how many times we could pivot without changing the name of that. I was like, oh, this is great. They don't have to rename the company once with four so it was nice. What um, when you look at now, so your your mind shift has changed, no agencies, going SAS, like all of the world of acquisition, like what makes a SAS product attractive in your mind, um, to either partner with, build or acquire, and I'm going to give you a caveat for that just based on a conversation Jake and I just got off of with one of our founders, um, where an investment banker basically said and Jake check me here, I'm going to paraphrase, but like SAS is so damn difficult now, valuations are going to crap because you could just go build it in your garage with claude.

You don't even have to go to your garage, you can just do it from the couch. Yeah. That's what he said. All right.

That's a very interesting investment banker. Um, I I mean, as someone who not and I I want to hear your answer but it's like someone who vibe codes and like I I build stuff all the time. I'm not naive to think I'm building enterprise level software for a hundred million dollar company to come out and use. Like that's not something you're building on your couch with uh, bolt or lovable or cursor or pick your poison.

Right. Well, the I think what has become exposed and was always true is that the building of the tool was never really the hardest part in most cases. If you're building a frontier model, yeah, sure. That's that's the hardest part but if you're not building a frontier model, then it's almost never the tech.

Um, it was everything else that came after that. I mean you launch your product and then what, right? So Yeah. You build a, you know, 20% of what salesforce has and you put up a landing page and you write a LinkedIn post and then what?

And that's where people have realized. They have to support it when the integration breaks. Yeah, I mean the integration, the the hundreds of integrations that salesforce has troubleshoot, the customer relationships, the contracts, the know-how, just the the business of it, the whole messy business of it. Not to mention the go to market.

I mean, the go to market is what you learn from running the business, you know, and it reflects that. Um, after a certain point, the go to market becomes kind of useless. You can run a terrible ad campaign and people continue to buy, not because of your terrible ad campaign, but because of the product and people pass that off as amazing marketing and they think, oh, that's great. Well, really it was it was totally ineffective.

Um, it just was run by the big brand who has their product. So I don't think of so that's that's one thing. And then also, people like me are acquiring very different SAS products than um, investment bankers seem to be helping work on deals for. Um, what we look for is a very boring niche vertical SAS that does something that is uh used by a corner of the world that is not often talked about.

Um, like we looked at a like a like a niche Google App Store Chrome extension recently that did something again, very niche within e-discovery, that was like one piece of the puzzle for what an e-discovery person does. Um, uh, if in terms of AI defensibility, that's kind of the big one. Um, for small tools because if it's a small tool, AI defensibility is the big factor. Like why can't you do this with Claude?

And then the question is, would it be more likely that someone would build their own version of this or whether they would use Claude to simply call the tool via an API or MCP to do the thing, which is often what happens, right? Like my my Claude calls the data for SEO API. And so data for SEO is not something I'm I I am able to build myself. It's not about building it, it's about the the rest of the data mode.

So I'm calling it, I'm not building it. Um, and so you have to kind of make a judgment call. Is are people's LLMs more likely to call on this thing or are people going to say, no, I'm going to build that one myself. Um, and like like you said earlier before we started the the the show, um, I mean, I have two or three Claude code windows in my monitor over here at any given time and they're all building different stuff whether it's a website, two websites, an internal tool, uh my co-founder's doing the same thing with an our external tool portfolio.

Um, so building was never really the hard part. It's just become a lot less time consuming. Um, but the rest of the stuff is where all the all the magic happens. So if you get lucky enough to acquire a company that has great distribution, you've bought a lot more than a codebase, haven't you?

So that's why I think the like you can't acquire SAS thing doesn't work as well unless it's such a bloated price point that AI is going to have downward pricing pressure, in which case, yeah, you might get your margin squeezed. Um, in fact, you'll you'll certainly see margins getting squeezed for legacy non-AI providers. Um, but it's not going to put them out of business. Yeah.

Uh, it's I I agree 100% and I think you the one thing you said is key, like hundreds of integrations, right? Like we're just talking one. I built a tool for one of our clients who, you know, every week the reps had to fill out one word document for a weekly one-on-one and another word document for, you know, the weekly executive meeting and all of this great stuff. And super easy, super cool.

I built it on an airplane on my way home from that client and it works really well. Although I got a message this morning that like, hey, when I go to hit submit, I'm getting in this endless loop. So I'm now going back and like that's great when there's six people who are using it. Now, imagine if this is some enterprise like, you can't do that stuff.

