About the Co-Founder

About the Co-founder

Tyson Batino

With over a decade of experience as a serial entrepreneur, he has consistently focused on building and scaling businesses centered around a clear principle: delivering highly practical services that create long-term value at fair and sustainable pricing.

Based in Tokyo, he co-founded and helped grow language education services such as One Coin English and Japan Switch, expanding access to quality education from a niche offering to something available to a much broader audience. Through this journey, he experienced first-hand the process of scaling an organization to a team of over 200 employees. Since then, he has continued to support small and medium-sized businesses as well as startups, working hands-on from the launch phase through sustained growth.

Through Smart Start Japan, he has supported revenue growth initiatives for more than 25 small and medium-sized businesses, while also helping 5 to 10 new companies per month launch their operations in Japan. In parallel, he has spent many years working on customer acquisition through Google Maps (Google Business Profile). Across both his own ventures and client engagements, he has consistently improved local search visibility and increased inbound inquiries through map-based discovery.

This expertise has been systematized and offered as a practical Google Maps operations and management service under Scaling Your Company, where the focus is on execution-backed, real-world results rather than theory. Client feedback includes comments such as:

“Our customer acquisition stabilized after improving our Google Maps rankings.”
“Inquiries coming from Google Maps clearly increased.”

These results reflect a proven track record of turning Google Maps optimization into measurable business outcomes. In addition, he has personally purchased and used 30 to 40+ lifetime license software tools over the years.

Having evaluated these tools across functionality, pricing, long-term usability, and support quality, he has developed a deep understanding of what separates tools that continue to deliver value over time from those that are abandoned shortly after implementation.

Why I Focus on Lifetime Deals

In recent years, I have chosen SaaS lifetime deals not as “cheap alternatives,” but as strategic investments to accelerate business execution.

For me, the most important factor in a lifetime deal is whether the product continues to be actively developed and remains reliable and useful years into the future.

From that perspective, I can point to several products that I personally purchased early as lifetime licenses and continue to use actively today. Many of these products have since transitioned to subscription-based pricing, with fees that have increased significantly. At the time of purchase, most were priced between ¥6,000 and ¥10,000, which closely matches the pricing range currently offered on AI MARKET.

Representative Examples (Easy to Understand at a Business Scale)

1. lemlist (Sales Engagement)

Purchase date: $49 in 2018 (one-time purchase)
Current value: €55-€69 per user per month
Reasons for choosing it:
In 2018, the cold email market was already highly competitive, but Lemlist had a clear advantage with its "email warm-up" and advanced personalization features like custom images.
Another major deciding factor was that the founder, Guillaume Moubeche, was very open about the company's growth and challenges, and I felt that he was "seriously creating products that can be used for a long time."
Current situation and learning:
Actually, I ended up getting a refund without being able to use it all at the time, and I still regret it.
It has now become an essential tool for B2B businesses, and I learned a great lesson: "You should not let go of good software too quickly, but should hold on to it with an eye to the future."
current situation:
It has now grown into a large-scale SaaS with an ARR of over $40M and is considered the de facto industry standard for multi-channel sales tools.

2. SE Ranking (SEO/Digital Marketing)

Purchase date: $39 (one-time purchase) in 2017
Current value: Over $50/month for comparable plans
ROI (proven):
We have used it as the core of our SEO strategy for about nine years, and have grown our four company websites to a combined monthly pageview count of over 70,000.
Reasons for choosing it:
In the early stages of our business, the $100+ per month costs of SEMrush and Ahrefs were not realistic.
SE Ranking offers highly accurate ranking tracking, backlink analysis, and weekly automated reports at a low cost, providing an excellent balance between price and data quality.
Current usage:
Used weekly by four businesses.
Continue to use keyword analysis, backlink tracking, competitor research, site SEO diagnostics, and ranking trackers.
current situation:
Over 1 million users, annual sales of approximately $35M.
Its recent acquisition of Planable shows that it continues to expand aggressively.

3. Snov.io (Lead Generation & Validation)

Purchase price: $49 in 2019 (one-time purchase)
Current value: Starter plan $39/month
ROI:
Even now, more than seven years after purchase, we are still using it to acquire and verify leads for AI MARKET.
Reasons for choosing it:
Despite being a LTD user, I was impressed by how quickly and courteously their support was handled.
The user-friendly UI and the rapid development speed convinced me that this was a SaaS that would continue to grow.
Current usage:
Use the Chrome extension to extract leads and track email opens in your daily work.

4. Visme (Visual Design & Infographics)

Purchase date: $49 in 2017 (one-time purchase)
Current value: $29-$59 per month
ROI:
Contributes to increasing the time spent on social media posts and blogs and improving visibility.
Reasons for choosing it:
The deciding factor was that it wasn't just a Canva alternative, but specialized in "data visualization and professional document creation."
We needed an environment where we could create materials in-house, similar to the ones we would have outsourced to a design company.
Current usage:
Use it to create interactive infographics for social media and blogs.
I feel that it is particularly superior to Canva in this respect.
current situation:
Annual sales of $18.1M, over 27 million users.
This is a good example of growth based on product quality without relying on fundraising.

Other Lifetime Deal Tools I Have Personally Purchased and Used (Selected Examples)

Vervoe (HR & Skill Assessment)
Purchased for $49 in 2017. The company has since raised a Series A round.
We plan to start using it at Scaling Your Company now that the team has grown to five members.
Billforward (Subscription Billing & Payments)
Purchased as a lifetime deal for $150 in 2021.
Stripe currently meets our needs, but we plan to revisit Billforward once we scale beyond 50 members and require more advanced subscription management.
RelayThat (Automated Brand Design)
Purchased for $49 in 2018.
Used at Japan Switch to quickly generate Google Display ads in multiple dimensions, saving significant design time.
Waybook (SOP & Knowledge Management)
Purchased the Pro plan for $189 in 2021.
Used at JapanSwitch.com to train interns, support onboarding, and organize internal manuals in a clean and structured way.
Niceboard (Job Board Builder)
Purchased for $99 in 2021.
Currently in active use by SenseiJob for their Japan-based teaching job board (https://senseijob.com).
Ziggeo (Video API)
Purchased for $69 in 2020.
Used at Smart Start Japan to collect customer video testimonials.

Because of these real-world experiences, our marketplace does not evaluate products based on price alone.

We prioritize long-term viability, development velocity, support quality, and pricing transparency. Only products we genuinely believe will continue to grow and deliver value over time are selected as lifetime deals on our platform.