How Joe Walsh is Pivoting a $4B Legacy Business into a SaaS Model
SaaS That App - Building Tech-Enabled Businesses · 2026-03-31 · 48 min
Episode notes
SaaS growth strategy, legacy business transformation, SMB software, AI in SaaS, private equity, business scaling, and digital transformation all come together in this episode of SaaS That App featuring Joe Walsh, Chairman and CEO of Thryv. He joins Aaron Marchbanks and Justin Edwards to share what it really takes to transform a legacy business into a high-growth SaaS company multiple times over. Joe unpacks how he helped grow Yellowbook from a $20M company into a $4B global business through acquisitions, operational discipline, and a repeatable scaling model, then explains how those same principles apply when reinventing companies for new markets. What You’ll Learn: How to use strategic financial partnerships as growth fuel The "manifest destiny" acquisition playbook Why pivoting a legacy business beats shutting it down How to rebrand criticism as curiosity to drive innovation Why AI adoption is the cost of staying competitive Joe Walsh is Chairman and CEO of Thryv, a cloud-based SaaS platform serving hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses with integrated marketing, sales, and growth tools.