Bootstrapped: Recent Episodes
Steve McLeod
When you run your own little software company, be it a SaaS or old school downloadable software, and you've been doing it for several years, and you've got through the major initial challenges that were interesting and fun and rewarding to conquer in the first few years, and you've now got to that point where your product revenue is stable, and your product is pretty much feature complete, it becomes boring.
Here's 3 projects I've been working on to alleviate my bootstrapper boredom, while not putting my company in peril.
Mentioned in this episode:
- My coaching: https://steveofmcleod.com/
- My book-in-progress: https://killthehippo.com/
- My public speaking, as recorded at Business of Software Europe in April 2025: https://businessofsoftware.org/playlists/playlist-europe-2025/#SM
In this episode, I talk about how I'm using podcasting as a business tool. Not as a guest, not to promote my product, not as an advertiser, but as a way to build up and strengthen my network amongst my "Ideal Customer Profile" in the video games industry.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Feature Upvote, my SaaS product
- The Community Lounge, the podcast I'm creating as a business tool
I want to tell you what's happening with my product, Feature Upvote, over the last year or so. I've dramatically changed the positioning, to be a feedback management platform for the video games industry.
Here's the story of why I repositioned - and how I did it.
Check out the new "video games industry"-focused Feature Upvote home page.
I was recently a guest on The Gross Profit podcast, hosted by James Kennedy. In that interview, James and I talked about our business heros, and well, it seemed to me that the conversation was a perfect fit for this podcast too.
So, with James's permission, I'm sharing with you here the entire episode of The Gross Profit podcast in which I was interviewed.
- The Gross Profit podcast
- Feature Upvote, my B2B SaaS
- My B2B SaaS coaching services
I chat with Nathan Powell, freelance product designer whose work these days is mainly with B2B SaaS. We chat about how developer founders can go about improving their app's UX and general design.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Nathan's website: https://nathanjpowell.com/
- Descript: https://www.descript.com/
I chat with Michael Koper, founder of Nusii. We talk about what it's like when your product spends several years at a revenue plateau.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Michael's company, Nusii
- Michael on Twitter.
I'm the guest on my own podcast! A year ago, Ben Pages joined my company, Feature Upvote, to be our marketing manager. Ben had questions about the early days of Feature Upvote, and how this product came to be. He also wanted to know the origin of my low-stress approach to running a business. We thought, why keep this conversation to ourselves? Why not record it as a podcast interview, and share it with you? And that is exactly what we did for this episode.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Feature Upvote
- A blog post we mentioned: What I learnt in 2018 while running Feature Upvote.
The Bob Dylan quote I mis-remembered in this episode is:
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
I chat with Maeva Cifuentes, founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing, an SEO and content marketing agency. We discuss Maeva's journey from freelance translator to CEO of a successful marketing agency. Maeva also shares with us some practical SEO tips.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Maeva's company, Flying Cat Marketing
- Maeva on LinkedIn
- Product-led SEO by Eli Schwartz
My frequent guest co-host Ed Freyfogle tells us about his recent marketing endeavours, including one that was inspired by April Dunford's "toilet talk". Toilet talk, you ask? All will be revealing during this episode.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Steve’s company, Feature Upvote
- Ed’s company, OpenCage
- Geomob website
- April Dunford's "Toilet talk"
- Ed's newly published Geocoding Buyer's Guide
We have two guests interviewing each other! I invited two friends of the podcast, Andy Brice, and Robin Warren, to chat with each other about what it's like running a lifestyle business in 2022 compared to, say, 10 years ago. Although both Andy and Robin run what they call lifestyle businesses, they've taken different approaches, based on what they want to get out of their business.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Robin's company: bluecatreports.com
- Andy's products: Easy Data Transform, PerfectTablePlan, Hyper Plan
- Andy on Twitter: @successfulsw
- Andy's blog: Successful Software
- Robin on Twitter: @robinwarren
I chat with Marc Jenkins, founder of 16by9, a small web studio that focuses on building WordPress sites. Marc and I talk about what its like to start and build up this type of company, and how, with some careful thinking, you can avoid letting your business become something you never wanted it to be.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Marc's web studio, 16by9
- Marc's Unoffice Hours
- Steve’s company, Feature Upvote
- The Bootstrapped website, designed and created by 16by9
I catch up with my frequent co-host, Ed Freyfogle, after a long summer break. Amongst other topics, we discuss how bad customer support will lose you customers. We also talk about yet more payment problems - a common theme on this podcast, and for SaaS businesses in general.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Steve’s company, Feature Upvote
- Ed’s company, OpenCage
Something a bit different in this episode: we're playing an episode of the new Pushing to Production podcast, where Ed Freyfogle was the guest. It's a conversation about the technical stack Ed's product runs on. Lots of insightful discussion of the tech decisions you need to make in an API-based business.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Pushing to Production podcast
- Ed’s company, OpenCage
- Bootstrapped #228, where I explain why this show will end with episode #250.
Simon Bennett, founder of SnapShooter, returns to the show. We chat about a generous acquisition offer Simon recently received for his company - and why he ultimately decided to not to be acquired. We also chat about Simon's new podcast, Ship SaaS Faster.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Simon's company, SnapShooter
- Simon's new podcast for SaaS founders, Ship SaaS Faster
- SnapShooter's podcast, Pushing to Production
- Versoly
- My company, Feature Upvote
- Simon on Twitter
An effective content strategy for your product requires getting backlinks. In this episode, I share 9 strategies I use for getting backlinks for my product's website - without doing things that make me feel dirty.
Mentioned in this episode:
- My company, Feature Upvote
- Tooltester's email deliverability report
- Rand Fishkin's company, SparkToro
- Posts I got on the blogs of Postmark, Cloudinary, and ChartMogul
- My guest post on Andy Brice's Successful Software blog
- My guest post on HelpSpot's blog
- Out of Beta podcast
- Javalin Java web framework
- Steve on Twitter
I chat with Nick Swan from SEOTesting.com. We discuss how Nick took on a co-founder for his already-established business, why Nick decided to no longer be a 1-person show, and most importantly how Nick sold a small part of his company in order to join TinySeed, a startup accelerator designed for founders who would traditionally bootstrap.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Nick's company, SEOTesting.com
- Nick's previous appearance on Bootstrapped #177
- Nick's investor, TinySeed
- Nick on Twitter
- Steve's company, Feature Upvote
We are joined by a good friend of the podcast, Peldi Guilizzoni, to discuss how to go about sponsoring events, newsletters, and podcasts to promote your product. In particular we talk about creative approaches that make your sponsorship stand out.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Peldi's company, Balsamiq, a low-fidelity wireframing tool.
- Steve's company, Feature Upvote
- Ed's company, OpenCage
- Steve on Twitter
- Email: steve@bootstrapped.fm
I first recorded this episode for the Business of Software podcast. I chat about the experience of attending the recent Business of Software Europe in-person event, together with Joe Leech, who was a speaker at the event.
Joe and I shared our thoughts on the event, Joe from the point of view of a speaker at the event, and me as an attendee.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Business of Software website
- Business of Software podcast
- Joe Leech's website
- Joe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrjoe
- Steve’s company, Feature Upvote
- Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveofmcleod
Ed and I talk about how currency fluctuations are affecting our pricing. And we give our opinion on the recent acquisition of Postmark, a bootstrapping success story, by ActiveCampaign.
A brief note about an error in this episode: At one point I complain about a customer support problem I once had when trying to sign up for ActiveCampaign. After recording, I realised I had confused ActiveCampaign with CampaignMonitor. Let the record show that I've never had any experience with ActiveCampaign, good or bad! Apologies for my confusion.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Postmark's acquisition announcement
- Steve's company, Feature Upvote
- Ed's company, OpenCage
We talk about why we are switching the podcast from weekly to fortnightly for a while. We also discuss headaches when customer payments fail and what we can do to address the problem.
Mentioned in this episode:
- The Photographer's Ephemeris
- Business of Software conference
- Ed's company, OpenCage.
- Steve's company, Feature Upvote.
Ed chats with Pierre de Wulf, co-founder of ScrapingBee. Pierre tells us about the time his company almost got acquired - and how the deal fell apart at the final stage.
Links:
- Pierre's company, Scraping Bee.
- Pierre on Twitter
My co-host Ed Freyfogle chats with Brian Sierakowski, general manager of Baremetrics. Brian stepped in to manage Baremetrics after it was acquired a year or so ago from the founder.
Ed and Brian discuss the challenges of taking over a complicated business, Brian's trajectory from SaaS founder himself to running someone else's business, and how changing prices inadvertently gave him the chance to get valuable customer feedback.
Ed and Steve talk about a dilemma Steve is facing. An open source component heavily used by Feature Upvote has become abandoned by the maintainer, and Steve has to make a hard decision about how to deal with this.
We also talk about why and how Steve recently moved Feature Upvote's website from Jekyll to Wordpress. Yes, really, Wordpress.
Ed chats with John Ndege, a former bootstrapper, about how it feels no longer being one's own boss.
John launched and grew a product, and he ultimately sold it. Afterwards, he went back to being an employee, working for a large corporation. Ed and John discuss the advantages and frustrations you might experience when you choose the path of going back to work for someone else.
Links:
- John's website: https://www.johnndege.com/
- John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnndege
Ed and I chat about Ed's recent trip to London, my upcoming trip to London, the return of in-person events, and getting exposed to ideas and concepts outside of our normal channels.
We mentioned Geomob and Business of Software.
In or near London? And interested in joining me for a Bootstrapped mini-meetup in central London on the evening of April 6th or 7th? Let me know at steve@bootstrapped.fm
I talk with Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage, an asynchronous video messaging tool.
Brian has created several successful products in the past, and sometimes ran them in parallel. But he recently sold his entire portfolio of products to focus on ZipMessage. Brian explains why he made this decision. He also talks about why sometimes you need to shut something down, even if it does seem to be kind of, sort of working.
And we talk about the feeling when you realise that a new product is really getting traction.
Links:
- zipmessage.com
- Brian's podcast, Bootstrapped Web
- Brian on Twitter
Ed tells me why and how he obtained a trademark for his business. We discuss when it is worthwhile to do this. We then talk about the trouble with having competitors clone your product or website content.
Ed mentioned how we got the EU to refund most of the costs of obtaining a trademark. Learn about the EU's "Ideas Powered for business SME Fund" here.
I chat with Robert Brandl, founder of ToolTester.com. We talk about Robert's recent experience changing the domain name of his website. It was an expensive experience, and one that, for a while, did not go to plan.
Ed and I chat about my recent experience hiring a marketing manager for Feature Upvote. Amongst other topics, we discuss how I went about finding the right person.
Ed interviews Charles Perry, founder of RelaNet. Charles was the co-host of Release Notes, a long-running podcast that Charles and his co-host recently ended.
It's a great conversation, addressing how, over the years, we change, our industries change, and how sometimes things do come to an end.
- Charles on Twitter
- The Release Notes podcast's back catalog of 450 episodes
We talk about Ed's launch of his new product line.
That leads into a meandering conversation about ethics and personal beliefs and values. In particular, when a customer signs up for our product and then we discover that customer is in a business that clashes with our own beliefs and values, what should we do and what can we do?
When is it right, ethically or legally, to refuse a customer?
Frequent guest Peldi, founder of Balsamiq, makes another welcome appearance.
We talk about some ways to strengthen company culture in a fully-remote team, we discuss advice that Peldi often gives to first-time entrepreneurs, and Peldi tells me why he might finally start with traditional product marketing - 14 years after he launched his product.
Find out more about Balsamiq's Office Hours.
Part 2 of Ed Freyfogle's 50 tips for running a stress-free SaaS.
There was a lot of good content in this recording and we recorded for much longer than usual. So we have split this recording over two episodes. Part 1 is here.
Ed Freyfogle shares with us his 50 tips for running a stress-free SaaS. This is based on Ed's talk he prepared for MicroConf late last year, but was unable to deliver due to misfortune.
There was a lot of good content in this recording and we recorded for much longer than usual. So we have split this recording over two episodes.
