# SaaS Mag and How Startups Can Leverage Traditional Media with Thomas Smale – MicroConf On Air

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQg0a8lJHqc
Duration: 22 min
Language: English
Words: 4093
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/YQg0a8lJHqc

---

[0:02] and we are live welcome to this week's episode of microconf on air i'm your host rob walling every wednesday we live stream for about 30 minutes we cover topics related to building and growing ambitious startups that don't require us to work 80-hour weeks raise millions in venture capital or drive us to the brink of burnout it's a great uh interesting week this week i'm actually it looks like i'm hovered or you know sitting over here in the corner in the dark thunder lightning outside and just trying to get a flight on me even to make this work has been a challenge so um it's gonna be a fun fun conversation

[0:35] today um speaking with uh mr thomas smail who you may have heard of he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of sas mag and the co-founder of fe international which is a mergers and acquisitions uh broker in essence m a broker and we're going to talk about how startups can leverage traditional media focusing on his experience around sas mag so sas mag launched just a couple years ago and i believe it's on a quarterly publication schedule and um you know as editor-in-chief he obviously has experience with startups who want to be featured with uh press releases with media relationships with all that and and you know thomas has um quite a wealth of

[1:21] experience even before fe international he um owned a number of of websites and online properties and then turned that into a brokerage because he was buying and selling them and so you know he's been on the marketing side he's been now on the m a side and he sees a lot of deals come through whether for sas applications um uh ecommerce sites you know wordpress plugins i don't know how many those they sell these days but all types of web properties that that come through fe and then when they decided to launch sas mag um you know that has become one of the kind of industry trade publication you know

[1:57] for for sas and it covers venture back and non-venture back i've read several issues and now i'm you know you know just thinking about on how he can help us learn from all the experience that he has if you have questions for thomas please put them in the micrograph on air channel in microconf connect if you're obviously if you're not microcontroller connect microgolfconnect.com we'll get you in there and then microconf on air is the channel that i monitor and producer xander is monitoring for your questions and the questions can rain from range from things that we're going to talk about like how startups can leverage traditional

[2:29] media you know being involved with this magazine and press releases and and media relationships or if you want to ask about sas valuations or about m a stuff about buy side sell side about you know any of that um thomas really is a wealth of knowledge so but to kick us off i'm curious you know what are some of the best stories founders can pitch that an outlet like sas mag or another magazine might want to cover like how how can founders get their story in the hands of the people that want to you know put them in in a magazine yes i think the first thing is

[3:04] there's no one-size-fits-all approach the publication like sas mag or any you call it a trade publication which i think is a good way of talking about it they'll often have like some very specific things they want to talk about but also quite broad if you go to somewhere like a tech crunch i think traditionally they want to hear funding stories they want to hear about the company that raised 100 million dollars for their new ai idea or whatever it might be um whereas if you go to them say hey i just saw my bootstrap sas business for two million dollars like that's a fantastic outcome for that

[3:39] founder but techcrunch don't care um part of the reason we launched asmag in the first place is there was no uncovering what we thought people would want to know about um so firstly it's like know the publication pitching techcrunch and sas mag same article it's probably not going to be beneficial i think this is going for any outreach you're gonna do if you blast out 200 emails that's exactly the same thing to 200 different publications or 200 podcasts or 200 blogs whatever you're trying to achieve you're gonna get bad results so figure out what that publication is talking about ultimately they don't really care about you or what you think is important they

[4:22] think about what they think their audience thinks is important it's probably the easiest way of doing it is see what a particular journalist or the editor or whoever has published before and see what's done well for them there are various tools out there you can kind of test and try to see what's been successful but i mean you know a very simple level you could go on their facebook page or twitter see how many shares or retweets a particular post has got and if it's been popular try and pitch something similar so it might be a could be a founder story something like sas mag we like founder

[4:59] stories but there are a lot of places that don't want to cover founder stories they want to talk about fundraising um so you really have to kind of put into context like that but i think the best way to do it is firstly figure out what a particular publication is talking about at the time what they've published in the past and to your best judgment what they've what they've been successful with in the past because ultimately most journalists and even even our team in the sas mag they're not judged by revenue because it's a it's a free magazine but we care about how popular a particular

[5:35] article is and what feedback we get so that's all someone a journalist or an editor is looking for it's kind of popularity if they think it's gonna be popular um then i would think that's the best place to start right yeah and i think that's good to get inside the mind of of a writer um or an editor is to think what is their end goal and starting with the end goal of page views or social shares or whatever that may be and then kind of backing in that if you are going to pitch um that you you kind of craft the pitch around that i got a couple questions from audience

[6:13] members and i'd love to give those priority um you know just so we can dive in even though they're perhaps a left turn from the topic we were just talking about so these are more m a questions when buying a business with a plant and equipment those assets can be used to get financing to buy the business what are financing options for buying website or web-based businesses um so i guess the lazy answer is they're relatively limited um the vast majority of buyers we work with either have their own cash or they've already raised cash from someone else um the most common form of bank financing we see

