Startups For the Rest of Us: Recent Episodes
Startups For the Rest of Us
The longest running (and most popular) podcast for bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped startups, this show follow the stories of founders as they start, acquire, and grow SaaS companies. Hear when they fail, struggle, succeed, and take you with them through the tumultuous life of a SaaS founder. If you like Mixergy, This Week in Startups, or SaaStr, you’ll enjoy Startup for the Rest of Us.
In episode 729, join Rob Walling as he shares insights from the 170+ SaaS investments he’s made through his B2B SaaS accelerator, TinySeed. Key patterns include the survivability of SaaS, the lucrative value of these companies, and commonalities across the ones that grow the fastest. To see even more patterns that didn’t make this episode, be sure to check out the MicroConf YouTube channel.
Episode Sponsor:Hiring senior developers can really move the needle in your business, but if you bring on the wrong person, you can quickly burn through your runway. If you need help finding a vetted, senior, results-oriented developer, you should reach out to today’s sponsor, Lemon.io.
For years, they’ve been helping our audience find high quality, global talent at competitive rates, and they can help you too.
Longtime listener Chaz Yoon, hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire ”definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.”
Chaz said he’d definitely use Lemon.io again when he’s looking for a senior level engineer.
To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups.
Topics we cover: * 2:24 – Survivability of B2B SaaS in TinySeed * 4:09 – SaaS is extremely valuable * 8:26 – Vertical and orthogonal SaaS face fewer headwinds * 12:36 – A supermajority of TinySeed companies want a big exit * 15:51 – TinySeed founder count aligns with the broader MicroConf ecosystem * 17:04 – Ruined cap tables have prevented deals * 19:35 – A quarter of TinySeed companies raise subsequent fundraising * 21:17 – Common advisory topics: pricing, plateaus, cofounders, funding, selling
Links from the Show: * Apply for TinySeed * Invest in TinySeed * MicroConf YouTube: 6 Lessons From My Most Successful Investments (B2B SaaS) * Episode 727 | Gymdesk Sells for More than $32.5 million, Hiring Gets Easier, and More Hot Take Tuesday Topics * Episode 728 | Bootstrapping Gymdesk to a More Than $32.5M Exit * State of Independent SaaS Report
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 728, Rob Walling interviews Eran Galperin, founder of Gymdesk, about his incredible exit. Eran shares his journey of transforming Gymdesk from "Martial Arts on Rails" into a successful gym management software company. He discusses how they succeeded in a competitive market, the role of TinySeed in their growth, and how feelings of burnout eventually led to a majority buyout for the company.
Topics we cover: * 2:02 – Gymdesk Announces a $32.5 Million Strategic Growth Investment * 5:13 – How the investment will be used * 6:38 – Eran’s projects before Gymdesk * 9:21 – Sticking with one idea long enough to see success * 12:45 – Entering a competitive market * 16:37 – Rapid growth as a marketing leader * 20:54 – Dealing with burnout and entertaining an acquisition * 26:45 – Handling a stressful sales process * 32:19 – The future of Gymdesk
Links from the Show: * Apply for TinySeed * Gymdesk Announces a $32.5 Million Strategic Growth Investment from Five Elms Capital * Episode 727 | Gymdesk Sells for More than $32.5 million, Hiring Gets Easier, and More Hot Take Tuesday Topics * Gymdesk.com * Eran Galperin (@erangalperin) | X * Eran Galperin | LinkedIn * Eran’s Website * Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) Explained: How It Works * Discretion Capital
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 727, Rob Walling is joined by Tracy Osborn and Einar Vollset to give their hot takes on some recent news. First they celebrate Gymdesk’s recent funding and evaluate what that means for TinySeed companies. Then, they weigh in on bootstrapper hiring, grappling with new challenges as MRR grows, and how to really move the needle in your business.
Episode Sponsor:Hiring senior developers can really move the needle in your business, but if you bring on the wrong person, you can quickly burn through your runway. If you need help finding a vetted, senior, results-oriented developer, you should reach out to today’s sponsor, Lemon.io.
For years, they’ve been helping our audience find high quality, global talent at competitive rates, and they can help you too.
Longtime listener Chaz Yoon, hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire ”definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.”
Chaz said he’d definitely use Lemon.io again when he’s looking for a senior level engineer.
To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups.
Topics we cover: * 2:19 – Gymdesk Announces a $32.5 Million Strategic Growth Investment * 9:06 – Is it getting easier for bootstrappers to hire? * 12:22 – Facing different challenges as MRR grows * 19:37 – Identifying what really moves the needle * 23:56 – Listen to those who have built businesses before you
Links from the Show: * Subscribe to the Startups For the Rest of Us Email List * TinySeed * The SaaS Playbook * Discretion Capital * Tracy Osborn (@tracymakes) | X * Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) | X * TinySeed (@tinyseedfund) | X * Gymdesk Announces a $32.5 Million Strategic Growth Investment from Five Elms Capital * Eran Galperin (@erangalperin) | X * Episode 697 | 7 Predictions for SaaS Bootstrappers in 2024 * State of Independent SaaS Report * The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowth * Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 726, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he covers several topics. In this episode he reveals the sales details around “The SaaS Playbook” by sharing the volume and sales channel data. He explores the importance of motivation over mere access to information, particularly for developers, with the introduction of AI. Rob also previews several exciting projects to be released in the near future.
Topics we cover: * 2:49 – The SaaS Playbook sales channel breakdown * 8:20 – Learnings from the book launch * 9:51 – Upcoming books and courses * 12:07 – ”Teach them how to run fast, better” * 16:04 – Access to information vs. motivation * 19:40 – Creating your onboarding last
Links from the Show: * Discretion Capital * Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) | X * Episode 707 | Once.com, Open Source to FT Income, and More (Hot Take Tuesday) * TinySeed * The SaaS Playbook * The SaaS Launchpad video course * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * Netflix’s Sprint * John Romero (@romero) | X * Masters of Doom by David Kushner * Doom Guy by John Romero
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 725, join Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez as they answer several more advanced listener questions. They discuss the challenges of pursuing freemium as a bootstrapper and make a suggestion that might surprise you. Rob and Ruben also talk about why building your business as a SaaS founder is usually the best way to build your brand indirectly.
Episode Sponsor:Hiring senior developers can really move the needle in your business, but if you bring on the wrong person, you can quickly burn through your runway. If you need help finding a vetted, senior, results-oriented developer, you should reach out to today’s sponsor, Lemon.io.
For years, they’ve been helping our audience find high quality, global talent at competitive rates, and they can help you too.
Longtime listener Chaz Yoon, hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire ”definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.”
Chaz said he’d definitely use Lemon.io again when he’s looking for a senior level engineer.
To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups.
Topics we cover: * 2:31 – Considering a freemium plan as a bootstrapper * 9:52 – Freemium, but without the intent to convert free users * 12:24 – Raising prices as an alternative to starting a freemium plan * 18:32 – When to start caring about your “brand” * 25:10 – Investing directly in branding * 31:00 – Revisiting your marketing funnels * 34:08 – AI’s impact on SEO * 38:20 – Google’s search results are already changing
Links from the Show: * Get notified about The SaaS LaunchPad * Ask a Question on SFTROU * Email a Question on SFTROU * MicroConf * TinySeed * The SaaS Playbook * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * SignWell * Episode 724 | Managing Managers, Breaking Through Plateaus, Thoughts on EOS, and More Later-Stage Listener Questions * Episode 717 | Bootstrapping to $1.3M ARR and 300,000 Free Users * Val Sopi (@valsopi) | X * Blogstatic * State of Independent SaaS 2024 Report * Josh Ho (@jlogic) | X * Lane || Boot.dev (@wagslane) | X
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 724, join Rob Walling as he takes on some later-stage listener questions in another solo adventure. He provides several tips for managing managers, how to break through MRR plateaus, and how to think about SaaS versus agency work. Rob also offers his take on how he would talk about his product at conferences, without overselling it.
Topics we cover: * 3:48 – Three tips for managing other managers * 8:42 – Schedule “skip level” meetings * 9:50 – Attending a conference without overselling * 15:00 – Breaking out of the $20k-$30k MRR plateau * 19:57 – How to keep your self-serve SaaS from becoming an agency * 23:58 – Scaling management through company growth
Links from the Show: * Get tickets for MicroConf Europe in Dubrovnik, Croatia (before August 15th) * TinySeed * Christopher Gimmer (@cgimmer) | X * Episode 480 | Stairstepping Your Way to SaaS with Christopher Gimmer * Seeking Scale
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 723, Rob Walling interviews Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author, about the significance of effective communication for founders. They discuss practical advice on recognizing different types of conversations, techniques for understanding and transitioning conversations, and how to quickly move past small talk in a conference setting.
Episode Sponsor:Hiring senior developers can really move the needle in your business, but if you bring on the wrong person, you can quickly burn through your runway. If you need help finding a vetted, senior, results-oriented developer, you should reach out to today’s sponsor, Lemon.io.
For years, they’ve been helping our audience find high quality, global talent at competitive rates, and they can help you too.
Longtime listener Chaz Yoon, hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire ”definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.”
Chaz said he’d definitely use Lemon.io again when he’s looking for a senior level engineer.
To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups.
Topics we cover: * 2:42 – What’s a “super communicator?” * 4:35 – Getting better at being a great communicator * 8:10 – Identifying the types of conversations you are having * 11:31 – Transitioning between different types of conversations * 16:51 – Advice for introverts engaging in deep conversations with new people * 22:01 – How to quickly improve small talk * 27:22 – Non-verbal communication has slightly different rules
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Charles Duhigg (@cduhigg) | X * Charles Duhigg’s website * Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg * The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg * Smarter, Faster, Better by Charles Duhigg * Crucial Conversations by Joseph Grenny et. al
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 722, Rob Walling interviews James Mooring, co-founder of Astalty, a SaaS serving Australia's NDIS market. James reveals how they bootstrapped from zero to seven figures in just 18 months and then they explore the strategic decisions, clever pricing, and deep industry knowledge that propelled Astalty's remarkable growth, proving their success was far more than just a lucky break.
