Practical Founders Podcast

#109: Helping SaaS Startups Grow with Practical Funding and Operational Services – Kyle York

Sep 5, 2024

Kyle York was the Chief Revenue Officer of Dyn, a bootstrapped cloud infrastructure company that he helped grow and sell to Oracle for over $600 million. He then led product strategy and acquisitions in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure group before going out on his own to invest in and help grow SaaS startups.

His current venture is York IE, which is both an advisory firm with tech-enabled services to help early-stage B2B SaaS companies grow and an investment firm that has invested in over 60 practical SaaS companies.

In this expert session, Kyle discusses why his efficient funding approach appeals to practical SaaS founders and why it is different than traditional VC funding. We discuss the current environment for funding, growth, and exits for practical founders. We also dive into what’s working and not working in 2024 to drive growth in capital-efficient SaaS businesses.

Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale

This week’s podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region.

Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

Quote from Kyle York, Founder of York IE

“It’s gonna sound so simple, but founders need to set the long-term vision of what they want to be and what they want to build. Then make sure that every decision you make backward to today is working towards fulfilling that vision.

“What I see too often is companies pigeonholing themselves down a certain trajectory or path that isn’t even aligned exactly with what they wanted. This can create problems when you’re raising money from outside investors if what investors want is not the same as your vision and timeline.”

Links

Practical Founders Podcast Stats

139

Founders
interviewed

$10.8billion

Total founder
equity value

$77million

Average founder
equity value

0

VC-funded
founders

Cover Photo of Practical Founders Podcast

Practical Founders Podcast with Greg Head

Every week, host Greg Head interviews a successful software founder who started, grew, and sometimes sold a valuable software company—without VC funding.

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