[6:49] is an sba loan uh sba loans are somewhat restrictive and they have a bunch of different rules and regulations around what you need to do in order to get one and that generally starts with years of tax returns on the business so generally if the business is based in the us or the owner of the business is based in the us and the business is at least five years old it's reasonably likely it will qualify for sba um if not then it can be challenging um so i guess the short answer is there are not too many ways to do it unless you have an sba qualified

[7:29] business or you have access to capital yourself um so i guess that somewhat created a barrier to entry in there in the industry where the vast majority of buyers out there are already independently wealthy or have access to capital that when you're starting out might be a little bit more difficult right right and seller financing as well right if a seller is willing to yeah exactly 68 yeah i'd say the rule of thumb we tend to tell people is if a business is below half a million you're probably going to be paying cash above that level you can definitely get seller financing um and again this is

[8:10] seems somewhat i don't know if you describe it as like elitist or a barrier to entry but the more of a track record you have and the more successful you've been the more likely you want to get seller financing so if you sold a business to 10 million dollars and you say hey i'll pay you 60 up front and 10 of the revenue for the next three years i'm going to grow the business then you're more likely to accept that deal than from the person who's like first time buyer is a little bit nervous and has never run a business before well what so that's good that's good

[8:44] info um about seller financing and about sba that was my understanding as well second question on mna stuff it's from rahul in microsoft on air he says what action items would you suggest for non-usd based sas products wanting to sell and market for us based small and medium-sized business customers yeah this is something i did did myself moving i mean f international the backstory as we were originally founded in the uk we moved out to the us um i think it does depend a little bit on your audience i think some people want to see that you are physically based in the us um so part of the reason i now live in

[9:24] the us is i spend a lot of my time as you know traveling to conferences and events um like michael month and meeting different people in person if you have a sas business and a lot of other businesses that's not necessary so your physical location shouldn't matter too much um a lot of people ask us if you're thinking about selling the business in the future again it doesn't really matter where you're based um now in the future um buyers generally don't really care if the beauty of this industry is you can run a business from from anywhere so it isn't actually any reason why you need to be based in a

[10:00] specific place um if you really need to in the short term something we did years ago before we physically moved out to the us is you can rent an office space go for a wework or a register or something like that and physically get an office space um you can get a us phone number all of those kind of things that are easy to do um but i think if you're trying to pretend you are saying that you are not in the long run that's probably not going to be the most successful strategy for you so my suggestion would be figure out if you truly you

[10:34] need to be um in the us one thing you definitely do need to do um is have the ability to work around us time zones um if you're not able to do that i think you're really going to struggle doing business in in the us in general and that to me has always been the biggest factor people don't really care what you're based as long as you work around them um and then like i said if you need a physical location get a physical location but for the vast majority of businesses it's not a problem that's that was the big one i was going to mention is i think folks in the us

[11:08] especially with sas are used to a lot of them being located here and so they are used to if there's live chat that it is you know there's manned you know 9am to 5pm or whatever um during us hours or if it's email support that it's not this 24-hour lag there are obvious exceptions um but you know even the australian sas i think like zeros based in australia like they have staff that is doing business you know that is doing support during business hours you know around the world i think the only other two other things i would say are pretty obvious but um obviously you need everything needs

[11:41] to be in english because so many people in the us don't speak a second language and um pricing in u.s dollars because folks are turned off here by euros and pounds as odd as that you know as odd as that may sound i know there's more tolerance for that in other parts of the world but u.s folks businesses tend to be you know pretty um focused on the dollar so those are the three things i'd be thinking about all right oh okay so rahul is clarifying he said my question was more on how to do our pr and marketing if we are a non-us company and for all in on that first i mean i

[12:18] don't i just don't know that there's i don't know how much of a difference i don't know that anyone cares you know it depends on what kind of marketing you're doing if you're doing great content i don't look to see where the company is if i'm reading your blog post if you're running ads on facebook or i'm clicking through a google ad like i don't know that that there's much of a difference for me the only thing i sometimes know is is the way that uk english and and you know american english have oh versus oh you or there's there's spellings that will tip me off to hey

[12:44] this someone's in europe but that isn't necessarily a huge huge issue i think what are your thoughts thomas yeah i would agree i mean there are some exceptions so if you're if you're publishing i'm in san francisco if you publish the san francisco chronicle something like that they probably want stories about companies from san francisco um some outlets will care about your location the vast majority will not um and i mean talk about a place like san francisco for example the not the vast majority i don't actually know the data but a lot of the companies here are run by people who are immigrants either first or second

[13:20] generation so it's very normal to be hey this is thomas from england it's not uncommon at all so i would say to answer the question in a very direct way i think you're overthinking it if you're worried about pitching for press if you think if you think your location is the only reason why you're struggling to get press if that is the actual issue then that's probably not the actual case there are probably other factors involved yeah yeah and that's i think there's press is one thing and marketing you know it really depends on the channels you're using i think another question that we had for you

[14:00] um is you often hear like hey if you are going to do pr if you are going to try to get written up that you should look at building relationships you know whether it's relationship with an editor with a magazine with an with a writer like what are some of the best ways you've seen people build those relationships to get um coverage over time right because this is not a pr is not a one-time thing if you want to get written up in sas mag or as you know as you've mentioned techcrunch or any other outlet you're gonna want that periodically as you launch something big as you get on