Episode Sponsor:If you need help hiring great talent from Latin America and the Philippines, but don’t want to pay ongoing recruitment fees, check out Outwork Staffing.
Outwork Staffing can help you hire customer support, virtual assistants, developers - or whoever you need! You pay a one-time hiring fee after they find your ideal candidate, and that’s it- there’s no additional costs, even if your new hire stays for years.
If your new hire doesn’t work out, Outwork Staffing will find you a replacement, free of charge within the first 6 months of their employment.
They also provide coaching to help you find, manage, and grow your global team efficiently.
Visit outworkstaffing.com/startups to book a call and get $500 off your first placement by mentioning Startups For the Rest of Us.
Topics we cover: * 2:44 – NDIS software for providers of disability care * 4:23 – Astalty’s rapid growth * 6:34 – Finding success with a strong co-founder pairing * 8:39 – Deciding to tailor the Astalty MVP * 12:25 – Building a free Chrome extension, smart or lucky? * 17:18 – Launching a paid plan and nailing the pricing * 21:57 – Explosive word of mouth growth * 25:19 – Selling at in-person events and in Facebook groups * 31:02 – A clever way of raising prices * 35:00 – Learning from fast iteration
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook * TinySeed * James Mooring | LinkedIn * Astalty * How Ben Chestnut Bootstrapped Mailchimp to a $12 Billion Exit * Question & Answer with Jason Fried, Co-Founder, Basecamp – MicroConf Growth 2019
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 721, Rob Walling and Asia Orangio analyze the results of MicroConf’s 2024 State of Independent SaaS Report. They share their key takeaways including the impact of business models on growth, requiring credit cards for free trials, and how the number of founders affects performance. Additionally, they delve into growth by target markets and the data behind bootstrapped SaaS companies taking funding.
To get your copy of the full report, head to stateofindiesaas.com.
Topics we cover: * 2:03 – The State of Independent SaaS Report * 7:36 – Requiring a credit card upfront * 10:27 – Three founders perform best * 14:31 – Free trials and credit cards * 19:11 – Average growth by target market * 22:46 – Plans for outside funding * 25:10 – Credit cards, trials, and churn * 32:10 – Advertising channels that are working
Links from the Show: * Download the State of Independent SaaS Report * Subscribe to the MicroConf YouTube channel * TinySeed * Rob Walling (@RobWalling) | X * Asia Orangio (@AsiaOrangio) | X * DemandMaven
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 720, Rob Walling is joined by Craig Hewitt to discuss the intricacies of prioritization in both business and in life. In addition to running Castos, Craig has started coaching founders in sales and marketing, and describes how he strives to focus on the right things. They talk about buying back their time, creating family-focused time, and share their solo podcasting experience after previously having co-hosts.
Episode Sponsor:If you need help hiring great talent from Latin America and the Philippines, but don’t want to pay ongoing recruitment fees, check out Outwork Staffing.
Outwork Staffing can help you hire customer support, virtual assistants, developers - or whoever you need! You pay a one-time hiring fee after they find your ideal candidate, and that’s it- there’s no additional costs, even if your new hire stays for years.
If your new hire doesn’t work out, Outwork Staffing will find you a replacement, free of charge within the first 6 months of their employment.
They also provide coaching to help you find, manage, and grow your global team efficiently.
Visit outworkstaffing.com/startups to book a call and get $500 off your first placement by mentioning Startups For the Rest of Us.
Topics we cover: * 3:34 – Prioritizing marketing growth and work-life balance outside of work * 7:07 – Buying back your time and optimizing for convenience * 10:08 – Identifying the right things to work on with coaches and masterminds * 19:42 – Making fewer, bigger decisions as a founder * 22:01 – Making intentional family-focused time * 30:03 – How Craig started his coaching * 36:11 – Podcasting with co-hosts vs. podcasting solo
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * TinySeed * Craig Hewitt (@TheCraigHewitt) | X * Castos * Rogue Startups * Craig’s Founder Insights Newsletter * 718 | When to Give Up, Open Source Competition, Painful Features, and More (with Derrick Reimer) * Episode 644 | Buying Back Your Time with Dan Martell * Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell * Zirtual * Buying The Future by Craig Hewitt * The MicroConf YouTube Channel * Who Not How by Dan Sullivan * Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart, Randy Street * Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
n episode 719, join Rob Walling as he embarks on another solo adventure, tackling listener questions. He discusses how to test pricing, addresses the pitfalls of one-time payments vs. SaaS, and he reflects on “building something for everyone.” He wraps up with advice on making better recommendations.
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 0:58 – Testing different prices for your product * 8:12 – One-time or lifetime payments * 15:02 – Horizontal products, building something for everyone * 21:43 – Making descriptive recommendations
Links from the Show: * 718 | When to Give Up, Open Source Competition, Painful Features, and More (with Derrick Reimer) * TinySeed * Building & Scaling Products: Lessons Learned from Four Years and 8,000 Customers – Des Traynor * Shoe Dog by Phil Knight * Sid Meier's Memoir! by Sid Meier * Masters of Doom by David Kushner * Doom Guy by John Romero * The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 718, Rob Walling and Derrick Reimer tackle listener questions about giving up on ideas, competing in crowded markets, and developing painful features. They also chat about SavvyCal’s recent design refresh, finding founder-market fit, and whether Derrick has retired from podcasting.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 3:59 – Which feature felt harder and took longer than imagined? * 9:14 – When is time to give up on a SaaS idea and move on? * 17:51 – Finding customers in crowded markets with large incumbents * 23:32 – Has Derrick officially retired from podcasting? * 25:57 – Handling competitors that are copying differentiating product features * 28:48 – Evaluating SavvyCal’s refreshed design * 31:10 – Considering vertical vs. horizontal SaaS for SavvyCal * 34:05 – Why did Derrick decide to pursue the idea for SavvyCal? * 40:19 – Finding “founder-fit”
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * TinySeed * Derrick Remier (@derrickreimer) | X * SavvyCal * Group scheduling mode * The Build In Public Podcast * The Art of Product Podcast * 8 B2B Marketing Strategies That Got My Startup to $10 Million (and 1 that FAILED) * Finding My Next Bootstrapped Business Idea
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 717, Rob Walling interviews Marie Martin, co-founder of Tally. They discuss the company’s journey to $1.3M ARR and the unusual pricing strategy that got them there. Marie details how they keep their support volume low, how they differentiate Tally from other form builders, and how they grew to over 300,000 free users.
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:22 – Where Tally is today * 3:53 – Keeping customer support volume low * 7:12 – Differentiating Tally from other form builders * 10:55 – The ingredients needed to make “free” work * 18:31 – ”Shrinking a Market” * 24:27 – Growing to 300,000+ free users * 26:47 – Dealing with bad actors * 29:37 – Applying the learnings from Tally’s success
Links from the Show: * Tickets for MicroConf Europe | Oct 6 - 8, 2024, Dubrovnik, Croatia * Apply for MicroConf Masterminds before June 12th 2024 * Marie Martens (@MarieMartens) | X * Tally * No-Code France * TinySeed
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 716, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He shares how he would position against incumbents, when to change an H1, and how choosing a tech stack affects your business valuation. Rob also weighs whether to skip a “Step 1” or “Step 2” business and start directly with a standalone SaaS in the Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 4:07 – How directly should I position my product against incumbents? * 8:25 – Making and testing changes to your H1 * 12:22 – Identifying and qualifying niches based on traffic * 18:07 – Should I skip a “Step 1” or “Step 2” business to start a SaaS? * 20:16 – How a tech stack affects valuations * 27:29 – Differentiating between B2B and B2C
Links from the Show: * Apply for MicroConf Masterminds before June 12th 2024 * Ask a Question on SFTROU * Episode 673 | Lifetime Plans vs Subscriptions, Testing an Idea With a Landing Page, and More Listener Questions * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Similarweb * Vertical SaaS vs Horizontal SaaS - Which is More Profitable?
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 715, Rob Walling is joined by Dr. Sherry Walling to discuss a variety of topics. They chat about two recent and meaningful interactions made possible by the Internet, the motivations behind organizing and performing a circus show, and they chat about upcoming launches on the horizon – new books and courses for SaaS founders.
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 3:16 – Examples of thoughtful, nuanced Internet interactions * 7:36 – Impacting people you otherwise couldn’t online * 14:38 – Dr. Sherry Walling’s circus show motivation * 21:19 – The psychology of business exits * 24:54 – Commonalities across founders considering exits * 30:37 – Speaking to the whole lifecycle of a SaaS business
Links from the Show: * Apply for MicroConf Masterminds before June 12th 2024 * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * Sherry Walling (@dr.sherrywalling) | Instagram * TinySeed * Discretion Capital * Before The Exit by Dan Andrews * Episode 532 | The Art of Selling Your Business with John Warrillow * The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together by Sherry Walling, PhD and Rob Walling * Enter your email at Robwalling.com * Sign up for the Zen Founder newsletter
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 714, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He talks about what to expect when acquiring a competitor and how he might integrate their business. Rob also covers navigating HIPAA compliance as a bootstrapper, how to find a developer co-founder, and he explores the concept of Total Reachable Market (TRM).
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 3:45 – How to navigate acquiring a competitor * 6:34 – How to transition the newly acquired customers into your product * 9:58 – HIPAA compliance for a bootstrapped MVP * 13:07 – Total Addressable Market (TAM) vs. Total Reachable Market (TRM) * 19:01 – How do I find a developer co-founder? * 28:03 – Can I find data on SaaS app store spending?
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Mastermind Program * TinySeed * MicroConf Connect * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 713, Rob Walling is joined by Arvid Kahl to share their experience from MicroConf US 2024 in Atlanta. They each discuss their top 5 moments, ranging from Dr. Sherry Walling’s talk on motivation to Ben Chestnut’s chat with Rob onstage. They agree that there’s nothing quite like being in the room with everyone and soaking in all the interactions outside of the official talks.
