SaaS Exit: Sold for $8M Then Built a Board Game

Nick Kellet sold his SaaS business to Business Objects for over $8 million in 1999 - then walked away from enterprise software to create a board game. Gift Trap sold nearly 100,000 copies and won 20+ awards worldwide.

In this episode, Nick reveals the strategy behind his SaaS exit that started when his product was only six weeks old, how he ordered 10,000 board games without knowing anything about the industry, and how he grew Listly to 200,000 users through unexpected early adopters in the church blogging community.

The startup acquisition happened fast. Nick exhibited at the Business Objects user conference when AnswerSets was barely a prototype. The CTO noticed the product, and a licensing conversation turned into a full SaaS acquisition in two and a half years. After selling a SaaS business, Nick applied those lessons to build Listly, where 50% of traffic came from embedded content on other blogs.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 💰 Position your product where acquirers already sell for a SaaS exit: Nick exhibited at the Business Objects conference when AnswerSets was six weeks old. That turned into an $8M+ startup acquisition.
• 🎯 Find unexpected niches after selling a SaaS business: Listly found early traction through church conference organizers who pulled their entire community along.
• 📉 Underpromise on network effects for early-stage products: Claiming engagement multiplication backfired when users with no audience expected dramatic results. Focus on personal utility first.
• 🚀 Build infrastructure before features for embeddable content: If embedded content slows down a blogger's site, they remove it immediately and warn others.
• 🧠 Play-test obsessively before committing to inventory: Nick tested Gift Trap with 500+ people. Unlike software, 10,000 board games in your garage cannot be patched after shipping.
• 🤝 Use the 1% rule to interpret customer feedback: When one person complains, assume 99 others silently left.
• 🔄 Offer three options, not two, to signal product flexibility: Two options feel like either/or. Three signal extensibility and invite more feedback.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Gift Trap board game origin story
• Building AnswerSets and visual Venn diagram tool
• The SaaS exit - selling AnswerSets to Business Objects for $8M+
• Post-acquisition life at Business Objects
• How Listly got started with structured data
• Getting early traction with 200,000 users
• Church blogger use case and influencer adoption
• Scaling embeddable content for 15,000 blogs
• Lightning round
• Where to find Nick Kellet and Listly

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/92
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email