Generated $2.5B With Performance Marketing - Cem Atik

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Charles Schwartz 0:00

Welcome to The Proven Podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Jem Atik, the German operator who's generated $2 billion in revenue buying, scaling, and selling SaaS and e-commerce companies, breaks down how to spot undervalued businesses, fix what's broken, and scale them into massive exits. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back. Cam, I'm excited to have you on the show.

Cem Atik 0:25

Have you to be here.

Charles Schwartz 0:27

So there's a couple of people out here who know about sales and they know about scaling and they know about SaaS, but they might not know about you. So give everybody a little bit of an idea of what you've done, the revenue that you've generated. Give everybody a little bit of detail who you are and what you've done.

Cem Atik 0:41

Sure. Yeah, I'm Sam from Germany, basically a small marketing nerd, I would say. And I make my passion to my job and also like, yeah, like my roadmap that I just want to share with people, I would say. So what I do is really simple. We buy businesses, we scale them, and then we sell them. Really simple. Mainly, we are just talking about e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Um, yeah, to just keep it quick.

Charles Schwartz 1:14

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So, but when you talk about doing that, you've generated a certain number of revenue and sales and scaling. Can you talk a little bit about that to get the audience to go, what the heck? Cause Sam, it's a, it's a huge thing that you've done.

Cem Atik 1:29

Yeah, when we were just talking about how much revenue we generate for businesses we are actively, yeah, was working on, yeah, we reached last year $2 billion.

How did Cem Atik generate $2 billion in revenue by acquiring and scaling businesses?

Charles Schwartz 1:43

So little numbers, nothing big, little numbers there. So you've done two billion revs for the companies that you didn't even start. You just acquired them. You scale them. You systematize them. You go from there. So a lot of people are going to have a lot of questions going, okay, I have a SaaS company. I want to own a SaaS company. I want to buy companies. Let's go through this whole process. Let's go through when you're looking for businesses to buy, and then we'll get to what we're doing if you're scaling one. When you're looking for businesses to buy that are these SaaS companies, where are you looking and what are you looking for?

Cem Atik 2:14

So the first thing is, a couple of years before, when we were starting with this idea, I was thinking like, okay, how we can do that? And I just... I just trade since I'm 19 a lot, and I was thinking about Warren Buffett. What he does is pretty much the same, only in another industry. He just tries to figure out really undervalued businesses, get involved, and grow together with them. And that's basically a pretty similar process. We do it a bit differently. Because we're especially looking also for businesses that are going close to being bankrupt sometimes. So buying a business out from the insolvency, it's a huge leverage for us. Just imagine a business that makes 30 million revenue last year can be maybe sold this year for 1 million, which is insanely cheap for sure.

Cem Atik 3:07

That's one thing. And the second thing is we usually, I mean, this is more a network thing. So it's not like you can do a lot of ads for it or you just can talk about it. We already do ads for that in Europe. But mainly these contacts or these leads or businesses that could be interesting for us coming over our M&A network. Over the last years and also because we are investor-backed, Happy to be able to say that. We have a huge M&A network, over 200, 300 M&A consultants that are interested to just give us the best possible deals because they know that the percentages that we share are much higher than the competition. So you win with money, basically. So that means if an M&A consultant usually get 5%, we pay him maybe 7%, yeah, that he gives us the good leads.

Charles Schwartz 4:00

Sounds bad, but the world, it is like it is. It's just how the world is, absolutely. I did this with real estate for years where, you know, your real estate agents, they're going to get 1% or 2% of whatever they sell. I'm like, well, I'll give you 6%.

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Chapters

6 chapters

1 What is the main topic discussed in this episode? 0:00–1:43 2 How did Cem Atik generate $2 billion in revenue by acquiring and scaling businesses? 1:43–8:38 3 Where does Cem find undervalued SaaS and e‑commerce deals and why pay M&A consultants more? 8:38–17:42 4 What unit economics does Cem check before acquiring a business? 17:42–28:46 5 How should founders reframe offers to ‘sell the result’ instead of the product? 28:46–44:59 6 Which A/B tests consistently improve SaaS conversion rates and where should you run them? 44:59–48:07

Speakers

2 identified

Cem Atik 32 min Charles Schwartz 12 min

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Recorded06 May 2026

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Show notes

Cem Atik built a portfolio that generated over two billion dollars in revenue without founding a single company from scratch, scaled a SaaS business from barely seven figures to forty-five million in twelve months, and now runs one of Europe's most active acquisition and growth operations buying distressed e-commerce and SaaS businesses and turning them exit-ready. Now he is pulling back the curtain on exactly how it works. Charles and Cem get into the real mechanics of acquiring and scaling businesses that other operators have given up on, from identifying the unit economics that separate a hidden gem from a money pit, to building a lead generation engine that converts without burning through ad spend, to running A/B tests that take a company from stagnant to scaling inside a year. Cem breaks down the organic content strategy that consistently delivers higher ROI than paid channels, the onboarding tweak that boosts conversions by up to forty percent, and what he would do in the first ninety days if he were starting a SaaS company from zero today. Together, they explore why selling the result always outperforms selling the product, why the highest return on investment platform is one most operators are already ignoring, and why knowing your unit economics matters more than any marketing tactic you will ever run. This is not a masterclass in theory. It is a field-tested breakdown of how overlooked businesses become acquisition-ready machines. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Why unit economics are the single most important number in any business and how most founders are measuring them wrong without knowing it How Cem's offer-testing framework identifies the highest-converting angle without committing your full budget to a single bet The landing page principle that will cost you more than your entire ad spend if you skip it before scaling traffic Why targeting an audience with purchasing power changes the complete math of your business model regardless of what you are selling How to use AI as a sparring partner rather than a search engine and why that shift produces decisions you can actually trust KEY POINTS 01:21 Two billion in revenue: Cem reveals the scale of what his team has built for businesses they did not start, while Charles breaks down why the number changes everything about how you think about acquiring versus building. 02:06 Finding deals no one else sees: Cem explains the M&A network strategy and why paying consultants above market rate ensures the best opportunities land with him first, while Charles connects it to how he ran the same play in real estate. 04:30 The unit economics test: Cem walks through the exact numbers he looks at before touching a business, while Charles pushes him on what it really looks like when a company thinks it is healthy but is not. 07:27 Sell the result, not the product: Cem uses a telehealth case study to show why reframing your offer around the outcome rewires the entire conversion process, while Charles ties it back to how every great brand in history has done the same thing. 12:20 The A/B tests that actually work: Cem shares the specific experiments that consistently outperform across industries, while Charles digs into where founders should be running those tests if they want the fastest feedback loop. 14:52 Where the real ROI lives: Cem breaks down why LinkedIn and Reddit outperform paid channels for most operators and what organic content actually needs to say to move an audience, while Charles challenges him on how you cut through when everyone else is doing the same thing.

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