If you missed the event and had some MicroConf FOMO, make sure to sign up for our email list to be notified when the tickets for our next event go on sale.!
Click here to watch Rob’s Fireside Chat with Ben Chestnut!
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:05 – Key takeaways from MicroConf 2024 * 3:45 – Dr. Sherry Walling’s talk on motivation * 7:02 – Stephen Steer’s sales scripts talk * 9:25 – Live valuation of a business by Quiet Light Brokerage * 12:23 – Micro excursions that allow founders to connect with one another * 14:09 – The hallway track outside of the venue * 15:53 – ”Nothing beats being in a room” * 19:22 – Lack of hierarchy among founders * 22:38 – Lianna Patch’s copywriting swipe file * 23:50 – Ben Chestnut is just like one of us * 29:50 – Don’t get stuck with MicroConf FOMO
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Europe | Dubrovnik - October 6 - 8, 2024 * MicroConf US 2025 Waiting List * Arvid Kahl (@arvidkahl) | X * The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together by Sherry Walling, PhD and Rob Walling * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * Superpower Storytelling: A Tactical Guide to Telling the Stories You Need to Lead, Sell and Inspire by Stephen Steers * Quiet Light * Lianna Patch (@punchlinecopy) | X * Watch Ben and Rob’s Fireside Chat at MicroConf Atlanta * The Bootstrapped Founder * Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl * Podscan
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 712, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure. He starts by revisiting past predictions and provides an update on how he successfully staved off full burnout. Rob then gives updates on this podcast, the progress of TinySeed and MicroConf, and teases two new books that he’s working on.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 1:21 – Revisiting past predictions and reporting back on burnout * 2:45 – Revisiting predictions for SaaS bootstrappers in 2024 * 5:29 – Twitter changes hands in 2024? * 6:29 – Reducing travel to quell burnout on the horizon * 11:45 – State of Startups For the Rest of Us * 14:40 – TinySeed invested in over 170+ companies * 17:54 – First annual TinyFest * 18:42 – TinySeed Tales Season 5 * 19:50 – The SaaS Playbook and my next two books
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * TinySeed * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * Episode 697 | 7 Predictions for SaaS Bootstrappers in 2024 * Vertical SaaS vs Horizontal SaaS - Which is More Profitable? * State of Independent SaaS * MicroConf Mastermind Program * TinyFest Unwrapped: Inside Our First-Ever Founder Conference and Retreat in Cancun * TinySeed Tales * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * Zen Founder * Subscribe to the SFTROU email list for two exclusive episodes * Ask a Question
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 711, join Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez as they answer listener questions. They chat about finding early customers without an audience, how to approach horizontal vs. vertical product spinoffs, and some considerations for No Code development. They also discuss the challenges of serving prosumer SaaS, the importance of understanding customer segments for pricing strategies, and the dual funnel approach for catering to different customer tiers.
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:00 – Strategies for finding your first users when you don’t have an audience * 10:42 – Positioning yourself to compete well against others * 12:25 – Jumping into SEO before having a product * 18:42 – Exporting No Code projects * 24:15 – Choosing between a vertical or horizontal product spinoff * 33:55 – Building a B2P, “business to prosumer” product * 42:53 – How to make lower pricing tiers work outside of B2B
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Ruben Gamez (@@earthlingworks) | X * SignWell * TinySeed * Bubble * MicroConf YouTube channel * State of Independent SaaS * Episode 216 | How a Single Founder Launched a 7-Figure SaaS App (with Nate Grahek) * Sticky * Castos * Episode 480 | Stairstepping Your Way to SaaS with Christopher Gimmer
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 710, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He answers whether you need a burning passion to be successful in entrepreneurship, and how that relates to developing a product alongside a day job. Rob also discusses competing against VC-backed companies, learning to code in the age of AI, and how much risk lies in IP theft when building your SaaS.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 3:00 – Reacting to needing a burning desire for entrepreneurship * 5:20 – Maintaining a day job to enable space for entrepreneurial pursuits * 8:52 – Balancing build speed vs. scalability with your tech stack * 10:30 – The April Fools Episode * 12:55 – Competing against VC-backed companies in a “hot” space * 18:34 – Is learning to code dead? * 27:33 – Risk in SaaS of IP theft
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Episode 704 | Landing Pages, Buying a SaaS, the Right Tech Stack, and More Listener Questions * Episode 706.5 | Rethinking My Most Common Advice * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * TinySeed * Episode 688 | Growing Boot.dev From $6k to $110k in Monthly Revenue in 15 Months * Ask a Question on SFTROU
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 709, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he shares his story of growing his personal wealth over the past few decades. Selling companies was the major driver of wealth, but he also explores the role of cryptocurrency, running profitable companies, and angel investing. Rob emphasizes the power of entrepreneurship in achieving financial freedom, while acknowledging there are ways to do so while keeping risk relatively low.
Episode Sponsor:We have been partnering with Lemon.io for several years, and they’ve proven to be a great choice when it comes to hiring for a highly skilled developer to work on your project.
Here are five reasons why you should consider working with Lemon.io.
- The time from your request to getting a candidate is just 48 hours.
- Developers have previously worked with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Intel, and LEGO.
- They only provide senior devs, with an average of 7 years' experience.
- Their talent pool covers more than 300 dev languages & frameworks.
- Your hire comes with a zero-risk, replacement guarantee.
Customers of Lemon.io typically stick around for at least a year, proving they know how to gain your trust by delivering consistent results.
Quit wasting time searching for a solid developer at a great price. Get in touch with Lemon.io.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, you’ll get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. That’s lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:50 – A lesson on how to build wealth * 4:31 – Entrepreneurship was our biggest tool * 6:37 – Building, acquiring, then selling companies * 10:45 – Building slowly while staying risk-averse * 13:27 – Investing in riskier assets like cryptocurrency * 19:39 – Running profitable companies * 20:56 – Angel investing, and WP Engine * 23:44 – Traditional, salaried employment * 24:53 – Typical investments: stocks, bonds, REITs * 27:36 – Real estate investing
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Christopher Gimmer (@cgimmer) | X * Christopher’s tweet * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * This Took 11 Years to Be An "Overnight Success" - SaaS Exit Strategy * Zen Founder * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * WP Engine * TinySeed * Barbell Strategy Explained for Stock and Bond Investors
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 708, Rob Walling and Derrick Reimer tackle listener questions about building development skills vs. business skills and strategies for entering competitive markets. They also chat about building on top of AI services, addressing the risks of platform dependency and the importance of managing infrastructure costs.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 02:38 - Should you build technical skills or business skills? * 11:41- Entering a competitive market * 21:14 - Building a valuable analytics dashboard tool * 29:29 - When should a solo founder hire for marketing roles? * 36:29 - The rare skillset of a full-stack marketer * 38:18 - Implications of building on openAI and scaling infrastructure costs
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Rob Walling | X * Derrick Reimer | X * Derrick Reimer * SavvyCal * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling * Devin AI
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
In episode 707, Rob Walling, alongside guests Tracy Osborn and Einar Vollset, give their hot takes on some recent news in the world of SaaS. They discuss Once.com’s launch, liquidation preference nuances in startup buyouts, with moving from open source to full time income and more.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:18 - Once.com and the Implications of One-Time Software Sales * 10:39 - Liquidation Preferences in Startup Acquisitions * 21:59 - Turning an open source project into a business * 24:32 - Book recommendations * 30:30 - Is building a startup actually hard? * 32:46 - Startups vs. lifestyle businesses
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Once.com * Campfire * Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld * Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss * The Anomaly by Herv Le Tellier * The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin * The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch * TinySeed * Einar Vollset (@EinarVollset) | X * Tracy Osborn (@itsTracyMakes) | TikTok
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 706.5, join Rob Walling as he reconsiders some of his most common advice. He explores why lowering prices might make sense and discusses the benefits of a B2C business model. Rob also walks back his prior advice on bootstrapping two-sided marketplaces and launching multiple products to see what sticks.
Topics we cover: * 1:04 – What would happen if you lowered prices? * 3:56 – Benefits of a B2C approach * 7:05 – Two-sided marketplaces allow to reach two audiences * 8:47 – Launch a bunch of products to see what sticks * 10:52 – This episode was released April 1, 2024
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook * Rob Walling (@robwalling) | X
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
MicroConf US in Atlanta is here in just a couple weeks, and this is your last call to buy tickets. We've sold more than 90% of the tickets, and we will sell this event out as we have for many years. The event is April 21st through the 23rd in Atlanta, Georgia at the amazing Starling Atlanta.
There are going to be 200-ish of your closest bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped founder friends who are showing up to hear talks from folks like Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven. I'm giving a talk as well, and Dr. Sherry Walling will be talking about staying motivated as an entrepreneur.We have a special guest MC, Lianna Patch, and we'll have a very special guest who has never appeared on the MicroConf stage before- Ben Chestnut, the co-founder of MailChimp.
Get all the details and secure your ticket before they run out at microconf.com/americas.
