From Consulting to SaaS: How AidKonekt Used Buyer Intelligence to Carve Out a Niche in a $21B Market

The humanitarian aid funding world is massive — $21 billion in grants and contracts from USAID alone. But for most nonprofits, chasing those funds is a costly, time-draining process that steals resources away from delivering impact on the ground.

Mike Shanley, founder of AidKonekt, saw this inefficiency up close through years of consulting with aid organizations. His insight was simple: if you could make funding access faster and more predictable, you could free up more money and time for real-world results.

What makes Shanley’s story a must-read for SaaS and tech founders is how he leveraged buyer intelligence and laser-focused positioning to turn a niche consulting service into a scalable SaaS product — without outside funding.

Lesson 1: Positioning Starts With Founder-Market Fit

Most SaaS positioning work starts with mapping the buyer’s pain. Shanley had a head start: years in the Peace Corps, a master’s in humanitarian assistance, and deep industry contacts.

Instead of trying to be “the everything platform for global development,” he positioned AidKonekt around one hyper-specific buyer problem:

“We make it easier to access USAID funding.”

That one-line positioning did two things:

• Made it easy for others to refer AidKonekt (“If you hear USAID, call Mike.”)

• Eliminated competition with broad grant-writing or procurement tools.

Positioning takeaway: Your “one thing” should be so clear that partners and customers can pitch you in a single sentence.

Lesson 2: Turn Consulting Patterns Into SaaS Features

For years, Shanley’s consulting firm manually monitored government websites, pulled data, and created reports for clients.

Eventually, patterns emerged:

• Clients were asking for the same data updates.

• The process was repetitive and error-prone.

• It was costing clients more than the insights were worth.

By mapping these common workflows, Shanley identified exactly what to automate first:

• Scraping high-value public procurement data.

• Flagging only the changes buyers cared about.

• Delivering it in a single, easy-to-use dashboard.

Buyer intelligence insight: Before writing a single line of code, study your existing service delivery for bottlenecks your clients wish didn’t exist.

Lesson 3: Validate With Paying Buyers Before You Build

Shanley didn’t assume consulting clients would pay for software. Instead, he tested demand through a paid newsletter that delivered monthly funding updates.

When subscribers wanted more frequent insights, he moved to clickable design mockups — and took those back to trusted clients for brutally honest feedback.

Only once the buyers confirmed the value did AidKonekt invest in engineering.

Lesson 4: Niche Positioning Fuels Guerrilla Marketing

Instead of pouring early funds into ads, Shanley used his niche positioning to get invited as a speaker at aid-industry conferences.

By owning the “USAID funding” conversation, he:

• Got free exposure to his exact buyer audience.

• Built authority by teaching, not pitching.

• Collected leads into a growing email and LinkedIn following.

His content wasn’t generic “how to write a grant” advice — it was tailored to his narrow buyer niche, making it hard for competitors to replicate.

Lesson 5: Keep Feature Decisions Anchored to Buyer Needs

Shanley admits he gets excited about new feature ideas weekly. His process for staying disciplined:

1. Write it down.

2. Wait a day before evaluating.

3. Cross-check against user feedback and usage data.

4. Only build if it solves a proven buyer problem.

That keeps AidKonekt from falling into the trap of “feature bloat” that dilutes positioning and slows growth.

Key Takeaways for SaaS & Tech Founders

1. Start with founder-market fit. Know your buyers so well you can finish their sentences.

2. Extract SaaS from service. Your repetitive, high-cost service tasks are your next features.

3. Validate with wallets, not opinions. Get paying buyers before you build.

4. Own a narrow conversation. Niche positioning makes marketing cheaper and more effective.

5. Build from buyer data, not founder excitement.

Why this matters for your SaaS or tech company: AidKonekt didn’t scale because it chased every market opportunity. It scaled because Shanley knew his buyers inside-out, positioned with surgical precision, and built only what those buyers needed most. That’s buyer intelligence in action — and it’s the difference between another feature-heavy platform and a must-have solution.