This week I go solo and rant about the dismal deeds of a desperate competitor. I also talk about the freedom that bootstrapping gives us to change our approach, our style, our audience while staying true to the nature of what we do.
Ed and I discuss the goals we'd like to achieve in 2022.
While we were recording this episode, we had some problems with our recording software. Now I was able to rescue the recording, but you will hear a few audio glitches.
In this episode, I mentioned that I'm hiring a part-time digital marketing expert for Feature Upvote. If you know someone who suits the position, please let them know.
Back in episode 163, Ed and I set our goals for 2021. In this episode we look back at those goals and we ask ourselves, how well did we do in achieving them?
Steve mentioned the Catalan Christmas tradition of Caga Tió. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Caga Tió.
I give Ed an update on what I've achieved on Saber Feedback in recent months.
A new app design, ripping out the SPA architecture, replacing our payment processor with Paddle, and hiring a marketing assistant. It's been busy!
If you have a friend or colleague or acquaintance who you think would enjoy this episode, please let them know about it!
Ed tells us about his accident he had, and the impact it had on his life and business. He also talks about how it got him reflecting about his business.
I conclude the mini season of interviews with a brief summary of the five interviews I conducted. A few weeks ago, my cohost had a cycling that student that broke his jaw. As a result he had to take a break from the podcast while he was recovering. In the meantime, I invited a few people to come onto the podcast and talk about their businesses, their work and themselves.
The episodes:
-
198: Simon Bennett of SnapShooter
-
199: Jane Portman of UI Breakfast
-
200: Positioning for bootstrappers with April Dunford
-
201: Peter Cooper of Cooperpress
-
202: Bridget Harris, co-founder of YouCanBook.Me
Bridget is co-founder and CEO of YouCanBook.me, an online scheduling tool. I chat with Bridget Harris about the 10-year journey of starting and growing her company as a bootstrapped SaaS. Amongst other things we discuss the financial sacrifices bootstrappers have to make in a rapidly growing business.
Links:
- Bridget's scheduling tool, YouCanBook.me
- Bridget's email: bridget@youcanbook.me
- Bridget on Twitter
I chat with Peter Cooper, who runs several email newsletters, including JavaScript Weekly, Ruby Weekly, React Status, and Postgres Weekly. These all live under the collective banner of Cooperpress.
Links:
- Cooperpress
- Peter on Twitter
April Dunford has a well-deserved reputation as the expert in product positioning within the tech industry. April and I discussed how bootstrappers can go about product positioning.
Links:
- April's website
- April's book, Obviously Awesome
- April on Twitter
Jane Portman is the host of UI Breakfast, a podcast covering UI/UX design, products, marketing. Jane recently crossed the 2 million downloads milestone. Jane and I discussed the journey from the first episodes, with almost no listeners, to where she is today.
Jane is also co-founder of Userlist. We discuss how Jane's podcasting experience helps with Userlist.
Links:
- The UI Breakfast podcast
- How to sponsor Jane's podcast
- Userlist
- Better Done Than Perfect podcast
Simon runs SnapShooter, a service that performs scheduled server backups. We discuss:
- why backups is NOT a dull business
- how the pandemic pushed him to make the jump to full-time
- charging his first customer just $2/month - and quickly learning to charge much more
- a "I did a rm -rf on the wrong server" story
Links:
- SnapShooter
- Simon on Twitter
Ed is recovering from an accident, so Steve goes solo in this episode. Ed's accident gets Steve musing on the unpredictability of life, and what we can do to partly prepare ourselves and our businesses for this.
Steve then abruptly changes topic and challenges all listeners to make a bold pricing experiment.
Email Steve at steve @ barbarysoftware dot com
Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveofmcleod
Three-time guest Robin Warren, founder of Corrello, achieves "very infrequent guest co-host" status. We chat about a number of aspects of mental wellbeing for bootstrappers - getting out of the house, taking breaks, dealing with boredom, and making your business less dependent on you.
Show links:
- Robin on Twitter
- Blue Cat Reports website
- Blue Cat Reports on Trello
Ed and Steve talk about the challenge of continuing to learn how to run our businesses better, and the challenges we encounter in ongoing learning.
It's good to take a break!
In this episode Ed and I get self-indulgent and talk about our vacations. From time to time we make a tenuous link between our vacations and our bootstrapped businesses.
If you've ever thought of selling your business, or acquiring one, you'll enjoy this episode. Matt Zeunert, founder of DebugBear, was curious about the details of my acquisition of Saber Feedback. So we switch roles for this episode, and the guest became the interviewer. Matt asks the questions, and I answer!
Mark Littlewood runs the Business of Software, a series of annual conferences to help us run our software companies better. Mark very openly shares how COVID-19 has hit his business, and his need to adapt almost overnight.
We talk about the upcoming Business of Software online conference, 27 - 29 September 2021, and how Mark's team make online events work.
- Business of Software website
- Use this code when buying a ticket for BoS Conf: Fall, 2021 for 20% discount: BootstrappedFM
In this solo episode, I talk about successful yet quiet SaaS business all around us. I also tell the full story of why our forum has been closed and put permanently into archive mode.
- Bootstrapped website
- Steve on Twitter
Recommended alternative communities to our now-closed community:
- Indie Hackers - if you are just getting started and want to chat with others just getting started
- Founder Summit (paid) - if your business is viable and you like to run a calm company
- MicroConf Connect - “a space for founders and their teams of independently funded startups to connect with like minded individuals.”
- MegaMaker (paid) - A community for bootstrappers
- Find 10 or so people at a similar stage in your businesses and make a private Slack account.
Peldi, founder of Balsamiq, drops by. We discuss two unrelated topics. First, resellers - why they exist and how to accommodate them. Second, the challenges and benefits of having a podcast for your product.
Ed and Steve go in deep on some enterprise sales work they've both been doing lately for their bootstrapped, mostly self-service SaaS products.
Craig Hewitt runs Castos, a podcast hosting and analytics company. He returns to the show to talk about why he recently sold a chunk of his bootstrapped company to a round of investors.
Links:
- Castos: https://castos.com/
- TinySeed: https://tinyseed.com/
- Craig on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCraigHewitt
It's 15 months since I acquired Saber Feedback. I talk about the challenges I've faced so far, the bottleneck I'm currently facing, and where things are headed.
- Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveofmcleod
- Bootstrapped on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bootstrapped_fm
While Steve enjoys a summer break, Ed Freyfogle steps in this week to interview Adam DuVander. Adam helps companies like yours market to developers.
Ed chats with Adam DuVander about his book "Developer Marketing Does Not Exist"
- Adam on Twitter
- Adam's site
- Learn more about Developer Marketing Does Not Exist
Moritz Dausinger, three-time bootstrapper, tells me why he recently sold a small stake of Refiner.io to Earnest Capital.
Between recording and publishing this episode, Earnest Capital renamed as the Calm Company Fund.
Links:
- Refiner.io
- Calm Company Fund (was Earnest Capital)
- Moritz on Twitter
- SAFE agreement
Ed and Steve discuss what it is like when a core team member quits, how to reduce the chance of it happening, and how to make our businesses resilient enough to handle it.
Watch this episode on YouTube.
Peldi concludes this mini-season with an open and honest discussion with Ed Freyfogle about a problem every business owner eventually encounters. How do you keep at it when you are feeling bored? Are we stuck in our businesses?
You can also watch this episode on YouTube.
Peldi Guilizzoni continues this mini-season as he chats with Trine Falbe, UX strategist & designer, on responsible product design.
Gamification, dark patterns, artificial "roadblocks", notifications frameworks that exist only to hook you into the product - why bootstrappers shouldn't mindlessly copy these techniques.
Show notes:
- Trine's website
- Trine's ethical design scorecard is available for download on https://ethicaldesignhandbook.com/
- Typeform’s terms of service
You can also watch this episode on YouTube.
Peldi Guilizzoni continues this mini-season as he chats with Asia Orangio of DemandMaven on how founders can - and should - conduct customer interviews, and how to deal with the discomfort us bootstrappers often feel with this type of work.
Topics includes
- the discomfort for some of us of talking to customers - but why you should do it anyway
- how to find the right customers to talk to
- why delegating customer interviews might actually be a good idea.
- how to actually conduct a customer interview
- what not to say, and how not to ask questions
Asia's company, DemandMaven.
Asia on Twitter.
You can watch this episode on YouTube.
Peldi Guilizzoni continues this mini-season as he chats with married couple Geraldine DeRuiter (author) and Rand Fishkin (software founder) on how their fields differ - and how they are more similar than you'd think.
Peldi, Geraldine, and Rand discuss:
- How the software industry is less special that we think
- Dealing with the loneliness and isolation of being a founder or author
- Managing your own psychology
- How a supportive partner shares your mental ups and downs
- The value of having a peer group (aka friends) for mutual support
- The challenge to ignore the VC hype machine
Geraldine's blog: The Everywhereist.
Rand's company SparkToro.
Peldi Guilizzoni steps in as host this week, and chats with GDPR expert Aleth Gueguen about how the GDPR is shaping and affecting our SaaS businesses.
Topics include:
- Is the GDPR being enforced?
- How has it changed our businesses?
- How can we shape new businesses to ensure we meet data protection requirements?
-
Does the GDPR give larger businesses an unfair advantage?
-
GDPR4SaaS
- Peldi on Twitter
You can also watch this episode on YouTube.
Both Ed and Steve are feeling a little bit stressed, perhaps at the beginning of burnout. We discuss why this might be, and what we are doing about it.
We also reveal our who guest host will be, stepping in for the next few weeks while I take a break.
This episode is also on YouTube.
Nick Swan was about to launch paid plans for his SaaS when a sudden terrible life event changed everything for Nick and his family.
"The doctor said, 'You have to go the main hospital now. Drive straight up there. Don't even pack a bag.' He didn't say what it was, but he said it was serious."
We discuss how this affected his life, his family and his mentality as a bootstrapper.
Nick's SaaS, SEOTesting
Aidan Doyle is a science fiction writer. Amongst his work are two self-published books, including The Writer's Book of Doubt. I'm planning to produce a book later this year as a marketing endeavour for Feature Upvote. So I chatted with Aidan to get tips on how to do this well.
- Aidan's website
- Aidan on Twitter
- The Writer's Book of Doubt
Discuss this episode with the Bootstrapper community.
Ed and Steve discuss
- the return of Microconf Europe as an in-person event
- working out if a new feature is worth the effort
- weighing the risk of becoming a customer of someone’s side project
Discuss this episode and more with our community.
This episode is also on YouTube.
My guest in this episode is Corey Haines, founder of Swipe Files. Swipe Files is a membership site that provides content, community, and courses to help you master marketing.
- Learn more about Swipe Files.
- Corey's podcast: Everything is Marketing.
Discuss this episode on our community.
This episode is also on YouTube.
Ed Freyfogle is back! We talk about Ed's systematic attempt to reduce his support workload.
Discuss this episode on our community.
This episode is also on YouTube.
Alex Yumashev, founder of JitBit, returns to the show. We discuss:
- why Alex ditched Google Analytics from his website
- how he keeps his work interesting after so many years running the same business
- why differentiation is often not possible
- finding freelancers
- the good and bad of being a bootstrapping entrepreneur
Alex's company: https://www.jitbit.com/
Also mentioned:
- Plausible Analytics (https://plausible.io/)
- https://f5bot.com/
This episode is also on YouTube.
Discuss this episode on our community.
Nick Franklin and I talked about what it is like to go down the venture capital route instead of bootstrapping.
For me this was a glimpse into another way of doing things.
Nick and I discussed:
- why he used outside investment to create ChartMogul
- ChartMogul's focus on creating good content
- finding a steady stream of interesting things to write about
- the difficulty of knowing how customers are acquired
- getting pricing right
Nick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nick_Franklin
ChartMogul: https://chartmogul.com/
This episode is also on YouTube.
Discuss this episode on our community.
Peldi Guilizzoni is the founder of low-fidelity wireframing tool Balsamiq.