In episode 706, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he discusses a variety of topics. He starts with why it’s important to both consider and credit “prior art” in business. Rob outlines his 2/20/200 idea validation framework used to repeatedly evaluate ideas. He also covers why, though there are some advantages, designing by committee has some significant downsides.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 2:37 – Learning from, and crediting, prior art * 10:27 – The 2/20/200 Idea Validation Framework * 16:03 – Be wary when designing by committee * 21:09 – When to crowdsource feedback
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham * David Sacks (@DavidSacks) | X * Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham * Episode 705 | From Bootstrapped to Mostly Bootstrapped * Episode 628 | The 5 P.M. Idea Validation Framework * Use This PROVEN Formula to Validate Your Next Startup Idea * Validate Your SaaS Idea FAST (Step-by-Step SaaS Validation Process)✅ * Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling * Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 705, Rob Walling interviews Braden Dennis, co-founder and CEO of FinChat. They discuss Braden’s journey going from fully bootstrapped, all the way to taking venture capital as FinChat scaled. Braden shares his experience in initially launching to an audience, how they successfully launched a second product, and how FinChat operates well with multiple co-founders.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:55 – What does FinChat look like today? * 4:00 – Starting with an audience and building a SaaS * 6:40 – Formulating the product and moving upmarket * 8:35 – Launching a second product * 12:25 – The common pitfall of launching a second product * 16:25 – How FinChat found explosive growth * 19:27 – Deciding to take venture funding * 26:13 – Making hard decisions with incomplete information * 30:31 – Working with multiple co-founders
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Apply for Director of Marketing and Operations for MicroConf * MicroConf YouTube Channel * TinySeed * Braden Dennis (@BradoCapital) | X * FinChat (@finchat_io) | X * FinChat * Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 704, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He weighs in on buying a SaaS, how to validate ideas using landing pages, and what tech stack to choose. Rob also provides guidance for those considering leaving their comfortable day jobs in favor of being a founder.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 4:00 – Comparing your business to successful outliers * 9:50 – Exploring business outside of a comfortable day job * 15:45 – Early access landing pages prior to development * 20:00 – How do you vet SaaS businesses that you are trying to acquire? * 27:16 – Evaluating a seller’s intentions * 29:50 – Choosing a tech stack for your SaaS
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Remote – Early Stage Saas Strategies * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Apply for Director of Marketing and Operations for MicroConf * MicroConf Connect * Startups For The Rest of Us – Ask a question * 37signals * 7 Proven Ways to Create Profitable SaaS Ideas EVERY Time * The SaaS Playbook * Quiet Light * Acquire.com * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 703, Rob Walling interviews Jordan Hansen, founder of Cobalt Intelligence. They dive into Jordan's unexpected journey into SaaS and the growth of his company, which specializes in business verification through API. Jordan reflects on quitting his job to pursue his startup and the benefits of community and mentorship he has received from TinySeed.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:30 – What does Cobalt Intelligence offer? * 5:45 – Team scale, market, and business origins * 9:55 – Starting YouTube and finding motivation to continually publish * 13:27 – Working with a savings runway and applying to TinySeed * 23:50 – Finding product-market fit * 26:58 – Unlisting content to align with business goals * 31:50 – “Accidental” SaaS founder
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * TinySeed * The SaaS Playbook * Jordan Hansen (@JordBHansen) | X * Cobalt Intelligence (@CobaltIntell) | X * Cobalt Intelligence * Lianna Patch (@punchlinecopy) | X * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual by John Sonmez * Episode 698 | How to Launch a Million Dollar Business (With Noah Kagan) * Episode 696 | The Truth about Product-Market Fit + Doing Sales as an Introvert (With Ruben Gamez) * Cobalt Intelligence YouTube channel
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 702, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He answers how to introduce friends to bootstrapping, when to lower your prices, and addresses the difference in revenue and profit multiple valuations. Rob also offers advice when weighing a career move versus building side projects and scaling your MVP.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 3:15 – How to introduce friends to entrepreneurship and bootstrapping * 6:00 – When to focus on profit vs. top-line revenue * 10:40 – Considerations for building, scaling, and differentiating an MVP * 15:45 – Rare circumstances where you should lower prices * 20:25 – Pursuing career moves vs. building on the side * 23:43 – Managing cap tables and equity vesting
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Remote – Early Stage Saas Strategies * TinySeed * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Start Small, Stay Small * The SaaS Playbook * MicroConf YouTube Channel: Building Your First SaaS: The Ultimate Crash Course * SFTROU Greatest Hits * Episode 222 | The Stair Step Approach to Launching Products * What is a SAFE?
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 701, Rob Walling interviews Matt Wensing, founder of Summit, a SaaS platform for lead scoring and qualification. Matt shares insights on finding product-market fit, the importance of following customer workflows to get there, and the challenges of marketing and positioning. Rob asks about his choice to raise venture capital, and how keeping a lean team maximizes that opportunity.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:27 – “Traveling many H1’s”, refining a target market * 5:44 – Moving back to a self-serve model * 10:52 – Niching down to achieve stronger product-market fit * 12:53 – Tactics that Matt used to achieve traction * 16:54 – Lead scoring by behavior and persona-fit * 19:20 – Scoring as a whole product vs. as only a feature * 23:31 – Pursuing VC with a lean team * 29:09 – Who is your ideal customer profile?
Links from the Show: * Apply for Tinyseed Feb 12th through Feb 25th * MicroConf Remote – Early Stage Saas Strategies * Matt Wensing (@mattwensing) | X * Summit * Episode 696 | The Truth about Product-Market Fit + Doing Sales as an Introvert (With Ruben Gamez) * Out of Beta * Episode 633 | Building SaaS Plus a Two-Sided Marketplace * The SaaS Playbook * "How I Sold My SaaS in An 8-Figure Exit" with Matt Wensing
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 700, Rob goes solo to celebrate another milestone of Startups For the Rest of Us. He reflects on playing the long game and doing so publicly enough to create larger luck surface area. He also emphasizes building skills in the process, and highlights several founders who have done this well.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
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You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
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Topics we cover: * 2:41 – Balancing short vs. long term thinking and decision making * 7:30 – Examples of founders leaning into the long game * 12:18 – Putting in the time, and doing it publicly (enough) * 16:42 – Lucky or smart? * 21:22 – How do I know if I’m playing the correct long game? * 23:54 – Acquiring skills as you play the long game * 27:13 – Cheers to 700!
Links from the Show: * Apply for TinySeed Spring 2024 * MicroConf * TinySeed * Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling * Gather * TinySeed Tales S2E1 | Introducing Gather * Lucky or Smart? by Bo Peabody
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 699, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, about scaling products tastefully. Derrick offers his perspective on maintaining a tidy UX and deciding which features to implement. They also cover best practices for maintaining knowledge bases, changelogs, and documentation. As a bonus, Rob and Derrick offer podcasting advice to their past selves.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:35 – Establish design systems and language as you scale your product * 8:36 – Building out a front-end directory to maintain consistency * 10:17 – Truly understand how customers are moving through your product * 16:28 – Naming convention dilemmas, industry norms vs. accuracy * 19:22 – Hiding product features with feature flags * 23:04 – Scaling new products that serve different verticals * 31:12 – Best practices for maintaining a product knowledge base * 37:11 – Bonus: What advice would you give to your prior self starting a podcast?
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * The SaaS Playbook * Derrick Reimer (@derrickreimer) I X * SavvyCal * Allen D King (@allendking) | X * FunJoin * FullStory * Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea * Help Scout Knowledge Base * Headway Changelog * CleanShot X
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 698, Rob Walling interviews Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo. They discuss the importance of eliminating distractions, cover strategies that led to growth in Noah’s businesses, and share insights from growing YouTube channels. Noah also shares why he decided to write his new book, Million Dollar Weekend.
Episode Sponsor:Is your outsourced development team dropping the ball?
Maybe you’ve worked with a team that just couldn't grasp your vision and needed constant oversight because they weren’t thinking strategically. Or maybe you ended up wasting hours micromanaging, often needing to jump on late-night calls across massive time zone differences to get alignment. And in the end, they delivered a sluggish app with a frustrating UI that didn’t come close to the solution you had envisioned. If any of that sounds familiar, you need to reach out to our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Get the committed, responsive development team that your business deserves.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off the first three months of your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 2:38 – Making good decisions, consistently * 5:47 – Noah’s disappointment in selling Sumo * 13:20 – Strategies and decisions that led to growth * 15:46 – Focus on eliminating distractions * 20:15 – Noah returns as AppSumo CEO * 23:20 – Making the mistake of not listening to customers * 26:55 –Growing a YouTube Channel to 1M+ subscribers * 35:03 – The role of YouTube content in supporting AppSumo * 37:11 – Building a million dollar business in a weekend
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan * Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) | X * Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin * Sumo * AppSumo * TidyCal * SendFox * KingSumo * Noah’s YouTube Channel
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 697, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he makes predictions for SaaS in 2024. His predictions focus on Vertical SaaS, emerging markets, the professionalization of No-Code, subscription fatigue, AI and more. At the end of the episode, he evaluates predictions he made over the past 10 years to see if they held up.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:32 – Opportunity in vertical SaaS * 3:48 – SaaS will continue to grow in emerging markets * 5:08 – Twitter changes hands in 2024? * 6:56 – Subscription fatigue has little impact on adoption of B2B SaaS * 8:13 – No-Code and Low-Code will undergo “professionalization” * 10:24 – Is it hype, or is it not? How AI will continue to develop this year * 14:11 – Will Stripe go public? * 17:08 – Revisiting past predictions: SaaS, Twitter, VR, crypto, markets, & gadgets
Links from the Show: * Call for Pitches * TinySeed Portfolio * Start Small Stay Small * Dave Kellett (@davekellett) | X * Once.com
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 696, Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez cover a variety of topics. They discuss how product market fit is achieved across customer segments and use cases, not simply broadly. Ruben shares how he approaches effective decision making and sales as an introvert. They wrap up by sharing how they evaluate candidates when hiring to build their teams.
Topics we cover: * 4:47 – Product market fit, increasing average revenue per customer * 7:58 – When did you know you had product market fit? * 11:03 – Product market fit is a continuum, and use case specific * 14:27 – Making hard decisions around product market fit * 19:01 – Getting better at prioritizing and making hard decisions * 27:38 – Doing sales as an introvert * 33:09 – Building a functional team that gets stuff done * 40:10 – Evaluating potential hires
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Sponsorships * Microconf Connect * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * SignWell * Episode 695 | Ideal Customers, Moving from B2C to B2B, and More Listener Questions (with Asia Orangio) * The SaaS Playbook * Dynamite Jobs * Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart, Randy Street * Crucial Conversations by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, et al.
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 695, Rob Walling and Asia Orangio answer listener questions. They take questions about ideal target customers, moving from B2C to B2B, and how to advertise for a product in a new space. They wrap up discussing the challenges of making freemium work while bootstrapping.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 4:06 – Adjusting your target customers to chase an opportunity * 11:58 – Is translating marketing or educational content worth it? * 16:46 – Moving from B2C to B2B * 25:53 – Defining a cross-channel marketing approach * 33:22 – Advertising for a product in new product category * 41:40 – The issues with making freemium work while bootstrapping.