[14:33] the inc 5000 as you raise a round of funding you know as you sell whatever it is so having these relationships um can be valuable what are some of the best ways you've seen folks build relationships with the writers or the editors yes i think if you look towards if you're on an ongoing relationship like first impressions are really important so assuming your pitch is successful and you get accepted by a publication or multiple publications and that will happen you'll get lots and lots of no's and you'll always get notes for kind of the entire history of your business but some people will say yes once you get a yes

[15:10] it's really important to first see i appreciate this is ironic seeing as my video cut out midway through the stream but it's being reliable and being available so it's kind of doing everything that the producer or editor or whatever it is wants so making their life making their life easier so not doing what i'm doing here at the zander but doing what providing content on time um being receptive to changes i think a lot of founders get quite protective over their kind of content and their style but ultimately the editor is the one or the engineering chief is ultimately the one who has final say on what content goes out so if

[15:47] they give you feedback even if you don't necessarily like it when you're starting out my suggestion would be just go with it um and then the really important thing is once the content or your article or video or whatever it is is published make sure you're putting the effort into promote it um sharing on all your channels because ultimately if the piece is successful um it's very much the meritocracy the journalist or the editor will then want to work with you again um and they'll come back if you don't bother sharing it or you don't put any effort in um you're not thankful to the journalists

[16:22] and there's thousands of other people in their inbox who will do a better job um so i guess that is another thing this might be extremely obvious but like journalists and editors are real people send them a send them a thank you note saying really appreciate you featuring me happy to be a resource again in the future so it may well be you start out by um something you might just start out by for example with sas mag we often feature people just on our blog and you might just provide a one-line quote for a particular blog post and it might be the first person to reply to her

[17:00] email out of 10 people email get the quote and then that quote might then turn into a uh interview on our blog and then if the blog post does well um you then i guess graduate to the print version of the magazine um so that's how we look at it every publication will be slightly different but for us it's kind of you can kind of graduate up from kind of quote to full article to front page um so that's definitely a way to look at it and like you mentioned already robert is a is a long-term thing you're not going to get kind of on the

[17:36] front page in a month expect these things to take usually years or definitely months to make any sort of progress particularly with a publication which like sas mag is published every quarter we generally know what content is going in for the next almost the next 12 months in advance and when that will just change the the topics but the people who are being included are usually somewhat fixed yeah that's that's good advice i like i like that uh thought process about almost graduating from the blog to uh you know up up into the magazine um yeah that's cool i've also heard advice given and i've never done this

[18:17] personally but hey if there's a reporter that you see or a writer that you see writing at whatever whether it's sass mag or techcrunch or whatever follow them on twitter and engage with them and if you as you become known to them they start to get curious i've had people do this to me and wind up on startups for the rest of us you know or wind up on microcom stage where i start seeing their name and i'm like how this person's like interacting in a lot of conversations that i am and i haven't i don't know them yet so i click through and i start learning about them oh

[18:43] they're running an app that's interesting and then i hear them on a podcast a month later and i'm like oh that's that person who did you know and suddenly you start connecting the dots i'm curious if you feel like that um is is a feasible approach for to get in the door i would say definitely um because talking about successful pitches um it's very obvious to someone sent you an individual email like you already mentioned it's also very obvious if someone is actually specifically read or watched what you've said or written and i guess this this also counts for getting like busy people like founders to reply for example if

[19:19] you want me to reply to an email um it's cold if you have very obviously read or listen to something i've said in the past and you have a question about it i will almost always respond to that email if you send me a generic email where you clearly have not and you just want kind of generic advice it's highly unlikely i will um enter and listen editors are exactly the same because a lot of them are they like writing and they learn to be intellectually challenged and they like to talk and discuss the content they have written about or produced in the in the past

[19:53] so if you engage with them in a genuine way um i wouldn't try and be annoying about it so don't constantly kind of tweet them but sharing their stuff um i think is always a a good way to go um and you should be doing this way before you have anything to to pitch them so hopefully by the time you are pitching it's not actually a cold email at all because they at least recognize your name or think they recognize your name so in the sea of 500 emails they've received that day if they see the surname warning they're like i've heard of this guy before i

[20:29] think he's got a podcast and then they're gonna more likely to read your email yeah for sure well thank you sir thanks so much for uh coming on the show we're at time for today folks want to follow you on twitter you are at thomas smail it's s-m-a-l-e and of course sas mag is at sas mag on twitter and sasmag.com thanks for joining me on uh microconfig air today sir thanks so much rob thanks everyone all right i want to tell you about micro golf remote it is september 1st and we want to hear your story you can head to microcomremote.com and if you submit a 60-second video sharing

[21:07] a story about a win a fail or your favorite microcomp memory you can get 50 off your ticket to microcomp remote even if you don't want to do that you should head there and get a ticket because we're it's going to be a really cool event um this is not the typical virtual summit that you've been attending uh we're really going all in on some novel and creative ideas and have been hustling and working to do something that is just it's gonna be five hours of coolness and i don't think you're gonna want to miss [Music] it you

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt