Daniel Saks learned about business from behind the counter of a family-owned store in Niagara Falls, Canada. Saks Furniture, founded in 1908 by his great-great-grandparents, was a fixture on Main Street for over a century. Then came the Great Recession. “I graduated in 2009 and saw our store, along with the butcher shop, the sports store, the grocer, all shut down,” recalls Saks. “There was a moment when the future of entrepreneurship seemed bleak. Small businesses were disappearing.”
This early exposure to economic fragility left a lasting mark. But it also revealed a gap in how businesses accessed and applied technology. When Saks visited a friend in San Francisco shortly after graduating, he discovered the power of cloud computing and software as a service. He immediately saw what his family’s store, and others like it, had lacked. “I realized that if my family had access to this kind of technology, we might have stayed in business,” he says. “That was the moment I knew I wanted to build something that could give other businesses a fighting chance.”
From Problem to Platform
That insight became the foundation of AppDirect, the subscription commerce platform Saks co-founded and led to unicorn status. Under his leadership, AppDirect grew to over 1,000 employees and facilitated more than 3 billion dollars in annual tech sales. “At AppDirect, we helped thousands of companies access technology. But I kept seeing the same challenge: growth,” he says. “Even with all the right tools, businesses struggled to find their next customer.” What separated the companies that scaled from those that stalled was the ability to build a repeatable engine for growth. Saks became fascinated with that problem and set out to solve it.
The Intelligence Behind the Growth Engine
In 2023, Saks launched Landbase with a clear goal. He wanted to eliminate the guesswork in go-to-market strategy by using machine intelligence. “The hardest part of business is finding your next customer,” he says. “We built Landbase to change that.” Landbase introduced GTM1 Omni, the world’s first AI model designed specifically for go-to-market campaigns. Trained on data from over 22 million businesses and hundreds of millions of contacts, the model does more than analyze. It recommends, initiates and even executes campaigns through channels like email and LinkedIn.
“It is like having a machine brain that understands how to grow your business,” Saks explains. “Whether it is identifying your ideal customer or launching outreach across multiple platforms, the system takes action.” What sets Landbase apart is how thoroughly it applies its own technology. Saks calls it “drinking our own champagne.” Over half of the company’s codebase is generated by AI. Most sales and marketing activities are orchestrated by the platform itself. Even internal workflows rely heavily on data-driven automation. This model of intelligent operations helped Landbase secure a 30 million dollar Series A investment led by Sound Ventures. More important to Saks, it proved that AI could accelerate not just individual tasks, but entire growth trajectories.
Grounded in Purpose, Focused on People
Despite his deep roots in artificial intelligence, Saks insists that Landbase is not about replacing people. It is about enabling them. “My mission is to help people at work be better,” he says. “At AppDirect, it meant providing access to tools. At Landbase, it means doing the heavy lifting so they can focus on what matters.” Saks believes AI has the potential to restore the human element in business. “Technology over the past 20 years has made us more glued to screens and less connected,” he says. “I see a future where AI gives us our time back. Since launching Landbase, I find myself spending more time with my kids, hosting more dinners, being present.” He views business not as a separate world, but as part of life. That philosophy fuels his conviction to build solutions that free people from tedious work and give them space to think, connect and grow.
An Entrepreneur Building for Entrepreneurs
For Saks, entrepreneurship is deeply personal. He has lived the uncertainty of the Great Recession and scaled the heights of Silicon Valley. Through it all, his compass has remained the same. “Business is hard. Whether you are running a billion-dollar company or a small store, it is challenging,” he says. “If I am going to devote my life to something, it should be helping others take on that challenge.” In Landbase, Saks sees a chance to level the playing field, to bring machine intelligence to every founder and team trying to grow. And in doing so, he continues his family’s entrepreneurial legacy by building the infrastructure for the future of business itself.
For more insights from Daniel Saks, follow him on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) or visit his website. Try Landbase’s new free VibeGTM experience at www.landbase.com