Links from the Show: * State of Independent SaaS Report * MicroConf Mastermind Program * Asia Orangio (@AsiaOrangio) | X * DemandMaven * Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea * User Interviews * Episode 685 | 7 Things You Should Never Do (A Rob Solo Adventure) * Four Fits for $100M+ Growth by Brian Balfour * Brian Balfour (@bbalfour) | X * Reforge * Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 694, join Rob Walling as he recaps 2023. He reflects on growing TinySeed, MicroConf, the YouTube channel and this podcast. Rob also addresses his struggle with "arrival fallacy" and the continuous journey of success. Alongside the growth, he describes seeing burnout on the horizon, emphasizes the importances of addressing that early, and what it means for him and his team in 2024.
Episode Sponsor:Going from an idea sketched on the back of a napkin to a robust, stable product requires a wide range of skills. You can spend ages looking for a one-in-a-million developer who can do it all, or you can quickly ramp up an entire product team to help you build and launch your product with our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Take the hassle out of assembling and managing a sprawling team of freelancers and work with a group that’s ready to hit the ground running.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 4:20 – 2023 growth, launch of The SaaS Playbook * 6:04 – Audience growth and supporting the mission * 7:24 – Seeing burnout on the horizon, content calendars, and travel * 11:49 – Dealing with burnout if you are experiencing it * 14:18 – Adjusting travel schedules and amount * 15:39 – Doing the things that “give me life”, sustainably
Links from the Show: * TinySeed * Get Your tickets for MicroConf Atlanta * State of Independent SaaS Report * The SaaS Playbook * Subscribe to the MicroConf YouTube channel * Start Small Stay Small * Episode 670 | Relying on Luck, Avoiding Burnout, and Bad Player vs. Bad Instrument (A Rob Solo Adventure) * The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together * The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 693, Rob Walling interviews Grant McConnaughey, founder of Postpone, a social media scheduling tool. They discuss the app's growth from inception to mid six figures, early growth tactics, a successful price increase, and platform risks with Reddit and Twitter. Grant also shares his experience going all-in on one idea, joining TinySeed, and reveals what he can still improve upon.
Topics we cover: * 2:04 – Postpone starts off as part of a New Year’s resolution * 4:13 – Validating and building the MVP to schedule content for Reddit * 6:44 – Launching lean to slow growth in the beginning * 9:10 – Doing things that don’t scale * 10:53 – What were the reasons for joining TinySeed * 13:06 – Full time focus and pricing changes enabled strong growth for Postpone * 17:15 – Initial hesitation for raising prices at first * 22:08 – Experiencing and overcoming Reddit platform risk * 26:00 – What could Grant be doing better?
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * TinySeed * Grant McConnaughey (@gmcconnaughey) | X * Postone’s MRR graph | X * Postpone * Adam Wathan (@adamwathan) | X * Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 692, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he addresses a variety of topics. He stresses revisiting your onboarding to evaluate your product’s “minimum path to awesome” and warns of conducting “mirror research” instead of market research. Rob also tackles why being the cheapest option is not always the best positioning.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:33 – Walking customers through signup to first value, revisit your onboarding * 4:29 – The early entrepreneur’s trap: "We are pre-revenue still…” * 8:31 – Not being the cheapest option * 14:31 – Mirror research vs. market research * 17:16 – Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist
Links from the Show: * Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 * The SaaS Playbook * Episode 456 | Launching a 2nd Product + Revisiting Freemium with Ruben Gamez * TinySeed Mentors * Comic Lab * Episode 685 | 7 Things You Should Never Do (A Rob Solo Adventure) * Episode 687 | An 8th Thing You Should Never Do, Things That Don’t Scale, and More Rob Solo Topics
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 691, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He evaluates freemium as it relates to paying by the “honor system”, competing against big incumbents, and whether to sell using high-touch vs. low-touch strategies. Rob also recommends books for introverts looking for sales advice.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:01 – Charging for your product using the “honor system” * 6:16 – Competing against big, entrenched incumbents * 12:36 – Low-touch vs. high-touch sales strategies * 17:01 – Selling as an introverted founder * 20:45 – Skipping the “Stair Step” approach to quickly validate a SaaS
Links from the Show: * Startups For the Rest of Us | X * Subscribe to the MicroConf YouTube channel * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * The SaaS Playbook * TinySeed * Keap * Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain * The Introvert's Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone by Matthew Pollard * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Episode 628 | The 5 P.M. Idea Validation Framework * Ask a Question on SFTROU
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 690, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He advises on the ethical considerations of email marketing and answers how he would value a business when buying out a partner. He also addresses the best ways to collect customer feedback and the value of high-fidelity customer calls.
Episode Sponsor:Going from an idea sketched on the back of a napkin to a robust, stable product requires a wide range of skills. You can spend ages looking for a one-in-a-million developer who can do it all, or you can quickly ramp up an entire product team to help you build and launch your product with our sponsor - DevSquad.
DevSquad provides an entire development team packed with top talent from Latin America.
Your elite squad will include between 2 to 6 Full Stack Developers, a technical product manager, plus experts in product strategy, UI/UX design, DevOps, and QA - all working together to make your SaaS Product a success.
You can ramp up an entire product team fast, in your timezone, and at rates 75% cheaper than a comparable US-based team. And with DevSquad, you pay month to month with no long-term contracts.
Take the hassle out of assembling and managing a sprawling team of freelancers and work with a group that’s ready to hit the ground running.
Visit DevSquad.com/startups and get 10% off your engagement.
Topics we cover: * 2:59 – Emailing users about other projects you are working on * 9:26 – Avoid sending spam-like emails * 12:55 – Building a service vs. selling it as an affiliate * 17:34 – SaaS evaluation after business partner falling out * 21:25 – The best ways to collect customer feedback * 25:36 – Determining which group of buyers to sell to, HOA’s or property managers
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook * Ask a Question on SFTROU * Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Quiet Light * FE International * Discretion Capital * MicroConf Connect * Producer Xander (@ProducerXander) | X * Episode 139 | 6 Questions You Should Ask In Your Customer Development Survey
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 689, Rob Walling interviews Robert Cserti, co-founder of SessionLab. Robert and his team provide tools and resources for designing workshops and SessionLab operates fully remote. Rob and Robert discuss strategies for motivating remote teams, fostering team culture and communication, and being intentional about synchronous meetings and team bonding.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:01 – SessionLab, for creating workshops * 3:42 – Keeping employee engagement high in remote teams, intentionally creating a workplace culture. * 7:15 – Daily check-ins, synchronous vs. asynchronous communication * 10:32 – Finding a cadence for synchronous calls and “all-hands” * 13:20 – Planning in team retreats * 15:18 – Meetings specifically for team bonding * 18:42 – Regularly scheduled, random 1:1 social chats * 21:05 – Experimenting with tools to facilitate communication and identify issues early * 26:02 – Managing synchronous working overlap across time zones
Links from the Show: * Are you considering selling your SaaS business? * The Psychology of Exiting Your Company * Quiet Light * Robert Cserti | LinkedIn * SessionLab (@SessionLab) | X * SessionLab * SessionLab’s Library of facilitation techniques * Geekbot * Cozy Juicy Real * Donut * SpatialChat
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 688, Rob Walling interviews Lane Wagner, founder of Boot.dev. Boot.dev is a learning platform gamified to teach backend development. They discuss the journey of bootstrapping Boot.dev, its explosive growth, and its unique business model. Lane also shares challenges of running a B2C business, why he took some funding, and the significance of customer lifetime value over MRR in his business.
Topics we cover: * 2:38 – Boot.dev seeing incredible growth * 3:35 – Growing on YouTube with partnerships * 5:42 – Teaching Python and Go as a B2C business * 7:49 – “This is not really SaaS”, considering JTBD * 11:18 – The beginnings of Boot.dev, serving the backend niche * 14:21 – Gaining the confidence to quit the day job * 15:51 – Deciding to raise funding and “mostly” bootstrap * 20:31 – Enduring hardship before turning the corner on growth * 26:38 – Finding the right revenue metric for the business
Links from the Show: * MicroConf US - Atlanta - April 21 - 23, 2024 * Interested in Sponsoring MicroConf Content? * Subscribe for Exclusive Episodes * Lane from Boot.dev (@wagslane) | X * Boot.dev * Profitable, at last! * Purple Cow by Seth Godin
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 687, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where discusses a variety of topics. He revisits a recent episode to add one more item to the list of things founders should never do. Rob also offers a hot take on Meta’s new subscription plans and weighs in on a Hacker News post about doing things that don’t scale.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:50 – There’s one more thing that founders should never do * 8:44 – Facebook and Instagram will offer a subscription for no ads * 12:42 – Ask HN: Paul Graham’s “Do Things That Don’t Scale” * 19:53 – Lugg, doing what it takes to prove out an idea
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Episode 685 | 7 Things You Should Never Do (A Rob Solo Adventure) * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * TinySeed * Facebook and Instagram To Offer Subscription for No Ads in Europe * Ask HN: PG's 'Do Things That Don't Scale' manual examples? * Do Things that Don't Scale * Lugg
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 686, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He answers how to evaluate monetary success, combat hedonic adaptation, and how to evaluate the capabilities of technical co-founders. Rob also discusses whether outsourcing sales and marketing is possible and considers some alternative no-code approaches.
Topics we cover: * 4:20 – Success after stair-stepping, confronting hedonic adaptation * 15:35 – Sales funnels, friction before demos, and collecting email addresses * 19:24 – Outsourcing marketing and sales * 23:54 – Evaluating the technical capabilities of your technical co-founder(s) * 29:41 – Reducing the platform risk of developing in typical no-code tools
Links from the Show: * State of Independent SaaS Survey and Report * MicroConf Local in Austin * MicroConf Connect * Bernard Huang (@bernardjhuang) | X * WP Engine (@wpengine) | X * Tracy Osborn (@tracymakes) | X * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup * The SaaS Playbook * This Took 11 Years to Be An "Overnight Success" - SaaS Exit Strategy * Once
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 685, Rob Walling goes solo to share his insights on 7 common mistakes that SaaS founders make. Be sure to listen to the end to hear Rob’s spicy take on launching a portfolio of products to see what sticks.
