Your boy was on two pods the past few weeks.  Can I still talk like this at 33?

The Startup Blueprint

Episode 9 - Don't Build It.... Buy It? Acquiring a $1M ARR Portfolio

This is a great intro from the perspective of Indie Hackers looking to buy their first company. Full of hot takes I will probably regret saying in a year.

Acquiring Minds

Episode 100 - Would They Do It Again? 1 Year Later with 5 Early Guests

It was great chatting with Will again 1 year later. It was a time for reflection on what went right, and what has gone wrong. TLDR; we're still on that grind one year later and wouldn't change it for the world!

What's up with that SBA deal?

We've been pretty heads down trying to figure out how to finance a low 7 figure deal the past few weeks. The SBA, which looked like the most unbelievable deal on planet earth, turned out to have a dark side ... a full on lien against any property any of the 3 founders have to 100% collateralize the deal. This was profoundly disappointing. A lien on your house is no joke. They also had a really tough time working through (slightly) dirty financials. They were clean enough to where I could make sense of them (a very low bar), and we still got a lot of pushback. It was a great experience though and shoutout to Matt for helping us dip our toes in the water! I'm not saying we'll never do an SBA deal but it's no longer our default source of capital.

Overall I had thought there was a desire in SBA land to figure out how to do SaaS. My perception is that's not true. The objective feels like it's just volume. They want easy to finance deals they can churn through quickly to collect some fees. Totally get it, it's a business, but I am disappointed.

Steal This Idea

I've been working on a new SaaS (yeah I know ... I should focus!) and my dude Shivansh has been doing these giveaways via my Twitter account. They've been working like black magic.

Here are the 3 we've done so far.

#1

My agency has consistently hit >70% open rates for 2 years straight 🤯

I compiled 40+ tested subject lines & every SECRET I know about writing a ‘winning’ subject line

🔁 retweet + comment 'subject' and I’ll dm you the doc containing

- 40+ subject lines
- all the dos and donts pic.twitter.com/iQsQRjHxbR

— Andrew Pierno (@AndrewPierno) October 26, 2022

#2

A well-thought CTA can easily 2x your reply rates.

I compiled a list of 50+ Call to Actions (CTAs) for you to STEAL and use in cold emails or Linkedin DMs.

🔁 retweet + comment 'CTA' and I’ll dm you the doc containing:

- 50+ CTAs
- 5 tips for the perfect CTA
- 5 CTA mistakes pic.twitter.com/EecDE7qrPD

— Andrew Pierno (@AndrewPierno) October 18, 2022

#3

This is the same list that I used to grow my agency to ~$30k MRR and now Super Send.

Giving it away for FREE to celebrate the Super Send launch

>1200 YC Funded tech companies with 100% VERIFIED EMAILS

🔁 retweet + comment 'SUPER SEND' and I’ll dm it to you pic.twitter.com/Ut9MEqYOOM

— Andrew Pierno (@AndrewPierno) October 10, 2022

So yeah... this is working. The strategy goes like this.

1. Create something compelling to give away for free. See above. Can be a list of leads, CTAs, idk something helpful and relevant to the target audience you want to reach. For Super Send, this is marketers, founders, etc.
2. Make people retweet and comment to get the link to the doc. I use Tweet Hunter to automate this. Basically it will auto dm people who retweet and comment the link so you don't have to do this manually.
3. Hide the thing you're giving away behind a google doc so they need to request access (you get their email). Add the email to your email newsletter so you can try to grab them as customers later (provide value first).

Super Send now has 625 ish people on the newsletter in only 6 weeks. Not all of them are from the giveaway but many of them are! Steal it!

✌️ ,

AP