👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
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A few days ago, I was scrolling through Steven Bartlett’s Instagram profile after watching an episode of his DOAC podcast.
I knew he was investing in health and wellness as well as consumer brands, but I wasn’t aware of his SaaS investment interests.
Now, you may be wondering what GrowthWaves has to do with Steven Bartlett’s investment portfolio.
Well, stay with me until the end, and you’ll find out.
Trend #1: Audience Co-Owner
A trend is hidden in plain sight in SaaS.
It’s SaaS companies bringing in co-owners (or majority investors) with massive online audiences.
It happened recently with Steven Bartlett, who became a co-owner of creator platform Stan.
There was an announcement on Instagram, LinkedIn, and almost every other medium Steven owns and operates.
And I’m sure there will be ads in his DOAC podcast soon, too.
That’s not the first time something like this has happened.
Back in 2024, entrepreneur and author (for lack of a better description) Alex Hormozi announced the biggest investment of his life into a SaaS called Skool.
The platform is co-owned by entrepreneur Sam Ovens, who already had a big audience online himself.
But, of course, nothing like the audience that Hormozi brought with him.
And, of course, there are special promotions on Skool’s website using Alex’s name:
This is one of the (only) two companies Alex is promoting on his social profiles, most notably X (formerly Twitter):
So, what do we have here?
A successful SaaS company with revenue, traction, and attention
A successful entrepreneur with a massive online following
Joining forces to create something even bigger
To understand the value of this, you’ve got to look under the hood.
And understand the motivations behind bringing an audience co-owner on board.
Here’s the audience co-owner framework:
Has a relevant online audience
Has the attention and trust of that audience
Can promote the company and help accelerate growth
So, it’s not as if Sam Ovens (Skool) or John Hu (Stan Store) have no audiences online.
And it’s not as if they can’t promote their companies online.
They do, or to be more accurate, they were doing it quite successfully before bringing an audience co-owner on board.
But access to a large, relevant, and ready-to-buy audience? That can’t be bought.
Consider this type of investment a new form of funding.
Because in most cases, a VC will wire you money, dictate which agency you’re going to work with, and send an email to their portfolio startups to start using your product.
They won’t be able to bring you the amount of attention that you’d get from an audience co-owner like Alex Hormozi or Steven Bartlett.
You may argue that this trend is a bit far-fetched, and it’s not really a trend since it’s pretty rare.
Fair enough.
Let’s go back to earth with something you can resonate more with.
Trend #2: Influencer Acquihire
Last week, Ahrefs announced the acquisition of Detailed.
Which means that they’ve started playing some serious ball.
Chrome extension with 450K+ users
Strong reputation in the SEO community
Site + newsletter with solid reach
Significant audience overlap with Ahrefs
Okay.
So, it’s just a media asset acquisition.
No big deal… right?
Not quite.
That’s not the *real* story.
Sure, Ahrefs will benefit from these assets.
But let’s be honest: they don’t need more reach in the SEO world.
The real story? Glen Allsopp is joining Ahrefs.
He’s one of the few SEO voices with reach *and* respect.
Loved by most, which is super rare these days.
To be clear, I’m not saying that this playbook is new.
Other companies have done similar acquisitions in the past:
HubSpot with The Hustle (Sam Parr running MFM podcast)
SEMrush with Backlinko (Brian Dean doing a course for SEMrush)
SEMrush with Traffic Think Tank (Nick Eubanks joining SEMrush)
Which means this is part of a bigger trend:
When distribution gets harder, SaaS companies buy influence.
To reiterate:
The assets in these acquisitions are important, but they’re not the main thing.
Just like audience co-owners, influencer acquihires share a few traits:
Has a relevant media asset
Has a relevant online audience
Has the attention and trust of that audience
Can work at the company and help accelerate growth
Even though there’s some overlap between influencer acquihires and audience co-owners, they’re obviously different.
They may not work full-time—project-based or part-time is often enough.
And I believe we’ll see more influencer acquihires (and even hires) going forward.
Especially when there’s a strong overlap between the influencer’s and the company’s audience.
In fact, I think that for certain positions (mainly GTM and revenue-related ones), the employee’s following and online audience, as well as their attention, will become as important (if not more important) than hard skills and other qualifications.
I made the prediction.
You can call me out if it turns out I was wrong.
Final thoughts
So, there you have it.
Two concepts based on real trends we’re seeing in SaaS.
Hopefully, they’ll help you understand and navigate the world around you a bit better.
I want to leave you with this:
Money isn’t the most important thing in SaaS anymore.
Distribution is.
Which is why the VC of the future will offer access to audiences and attention, rather than access to capital.
Thank you for reading today’s note, and see you again next week.