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Topics we cover: * 1:29 – Sign the National Association of Manufacturers Letter, Section 174 * 3:52 – Compiling a list of things founders shouldn’t do * 6:49 – B2C applications, “the worst of all the worlds” * 9:42 – Don’t build a second product if your first has stopped growing * 10:40 – Defining a new category of software is usually a bad idea * 19:59 – Avoid multi-language support * 24:13 – Dig deep to find root causes beyond the symptoms * 27:41 – The portfolio approach
Links from the Show: * The Small Software Business Alliance * MicroConf Remote * The SaaS Playbook * Dan Andrews (@TropicalMBA) | X * Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea * Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 684, Rob Walling is joined by Dr. Sherry Walling to share their experience from MicroConf Europe 2023 in Lisbon. They discuss a continued shift in MicroConf’s focus towards fostering founder connections and networking, and the value of face-to-face interactions. Rob and Sherry reflect on their own talks and highlight others by fellow founders and attendees.
Topics we cover: * 1:28 – Reflecting on MicroConf locations * 6:28 – Continuous event improvements, focus on community * 9:41 – Michelle Hanson’s talk “Frameworks For Making Product and Strategic Company Decisions” * 10:38 – Rob’s talk about the five stages of customer awareness * 13:21 – Einar Vollset’s talk on applying AI iteratively to solve problems * 15:07 – QuietLight’s live business valuation * 16:39 – Attendee talks from Sophie, Johannes Akhison, and more * 19:25 – Dr. Sherry Walling discusses motivational archetypes * 22:46 – Steven Craven’s founder story
Links from the Show: * Rob Walling (@robwalling) | X * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | X * Sherrywalling.com * Dr. Sherry Walling | YouTube * MicroConf Remote * Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) | X * Michele Hansen (@mjwhansen) | X * Powered by Search (@poweredbysearch) | X * David Newell | Quiet Light * thisissophie.com * Johannes Åkesson – “How Consulting Gave Me Time to Nail Product-Market Fit.” * Stephen Craven (@stephen_craven) | X * Stridist * Producer Xander (@ProducerXander) | X
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 683, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He addresses gathering feedback from customers that are reluctant to give it to you, whether to bring on a partner, and the value of going to in-person events. Rob also covers topics such as equity for advisors, pricing strategies, & productized services.
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Topics we cover: * 1:56 – Gathering feedback from reluctant customers * 8:47 – When to bring in other partners * 12:45 – Weighing the positives and negatives of going to trade shows * 15:36 – Staying energized and motivated * 17:51 – Offering pre-launch discounts vs. offering value-added product * 22:08 – Charging for products in different currencies * 23:37 – Productized service, pricing, and pausing * 26:40 – Fractional CTOs and equity grants
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Mastermind Matching * MicroConf Connect * The SaaS Playbook * Episode 671 | Working on What Matters, Left-handed Threads, and Being Lucky (A Rob Solo Adventure)
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 682, Rob Walling interviews Alex Theuma, the founder of SaaStock, a conference for SaaS founders. They discuss the challenges of bootstrapping an event and the pros and cons of large startup events versus small startup events. Alex also shares his experience of building credibility and authority in the industry, the importance of maintaining a positive attendee experience, and ensuring financial sustainability.
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Topics we cover: * 2:44 – How Alex bootstrapped SaaStock in the early stages * 4:32 – Laying the groundwork and building credibility * 6:59 – Figuring out sponsor subsidies * 8:53 – Reflecting on the first event, growing afterwards * 12:59 – Event sizing and event types * 19:44 – Setting up event programming * 23:00 – Swapping crazy event stories
Links from the Show: * Microconf Mastermind Matching * SaaStock * SaaStock (@SaaStock) | X * SaaStock | LinkedIn * Alex Theuma (@alextheuma) | X * The SaaS Revolution Show * ChartMogul * Web Summit * ProfitWell * Dunbar's number * SaaS.City * Muck Rack * Patrick Campbell’s “Churn” talk
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 681, Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez go deep on the drawbacks of launching a second product. They both generally advise against doing so, as it can distract from the existing product. However they do share some successful attempts, strategic insights, how to approach feedback on second ideas, and the benefits for founders that beat the odds.
Topics we cover: * 1:31 – When you should launch a second product * 5:32 – Ruben’s experience growing Bidsketch and SignWell * 9:45 – Responding to market pull, avoid the sunk cost fallacy * 12:26 – Dividing attention between multiple products * 16:40 – Choosing when to split focus * 21:13 – Why a second product worked for Ruben and others * 28:54 – Gauging your product intuition and getting outside feedback * 32:50 – Avoiding bias when receiving feedback on your ideas * 38:21 – Strategies and goals for adding a second product * 42:50 – Cross selling multiple products
Links from the Show: * MicroConf US Tickets are on sale * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * Episode 499 | The (First) Six Stages of SaaS Growth – Part 1 * Intelligent Editing * SignWell (@SignWellApp) | X * Bidsketch * SignWell * Stratosphere * finchat.io * David Cancel (@dcancel) | X * The SaaS Playbook
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 680, Rob Walling goes solo again, covering a wide variety of topics including listening to customers, but not necessarily their solutions. He also cautions against making decisions based on one customer's feedback, but listening to the crowd. Finally, Rob highlights the importance of doing whatever it takes to succeed as a founder.
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When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:52 – Paying attention to customer problems, not customer solutions * 6:52 – Don’t listen to a customer, always listen to your customers * 9:42 – Finding product market fit with limited information * 13:01 – Identifying the appropriate time to grind out the work * 19:18 – Don’t be above “taking out the trash”
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Connect * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X * Ruben’s repost of @sequence_film * ComicLab (@ComicLabPodcast) | X * Dave Kellett (@davekellett) | X * Brad Guigar (@guigar) | X * The SaaS Playbook
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 679.5, Rob shares seven announcements about the future of MicroConf in the upcoming year.
Whether you're a long-time supporter or a new member of our crew of misfits, you know we're all about empowering bootstrapped SaaS entrepreneurs.
For nearly a decade, we've been fueling the permissionless entrepreneurship movement that's gripped founders worldwide - and we're nowhere close to finished.
Our next big leap is coming, and you won't want to miss it.
If you want to get the inside scoop, and to keep up to date as we roll out all of these offerings, head over to https://www.futureofmicroconf.com/.
Topics we cover: * 2:03 – MicroConf Connect has leveled up, and is accepting new signups * 2:41 – The return of The State of Independent SaaS Report * 3:21 – Community voting for MicroConf Local 2024 cities * 3:50 – New course launch, “Starting Up From Idea to Traction” * 4:21 – MicroConf co-founder matching coming soon * 4:58 – Host your team retreat with MicroConf’s Team Sync * 5:28 – MicroConf Platinum Events for an exclusive and intimate experience
Links from the Show: * Sign up to get notified for MicroConf updates * MicroConf Connect * Rob Walling (@robwalling) | X * MicroConf (@MicroConf) | X * MicroConf YouTube Channel * MicroConf On Air Podcast * MicroConf Mastermind Matching * State of Independent SaaS (2022) * DemandMaven * MicroConf Local * TinySeed
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 679, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He discusses how “mock features” can be implemented to close deals with certain buying dynamics, how to recover from a failed launch, and the benefits of phased launches to minimize those. Rob also gives advice on creating organic content for a SaaS and suggests alternative marketing strategies to content creation. Finally, he covers what an engineer might encounter during an acquisition in a small startup and how to dive into consulting and contracting.
Topics we cover: * 3:43 – Mock features for B2B SaaS * 6:20 – Recovering from a failed launch * 10:37 – Advice for a consumer-facing “vitamin” product * 12:53 – Creating content to market SaaS tools * 17:13 – Acquisitions for startups with small engineering teams * 20:24 – Consulting for junior and mid-level engineers
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook * MicroConf Connect Applications are Open! * Episode 671 | Working on What Matters, Left-handed Threads, and Being Lucky (A Rob Solo Adventure) * Ab Advany’s “Mock Features for B2B SaaS”
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 678, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions. He answers how he might find buyers for a half-done SaaS product, addresses platform risk that accompanies no-code development, and shares insights on bookkeeping for SaaS startups. Rob also details what frameworks new marketers should be looking into and gives advice on launching a new SaaS tool to an email list.
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When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 3:10 – Where can I sell partially developed SaaS apps? * 7:42 – Evaluating higher platform risk inherent in no-code apps * 11:44 – Approaches to bookkeeping early on in your SaaS business * 14:47 – Setting up a marketing engine for those with little experience * 20:43 – Launching a new product to an email list with a phased approach
Links from the Show: * Apply for TinySeed * Join Us For A Big MicroConf Announcement * The SaaS Playbook * MicroConf Connect * Acquire.com * #1 Mistake No-Code SaaS Founders Make - Don't Build Without THIS * Episode 642 | The Pros and Cons of Building a No-Code MVP * Bench.co * Xero.com * Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares * Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown * Postaga
In episode 677, Tracy Osborn interviews Leon Barnard from Balsamiq about wireframing and design. They discuss the book "Wireframing for Everyone" written by Leon and his co-authors from Balsamiq and they emphasize the value of low-fidelity wireframes for founders. They also cover how wireframing can improve ideation and communication processes among teams. To wrap up, they recommend resources for non-designers interested in learning more about wireframing and design.