Like you you you can't charge someone thousands of dollars a month and have it break and you're the sole point of support because you vibe coded it in your living room. Man, you got me thinking about something you just said. And and and like, I actually think it rings so true and I and and no one's I haven't at least read or heard anyone say it this way, but it makes sense to me is and I wonder how many people are going to hate this that you said this but it the building was never the hard part. Right?

Jeez, like it's so true and we're proving that. And and we've always kind of known like, okay, it was execution, but now more than ever, it is brutally exposing that it's distribution, it's go to market, it's it's partnerships, it's motion, it's how you are you're getting the build into the hands of your buyers and the validation and generating revenue from it and and which I think is so interesting now just also coming off of the last, you know, day, 24 hours, everyone's talking about, oh my gosh, if we look at Hubspot, they took such a big head. I mean, is everyone's excitement about like or fear around what AI like vibecoded CRMs are going to be doing to, you know, big business. But the reality is like, are you telling me that everyone is going to be able to execute?

Jake, think about it. We we say this all the time. Like one of the things I just said this Alex to a a banker this morning, they're like, why did why do you get into, you know, doing what you do? And because I got tired of seeing so many amazing products that were built great, whether easy to build, hard to build, whatever, turn into shelfware because no one could figure out a proper go-to market motion.

That's exactly the point. And it it is exposing now more than ever the need for a proper go-to market motion and investment because that that that your darlings that you thought were 100% tied to the value of the product and that any any dumbass sales rep off the street could go sell for you. We're proving that perspective has its flaws. Yeah.

There was this kind of legacy excess margin opportunity built in to what you just described for a long time. And we we've all seen it, right? We've all interacted with I'll just say the typical sales rep at a big company who is let's face it, terrible. And doesn't do a good job and does the bare minimum and still they do just fine at their job because they're just happen to be the gateway of doing business with that company which up until now, it was very hard to create the tech for.

So the whole thing just kind of tottered along. And when I was doing consulting I would I would get very annoyed by this because I was in the mode of, well, why would everyone not do the best they possibly can? But if you don't need to, I ask myself that every day. I can't stand that question but it's needs to be asked.

And now you kind of have to. And now there's two sides of the of the layoff coin now because on the one hand, I don't want to wish instability on anyone's family. Um, and also for and I also don't want to imply that people getting laid off are not doing good job. That's not at all.

But there are many people who were doing a bad job and didn't need to do a good job because there wasn't much pressure to do so, which annoyed me before and now it's sort of becoming economic reality. So it's it's so now it's like, I don't want to make fun of it and punch down but um, uh, at the same time, there's there's some readjusting to you really don't need as many people let's just say like inbounds, for example, right? Who don't take notes, don't pass you the information to their AE, don't don't look at what you put in the chat already and were really annoying to work with and now we're saying, okay, before we could use RevOps to kind of uh, smooth over some of those. Now we just don't really need that role in the same way in most cases.

And so again, not wishing instability in families, at the same time, that was a that was a really bad experience for the last couple decades. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win. The best part?

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The margin opportunity is is changing but if you're someone who has always just done a good job and done the things that humans need to do versus the things that can be automated, then you're going to you're going to be fine. Um, people never bought from sales reps because they told them about their product. They did so because there was a throat to choke, so to speak, if something went wrong. You know, a social security number and reputation to lose.

That's what people are buying. They're saying, you're putting your name on this, great. That's, you know, you're you're the rep on my deal. I'm you're going to be hearing from me if things go bad and that's your incentive to tell me the truth and help me make good decisions.

Not because you gave me a brochure. Uh so if you're if you're a go to market and you're doing that, then awesome. I don't think there's anything to worry about. We can keep building good SAS.

I I couldn't agree more. I I I get frustrated often and I think this is what makes most great leaders great leaders, but we all work for the most part. Um, as hard as we can and we're all committed to doing a really good job and we think when we become leaders and Jake, you probably know this more than anyone having led enablement teams. Like we think that, oh, everyone's going to try just as hard and it's everyone on my team's going to, you know, put forth 100% effort just like I do.

And we all tend to get really frustrated when we have that person who puts in like 60% effort and it's like, but but I put in 150%. Why don't you? It's it's it's such a mind f to me. Um, and it used to frustrate me until I realized like there's a reason that I'm this is not really cocky here but like there's a reason that I'm as good as I am and it's because of the effort I put in and not everyone's going to put in that same effort.