Peldi and Steve discuss:
- why Peldi tracks almost nothing except revenue and profits
- talking to customers instead of using analytics
- on being "so good they can't ignore you"
- how to apply a coder's approach to marketing
- how Balsamiq is run like a "cozy restaurant on the web"
- not getting to code much when running a software company
- the painful experience of rewriting Balsamiq Wireframes from scratch that took five years(!)
- choosing technology carefully for your company
This episode is also on YouTube.
Discuss this episode on our community.
We argue for and against having a monthly email newsletter for your product. Ed is firmly in the "No way" corner. Steve represents the "You gotta have a newsletter" side. Let the debate begin!
Also mentioned:
- Do Open - How a simple email newsletter can transform your business (and it can), by David Hieatt
Ed and I cover a lot of ground this week:
- podcasting nerves
- geotrivia as marketing
- a brief foray into geopolitics
- using Twitter for marketing
- the frustrating unpredictability of what marketing efforts will bear fruit
- the pleasure of working from home
- dealing with zombie customers
The Bootstrapped podcast now has its own Twitter account - follow to receive daily tips for bootstrappers.
Ed and Steve talk about the mental stress of having real-time business metrics, how to find a business mentor, and Steve's attempt to get started with enterprise sales.
And we talk about the blog that posts very infrequently.
Discuss this topic and more with the Bootstrapped community.
Allan Jardine is the creator of DataTables, a popular jQuery plugin. We discuss his challenges and successes as he learned how to make a viable business from creating Open Source software.
We also discuss Allan's new SaaS product, CloudTables.
Discuss this topic and more with the Bootstrapped community.
In this episode I answer some listener questions about freelancers. I discuss how to find, hire, and communicate with freelancers.
Discuss this topic and more with the Bootstrapped community.
Ed grills me on my progress with Saber Feedback, my B2B SaaS, nine months after I acquired it. We talk about SEO, competitors, getting backlinks, finding a niche, and resisting the temptation to write code instead of doing marketing.
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Ed and I discuss what we want to achieve in 2021. Last year, unexpected world events turned our "goals for 2020" upside-down. Having learnt no lesson whatsoever from this, we fearlessly enter 2021 with plans!
We mentioned Ed's personal blog in this episode.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Steve and Ed look back at the goals they set for 2020 at the beginning of the year. What goals did we hit? What goals eluded us? What did we learn along the way?
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
This is a talk I recently gave at Barcelona's ESIC business school. Ostensibly, I spoke on working with intangibles as products. But actually, I told the story of how I started as a bootstrapper - and revealed how clueless I was at the beginning.
So, if you are curious about how I got started creating and selling software products, then you'll enjoy this episode.
Liz is an expert in onboarding email sequences. Over the course of this episode, Liz helps me design a great email sequence for Saber Feedback.
On the way, there are plenty of practical tips for better emails that you can apply to your product's emails.
Want to see the results of my conversation with Liz? Sign up for Saber Feedback, and experience the new onboarding sequence first-hand.
- Liz's agency: Comma Comma Copywriting
- Contact Liz: liz@commacomma.co.uk
- Liz recommends Userlist as a segmenting and emailing tool.
Discuss this episode and other topics on our forum for bootstrappers.
Ed and Steve talk about recent challenges and successes in their bootstrapped SaaS businesses. Ed tells of the agony of doing enterprise sales. Steve admits to self-doubt when waiting for SEO results.
Some things we discussed:
- 2020 SaaS Podcast Awards
- Our forum thread on dealing with endless business administration
- Fathom Analytics
Moritz Dausinger, founder of refiner.io, chats about his success as a serial founder of bootstrapped SaaS products. He founded and sold two B2B SaaS apps, and now he's doing it a third time.
Moritz shares some real-world practical, proven tips based on his repeat successes.
- Moritz's current SaaS app: refiner.io
- Moritz's previous SaaS apps: Docparser and Mailparser.
- Moritz on Indie Hackers podcast
- Moritz on Twitter.
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Ed and Steve discuss the endless burden of busy-work that comes with running a business - and how we try to minimise it.
We also mention Ed's new marketing-related hire, Feature Upvote's dashboard design overhaul, and using a content agency to write blog posts for Saber Feedback.
The invoice handling service we mentioned is GetMyInvoices.
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Discounts, discounts, discounts! Ed and I discuss how we respond to customers asking for discounts, whether we should offer Cyber Monday offers, and how offering discounts can hurt future sales.
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Alex runs a successful help desk software company with only 3 employees, competing in a crowded market.
We discuss:
- the importance of industry knowledge,
- the customer awareness funnel,
- advanced SEO techniques,
- bringing on a co-founder after you've already got traction.
Links:
- Jitbit
- Alex on Twitter
- Gail Goodman's talk ‘The Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death’
- The Awareness Funnel aka the Buyer's Journey
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Robin Warren of Corrello tells me how he finds and recruits freelance developers for his bootstrapped software company.
We also talk about:
- Robin's business creating Trello Power-ups
- Using Product Hunt to hone your marketing message
- Juggling multiple products
Links:
- Robin on Twitter
- Corrello
- Blue Cat Reports
- Burndown Charts by Corrello
- Robin's previous interview on the Bootstrapped podcast
I seek Ed's advice on some Saber Feedback stuff. We talk about pricing, free plans, legacy framework woes, and database hosting.
We also chat about:
- running Geomob as an online conference instead as a COVID alternative to an in-person conference
- automating away common customer support enquiries
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Other links:
- SureSwift Capital's Start-up founder customer service tips.
Ed and I discuss knowledge sharing for bootstrappers, and even for one-person teams. How do you make sure the important knowledge for your business gets remembered, shared, and used?
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
I answer several questions from a loyal listener who wants advice on building a B2B SaaS similar in scope and style to my product, Feature Upvote.
Robert Brandl of ToolTester Network built his company by developing excellent SEO skills. In this episode he turns his skills to Saber Feedback, and gives me awesome advice on how to solve my SEO problems.
We also talk about his recent acquisition of https://howtogetonline.com/
Other links:
- Robert on Twitter: @robertbrandl
- Saber Feedback's guide to feedback buttons
Ed Freyfogle is back again. This week he interviews Steve on his progress with Saber Feedback, six months after acquisition.
Ed marvels at how many words we were able to write about feedback buttons.
We also talk a bit about co-working in the age of Covid.
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Ed Freyfogle steps in for me this week and interviews Hrishi Mittal, founder of online learning platform Learnetto.
Hrishi shares his struggle to progress past a point of having limited success without finding real traction. He also talks about his desire to bring on a cofounder.
- Hrishi on Twitter
- Learnetto
- Learnetto on Twitter
- "The Complete React on Rails Course" on Learnetto
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Laura Roeder talks about why she doesn't do demo calls unlike most other SaaS founders - and how bootstrapping frees you up to run your business the way that works for you.
Laura is the founder of MeetEdgar, a social media scheduling tool, and cofounder of Paperbell, coaching software.
Links
- Laura on Startups for the Rest of Us
- Laura's talk at Business of Software Europe 2018: Bootstrapping A Business In The Face Of Well-Funded Competition
Remember, as Laura says, "You get to do this however works for you"
Kevin McArdle of SureSwift Capital has acquired almost 40 online businesses, most of them B2B SaaS products.
We talk about the process of getting acquired, as the seller and founder of an online business.
Kevin tells me the options for getting acquired at 4 different revenue levels:
- $1,000 to $4,000 monthly revenue
- $10K to $20K monthly revenue
- $20K to $50K monthly revenue
- $100K+ monthly revenue
Links
- Kevin's interview on Escape Velocity with Dan Martell
- SureSwift Capital
- Kevin on Twitter
- Kevin's email: kevin@sureswiftcapital.com
- MicroAcquire
- My conversation with Matt Bearman on the acquisition of Saber Feedback
Discuss this topic and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Ed reintroduces himself, Steve shares his experience of making it to the front page of Hacker News, and we discuss Quaderno's 5-hour work day and Wildbit's 4-day work week.
Links:
- Ed's home on the web.
- Quaderno's job page.
- Wildbit's 4-day work week.
Discuss these topics and more on the Bootstrapped discussion forum.
Patrick Hathaway is the cofounder of Sitebulb, a website auditing tool for SEO consultants and agencies. Patrick tells us why he made a desktop app when his competitors offer cloud apps.
We also talk about how Patrick uses awesome release notes as a marketing tool.
We finish up with a discussion the pros and cons of using Paddle as a payment processor.
Sitebulb: https://sitebulb.com/
Sitebulb's release notes: https://sitebulb.com/release-notes/
When, if ever, should you, should make changes to your product's code that don't change its external behaviour?
How do you weigh up the risks of breaking things against the ease of future development?
Steve and Ed get way more technical than usual in this episode.
We mention Refactoring, the book by Martin Fowler.
We want listener questions! Post your question here and we'll discuss it in a future episode of Bootstrapped.
We revisit the goals we made in January 2020. We consider what progress we've made despite the current massive global uncertainty.
Back in January, in episode #124, Ed and Steve stated their goals for 2020. Then COVID-19 happened, changing many of the assumptions we had when we made those goals.
We’re open for listener questions! Got a topic or question you’d like us to discuss on the podcast? Let us know on our discussion forum.
I openly report on the challenges and successes I've had in the first three months of owning Saber Feedback. And yes, I do reveal customer numbers, revenue, and traffic volume!
This was a painful episode to record. I had problems getting some customers to pay. How I handled it was a cascade of mistakes. I tell Ed the story, and he gives me advice on what I should have done.
Ed tells us about his recent effort to add a once-off pricing plan to his SaaS.
We also mentioned Ed's appearance on the Slow and Steady podcast, where he shared 25+ practical tips for running your SaaS.
We're open for listener questions! Got a topic or question you'd like us to discuss on the podcast? Let us know on our discussion forum.
Ed chats with Peter Suhm about the challenges and rewards of selling to developers. Peter is the founder of Branch, a deployment tool for WordPress developers.
Peter on twitter: https://twitter.com/petersuhm
Branch: https://branchci.com
WP Pusher, another product by Peter for WordPress developers: https://wppusher.com
Out of Beta, Peter's podcast: https://outofbeta.fm (recommended!)
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
We discuss Ed Freyfogle's recent experience creating the OpenCage Reverse Geocoding guide, an example of an "epic guide" approach to content marketing.
Useful links:
- The OpenCage Reverse Geocoding guide: https://opencagedata.com/reverse-geocoding
- Adam Duvander, who helped Ed create the guide: https://twitter.com/adamd
- Adam's company: https://everydeveloper.com/
- Adam's personal site: http://www.adamd.org/
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Derrick's product is a direct competitor to one of my products. So it was extremely generous of him to speak openly about the challenges and successes of running PageProofer.
We also discussed:
- the challenge of having many competitors
- having years of work annihilated by one Steve Jobs announcement
- the challenge of separating personal life from work time when you are a solo founder.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Security audits! Bug bounty programs! Frequent unsolicited pen-testing! When you put a website on the Internet, it almost immediately faces non-stop security attacks.
Ed and I discuss the ways we handle this within the resources available to us as bootstrappers.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester’s deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Content specialist Hannah Adcock audited Saber Feedback's website. In this episode, she tells us what's good about our site and what needs to change.
Hannah runs Contented Strategy. She was on the podcast a few months ago, when she talked about the benefit of a content audit.
In this episode Hannah is way more specific. She tears down the Saber Feedback website, section by section. And then she presents a plan for improvement.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester’s deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Frequent guest co-host Ed Freyfogle has questions. Lots of questions. About why I acquired Saber Feedback, what the acquisition process was like, and what plans I have for Saber Feedback in the coming months.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester’s deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Matt Bearman, original founder of Saber Feedback, discusses the experience of creating, growing, and then selling Saber Feedback.
- Matt's Blog: https://mattbearman.svbtle.com/
- The Google Ads PPC recommended by Matt: https://www.udemy.com/share/101XkgB0oZcFZUQHg=
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester’s deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
(Looking for Episode 131? For boring, technical reasons, there is no episode 131.)
Ed Freyfogle and I discuss how COVID-19 is affecting our lives, our families, and our businesses.
We also talk a little about my acquisition of Saber Feedback.