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Topics we cover: * 3:29 – TinySeed applications for Fall 2023 are open * 5:00 – Leon’s passion for wireframing * 8:32 – Designing in low fidelity wireframes * 11:03 – Wireframing, ideation, and iteration * 16:21 – Communicating design with wireframing * 21:22 – Using wireframing to iterate on already existing, high fidelity content * 24:35 – Writing about wireframing within the broader context of general design principles * 28:16 – Additional resources for non-designers to gain confidence in design * 32:36 – Asking questions informs good design
Links from the Show: * MicroConf is leveling up! * Tracy Osborn (@tracymakes) | X * Leon Barnard (@leonbarnard) | X * Leon Barnard | LinkedIn * Balsamiq (@balsamiq) | X * Wireframing for Everyone by Michael Angeles, Leon Barnard, and Billy Carlson * Balsamiq Wireframing Academy * Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton * Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug * UX for Lean Startups by Laura Klein
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 676, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he answers more listener questions. He answers questions around the inflated valuations in the B2B SaaS market, choosing between ideas, and validating a SaaS idea before building. Rob wraps up evaluating the effectiveness of building a podcast or YouTube following prior to launch.
Topics we cover: * 0:56 – TinySeed applications for fall 2023 batch * 1:42 – The Future of MicroConf announcement event * 2:13 – Why are B2B SaaS valuations so high? * 10:43 – Choosing between two software ideas * 15:02 – Don’t start a two-sided marketplace * 17:04 – Do my “Stair Steps” have to be related? * 19:47 – Co-founder equity splits and founder agreements * 24:56 – Idea validation techniques * 28:02 – Starting a podcast to building an audience
Links from the Show: * The SaaS Playbook * TinySeed * Future of MicroConf * The UpFlip Podcast * 27. How to Build a Thriving Software Company (From Scratch) * Quiet Light, Empire Flippers, FE international * Castos Productions * Nolo, Rocket Lawyer, Lexgo * Slicing Pie * Episode 671 | Working on What Matters, Left-handed Threads, and Being Lucky (A Rob Solo Adventure) * The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping * Traction by Gino Wickman * Hacking Growth by Sean Brown, Morgan, Ellis
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 675, Rob Walling interviews Stephen Steers, author of "Superpower Storytelling." They discuss Stephen’s experience in selling and teaching startups how to sell better. They cover Stephen’s storytelling “AREA” framework and the concept of the problem stack. They also talk about when founders should consider delegating sales, the importance of documenting successful sales processes, and using humor in the sales process.
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They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:36 – Start Small, Stay Small * 3:21 – Stephen’s book, Superpower Storytelling, and how to tell the story of you and your company * 4:30 – Why is storytelling important for startups * 7:47 – A valuable background in sales consulting * 10:35 – The AREA mental framework * 13:21 – The “problem stack” * 18:42 – When to outsource sales in your organization * 22:37 – The four reasons that businesses buy, consultative selling * 28:01 – Using humor to your advantage when selling or as a founder
Links from the Show: * Stephen Steers | LinkedIn * Steers Sales Consulting * Superpower Storytelling by Stephen Steers * Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling * Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath * Taki Moore (@takimoore) | Twitter * Scott Sambucci (@scottsambucci) | Twitter
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 674, join Rob Walling, Einar Vollset, and Tracy Osborn for Hot Take Tuesday, where they analyze and discuss some of the latest news. They talk about Elon rebranding Twitter to X and the emergence of Instagram's Threads. They also cover the pros and cons of taking VC and SparkToro's unique funding model and paying back investors.
Topics we cover: * 2:49 – Twitter is now X * 5:53 – Does the rebranding make sense? * 12:15 – Instagram launches Threads * 19:18 – SparkToro pays back investors * 26:04 – Planning ahead for the payback * 28:53 – “Don’t take VC funding” * 35:11 – “We Raised a Bunch of Money”
Links from the Show: * Tracy Osborn (@tracymakes) | Twitter * Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) | Twitter * The SaaS Playbook * TinySeed * Twitter is being rebranded as X * Introducing Threads: A New Way to Share with Text * Rand Fishkin (@randfish ) |Twitter * Casey Henry (@caseyhen) |Twitter * SparkToro * Postpone * SparkToro Year 3 Retrospective: Investor Payback, Systemic Challenges, and V2 on the Way * Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin * Fly.io * We Raised A Bunch Of Money
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google
In episode 673, Rob Walling chats with Ruben Gamez, the founder of SignWell, as they answer listener questions. They cover topics related to pricing models for SaaS products, marketing strategies for new products, the concept of copycat apps, and the challenges of balancing customer requests with product development. Additionally, they address a question about choosing between working at a startup or a big tech company.
Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 2:06 – Lifetime value pricing vs. monthly recurring revenue * 11:33 – Pay-as-you-go as an alternative to lifetime or SaaS pricing * 14:30 – Testing the market with a landing page * 22:16 – Getting feedback from landing page signups * 25:11 – Marketing strategies for SaaS * 32:53 – Building copycat apps * 38:51 – Startup roles vs. roles in a big tech company as a software engineer * 43:33 – Balancing customer needs with our strategic roadmap
Links from the Show: * MicroConf Sponsorships * The SaaS Playbook * Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | Twitter * SignWell (@SignWellApp) |Twitter * SignWell * Hackers Incorporated, E4 | Lifetime pricing is underrated * AppSumo * Tailwind UI * Loadster * How to Grow Your Self Funded Business Faster – Hiten Shah – MicroConf 2014
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please
In episode 672, Rob Walling speaks with Jon Hainstock, M&A advisor at Quiet Light and previously ZoomShift. They discuss Jon’s bootstrapper journey, his exit from ZoomShift, the benefits of buying versus building, and how he helps other founders sell their businesses at Quiet Light. To wrap up, Jon exposes some common pitfalls to avoid when buying businesses.
Topics we cover: * 2:17 – Timeline of building and selling ZoomShift * 6:07 – Deciding to sell ZoomShift * 11:06 – Jumping into a new project immediately after exit * 17:16 – Acquiring small assets * 19:16 – Picking Quiet Light Brokerage over smaller acquisitions * 26:23 – “Broker” vs. “Advisor” * 30:26 – What to avoid when buying a business
Links from the Show: * The Exit Event * Jon Hainstock (@jonhainstock) | Twitter * Quiet Light (@quietlightinc) | Twitter * ZoomShift * ChatterDocs.ai * Quiet Light * Finish Big by Bo Burlingham * Acquire.com, formerly MicroAcquire * Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki * The Quiet Light Podcast
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 671, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he covers a variety of topics. First, he shares an example of why successful founders move the needle rather than staying in their comfort zone. He shares an anecdote about discovering left-handed threads and how it applies to startups, and wraps up with some thoughts on the role of luck in audience building.
Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:56 – Moving the needle rather than staying comfortable * 11:10 – First time discovering left-handed threads * 19:15 – Building an audience doesn’t require luck
Links from the Show: * MicroConf * MicroConf Connect * The SaaS Playbook * Episode 670 | Relying on Luck, Avoiding Burnout, and Bad Player vs. Bad Instrument (A Rob Solo Adventure) * Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) | Twitter * TinySeed * How to Build SaaS from Scratch in 8 Simplified Steps
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 670, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure, where he discusses why, while striking luck in your SaaS journey is great, working hard and building skills is the sustainable way to build businesses for the long haul. He also shares his personal approach to work when burnout is on the horizon and finally an anecdote relating to SaaS marketing approaches.
Topics we cover: * 0:41 – RSS feed issues, undesirable startup tasks * 2:52 – Two exclusive episodes of Startups For the Rest of Us * 3:39 – Success takes hard work, luck, and skill * 11:00 – The grind of content creation, burnout on the horizon * 21:38 – Bad player or bad instrument?
Links from the Show: * Episode 667 | Increase Your Exit Price by Decoupling Yourself from Your Business with John Warrillow * Castos * Sugarcult – “Stuck in America” * MicroConf YouTube Channel * MicroConf On Air Podcast * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | Twitter * The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together * TinySeed
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 669, Rob Walling chats with Rick Hymanson, founder of detamoov and previously Shugo. They discuss Rick’s exit from Shugo in 2018 in what Rob calls “ten years to overnight success”. Rick recounts an early pivot for the company in finding product market fit, building the business with a day job, the logistics of the exit, and why he’s excited to join TinySeed with detamoov.
Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover: * 1:59 – How Rick felt after exiting Shugo * 5:10 – Deciding to start detamoov after the exit * 7:09 – Creating a Shugo MVP and pivoting * 11:15 – Building a SaaS product while working a day job * 15:34 – Transitioning to full time and growing Shugo ARR * 20:28 – Expanding the product feature set * 22:11 – When did you know you had product-market fit? * 23:28 – Finding an acquirer and navigating the process * 27:38 – Starting and growing datamoov * 31:12 – The value of relationship building * 34:43 – IP ownership agreements
Links from the Show: * Rick Hymanson | LinkedIn * detamoov * The SaaS Playbook * TinySeed
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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Listen to Episode 669
In episode 668, Rob Walling and Arvid Kahl share nine key takeaways from MicroConf US 2023 in Denver. They cover topics ranging from founder mental health, shared motivations for bootstrapping, the value of in-person conferences, and the MicroConf experimentation that led to the “Chaos Lunch”.
