What Is SaaS? Software As A Service Explained (In 5 Minutes)

0:00today i'm going to be talking about sas what it is and why it's important in under five minutes hi i'm rob walling i'm a startup founder with multiple exits the author of three books on building startups and an investor in almost 80 companies sas is an acronym it's s-a-a-s software as a service so let's look at those two components of it the first is software software you might be familiar with is a tool that you use to complete a task think of something like microsoft word or imovie that's software but it's not sas because you have to download it and install it on your computer the as a service part means that it runs

0:38as a service on the internet so you usually access it through a web browser like chrome or firefox safari internet explorer i think some people still use that right but it's in the cloud as some people might say and you don't own the software you don't pay a one-time fee and download it but you almost lease it or you rent it usually sas is paid for on a subscription basis like uh at a month at a time or a year at a time and you have to get a break for paying for an entire year at a time and so instead of having to install new versions of software all

1:10the time and keep it patched like we used to do with you know old desktop software like you think of microsoft word 10 years ago you think of a video editor you think of adobe acrobat that runs on your machine instead of dealing with all of that getting the constant you need to update sas companies are able to update their software frequently because it's running on a server that you are accessing so they can just update the server and now when you type in the url to docs.google.com or you go to the dropbox interface via you know via google chrome you see the latest version sas software should be getting better or

1:44at least more feature-rich the longer that you use it almost without you noticing i mean you should be able to log in and just see new features without having to install or download anything so sas is important for end users like yourself or a business and other consumers because you always have the best software and you don't have to install anything now there's also a debate of well i liked it you know some people like it when they're able to buy the software pay that one-time fee and then not have to keep paying um every month or every year because they only need to use it once

2:18so that is the push and pull a bit before i tell you why sas is so important for startup founders and entrepreneurs i want to remind you if you're enjoying this video if you're getting some value out of it hit the like button subscribe to the channel this is a very basic 101 video i'm going through of a very basic concept and i hope it's helpful for you but we dive into all types of more advanced concepts around startup ideas validating sas how to build it launch it grow at all those topics we cover throughout our videos so it's important to subscribe to keep up to date so now

2:47why is sas so critical and such an amazing lever for startup founders and entrepreneurs it's because it has the cheat code of business built into it i like to use that phrase cheat code do you remember the game contra it had the konami cheat code which was up up down down left right left right b a start and that allowed you to get a kajillion lives in contra this is i'm dating myself this is on the old nintendo entertainment system from the 80s but it was a cheat code and sas has a cheap code built in that other business forms do not and that code is recurring

3:21revenue and so from an entrepreneurs or a founder's perspective everyone wants recurring revenue companies without recurring revenue try to figure out ways to start subscriptions um you know you saw ecommerce go from selling shoes one time to having subscription shoes and clothing one time having subscription clothing and subscription anything box right it's because recurring revenue is so powerful companies with recurring revenue are worth more than companies with one-time sales and it's just a smoother ride because you have people paying you every month so that's why so many founders when they start companies want to look at sas because it's just a very powerful business model and it has

3:58recurring revenue baked in i'll stop there that's the gist what is sas in under five minutes hope you enjoyed it again like and subscribe if you did and i'll see you in the next video