Things we mention in the show:
- Geomob podcast
- Audience podcast
- Business of Software conference
- Saber Feedback
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester’s deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
A short episode where I explain why the podcast is on break for a few weeks.
Spoiler alert: the pandemic has left me stranded 16,816 km from home. Until I find a way home, I can't easily record new episodes. Listen for the full story!
Hopefully I'll be back with new episodes in a few weeks.
Julian Wilde of Wormly describes how he was able to drive across central Asia - often in countries without easily-available Internet - while running a monitoring SaaS.
We also reminisce about running a software company before Stripe, AWS and the Digital Nomad phenomenon.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester's deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Bootstrapping is stressful. I share seven ways I try to manage the stress of being a software bootstrapper.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester's deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
We discuss some of the SaaS products we rely on to run our businesses: what they are and why we use them.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester's deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
When Dave Rodenbaugh wanted to run a software business, he decided to buy an existing one. He tells me why he did this, how he chose the business, and what he did right and wrong along the way.
He also shares - painfully - his embarrassing $50K mistake.
Dave runs Recapture and is co-host of the Rogue Startups podcast.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester's deliverability report.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
I'm joined again by frequent guest co-host Ed Freyfogle.
We talk about how we track the spending on our businesses.
We mentioned a rewards card for Startups from Cledara.
Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode. Find the best email newsletter service for you with EmailToolTester's calculator.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Steve and Ed discuss what they hope to achieve by the end of 2020 - both professionally and personally.
We also discuss the importance of knowing your non-goals, that is, things your explicit decide NOT to do.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Bootstrapped listeners, to try Balsamiq for free, visit balsamiq.com/go/bootstrapped where you will find a promo code giving you an extended trial and a hefty discount.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Review us on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do this from your computer:
- Go to https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bootstrapped/id623143926
- Click on "Listen on Apple Podcasts", which will open the Apple Podcasts app.
- Click on "Write a Review". It is in the footer area.
Courtenay Farquharson shares how he built up Parserr to more than $10K monthly revenue - and why he sold it.
We also talk about:
- bootstrapping in the Microsoft ecosystem
- bootstrapping in Australia
Courtenay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/courtzz
Courtenay's next endeavour: sleepapp.com.au
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Bootstrapped listeners, to try Balsamiq for free, visit balsamiq.com/go/bootstrapped where you will find a promo code giving you an extended trial and a hefty discount.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is HelpNinja, a simple help desk system focussed on bootstrapped businesses.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Steve tells Ed all about the sale of his desktop app. We talked about why I sold off the desktop app I've been running for 12 years, how I found a purchaser, and the emotional ride of negotiating and handing over the app.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Bootstrapped listeners, to try Balsamiq for free, visit balsamiq.com/go/bootstrapped where you will find a promo code giving you an extended trial and a hefty discount.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Versoly. Versoly is the easiest way to build a SaaS website that converts without worrying about coding, design or hosting.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Ed Freyfogle of OpenCage Geocoder and I (founder of Feature Upvote) discuss how we handle customer cancellation requests in our respective SaaS products. We discuss how we might do it differently.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Vivid.fm. Vivid helps podcasters reach more subscribers via social sharing by automatically creating video teasers.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Last week we heard Ed's top 5 habits for small teams. This week, Steve shares the habits he uses to keep his small team productive.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Checkvist, the professional list making tool.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Ed shares his top 5 habits he recommends for small bootstrapping teams, to keep your product as good as it should be.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Mimiran, the CRM for people who hate selling.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Steve and Ed consider whether Freemium is a viable business model for bootstrappers.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is IvyBackup.
Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers.
Ed from OpenCage Geocoder and I talk about the marketing techniques that work - and don't work - when you product is targeted towards developers.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Easy Data Transform.
I’m joined by Ed Freyfogle for the first of several episodes in which he is my cohost. Ed is the co-founder of OpenCage Geocoder, a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast
Our guest sponsor, courtesy of Balsamiq, is Mockless.
We discuss:
- the bootstrapping scene in Barcelona, where both Ed and I live
- the advantages of offering your product in multiple currencies
- which currencies to offer
- dealing with currency fluctuations
- how this affects your marketing content
- how Quaderno has helped both of us do best-in-class invoicing.
We also rant a little about how some businesses could improve the finer details of billing.
Craig and I are both bootstrapping our businesses while living in foreign countries. In this episode we discuss what that's like for us personally. We also discuss the challenging practicalities of visas, languages, and business while living abroad.
Thanks to Balsamiq who sponsored this episode. Find out how, thanks to Balsamiq, you can promote your bootstrapped business for free on the podcast.
We also discuss:
- Craig's efforts with paid acquisition
- how Steve refined the sign-up process for Feature Upvote
Craig turns the tables and interviews me about Feature Upvote and about this podcast.
We discuss:
- why Steve launched Feature Upvote when he already had a successful product.
- doing things differently the second time around.
- the beauty of "expansion revenue".
- B2C vs B2B (spoiler alert: B2B has a whole lot of advantages).
- the Bootstrapped podcast 10 episodes into its new iteration.
We discuss how you can become a speaker at events, and whether this is a viable way to raise awareness of your product and services.
Topics include:
- Why speak at events and conferences
- Getting started as a speaker
- What event organisers look for in potential speakers
- Non-obvious benefits from speaking at events
- Steve's champagne-spilling behaviour when speaking in public
- Craig's experience speaking recently at MicroConf Europe
- TinySeed Tales: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/tinyseed-tales/castos-1-a-non-technical-saas-founder
- Traction by Gabriel Weinberg: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369
Craig and I discuss how bootstrappers can use the podcasting ecosystem to promote their products.
We discuss three ways to use podcasts - and the pros and cons of each:
- Start and run your own podcast
- Do the "podcast circuit" as an interesting guest with riveting insights
- Sponsor podcasts
We 'go meta' and talk about why Steve has launched the new iteration of the Bootstrapped podcast.
We also talk about:
- "credit card required upfront" trials versus "no credit card required" trials.
- the life-cycle email sequences using activity-based triggers that we've recently added to Feature Upvote.
- the danger of applying data-based marketing approaches to products when your product doesn't have enough data
- why Steve doesn't do A/B testing - yet
I'm joined by Craig Hewitt for the first of several episodes in which he is my cohost.
TinySeed is a "startup accelerator designed for bootstrappers." Craig was accepted into TinySeed's first cohort.
To help me answer the question, "Should I apply for TinySeed?", Craig tells me what it has been like for him. We discuss why he applied, how it has changed his business so far, and what unexpected benefits there are have been.
Links:
- Castos: podcast hosting and analytics platform: https://castos.com/
- Rogue Startups podcast: https://roguestartups.com/. I highly recommend this podcast!
- TinySeed: https://tinyseed.com/
- The 5 Phases of the Customer Journey comes from this out-of-print book: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Advertising-Eugene-M-Schwartz/dp/0887232981
Robin and I discuss living the Bootstrapper dream - and how the dream changes over time. We also go off topic and discuss surfing up the Bristol Channel.
Links:
- Robin’s company, Corrello: Dashboards for Scrum and Kanban teams using Trello: https://getcorrello.com/
- Robin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/robinwarren
- Robin's blog post "$0 to $1k MRR in 57 months":
https://getcorrello.com/blog/2016/04/13/0-1k-mrr-57-months/ * Britstrapped podcast interview with Robin, From 0 MRR to "Living the Dream":
http://www.britstrapped.com/280d7224 * Surfing up the Bristol channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKA39LQOIck
Andy and I discuss why he's created a new product, even though he already has two successful products.
We also discuss:
- how he manages a portfolio of three desktop apps as a one-person team
- how to name products
- choosing a market
- usability testing
- choosing to remain a one-person team
- the benefits of the founder doing customer support
- why many one-person businesses are actually two-people businesses
Links:
- Easy Data Transform: https://www.easydatatransform.com/
- Andy's blog: https://successfulsoftware.net/
- Easy Data Transform's demo video: https://successfulsoftware.net/2019/09/11/easy-data-transform-video/
- Andy's other products: https://www.perfecttableplan.com/ and https://www.hyperplan.com/
- "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515
- Steve Krug talking about usability at Business of Software: https://businessofsoftware.org/2008/07/steve-krug-to-s/
Hannah and I discuss content strategy for bootstrappers.
Hannah's website: https://contentedstrategy.com/
Hannah's book: "Content Strategy for Solopreneurs, Startups, Charities and Growing Businesses": https://contentedstrategy.com/content_strategy_for_startups.html
How to do a content audit: https://contentedstrategy.com/blog/2019/05/17/startup-content-audit.html
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369
Robert and I discuss how to hire and manage freelancers. We also discuss how having children forces you to change the way you work.
Robert's 4 tips for a healthy freelancer relationship:
- Meet in person from time to time, if possible
- Pay at the higher end of their expected rate
- Remember the Golden Rule: Treat them they way you expect to be treated
- Let them know the positive results of their work
Links:
- Robert Brandl's company: https://www.tooltester.net/
- Robert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertBrandl
- Pat Flynn on "The Baby Effect": https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/the-effect-my-kids-have-had-on-my-business/
- Zapier for automating repetitive tasks: https://zapier.com
- Upwork for hiring and paying Freelancers: https://www.upwork.com/
- Domestika: a Spanish site for finding creative freelancers: https://www.domestika.org/en
Sylvestre and I discuss getting those first 10 customers, moving to a new country when your startup earns enough to replace your day job, and the difficulty of supporting customers from a cruise ship.
We also discuss:
- Collecting domain names
- Leaving consulting to bootstrap a SaaS
- Bootstrapping with the generosity of the French government
- The tough months before the first sale - and then the elation after the first sale
- Using Quora to land the first customers - and to learn the language used by your potential customers
- Using Zapier for leads
- The difficulty of opening a Dutch business when you don't speak Dutch
- Choosing a place to live when you work remotely
- The challenges and rewards of bootstrapping from Mauritius
- Translating your website for SEO gains
- Travelling the world by cargo ship
- Supporting customers from a cruise ship via satellite Internet
Links:
- Parseur
- grandvoyageur.fr
Find Sylvestre on Twitter at @slybridges
In this episode we're joined by Natalie Nagele from Wildbit to talk about starting a business vs. consulting, employees with side hustles, how to pick conferences to attend, and yes, GDPR.
In this episode we discuss conferences & traveling, birthday parties for kids, .app domains, and Andrey's new GDPR-related project Consent Monitor.
In this episode we discuss parenting at the park, hiring a plumber, cutting & bulking > marketing, the awesomeness of Peers Conference ⭐, hiring a contractor for Scribbleton, & more.
In this episode we discuss planning for Laracon Online, what's coming up next for Helpspot & Thermostat, and investing in startups.
In this episode we discuss Butov's workout routine, the pros and cons of hiring a part-time employee, and upcoming conference plans.
In a special episode of Bootstrapped, Taylor Otwell (creator of Laravel) joins Ian to talk about 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'.
WARNING: This podcast contains spoilers for 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'. If you haven't seen that movie yet (and seriously, what are you waiting for), wait to listen to this podcast until afterwards!
In this episode we discuss solo parenting, Disney on Ice, future conference plans, and a plan to live stream Ian playing video games.
In this episode we discuss being sick, what happens when you get an influx of clients, and a bunch of updates on everything from Scribbleton to Thermostat to Ian's new project, LaraTalent.
In this episode we discuss the beginnings of Ian's new CRUD app, Scribbleton upgrades, freezing your credit, Las Vegas, and more.
In this episode we discuss hearing trips to and from NYC, nostalgia for high school, the 'New Renaissance Butov', and more.
In this episode we discuss kindergarten, kids destroying tablets, side projects for founders, encryption in Scribbleton, and more.
In this episode we discuss Ian's "mancation", if Seinfeld still has it, an update on Andrey's weight loss and his new app, and more.
In this episode we continue our follow-up on Laracon, talk about all things hotels, plus poker, Thermostat.io, watching games on Twitch, & more.
In this episode we discuss Laracon, getting healthy, how millennials go to the gym, and more.