Yeah. And that's fine. Let's uh, let's shift gears a little bit and talk about founder brand. Um, so you've built a a really powerful brand.

You talk about building brand and social presence. Um, so when we talk about like growing social presence and founder led distribution, how has that influenced your SAS portfolio? Positively. Um, thankfully.

I mean it didn't start as founder brain. It started just uh, sort of being a philosopher online and posting about stuff I learned being a head of sales. Uh and then it sort of clicked pretty soon on once it started creating revenue, it just my brain got trained to like a in like a skinner box, oh, I I make good posts, money come out. Like keep doing that.

And it was that simple. It it really can be that simple. You know, there's that meme of like the dumb guys on the sides and then the smart guy in the middle trying really hard and like dumb guy and wise guy is just make good posts, money come out. And the middle it's like complicated systems with you know, this automation and that and have social signals to email sent and then you create this stupid thing and really it's just like write good stuff and people do business with you.

Um, you got to extend it a little more than that, obviously and when you get into the nuances of it, there's a lot to learn. But um, whether it's been agency or SAS, it's it's irreplaceable. I mean, the ability to reach thousands of people a day or twice a day on one and now more platforms. Um, is immense.

You can't really do that with ads and the trouble with running ads to do that is an ad impression and an organic impression on your personal brand are worth in some cases 20 times different amounts. Um, Were were you reading my next question that's literally talk about the ROI of founder brand versus personal brand versus traditional paid acquisition. Yeah, maybe. I mean we we it's funny because with our last company we we didn't run ads and we couldn't with aware because it was like, well, this is we basically don't like we can't use the like the LinkedIn name in the ads because obvious trademark issues.

No, that'd be frowned upon. Yeah. And then with our with our other portfolio like, oh, we have compliance tools. We can totally run ads.

And I had this sort of inflated impression like, I'll just spend on what I was getting through founder brand. No, no, no. Uh, terrible ROI, like it's not the same thing at all. Um, there's no personal connection there really.

Um, so maybe I'm bad at running ads, but I did my darndest and everything seemed to check out and multiple people who are good at ads were like, yeah, it's pretty good. You just you just spend a lot more. And I was like, oh, this is way worse ROI than founder brand stuff. Um, So I don't have a a specific number but I really can't point to a single customer from, you know, several thousand bucks of ad spend on a compliance tool.

We were running for. Um, I'm sure compliance marketers would be like, oh, it needs to be at least 200,000. To which I say, oh, or I could write, you know, some posts and comments and We we we have we have a client who's in the compliance space and I'll agree with what you're saying. I don't think I could point to more than maybe a handful that have come from paid ad spend.

Yeah. And maybe it's like especially in that space. Yeah, that's what it's it seems like if they either will find you for something through not like the old-fashioned way but um, well, I mean a lot of our compliance SAS um, signups come from SEO. They just find our website or and I I include AI SEO in that too because Yeah, of course.

Is it is it really that simple, Alex? And I and hear me out. Like, you make it sound simple. And I guess the question is, is it is it sounding that simple because you have years of experience of just essentially figuring out how to explain something complex to a five-year-old, right?

And what I mean by this is like we've got we've got a lot of founders we work with who either know that they need to, you know, you know, invest in founder-led brand or, you know, founder-led content. Um, and they either just don't want to do it or we often find that they they just don't know where to start. And especially now it's become even more complicated because it's like, well, I could have all these cool ghost writers do it for me. Um, I could use AI to do it for me, but then I risk credibility because everyone ends up starting to sound the same on LinkedIn and you know what those posts look like.

Yeah. Um, so, so like what's what's one solid piece of advice to you could give to a founder SAS founder right now that they could start right now to say, okay, this is how I can leverage my brand to actually or or or or my voice or my, you know, experience, my wisdom to build a brand. Yeah, it's a good point. I'm being a little bit glib about can it be that simple because I'm disregarding a number of things.

Um, I've had a lot of sales experience and training and if you're a really good seller, you know how to explain things well. And if you can explain things really well, then that makes you better at writing content, which is good. Um, my degree was in philosophy. So I spent a lot of time writing and talking in a way that's very defensible.

It's I tend to be good at talking in a way where you can't easily poke at what I'm saying and find obvious flaws. Um, which tends to make my like LinkedIn posts hold up really well. I can say things that are like appropriately qualified. Uh, it's easy to like disagree with subjective taste things, but it's hard to disagree objectively.

