SaaS Partnerships: 2,500 Merchants and $7.8M Raised

Kevin Lee spent $160,000 building a technology that nobody wanted. His proxy server was designed to monetize university network traffic for charity, but every IT department turned him down. That failure led him to SaaS partnerships that would eventually connect 2,500 merchants and raise $7.8 million for nonprofits.

In this episode, Kevin shares how SaaS partnerships with affiliate networks became the engine behind We-Care's 2,500 merchant relationships. He explains how he pivoted from enterprise infrastructure to a consumer browser plugin, and why his win-win philosophy helped him build a cause marketing SaaS platform that does well and does good at the same time.

Kevin leveraged SaaS partnerships with LinkShare, Commission Junction, and Pepper Jam to scale without a large sales team. These affiliate partnerships gave We-Care access to thousands of merchants through existing networks. The 50/50 revenue split model with nonprofits kept both sides invested in partner-led growth.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🤝 Validate before building, not after SaaS partnerships form: Kevin spent $160,000 and 6 months on a proxy server without talking to potential users first. Every university and hospital IT team rejected it despite it being free to implement.
• 📉 Don't protect your idea at the cost of feedback: Kevin kept his concept secret to preserve first-mover advantage. That secrecy prevented him from discovering critical adoption barriers in early conversations with IT teams.
• 🔄 Pivot your delivery model when buyer SaaS partnerships stall: After enterprise IT teams refused the proxy server, Kevin rewrote the same functionality as a consumer browser plugin. Removing the enterprise gatekeeper unlocked the consumer market directly.
• 🤝 Use affiliate networks to scale SaaS partnerships without a sales team: We-Care tapped LinkShare, Commission Junction, and Pepper Jam to reach 2,500 merchants through existing infrastructure rather than building a large biz dev operation.
• 🎯 Apply the 80/20 rule to prioritize partnership prospects: Kevin recommends ranking potential partners by deal materiality versus ease of closing. Easy deals create case studies, while whale deals can sustain a company for years.

Chapters

• Introduction and Kevin Lee's background
• We-Care's updated fundraising numbers
• Kevin's personal life and motivation
• Favorite quote and win-win philosophy
• How Didit (DIT) started in the 1990s
• The We-Care mission and cause marketing concept
• The original proxy server technology
• $160,000 and 6 months building a product nobody wanted
• Using Didit to fund We-Care development
• The most important lesson from the failure
• Advice on sharing ideas versus protecting them
• Pivoting to a consumer browser plugin
• How the browser plugin works for shoppers
• Finding marketing partners for distribution
• How nonprofit causes helped market We-Care
• The hardest part of building We-Care
• Getting deeper into the hole before traction
• Revenue model and the 50/50 nonprofit split
• Team size and the Sweeps for a Cause launch
• Building SaaS partnerships with 2,500 merchants
• Advice on striking partnership deals at scale

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/40
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email