In this episode we discuss Butov's new addition to the family, experimenting with frameworks & languages, family vacations, old phones, & more.
In this episode we talk about Ian & NPS, Butov's attempts to hire millennials, and paying people to watch video games.
Part two of Andrey & Ian's conversation with Charles Perry (founder of Metakite) about what it's like to start a new subscription-based mobile app, plus a lot more.
Links:
- Metakite
- Follow Charles Perry on Twitter
Part one of Andrey & Ian's conversation with Charles Perry (founder of Metakite) about what it's like to start a new subscription-based mobile app, plus a lot more.
Links:
- Metakite
- Follow Charles Perry on Twitter
Butov needs a laptop upgrade, Ian wants simpler basketball video games, and they both talk about virtual reality.
Part two of our talk with Brian Casel about Audience Ops, the new Audience Ops Calendar, and more.
Links:
- Audience Ops
- Audience Ops Calendar
- Brian Casel on Twitter
Part one of our talk with Brian Casel about Audience Ops, the new Audience Ops Calendar, and more.
Links:
- Audience Ops
- Audience Ops Calendar
- Brian Casel on Twitter
Part two of our talk with Brandon Kelly about Craft CMS, pricing, support, and Pixel and Tonic.
Part one of our talk with Brandon Kelly about Craft CMS, politics, domains, and Pixel and Tonic.
Our guest in this episode is JD Graffam, owner of two agencies, Clear Function and Simple Focus, and several SaaS products, including Sifter, Pulse, and Ballpark.
We discuss the passing of Andrey's dog Cleo, moving company business models, standing desks, where you can find real news, founder vacation time needs, Ian's new ebook, Ian's hackentosh, autonomous cars.
Unpakt
Autonomous.ai standing desks
Ian's ebook, Securing the Five Figure Sale
River Raid
Sky Force Reloaded
Monsters and Monocles
Thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. Sign up today and get $20 off.
In this episode we talk about Ian's trip to Laracon, politics, working on multiple projects simultaneously, working on web apps vs other types of products, The Hive, changes at Userscape, dogs, naps, contractors, Twitch, board games, and kids growing up.
We're joined by our friend Matt Weinberg to chat about growing a large consultancy, software, hiring, and more. A lot of great insights in this one, don't miss it!
In this week's episode, Ian and Andrey talk about going to the gym, living on Long Island, Andrey's car buying adventures, Richard Stallman's speaking requirements, new iOS APIs, Twitter, Facebook, VR, game development, customizing products for individual customers, consulting work.
- Richard Stallman speaker visit
- Craft/ExpressionEngine NYC meetup
- Star Trek Bridge Crew in VR
- Batman Arkham VR
- "It’s been 6 weeks since I gave up on ever doing product again, and I feel great."
We discuss naps and meditation, new HelpSpot pricing, business ideas, is Andrey and introvert?, BaconBiz conf, Butov goes to Buffalo, new product work and ideas, and car leasing.
In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk to Jane Portman about her company, UI Breakfast, her new book for SaaS founders, building a business, and UI/UX for SaaS web applications.
Hating snow blowers, BaconBiz, going to the gym, driving to places you should be flying to, Rocket League, Quintu, Scribbleton, profit-generating companies and VC backing, seeing the path of a company as an outsider, favorite songs.
Andrey has never seen Breaking Bad, SaaStr review, Butov does PR and advertising, adventures in email, Ian drops an idea for a product you should steal but probably won't, Butov's Brooklyn, A Chef's Life.
In this episode, we talk about Mr. Rogers, releasing How Are Sales Today, writing desktop apps in C++, Parse closing and Uberdeck, Scribbleton, Userscape's new office, Userscape's partner program.
In this episode, we talk about Star Wars, how much Ian loves it and how much Andrey hates it, synchronizing hardware between home and office, code signing and certificate confirmation, international currencies and writing currency exchange code for How Are Sales Today, direct sales, the Userscape marketing plan for 2016, tracking advertising, adding more features vs releasing software earlier, and on-premise vs. software in the cloud.
- How Are Sales Today? Sales and SaaS metrics for Stripe
- The Joker: Mark Hamill
- Brad Bell's talk from Peers 2015
- Andrey's talk from Peers 2015
Thanks to Backup Pro for sponsoring this weeks show. Get 50% off with coupon code bootstrapped.fm
Also thanks to Linode for sponsoring this weeks show. Get $20 off your first month with code: bootstrapped20
This week Andrey doesn't tell me I'm on the wrong mic until half way through and we also cover acronyms, Jessica Jones, babysitter acquisition strategies, How Are Sales Today update, HelpSpot update, we go through Andrey Butov's favorite movies and TV shows.
In this episode, we talk about the new app from Quantic Insights, opening up a business bank account, meditation, mellowing out with age, new Userscape office, and Fallout 4.
- Deploy PHP
- How Are Sales Today? (or QiBar). The new app from Quantic Insights
- Jerry Seinfeld talks Transcendental Meditation
In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk about new hardware, Star Wars, HelpSpot Cloud, back-end systems, Quantic Insights, virtual insurance for virtual crap, and fantasy football.
- Mike Jones (labs.log)
- HelpSpot Cloud
- Quantic Insights
- Japanese Pachinko machines
- Ian’s post on purchase orders
Thanks to Linode for sponsoring the show this week.
Get $10 off (1 free month of a 1GB server) https://promo.linode.com/bootstrappedfm/
Discuss this episode in the forums >>
We discuss how we don’t hold to our topic, home contractors, physical servers, internet secure, desktop software development, rewriting software from scratch, online banking, Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars vs Star Trek (again).
Thanks to Linode for sponsoring the show this week.
Get $10 off (1 free month of a 1GB server) https://promo.linode.com/bootstrappedfm/
- DHH on rewriting software
- Tell Tale Games
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In this episode we talk about photography, Userscape’s new employee, health insurance, Finsumi, building everything yourself, outsourcing, Quantic Insights, C++, customer support, working from home, audiobooks, and video games.
Graciously sponsored by: Release Notes Conference. Offer code: bootstrapped for $100 off.
- Quantic Insights
- Awesome Batman artwork
- SaaStr
Discuss this episode in the forums >>
In this episode, we discuss Andrey’s PhillyPopecation, Release Notes Conference, how we do sales at UserScape, why you should never offer unlimited/site licenses, Jet Brains pricing, SaaS pricing for on-premise products, Ian’s Last Of Us update, video game violence, “shooting feel” in a game, we talk AGAIN about having dogs, dead fish.
Graciously sponsored by: Release Notes Conference. Offer code: bootstrapped for $100 off.
- Quantic Insights stealth mode landing page
- HelpSpot website, talk to sales
- Testrail
- Second Variety
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In this episode, we discuss returning for another season, first day of school, finishing up consulting work and returning to product work, co-founding a new company, HelpSpot 4, having a full-time sales person, Snappy, Quantic Insights, programmers and math, mobile apps for kids, Star Wars, Mad Max, and home theater setup.
- Quantic Insights
- HelpSpot
- Snappy
- Pastevault
- Honeybadger
Discuss this episode in the forums >>
Andrey swears a lot, we talk about nearly everything except bootstrapping! Stay until the end to hear us discuss Star Wars, 2001, Contact, Guardians of the Galaxy (classic!), Superman vs Batman.
- Dave Hicking Superhero
- Video of how Ian’s wife thinks Ian and Andrey will walk through Philly
- Video of Ian’s Microconf 2014 talk
- Babka
- Servers For Hackers – Learn how to actually manage the servers you run
- Product + Support – Ian’s new interview site
- X100T
- Steven Soderbergh 2001 recut
- Contact “buy 2 at twice the price” scene
- I am Groot
Discuss this episode in the forums >>
In this episode, we discuss Snappy shutting down, selling Snappy, resurrecting a failed product, Andrey’s trip to PAX, Peers conference, client work, Slack room atmosphere, games we’re playing, and games we can’t play.
- Why we’re closing Snappy – Ian’s blog post.
- Turning a failed product into a successful one – forum post
- Monsters & Monocles – a new game by Retro Dreamer
- Andrey’s PAX trip – photo1, photo2.
- Peers conference
- Starfighter – Patrick’s new company
Discuss this episode in the forums >>
Some product updates, yada yada yada, this is embarrassing.
- HelpSpot Help Desk Software 4
- Release Notes Conference
- Peers Conf
- Bacon Biz Conf
- Hyperplan
- The IOU of iOS
- The Shape of the App Store
- Soderbergh 2001 cut
- Us talking about Gone Home
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Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss names, getting punished for good deeds, fast-food burgers, Authorize.NET, HelpSpot mobile apps, making money from mobile games in the app store, a decade of running HelpSpot and Antair, life checkboxes, HelpSpot 4, and making games.
- DNSimple blog – Switching from Authorize.NET to Stripe.
- YTD Revenue for ‘A Dark Room’ iOS.
- Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits
- Jeff Vogel – “The Indie Bubble is Popping”
- Indie Game the Movie
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Download this episode where we discuss Ian’s health update, how Scribbbleton handles synchronization, moving, coworking and working from home, real estate business, discussing revenues, vote for us on iTunes!
- Convergence Insufficiency – headaches? reading trouble? kids with learning problems? – read this.
- Dead Man’s Switch
- Eric Sink’s Solitaire
- Indy Hall – Philly coworking
- Andrey’s post on revenue curve
- Houdini – You need this if you use a Mac
- Vote for us!!!
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Download this episode, in which we’re joined by special guest, Matt Stauffer, to talk about bootstrapping a SaaS while running a consultancy full-time, happiness, Laravel, structuring your day, hiring developers, work & family, gritty TV shows, and Star Trek!
- Matt Stauffer – Twitter, Website
- Tighten Co – Matt’s consulting company
- Karani – Matt’s SaaS application.
- Eric Barnes’ Laravel News Artisan Files – interview with Matt.
- Matt’s series on Laravel 5
- The Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death
- An evening with the Star Trek TNG cast (video clips)
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Download this episode. This week we fail to discuss that it’s our 50th episode, family impact on development, Andrey might be hiring a helper so contact him, crazy contract work, Servers for Hackers, UTF–8, Bootstrapped app we don’t have time for, Markdown, Moto X review, a plumber will run UserScape for a day.
- Servers for Hackers
- Ellison buys Lanai
- 20 years of blogging
Discuss this episode on our forums.
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about antisocial haircuts, Joan Rivers, consulting, Scribbleton on Lifehacker, relaxing, doing a product from start to finish on the show, a Userscape update, Postgres, Nightstand, the Oculus Rift, Minecraft, Star Trek Bridge Commander, Wing Commander, Steam.
- Scribbleton
- Snappy
- Star Trek Bridge Commander
- Wing Commander 3
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We chat with special guest Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo. We cover the full gamut from bootstrapping, VC, competing against Google, Perl, privacy, advertising, remote work, finding customers, biz dev and Gabriel’s new book Traction.
- Gabriel Weinberg
- DuckDuckGo
- Traction – Gabriel’s book on getting customers
Discuss this episode on the Bootstrapped forum
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss anchor celebrities, parenting, Larajobs, fake snow, product hunt, donationware, Uberdeck, consulting retainers, the costs of opening up an office.
- Dave Hicking
- Bootstrapping a job board to $5,000 in revenue
- Larajobs
- Scribbleton
- What does it really cost to open an indie studio?
- Setting up an office for a software company
This episode is sponsored by Linode
Discuss this episode with other bootstrappers
This week we have special guest Jeffrey Way. We talk about how he’s bootstrapped Laracasts, how he got started in Laravel, the philosophy behind Laracasts, pricing, hiring, building a personal brand, supporting open source, how to make a great screencast, working for The Man.
- Laracasts
Thanks to this weeks sponsor: Linode
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Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss taking a vacation while bootstrapping, the craziness of Hacker News, LaraJobs, Scribbleton, installing desktop software, mods, git, pity purchases, Linux desktop apps, Walmart, the new square BlackBerry, Commodore 64, consulting work, how much it costs to build an app, shutting down a SaaS that isn’t performing, who handles support, bad web hosting, Martha’s Vineyard, American Presidents, Ian posting Scribbleton on Hacker News and causing trouble.