I I don't make claims that are giant and easy to poke holes at. Um, so that helped a ton with growing an agency and with selling complex things is if you don't overclaim. Um, and then just tons of writing practice too. I know what good writing looks like and whether I'm using AI or not.

Everyone should stand behind what goes out on their profile regardless of whether you use AI to create it. But that involves you knowing what good writing looks like because you know what to stand behind. If you don't know what good looks like, it's hard for you to stand behind something good. That could be where a good ghost writer comes in.

They can say they can help you know what good writing looks like, they can gut check whether this really represents you or is kind of generic and and watered down. They can So are you saying just pick a pick a lane and and start just just start learning what good writing looks like? I think it's important. I think yeah.

I think it's good to prioritize knowing how to communicate well. I I think there's that's among the most important skills you can commit to. And I agree. Like if you're an AI CEO too, right?

That's a really important skill, you know, knowing how to craft a PR announcement that doesn't turn all of Twitter against you, that's a good skill. No matter what level of business you're playing at. So I would argue that if you are saying that's not a skill worth learning, I have better things to do, that you're not observing the situation correctly and you need to look at what CEOs of all levels who are really good from a small agency to the leader of the free world in quotes are doing. And judge whether large scale communication one to many is a skill you should commit to.

That's that's what to learn. I mean, writing a good LinkedIn post is is a mild derivative of being a good executive communicator. Oh, I love that. Like I think at the end of the day fundamentally all all business, all derivatives of of business and what leads to revenue is is our human understanding of conversation and connection and the ability to do that in a way that provokes thought, emotion and logic, right?

So good good good insight. Um, okay, so we talked about the kind of the AI hype earlier. Um, and and the like, I guess the implications that that might have on like product defensibility, modes, and and and perhaps like the, you know, exposing the importance of of a good go-to market motion. What about from a positive perspective and positive impacts and implications that's having on one's ability to to operate for cash flow and and and for efficiency, right?

So what are you seeing as you're going into organizations as you're evaluating, you know, your in your initial metrics or or how they operate that that that's having an impact on operating for cash flow. Oh, it's awesome. Uh, organizations pre AI, you need to have people doing 60% effort just because someone needs to turn that part of the wheel in the machine. And so you have these organizations pre pre AI and agents that are full of people doing uh that's not the right word to say.

That have many people doing dumb stuff at 60% effort and then you have people working really hard and they're all mishmashed together. That's kind of awkward culturally. Now, you really don't need the people who are not going to put in effort. You just have you you in theory can just have the people who are working really hard and then tech is doing a lot of the jobs that people used to do with like I clock in and sort of phone it in but I'm I'm turning the crank on this one little thing over here.

Um, so it's true that you need fewer people doing those same things as before. Now, I'm a firm firm believer in Givan's not paradox, so I don't know how you say that if that's how you pronounce it, but the idea that you will have new jobs be created. Um, but the new jobs that are created are mentally more difficult than the previous ones. And that's just going to take a little bit of time and I I urge people who are in the category of just turning the crank to sort of change their perspective on what level of mental investment they'll be putting into their work.

Um, but these post AI organizations leaner, full of higher effort people, or people that are putting in higher effort. I don't think there's a high effort and low effort person. There's people putting in different levels of of output. Um, and it's more enjoyable work.

I at my first sales job, we had to prospect every day for an hour, which was find 10 people, go to this random online free tool and try different variations of their email until you got a checkmark and then send the same email template and then a calendar reminder to send the the follow-up email template. It's crazy to think that we used to pay people to do that. Yeah, yeah, we did. And I did it.

I remember. I used to have a word doc open at at uh job before that with the email templates so I could copy and paste from them. I mean, how terrible that we had to do that and I don't need to do it anymore. So I can just do more of the fun stuff and less of the not fun stuff.

So has it changed organizations, uh, I think the the post AI change, wherever we are on the spectrum, and every organization's different. Some are maturing faster, some are slower. But you need fewer people doing those bad jobs. You'll at the end of the day, uh be able to use your cash flow more flexibly.

If you want to hire more of those higher effort people, you'll be able to scale faster. Revenue per employee goes up. Um, ideally overall, just global productivity increases, which is generally better for everyone. Gets us closer to that Star Trek Utopia where hopefully heading to, you know, post scarcity universe.

But until then we're still going to apparently copy and paste email templates. In some some places. There we go. Let's um, so I think that that's a good place to shift into a little bit of rapid fire because my rapid fire questions are are going to pick up on that um, as we're coming up on time.

