The Distribution Problem

Building SaaS has never been easier.

Getting people to care is still hard.

I’ve spent more than 12 years in affiliate marketing, so distribution isn’t exactly new to me.

But since starting my own SaaS, Affonso, in 2024, I’ve found myself thinking about one question more and more:

How do SaaS companies actually get customers?

Not “how do you grow a SaaS?” in the abstract.

I want to know where the customers actually come from.

The founder’s audience? SEO? Ads? Affiliates? Outbound? A free tool? Integrations? Partnerships? Word of mouth?

And more importantly:

Why did it work? What did they try before it worked? How long did it take? Would it work for another SaaS?

And whenever people are willing to share them: what do the numbers look like?

That’s the question behind The Next Customer.

There’s an incredible amount of advice on how to build SaaS.

What stack to use. How to ship faster. Which AI tools to use. How to design your onboarding. How to price your product.

All useful. But eventually you have a product sitting there. Now what?

You need people to discover it.

Some of them need to care enough to try it.

And some of those people need to become customers.

That path from “Nobody knows this exists” to “Someone paid for it” is what interests me.

And there isn’t one answer.

One SaaS might get most of its customers from Google.

Another has a founder with a huge audience.

Another spends heavily on paid acquisition (probably not an option if you’re bootstrapped 😅).

Another grows through affiliates and partnerships.

Another gives away a free tool that sends thousands of people into its product.

And the really interesting companies often combine several of these into something that compounds over time.

That’s what I want to understand.

Not another list of “10 SaaS growth hacks.”

I want to understand the machinery behind where customers come from.

Every Monday, I’ll share one useful look at how SaaS companies get customers.

Sometimes I’ll reverse-engineer the distribution of a SaaS company.

Sometimes I’ll dig into a specific channel or playbook.

I’ll pull interesting lessons out of founder interviews, podcasts, data, and stories I come across.

And because I’m building SaaS myself, I’ll also share my own experiments. Including the ones that don’t work.

I don’t know where all of this will lead.

But I know the question I want to keep asking:

How do SaaS companies get customers?

That should keep us busy for a while.

For the next issue, I’m starting with something I actually have the receipts for:

How I got the first customers for Affonso.

Where they came from, what I did to get them, what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently today.

See you Monday.

— Silvestro

P.S. I want your input on what I dig into next. Know a SaaS with an interesting distribution story? A founder I should talk to? A channel you want me to investigate?

Just reply and send it my way.