Ian Brodie, the co-founder and CEO of Levanta, shares his journey of building a successful SaaS company in the affiliate marketing space.
Levanta is an affiliate marketing platform for Amazon sellers, enabling them to connect with content creators, publishers, and influencers to drive sales and traffic to their Amazon storefronts. The company has experienced rapid growth, with over 700 brands and 3,000 affiliates on the platform. Ian discusses the challenges and opportunities of the affiliate marketing industry, working with Amazon, and the importance of building credibility and confidence as a young founder.
He also discusses his experience of successful selling his previous company, Grovia, an affiliate partner recruiting services company that was acquired by Acceleration Partners in 2022.
Affiliate Marketing for Amazon topics discussed on this podcast:
- Why Levanta is specifically focused on helping Amazon sellers build affiliate networks
- How their revenue includes flat SaaS fees and variable fees based on performance
- How building and selling a company at a young age provides credibility, skills, and financial security for future ventures
- How selling Grovia was a sleepless process of legal contracts, negotiating deals, and investing resources.
- How starting a services business can provide valuable insights into the industry and help identify software opportunities
- Why their future could involve achieving profitability, exploring new growth opportunities, or considering an exit
Best quote from Ian Brodie, CEO of Levanta
“I definitely believe in the benefits of starting with a services business first–before starting a SaaS business. I highly recommend to anyone who’s starting a business for the first time and wants to learn about a space. You can spin up a services business up so quickly because you can market it very cheap at first, start delivering value, and then grow a point where you can bring on additional talent.
“Then, you can start experimenting with an engineer to build a product by adding a tech-enabled aspect to your services business. That allows you to learn a lot about a particular industry and become practitioners. You can become experts in a particular space and know what problems are missing. If you do go and start another company, that’s where the SaaS opportunity lies. You’ll know exactly where that is.”
Links
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