But we talk about post AI universe, you're talking about revenue per employee. Uh what's the one SAS metric that founders obsess over too much? Ah. Revenue per employee?

Kidding. No, that's a good one. Um, I was kidding. Yeah.

Dale versus Jake. I think they obsess over too many things. I think they probably overcomplicate things and they don't over-obsess over one thing too much. In fact, if they obsessed only over revenue per employee, I think they'd be better than what they're doing now.

I mean revenue versus profit is one um, that's changing. Um, that I mean, you got to be really, really ambitious to have a negative gross margin. And if you can pull it off, awesome. But the owners on you to be right about your level of correctness and ambition is very high.

If you're cursor, okay, you get your negative gross margin. If you're not cursor, well, maybe you should come off your high horse and, you know, figure out your pricing strategy. Fair point. That's a interesting take.

All right. This one might feel more like uh, which is your favorite child. But uh, best acquisition you've ever made and why? Um, well, I'd say the um, I haven't done too too many.

I'm not I haven't done 100 deals. Um, but we bought a smaller competitor for a about an eighth of their initial listing price. And we got uh it took a few months for that to happen because there was yeah, the back and forth negotiation. They declined in revenue a little bit.

Uh, but their SEO value was worth multiples of what we paid right up front. So we just bought our SEO wholesale right away. Um, for, you know, fractions of a dollar for per dollar. Um, and that was that if I can do more of those deals, I'll be so so happy.

Man, I I I I have you help with my real estate investing. Um, I I like that I like that haircut you took on them. Uh, Alex, what's one AI trend you're skeptical about? Um, the over agentifying of the front end customer communication part of things.

I love all the back office process automation. Like automate the hell out of every back office process. When it comes to speaking with the most important people of, you know, your customers and carrying your brand, can you spare a good human for that please for now, you know? Unless they're asking, how does this feature work?

And they've been paying for three months and you can have your bot do that. That's that's fine. But man, if if you're still if you're having a GPT do those most important sales touchpoints, I'm I'm skeptical. Um, that's where that's where people are are are done best in the process and there's so much more back office to automate before we should resort to trying to automate that front end part.

100% agree. All right, what's um, what's what's one habit you have learned to really sharpen over the years that you would say has the biggest influence on your ability to compound wealth over time and and success. Always build pipeline. Even if you if you're not needing pipeline solves 90% of your problems.

And enlarging the size of the pie is helpful for so many things. Um, among other things, keeping your team and business partner's relationships good is way easier when there's so much happening and there's a lot coming in then when the pie gets smaller, culture suffers and you don't really know you're doing everything right but you don't know why it's just the human scarcity instinct takes over. So whether it's a team, you're the founder or anything else, just keep building keep building pipeline, keep investing in marketing. Um, and don't let up on that.

Um, unless you want, you know, growth to inevitably stall and the negative psychological and cultural effects of of that to start trickling in throughout you, your family, your organization. Love it. Last one, Alex. Uh, what's a harder role, founder or operator?

Operator like executive, non-founder? Yep. Um, I'd say founder is harder in terms of stress. Um, operator is more demanding in terms of actual output, work that needs to get done.

And so for me, I pick my my heart, I don't I don't love the stress hard as much as I do the output hard. I'd much rather have an output hard. Uh, so I think operator is a an easier role because that's how my I am constructed mentally. Um, maybe that's because I am a founder and I I'm speaking with that bias, but um, uh, whenever the whenever it's on you to keep the company going and the ownership and ultimate liability falls to you in some way, then that to me is feels more risky than just having to do a good job every day, which feels less risky.

Even if it is demanding in terms of how much you output, um, there's something to be said for that. But um, if you're a VP of marketing, a company goes out of business, you just stop receiving your paycheck. There's no like Right. potential securities liability if you raise money in the wrong way, right?

Like no one's coming after you if if your ARR was 3.1 and you said it was seven. I I I I know that movie. I've seen that movie.

Um, Alex Boyd, thank you for joining the show. Where uh, where can people learn more about you and what you're up to. Um, LinkedIn's a great place to direct traffic. LinkedIn.

Um, I've been on LinkedIn for coming up on a decade actively and um, it's still the best place to direct traffic. I know this will go up on LinkedIn, so good there. I'm also building up on Substack and Twitter and so forth. But um, uh for now, um still like you'll hear about what I'm doing from LinkedIn.

Awesome. Thanks for joining the show. We appreciate it. Appreciate it, guys.

Thanks for having me. Thanks, Alex.