- LaraJobs
- Scribbleton
- River Raid on the Commodore 64
- Ionic framework
This episode is sponsored by FusionInvoice — 20% 0ff for our listeners.
This episode is also sponsored by Linode .
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Ian’s (non-life threatening) health issues, delaying the Bootstrapped Conference, quarters as a service, app translation, LaraJobs, what we’d do if we had to work someplace else, Scribbleton update, twitter as protocol.
- Level Up Conference
- MacDowell Colony
- Washboard.co – Even the goodbye letter is weird, don’t miss the video.
- Tehtras
- Transifex
- LaraJobs
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In this episode, we sit down with the developers of Userscape; Eric Barnes, Chris Fidao, and Taylor Otwell, to talk about weird dreams, Eric’s, Chris’ and Taylor’s backgrounds and how they got started at Userscape, supporting open source, Forge, newsletters, servers, building Scribbleton for Linux, content-based products, deploying desktop apps, and TV shows
- Userscape – About Us
- Snappy
- Eric Barnes – blog, Wardrobe CMS, Laravel News
- Chris Fidao – Servers for Hackers
- Taylor Otwell – Laravel, Forge
- Video of Ian’s talk from Laracon: Open Source & Your Business
- Scribbleton
This episode is sponsored by Linode.
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This week we talk about Scribbleton, Sponsor us!, Rails apps, The Bootstrapped.fm Conference, semi-obscure Seinfeld references, Apple WWDC, Beats and Jimmy Ionvine, and much much much more!
- Scribbleton
- Apple WWDC Keynote
- Sponsor Bootstrapped.fm!
- Bootstrapped.fm Conference!
- Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
- The Boyfriend (Seinfeld)
- Recode/Jimmy Iovine interview
- Wil Wheaton
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In this episode, we talk about Laracon, holding a conference in New York, Snappy Concierge, experimental coding, Scribbleton, the Mac app store, the Bootstrapped.fm conference, managing product websites, and disruptive businesses.
- The Bootstrapped.fm Conference
- Snappy Concierge
- Scribbleton
- Ada Lovelace and Edsger Dijkstra
- Dijkstra – Discipline in Thought (video)
- Cliffski’s strategic risks and opportunities (for Positech)
If you’d like to sign-up to be notified about the details of the Bootstrapped.fm conference, you can do so on the conference page at http://conference.bootstrapped.fm
If you’d like to participate in the discussion surrounding the conference dates, venues, speakers, location, etc, we’ve set up a forum thread for that.
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In this episode we discuss talking at conferences, Star Wars, and sci-fi, video games, Ludum Dare and game dev competitions, the current Antair project list, user interfaces for kids’ apps, Scribbleton, multi-platform development, Snappy, domain registrars, and the Oculus Rift for virtual offices.
- Laracon
- Rachel Andrew – Conference speaking, transparency and fairness.
- Draplin Design Co. — the talk Ian referred to in the show.
- Mike Rowe TED Talk
- Rendezvous with Rama
- A Dark Room (web version) – and the iOS version
- Pug vs. Nemo – Andrey’s Ludum Dare entry.
-
LOWREZ JAM 2014
- Scribbleton
- Snappy
- Gail Goodman – The Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death
- Heavy Rain – and the VR glasses video.
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This week we discuss profanity, Microconf, Peersconf, business evolution, Andrey Do-gooder, product trials, Notch and motivation beyond money, Minecraft, multiple saas apps, acquiring products and building vs buying, coder vs marketer, Andrey should do an ebook
- Stampy Minecraft videos
- UI Breakfast
- Ian’s Microconf slides
- @sil
- MicroISV From Vision to Reality
- Andrey’s Dr.Dobbs article
- NYT Now
- Long Island Herald
- Drip email marketing
- So You Want to Be a Wall Street Programmer
Discuss this weeks episode on the forums
Also, don’t miss the short After Dark episode this week.
Another few minutes on this weeks podcast where we discuss things to do in New York City.
In this episode, we sit down with Eric Miller, of Eric Miller Design, to talk about Eric’s design studio, his products, UX Kits, bootstrapping physical products, working with your spouse, Dribbble, Facebook and Twitter ads, OpenSSL, Brooklyn, Long Island, Poughkeepsie, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island.
- Eric Miller Design
- UX Kits
- Redesigning Solspace
- Katy Robbins
- Vector Media Group
- eecoder ( Visual Chefs)
- Graffletopia
- Northside Festival in Brooklyn
- Unsplash
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In this episode, we discuss tax credits, branding and positioning, JitBit, John Carmack, Oculus, Zuckerberg, young people running companies, VR, box.com, Snappy, marketing tracking software, naming projects, and growth hackers vs. bootstrappers.
- Rob Walling – HitTail
- Section 199 Domestic Production Tax Credit
- Chasing Product interview with Alex Yumashev – JitBit
- John Carmack
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
- Oculus
- Carmack’s 2012 QuakeCon keynote
- Carmack thanks Notch for inspiration to jump to Oculus
- Notch’s blog post on the Oculus/Facebook situation
- Michael Abrash’s presentation on presence and VR
- Palmer Luckey on Reddit
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We discuss more growth hacking scum, the podcasts 1 year birthday, building a business for more than money, SaaS vs download, SaaS thriving off dead accounts, code builds, game console emulators, open source doc and design quality, open source vs open source and free, publishing, conference talks.
- Jason Cohen
- Monetizing Children
- Is SaaS the Only Business Model for the Web
- Arq OSX Backups
- Unreal Engine 5% deal
- Popcorn Time – Napster for movies
- Perch CMS
- AGPL – the OS license to use if you want to use GPL
- Laracon
- Andrey’s first open source project
- Ian’s talks at Microconf and Peers
- Failconf
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In this episode, we discuss screaming squirrels, being busy, clients, project estimates, VC backed companies, why we hate SaaS, mobile app ickiness, and the value of ideas.
- “Is 5X the new 2X in SaaS?”
- “Give me $300 or the website gets it!”
- The icky mobile apps article
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We discuss confusion over our voices, taxes, vacation, Disney tracking your meat, off topic, doppelgängers, SPF records, Al Bundy/Married With Children, Evernote, pruning your twitter account, Groupon marketing genius, Flappy Bird and the mobile cesspool, Rick Ellis, product first mindset, we’re over SaaS
- Disney and the Meat Space
- Laracon
- Andrey’s Doppleganger ( Doppelgangers)
- Mobile Developer Weekly
- SPF Records, SPF on CampaignMonitor
- Evernote
- QT
- Prune Your Twitter Account (Ian’s article)
- Groupon Marketing
- Flappy Bird download analysis article
- Bill Gates can’t install Windows 8.1
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Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about Florida, children, stupid teenagers, growing up, stories that go nowhere, growth hackers, hiring a content engineer, unit testing, John Carmack, spending $13,000 on marketing automation software, motorcycles, and baseball tickets.
- Irene McGee – and her recent article.
- Userscape is hiring a Content Engineer
- Ruben Gamez on Bootstrapped.fm
- John Carmack – The Physics of Light and Rendering
- Michael Abrash
- Doom playthrough with John Romero
- Pardot
- Infusionsoft
- Kawasaki ZX-6R Ninja
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Download this episode. Andrey talks about Gone Home and the impact it’s had on his life, but won’t give details! Voiceovers, Antair is 9 years old, UserScape is almost 9 though Ian considers it 10, the good old days of bootstrapping, the constant re-inventing of Antair, Ian goes on a rant about Growth Hacking, project management apps, Ian rants again about marketing automation tools, remote work, Ian talking at Microconf, beards, Ian ranting about taking his family to Disney
- Gone Home – Andrey’s new all time favorite game
- Heavy Rain
- Spec Ops: The Line
- Don Quixote
- God Emperor of Dune – Dune series
- Sia – Breathe Me
- Sarah Grayson – voiceover actress
- The Last of Us
- Bioshock Infinite
- Tony Baker – voiceover in Bioshock
- Lost Planet 3
- Bill Watterson – voiceover Lost Planet
- OUR FORUMS, YOU SHOULD BE CHECKING THIS OUT
- Coffice – mmkkk
- Cold email thread – growth hacking spam
- Hubspot
- Recurly
- Chargify
- Kanban
- The Year Without Pants – Book about remote work
- Microconf – Ian is speaking at this, too late for tickets if you don’t have them already
- Possible Bootstrapped.fm meetup in Vegas
- The Truman Show
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about growing to a point where you have no idea where stuff is in your own company, building mobile clients for Snappy and Quintu, Minecraft, live coding streams, games, client work, system administration with SaaS, the Sturgeon/Laravel argument, the forums, SaaS growth curves, the PHP Book Book, Seinfeld, Bill Gates, and the Gone Home game.
- Ionic framework
- Asteroid Jane
- Phil Sturgeon on The Tribal Framework Mindset
- Ian’s sideon the Sturgeon/Laravel discussion.
- Amy Hoy – 5 years of SaaS growth.
- Seinfeld – Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
- Gone Home
Discuss this episode.
Special guest Gavin Bowman of RetroDreamer talks about bootstrapping a mobile gaming company. The business of software forums come up… again, expanding a gaming shop and how creativity factors into that, Ian asks too many questions about gaming and such, Being able to be done, revenue fear, ads vs paid, platforms, Apple review controversy
- Gavin Bowman
- Retro Dreamer
- Sneezies – Still a great iOS game
- Ryan Evans – Retro Dreamers first full time hire
- Velocispider
- What Now Podcast
- Andy Brice on Bootstrapped.fm
- Oculus virtual reality headset
Discuss this episode
Download episode 29, in which we talk about school lunches, fast food, Ludum Dare, game development, Minecraft, Userscape’s new employee, taking a vacation, 2013 year in review, amount of revenue to have before hiring full-time, the first two years of running a software consultancy, being too open about your employee information, Laracon 2014, and running an online retail shop.
- Gavin Bowman of Retro Dreamer
- What Now Podcast
- Bootstrapped.fm episode on movies for programmers
- Ludum Dare
- Notch live-coding for Ludum Dare 28, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
- The Story of Minecraft – documentary
- Chris Fidao (@fideloper)
- 2013 year in review – forum thread
- Lessons Learned: The First Two Years of Running a Consultancy
- Open salaries at Buffer
- Laracon 2014 in NYC
- Selling an e-commerce store, with a follow-up
Discuss this episode in our Bootstrapper forums
This is one of our best episodes yet. If you’re interested in content marketing be prepared to take notes. We also discuss the SaaS release cycle and lifestyle, working hours, business coaching and Andrey abducting Ruben.
- Ruben’s client proposal software Bidsketch
- Ruben’s personal blog
- Seth MacFarlane’s tweet on the Family Guy Brian stuff
- Ruben’s post on getting to his first 1K a month regarding Andrey’s previous question on Bootstrapped 15
- Keyword Funnel – Adwords keyword finder/organizer
- Old Bidsketch video demo
- Eric Sink’s on the Business of Software
Discuss this episode on our Bootstrapper forums.
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about kids’ toys, Uberdeck, making sense of Adwords, Snappy, content marketing, finding a regular job after years of running a bootstrapped software company, selling physical products, Userscape’s new hire, running a conference, and moving to a consultancy.
- Startups for the rest of us, episode 160 – podcast with Rob Walling and Mike Taber
- Andy Brice, his software business training course, and his upcoming Keyword Funnel tool.
- Pusher – Real time messaging service for web and mobile apps.
- Found – Elasticsearch hosting.
- 24ways – Web design and development goodness.
- Founder made $99 from an $82 million dollar exit.
- A year of selling physical products.
- Gavin and Craig of RetroDreamer.
Discuss this show over on our Bootstrapper forums.
Download this podcast where Andrey sings Party All the Time by Eddie Murphy, booze, big UberDeck update, marketing, Snappy mobile app, mobile app reviews, VM’s,16 terminals tiled (huh?), everything is noodles (huh?), coworking, healthcare plans, more marketing, doing marketing under your own name, Ian’s idea for a new app
- Party All the Time by Eddie Murphy
- Doc’s Hard Cider
- UberDeck v2 – new push notifications, concierge installation service, great new pricing
- Moz
- Mochibits
- Slideroom – Happy Snappy customer
- PHP Townhall Podcast
- Light Table IDE
- Festivus
- Healthcare.gov – You probably haven’t heard of this site
- Supportops
- Andy Brice software consulting
- Drip – email marketing via drip campaigns
- Rachel Andrew’s Newsletter – sign up at the bottom of the page
- Ruben Gamaz interview
- Hover.com
Discuss the show over on our Bootstrappers forum
Download this episode, in which we talk about dollar stores, dogs and babies, the new Helpspot release, support contracts, requiring a credit card at signup, pricing and recurring billing, info-products, SaaS being unsatisfying, digging new holes, the point of growing, all software going to zero.
- Helpspot – Ian’s helpdesk product.
- Snappy – Ian’s newest product.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s mobile-app marketing product.
- Stripe – payment processing service.
- Star Trek Generations
- Ian’s “all software is going to $0.00” theory
- Edge of My Seat – Perch, Rachel Andrew, Drew McLellan
- Rachel Andrew on Bootstrapped.fm
- SupportOps.co – Chase Clemons
- Chase Clemons on Bootstrapped.fm
- So You Want To Be A Wall Street Programmer? – Andrey’s Book
- Ian’s newsletter
- SuccessfulSoftware.net – Andy Brice
- Andy Brice on Bootstrapped.fm
Discuss this episode with other bootstrappers in the forums.
Download this episode, in which we talk about Batman, Software going to $0, Pricing again, Saas sucking, High school/depression, Business of Software Conference, A/B testing, Insurance, Andrey and me opening a coffee shop comic book store, Batman Arkham Origins, how we’re the Seinfeld of bootstrap podcasting, Everpix closing, soup delivery, $7.95 cupcakes, our side projects that make us no money.
We’re going to try to do a Bootstrapped.fm meetup if you’re in the NYC area. Contact us or post to the board if you’re interested.
- Business of Software Conference
- Developers, Entrepreneurs and Depression
- ACT! CRM
- Microconf
- Optimizely
- Track.io
- Lego Star Wars movies
- The Crafted Kup – Ian’s local coffee house
- Everpix – Everpix Verge article
- Backblaze – awesome backup
- Tattly
- Not the guy we talked about, but another selling soup via bike
- Readdle
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Download this episode, in which we talk about Andrey finally leaving the house, street cred, Quintu, the work that goes into a typical SaaS app, implementing push in Uberdeck, OS X 10.8 update woes, git and distributed source code control, supporting developers vs. supporting end users, downloadable vs. SaaS, playing with SaaS marketing at an early stage of the product, being organized with marketing, tracking the marketing flow, onboarding, pricing based on volume, seasonal stores, celebrities in NYC, the new Panic office, and a day of doing nothing at work.
- Arq, Crashplan – backup software.
- VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion – VM software.
- HipChat – private group chat.
- Rachel Andrew – Founder of Perch.
- Chargify, Stripe – Recurding billing and payments services.
- HubSpot – inbound marketing software.
- KISSmetrics, Mixpanel – analytics and metrics tools.
- Trak.io – Ian’s preferred metric app (for now).
- Optimizely – A/B testing tool.
- Seasonal stores
- The Living Room NYC
- Panic office – founder’s room.
Discuss this episode with other bootstrappers in the forums.
Download this episode, in which we give away an amazing social mobile podcast product idea, Blackberry (sorry), App stores, Andrey’s gripes with Laravel 4 and other techy things, asset management in front end web development, Vi, Breaking Bad finale!!!, Living in NYC, Perch CMS meetup, Business of Software conference
- Blackberry sale
- Number Two
- Antair Notes on Amazon App Store
- Twitter Ads (also great just to see your RT’s/Fav’s even if you don’t buy ads)
- Laravel 4 PHP framework
- Grunt – JS task runner
- Sentry Laravel Auth Library
- Sublime Text
- PhpStorm
- FogCreek Wasabi
- Business of Software Conference – 10% off with code “bootstrap”
- Perch CMS meetup
Discuss this episode in our bootstrapper forums
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey sit down with special guest, Andy Brice, to discuss Perfect Table Plan, software marketing, creating desktop software vs. SaaS web apps, software pricing, cross-platform development with QT, analytics, measuring how many people are ‘word-of-mouth’ customers, Andy’s 2-day intensive training course on starting your own software business, practical software products, the legacy of shareware, the effect of SaaS apps on lifestyle, A/B testing, Adwords, email vs. helpdesk system for one-person companies, and martial arts.
- Andy Brice at http://www.successfulsoftware.net, and on twitter at http://twitter.com/successfulsw
- Perfect Table Plan – Andy’s flagship product.
- Andy’s two-day intensive training course on starting your own software business.
- QT
- Andy’s article on software award scams.
- Andy will be a speaker at MicroConf Europe (Prague) on Oct 5-6
- Association of Software Professionals
- Thomas Warfield – Pretty Good Solitaire
- Andy’s Article – “Shareware is Dead – Long Live Shareware”
- Perry Marshall book on Adwords
- Capoeira
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss their appearances on other podcasts, depression caused by taking consulting work, how Andrey will structure his day, Apple keynote and how new hardware relates to mobile development, releasing software in the app store, SaaS searching tech and more.
- Chasing Product podcast
- DNL Consulting
- Apple iPhone 5s/5c keynote
- Fertile Ground – Marco Arment on supporting new mobile API’s
- Number Two – Andrew Garrison on his mobile release strategy
- Antair Sodoku for Playbook
- Successful Software blog
- Perfect Table Planner – table seating planner
- Start Your Own Software Business training course
- Found.no hosted Elasticsearch
- Hack Fitconference
- The ALL NEW HelpSpot.com
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss Laracon EU, Snappy, web app activity tracking and analytics, Uberdeck, marketing as your primary daily activity, Andrey’s next app, native clients vs. mobile web apps vs. responsive design for a SaaS product, front-end web dev frameworks, annual SaaS billing, getting dumber, Vincent van Gogh, San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Texas.
- Laracon EU
- Snappy 3-tier pricing
- Uberdeck
- iDeveloper.co – podcast for iOS developers.
- ChasingProduct.com – podcast for consultants looking to move into products.
- PhoneGap
- Responsive Design
- jQuery Mobile
- Backbone.js
- Forecast.io – blog post on building their web/mobile app
- Dark Sky app – from the folks who brought you Forecast.io
- Ember.js
- AngularJS
- Zepto.js
- Forbes – how much do average apps make?
- The Other F Word
- Unfinished Business Podcast – episode 33
(Sorry for the crappy audio quality on Andrey’s side in this episode; he’ll get it right one of these days).
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey sit down with special guest Chase Clemons of SupportOps to discuss customer service for bootstrappers. We also get an Uberdeck update on leaving beta and pricing strategy.
This episode is being cross released on both Bootstrapped.fm and Support Ops Podcast. Check them out!
- 37Signals
- Support Ops and the Support Ops Podcast
- Uberdeck is released!
- Andrey’s Essential Voice Recorder – type notes while you record audio (Android)
- Basecamp Mobile
- Bootstrapped customer service and using self service walls threads on discuss.bootstrapped.fm
- Pingdom
- Amazon Prime – Love the prime, buy the prime!!!! (Ian)
- GetSatisfaction
- CoSupport
- Support Ops Hangouts – Watch Chase live every Monday
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey sit down with special guest Rachel Andrew from EdgeOfMySeat.com, to discuss Perch, the really little CMS, the new Bootstrapped.fm forums, marketing, customer support, product dependencies, how important personal visibility is to your business, content management systems, writing and speaking, and self-publishing.
- Rachel Andrew
- Perch: the really little CMS – Rachel’s product.
- EdgeOfMySeat.com – Rachel’s company.
- Drew McLellan – Rachel’s husband and business partner. Drew on 24 Ways.
- The Perch Podcast
- Bootstrapped.fm Forums
- The Perch website was designed by Paddy Donnelly of Lefft. The birds were drawn by Kev Adamson.
- Rachel will have a workshop on Shipping Your Product at the Future of Web Apps. She also has a version of the workshop available as a Smashing Workshop.
- Big thanks to Mike Jones, for making http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm come alive.
- Discourse – forum software.
- Discussion on serving different sections of the market for one product.
- Discussion regarding MachForm, and their free installation offer.
- Rachel’s presentation (video) on Things Learned While Supporting Perch.
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss Andrey’s new mobile apps, doing press releases in unique cases, HARO, bringing on a partner, Valentino movie, Breaking Bad, Andrey on being abducted, dress code in fancy steak joints, optimal steak restaurant design, Snappy marketing, doing a giveaway
_ Note: this podcast was recorded before we released http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm, next week we’ll discuss that in more detail_.
- Bootstrapped Ep 15 with Special guest Patrick McKenzie
- Be a source on Help a Reporter Out
- We ate a huge steak at http://www.peterluger.com/ with DNL
- Business movie: Valentino: The Last Emperor
- Black Books show
- BREAKING BAD!!
- Çingleton
- Mailgun
- Patrick McKenzie’s drip email series
- Rafflecopter – great app for running giveaways
- Taylor Otwell’s Laravel book
- Guest next week Rachel Andrew
Discuss this episode: http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/episode-16-meat-and-attitude/74
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey are joined by special guest, Patrick McKenzie (patio11), to discuss the “early” days of the Business of Software forums, Patrick’s journey and daily routine, Helpdesk systems and support, Appointment Reminder, systemizing and automating daily tasks, SaaS, B2C vs. B2B, pricing of software, consulting, learning from Blackhats, Hacker News, marketing, Uberdeck, making money from open source, dual-licensing, running a conference, hacker meetups, Patrick’s biggest mistake in business, Patrick’s next product, and Facebook games.
- Special guest Patrick McKenzie (patio11) of Kalzumeus.
- Business of Software Forums – Joel on Software.
- Bingo Card Creator – Patrick’s first product.
- Appointment Reminder – Patrick’s second product.
- Helpspot – Ian’s first product.
- Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
- Antair Spam Filter – One of Andrey’s first products.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s latest product
- Andy Brice, and his Perfect Table Plan product.
- Jon B and his ViEmu, vi emulator for Visual Studio.
- Gavin Bowman
- Michael Pryor
- Kalzumeus Podcast
- Teach for America
- Hacker News
- Ruben Gamez, founder of Bidsketch
- 30×500, by Amy Hoy
- Micropreneur Academy
- Marco Arment
- Laravel
- Laravel: From Apprentice to Artisan, by Taylor Otwell
- Paint.net
- Binpress
- Rails Long Term Support
- Gail Goodman talk from Business of Software 2012
- Patrick’s Email List
- Peldi, Balsamiq Mockups
- Visual Website Optimizer
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey are joined by special guest Scott Watermasysk. We get the back story on KickoffLabs Scott’s company, Andrey laments about having to do “stuff”, we don’t get Quora, we go deep on Uberdeck pricing strategy, how Agant went back to being a one person shop, starting solo or with a co-founder, Ship It!, a few landing page tips from Scott.
- Special guest Scott Watermasysk of KickoffLabs
- IBM Ideating commercial
- CampaignMonitor pricing
- What Next for Agant
- Rise of the Millon Dollar One Person Business
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss getting ready to deploy Uberdeck, Snappy progress, what’s next for Snappy marketing, stories of first job interviews, the benefits, if any, of a college education, selling into the consumer space, the experience of buying software in a box, selling software before making software and vetting product ideas.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s new product. ( preview screenshot)
- Fabric – a Python SSH tool.
- Snappy – Ian’s newest product.
- SupportOps.co – a site dedicated to customer support best practices.
- Helpspot – Ian’s first product; a helpdesk application.
- SmallSpec.com – Chris Hawkins‘ new product for building functional specs.
- Boiler Room – movie.
- Songwriter gets paid $16 for 1 million plays.
- xkcd – the pace of modern life.
Download this episode, in which Andrey and Ian discuss mistakes with Snappy’s initial website, building multiple products vs focusing on a single product, fixing the app store, recommendations on going into the mobile space, and Derek Sivers new company and how he outsourced it all.
- FocusLab
- Slambots – the latest RetroDreamer game
- Marco on removing mobile app store top lists
- Spider Web Games
- CD Baby
- Sivers article on new company
Download this episode, in which Andrey and Ian sit down with Carl Diesing from DNL OmniMedia, and Chris Hawkins from Cogeian Systems, to talk about bootstrapping a successful software consulting company.
- Chris Hawkins on Twitter, and his website with lots of good articles and advice.
- Cogeian Systems – The software consultancy where Chris is the founder.
- Carl Diesing on Twitter
- DNL OmniMedia – The software consultancy where Carl is a co-founder.
- Expensd– DNL’s SaaS product
- SmallSpec – Chris’ new SaaS product
- Parscale Media – A consulting software company mentioned by Ian during the show.
- Chasing Product – Chris’ new podcast
Download this episode, in which we go over the launch of Snappy, the Laravel 4 release, taking care of kids and kid gym options, Bootstrap conferences, app metrics and Infoproducts!
- Snappy goes live
- Eric Sink on pricing
- Laravel 4 – THE PHP framework
- Laravel three docs
- DNL Omnimedia
- Cogeian
- The Little Gym
- Gymboree
- Imitation Gruel – Andrey referenced this, check it out
- JDate
- BaconBizConf – Original announcement
- Bidsketch
- Dribbble
- Focus Lab
- SmoothMouse
- Beach Haven, NJ
- Kissmetrics
- Mixpanel – recommended
- So You Want To Be a Wall Street Programmer
- Authority by Nathan Barry
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey discuss Uberdeck, system administration, pricing strategies, news coverage for startups, Jeff Atwood, Trello, and Snappy.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s latest project
- Alwin Hoogerdijk (collectorz.com) – on email marketing
- Campaign Monitor – email campaign service
- DNS Made Easy – DNS service
- Amazon Route 53 – DNS service
- Linode – hosting for Uberdeck
- Trello – project management
- Coding Horror – Jeff Atwood’s blog
- Amazon SQS – hosted message queue service
- EngineHosting – hosting for Snappy
- Snappy – Ian’s latest product
- PG Experts – PostgreSQL expert services
- BugSnag – real-time bug intelligence
- AsyncHttp – HTTP library for Android
- James Smith – creator of BugSnag and AsyncHttp for Android.
- Discourse – Jeff Atwood’s forum software
- Eric Sink – on the business of software
Download this episode, where Ian and Andrey discuss sweet games, SaaS downtime, UserScape Bizarro Week, Brooklyn, Microconf and more.
- Bioshock Infinite – Andrey says this is one of the great games of all times with perhaps the best ending of all time
- Heavy Rain – Another great game
- Rainbow Six – Classic
- The Secret of Monkey Island – I assume you’ve all heard of and played this
- Supervisor – A process control system
- DB Tenancy Information
- EngineHosting – Private resource clusters for your big app needs
- Review of Google Play on Nook
- Google 20% time explained
- Fogcreek remote work position
- Park Slope, Brooklyn
- Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
- Setting up an office for a software company – Details on Andrey’s office setup for Antair
- Microconf – Ian will eventually make it to this conference
- Summary of Jason Cohen Microconf 2013 talk
- Microconf take away summary
- Jason Cohen: Bootstrapped CPC rule of thumb: MRR/25 – Interesting article on how to determine what you should be willing to bid for your cost per click ads
Download this episode, where Ian and Andrey discuss the Apple app store release process, making video games for a living, people and companies that “get it”, fonts for web development, trademarks and names,
- Helvetica – Documentary about the typeface (and design, in general).
- Indie Game the Movie – Documentary that follows several indie game developers.
- What Now podcast – Gavin’s and Andrey’s podcast about making mobile apps for a living.
- Typography.com – the site Andrey was referring to when he mentioned “typeface.com” in the episode.
- Google Fonts
- Typekit
- Snappy
- Focus Lab – The design team behind Snappy.
- Bloomberg by Bloomberg
- PasteVault
- WordPress open source terms of service and privacy policy.
- Tom Pitegoff – Ian’s (Userscape’s) corporate lawyer.
- Patrick McKenzie
- Lean Startup
- Uberdeck
- Antair Snippets
- TechZing podcast
- Tim Ferriss
–
Download this episode, where Ian and Andrey discuss screen real estate, hiring a part time developer, Apple II parts, a segment which went way too long on Authorize.net, funding open source projects and code naming.
- See Andrey’s setup
- Divvy – Mac windows manager
- Antair part time developer position – 20-30 hours a month
- Hacker News – Hacker New Popular Twitter stream
- Vienna RSS – Andrey’s choice for a Mac desktop RSS reader
- Dave Winer discusses the concept of a River of News – (audio)
- Temperature in David Letterman’s studio is 58 degrees ( ref)
- Apple II store – This is awesome
- Wall-E
- Description of Andrey’s first app – sadly no actual zip provided
- Authorize.net – (please use Stripe or other modern solutions)
- Merchant Accounts
- Stripe
- Brian Kernighan’s “Advanced Programming Techniques”
- PasteVault.com – expiring text/passwords
- Gittip
- Info on Shareware, for you kids
- OpenJDK – open source Java
- Go to UberDeck and sign up for the beta
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about a gauntlet of client work, consulting, competitors, talking about your product early, stock options and bonuses, a little bit on wall street programming, hiring, contributing to open source, life after programming, and movies!
Links:
- Bitsplitting Podcast – episode 2, with Erika Hall of Mule Design Studio.
- Shipping an Empty Box – Andrey’s blog post about supporting large companies.
- Helpspot – Ian’s product.
- Snappy – Ian’s newest product.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s upcoming product.
- Snappy on Dribble
- Bill Cosby, “Himself” – full stand-up special
- Code Rush – full documentary
- Jamie Zawinski
- Viola web browser
- Eric Sink – wrote the browser that eventually became Internet Explorer
- DNA Lounge – nightclub owned by Jamie Zawinski
- DNA Pizza – pizza joint owned by Jamie Zawinski
- The Living Room in NYC
- Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee – Seinfeld’s online show
- Startup.com – full movie
- 12 Weeks with Geeks – full movie
- Pirates of Silicon Valley – full movie
- Triumph of the Nerds, Part I, Part II, Part III – full documentary in 3 parts.
- Good Eats
- Bill Nye the Science Guy
- John Carmack’s QuakeCon 2012 Keynote – full video
- Swamp Loggers
- Wall Street
- Scarface
- The Godfather
- The Matrix
- Mad Men
- Breaking Bad
- Grand Theft Auto
- Scarface video game
- Euro Truck Simulator
- Game Dev Story, an iPhone game where you run a game software company
- Whites
- Black Books
- DeviantArt
- PasteVault – Ian’s open source project.
- Laravel
- Kudos – Ian’s open source blog engine
- TurnJS – Javascript library
- Packery – Javascript library
- Tipped – Javascript component
- Highcharts – Javascript library
- id source code
- Dave Winer
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey cover a host of issues, including an apology of sorts to Patrick McKenzie, a discussion on if in fact the customer is always right, how you support .99 cent apps, non-mistakes from Ian’s past, VC funding and an extremely important tax tip!
Links:
- Appointment Reminder – by Patrick McKenzie
- Patrick McKenzie Interview
- Podcast with Patrick & Amy Hoy
- Freckle
- Shutting down Charm – Interesting look at shutting down a SaaS app before it launches
- History of “the customer is always right”
- What Now Podcast – Andrey’s other podcast
- Retro Dreamer
- Automattic Hosting – WordPress hosting
- Spiderweb Games – RPG games (not $.99!)
- Ian’s ChatSpot Live non-mistake – Glad I didn’t build it, but still like the logo by Mike Rohde
- Creating a Business Logo – history of UserScape & HelpSpot logo’s
- Mixergy Paul Singh Interview
- Spryfox
- Rob Walling
- Stackoverflow initial VC funding
- Startup.com Movie
- Stardock
- Figure53
- Atlassian financing
- Section 199 Domestic Production Tax Credit – this is awesome, talk to your accountant today!
- Handling B2B Transactions
- DNL – Ian’s Brother & cousins web consultancy
- Jason Cohen on consultancy math
- Business of Software conference – Go, it’s awesome
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about not being able to remember anything that happened before today, Ian’s rules for the practical entrepreneur, having so many products that you can’t list them all, entering a fragmented market, preferring B2B, The Pivot, Andrey not having any kind of strategy for choosing which products to make, damned phones, when selling to a business is not really selling to a business, clear and simple revenue model, bridging the internet world with the real world, not using your own products, doing support, how recent the 90’s were, dealing with criticism, competitors who are clearly doing it wrong, Steve Jobs being brilliant at what he does, customers not caring about which technology you use, being the perfect developer for your own company, bootstrapping a company when you have kids, the sense of being continuously rushed, BioIsChanged.com, DAS Keyboard, and customer-hosted vs. SaaS.
Links:
- Ian’s 4 Rules for the Practical Entrepreneur
- $10,000 – Ian’s sale numbers from the early days of selling Helpspot.
- A partial list of Andrey’s products – including the early ones like Printer Friendly, Chinchilla, and Asteroid Jane.
- Uberdeck – Andrey’s upcoming product.
- Pixelmator, and Acorn – Photoshop competitors on the Mac.
- Pivoting, as a company strategy.
- Authorize.NET, Stripe, and Square – payment processing.
- Hubspot – marketing
- Seamless Web – online food ordering.
- Patrick McKenzie’s Appointment Reminder
- Let’s Take This Offline – Joel Spolsky quits blogging.
- Dave Winer – interviews here and here.
- Steve Jobs Insult Response
- Ian choosing a development stack for Helpspot.
- John Carmack
- Eric Barnes, and his talk.
- Ethan – Andrey’s son.
- Tyler – Ian’s first child.
- 37signals on interruptions
- Jim Gaffigan (comedian)
- BioIsChanged.com
- DAS Keyboard
- OpenSourceHelpdeskList.com
- Amy Hoy’s TwiStory
- Fogcreek’s FogBugz
- Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
- GitHub’s enterprise version
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about software version numbers, SaaS apps, hiring, modern web application development, server hosting, what to do with old servers, monitors and hard drives, doing what it takes to fund your business, Andrey’s psychological state, physical world products vs software.
Links:
- Eric Barnes – Laracon 2013 talk
- Laravel – The awesome PHP framework
- CodeIgniter
- BackBone – JS front end framework
- Coffeescript – A little language that compiles to JavaScript
- LESS – The only way to write CSS
- EngineHosting – Sweet VPS based hosting solution
- Linode – Linux VPS provider
- Hard drive station – Find a use for those old hard drives
- Are You Serious About Starting a Business – Ian’s blog post on selling his car to fund UserScape
- Creating a Business Logo – Ian’s blog post on creating the UserScape and HelpSpot logo’s
- Impostor Syndrome – A psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments
- Antair Spam Filter – Andrey’s spam filter product
- Interview with Jason Cohen – talks about tons of useful things including cancellations we reference in the podcast
- QLab – Live show controls for OSX
- FogBugz – Bug tracking
- The Business of Software Forums – Joel Spolsky forum site where a lot of us got our start
- Lollipop Sticks – Andrey on physical products
- Swamp Loggers
- Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
- Uberdeck – the product Andrey is currently working on.
Two software companies, Userscape, founded in 2004, and Antair, founded in 2005.
Both companies, bootstrapped and profitable.
Join Ian and Andrey, the founders, as they share their experiences in running their companies.
Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about running a web-app company vs. running a mobile-app company, having one large product vs. many smaller products, starting out by making products ‘because you can’, instead of products that have a market, SaaS and recurring revenue, Enron email and spam filters, how the iPhone almost brought down Andrey’s company, planning vs. falling into it, being late to the SaaS party, installable software and support, B2B vs. B2C, and things that seemed exciting in the first year of running a software company, but are a chore to do 9 years later.