Topics we cover: * 2:04 – MicroConf 2023 in Denver, building back after COVID * 9:09 – Founders are sharing an experience of struggles and pivots * 11:21 – Why nothing beats being in a room together * 14:07 – Discussing mental health in a welcoming environment * 17:07 – How experimentation on the MicroConf format led to “Chaos Lunch” * 21:03 – Sharing strategies and tactics, Dev Basu’s talk on product marketing * 24:28 – What motivations do founders have for running their SaaS businesses * 27:27 – Arvid’s workshop encourages discussion of founder mental health * 30:22 – MicroConf’s powerful Hallway track * 32:45 – Patrick Campbell’s talk on mental frameworks and founder paths * 36:47 – Upcoming MicroConf events * 40:05 – The not-so-hidden track: Arvid’s Twitter growth and strategy
Links from the Show: * MicroConf US 2024 | Atlanta, GA | April 21 - 23, 2024 * MicroConf US Recordings * Arvid Kahl (@arvidkahl) I Twitter * Episode 492 | From Zero to $55k MRR to Exit (in 2 Years) with Feedback Panda * thebootstrappedfounder.com * Lianna Patch (@punchlinecopy) | Twitter * Claire Suellentrop (@ClaireSuellen) | Twitter * Dev Basu (@devbasu) | Twitter * Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) Twitter * John Ndege (@johnndege) | Twitter * Comte Anthony Eden (@aeden) | Twitter * Quiet Light (@quietlightinc) | Twitter * Sherry Walling (@sherrywalling) | Twitter
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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In episode 667, Rob Walling speaks with John Warrillow, author of Built to Sell, about validating and launching his second SaaS business, VidGuide. They cover why Standard Operating Procedures can help your business, from leading toward better exits to easing your burden as a founder. Topics we cover: 2:59 – Why John decided to launch […]
In episode 643, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, as they answer listener questions. They cover topics ranging from idea validation in competitive spaces to book recommendations to development strategies for non-technical founders.
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They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network...
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In episode 665, Rob Walling chats with Georgiana Laudi, who is the co-author of the new book, Forget the Funnel. They dive deep into key concepts from the book, including specific Jobs-to-be-done interview examples and how to apply these insights to your marketing strategy.
They also chat a bit about the process of writing a book.
Topics we cover: * 2:37 - Gia and Claire's intentional decision to keep the book under 200 pages * 5:28 - What size SaaS companies will get the most value from Claire and Gia’s new book? * 9:49 - The customer-led growth framework * 11:29 - Why you shouldn’t think in terms of marketing funnels * 15:51- Jobs-to-be done interviews * 20:27- An approach for founders who are skeptical about customer research and JTBD interviews * 25:15- How to use information gathered from customer interviews to inform your marketing strategy * 29:47- What was the experience like recording the audiobook?
Links from the Show: * Claire Suellentrop @clairesuellen I...
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In episode 664, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he answers more listener questions. These questions range from positioning a new SaaS product with many use cases to consumption vs. seat-based pricing and managing your time as a single parent.
Episode Sponsor:Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups
Topics we cover:* 2:07 - Positioning a new SaaS business with multiple use cases * 9:22 - Consumption vs. seat-based pricing * 13:00 - When to expand a SaaS business outside of the core problem it solves * 19:07 - Building a marketing flywheel for a 2-sided marketplace * 22:23- Managing your time as a single parent
Links from the Show:* Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It * Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide To Launching a Startup * The SaaS Playbook * MicroConf Youtube Channel
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.
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Transcript:Rob Walling:Ads can be a good way to get started, but it's not scalable. I think in the long term, if you want to build a flywheel, then you need that content engine cranking out content, and you need to start ranking for enough terms. Start with the long tail, and you slowly climb up to the head terms that allows you to get 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 uniques a month. They essentially are the demand side, looking for supply. These are the consumers and the businesses with the WordPress websites, and I would be looking to SEO.Welcome back to The Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. In this episode, I answer listener questions, pretty amazing video and audio listener questions ranging from positioning a new SaaS with many potential use cases to deciding between consumption versus seat-based pricing, determining whether to expand your business to address customer needs that are outside your core SaaS, and several others. But before we dive into that, I wanted to let you know about my new book, The SaaS Playbook. I know you heard about it when I was running the Kickstarter. We are getting ready to fulfill that Kickstarter here, and it's going to be probably in the next three, four weeks.It depends. It depends on when the books show up and all that. But with that in mind, if you didn't back the Kickstarter, you can still go to saasplaybook.com and pre-order a paperback copy of the book, the audio version, which I just finished reading last week, or an electronic version, like a PDF, EPUB type thing. This book is concise. It's about 200 pages, and it's where I densely packed everything that I know about building ambitious SaaS products, seven- and eight-figure ARR companies. I cover things like team and market pricing, marketing. I'd dive deep into it for a couple hundred pages. If you haven't checked it out, saasplaybook.com. With that, let's dive into our first listener question.Simon:Hey, Rob, I hope you're well. I've been following along with the podcast and MicroConf community for quite some time now and really appreciate all that you do. Thanks for putting it out there. I have a question around positioning. I've just launched a SaaS, or a tech-enabled service called Delineate. It's at delineate.co, and it helps you create predictive models and data products in a much shorter amount of time with a lot less money than what these things would usually cost. For example, you could train a predictive model with machine learning and your CRM data to predict the probability that any given customer is going to churn in the next three months, for example. Or you could externalize these models to create a data product or an engineering-as-marketing tool. Imagine if you were a business broker. You could train the model on a bunch of previous transactions and then create a business valuation calculator, which you could then publish to your website.My question is the product can do a lot of things. Essentially, anything that involves a predictive model, it can help out with. I'm having trouble knowing where I should focus my energy on the marketing front. There's just a lot of potential audiences and a lot of potential use cases for the tool, which is great in one way but bad in another because I don't know where I should focus. I've read April Dunford's book on positioning and loved it, but I do find it's more relevant for companies that already have a bunch of data on who's using their product and how. I'm wondering if you have any frameworks, mental models, or thoughts, et cetera, on how you think about approaching a positioning problem for a relatively new business where the tool has many potential use cases and audiences. Thanks again for all that you do, and I'm excited for the new book. Cheers.Rob Walling:This is a great question, Simon. Thanks for sending it in. This is a common problem. I'll say it's less common than it used to be because I think the idea of niching down or nicheing down has become so much more popular, partially due to the MicroConf community and this podcast, where I learned very early on, 15, 18 years ago, that not having some type of niche to attack, basically, and to own is a real problem in the early days. If you go back and read my first book, Start Small, Stay Small, there's an entire chapter that's just about niching down and about finding a single vertical to go after. Now, Start Small, Stay Small was about small lifestyle businesses that could get to maybe 10K, 20K, 30K a month. And these days, I'm thinking bigger than that with TinySeed companies and with the SaaS Playbook.But if you don't have $0.5 million or $1 million in the bank, it can be a challenge to not have a niche. Now, are there ways around it? There are. Think of SavvyCal and SignWell. These are a scheduling link and electronic signature, and those are not verticalized. It's not designed for hairdressers, dog breeders, or web designers. These are broad horizontal platforms. But how have they marketed themselves? SignWell has a founder behind it who is a genius at content marketing and SEO, and it's a huge market. There's a ton of search engine and search traffic for it in general, and he knew that before he went into it. So he optimized the entire business around that concept. If you don't have that here, and I bet you do not, because I don't think the market you're in is that big or has that much search volume, then you have to think about how Derrick Reimer with SavvyCal has done it where he had a small audience in the early days.He's built SavvyCal to be horizontal, but he focused on calendar power users and founders, executives, and now even sales folks. So it's not directly niched, but he does have certain roles and certain use cases that he is catering to. But his thing is, he's just building a more powerful but still really easy-to-use scheduling link. He also has a luxury. That space is very well defined. There are big competitors of Calendly. There's YouCanBookMe. There's a handful of big competitors, and he can come in and just carve out a position in the space. With those three things in mind, one I said, nicheing down, one I said, figure out if there's a boatload of search traffic that you can get in front of, or the third one is to carve out a position in an already crowded market against other competitors where you have a far superior product and you are differentiated enough that people will actively switch.The other thing that works in both SavvyCal and SignWell's favor is, the switching cost is relatively low for those tools, versus I'm not sure about the switching costs with your product. If I were in your shoes, I would be looking to model what I'm doing after someone who has done it successfully before me. I would 100% not, if I was bootstrapping, be going after an amorphous horizontal space where you build something for everyone, you build it for no one in essence. I personally would likely be trying to figure out who are my best users, who are my most dedicated users, who will use this at all and love it, who says I can't live without that? And then figure out, is it because of the task they are accomplishing or is it because of the role that they hold at a company? So then you can start figuring out, "Oh, it turns out chief technology officers or directors of business intelligence at Fortune 1000 companies. There's two or three of them that really love it."You start to hone in on that, and then you build out their use cases before you land and expand. That is, you land with the functionality you have, and then you later expand into other roles, other verticals, or frankly, other use cases. In the meantime, to find that, I would be going on all the podcasts, I would be doing all the SEO, I would be spending all the money on the paper click ads that I could, or the Instagram and Facebook ads. Nothing has to be profitable. You are in customer development mode, and it sounds like you have a product already, but what problem does that solve and for whom? I've said this many times on the podcast before. Nowadays, when a founder tells me their idea, I say, "Don't tell me your idea. Tell me what problem it solves." And I should add this at the end, "And for whom? Who does it solve this problem for?"Because that's equally as important, because if you tell me this solves the problem of organizing my music library, I say, "Great, who needs this?" And you say, "It's people over the age of 65 who still use MP3s." Then I think to myself, "Okay, that is a tough market." Not only is it consumers, but it's folks who may be averse to paying for technology. Or if you tell me it's for teenagers who have vinyl record collections, again, it's like, "Teenagers don't have a ton of disposable income to pay for software and the vinyl record space. The niche is very small." I know you're not serving either of those. They're just dumb examples. But the idea is that the more you learn about who needs this, not just what problem it solves, but for whom that is where you can start to get traction and find your product market fit. I hope that helps, Simon. Thanks for the question. My next question is about consumption versus seat-based pricing.Steven:Hey Rob, my name's Steven, and I love the show. I have a question about aligning pricing with customer value. I'm building tools for real estate agents, so I think that a single monthly fee will be simpler, but charging on consumption only when an agent closes a transaction seems better aligned with the cycles of their business. When do you think you should consider a consumption versus subscription-based pricing?Rob Walling:That's a good question, Steven. Thanks for sending it in. There's a bit of it, depends. I think, specifically with real estate, I have a tough time imagining a realtor is going to want to be charged every time they close the deal. Do you know when the deal is closed? Is there any way they can game that and just not close it in your system and therefore never pay you or only pay you for half of the deals they close? That's something that you really need to think about with pricing is unless you are holding dollar amounts in escrow and when they get distributed, there is an angle there for folks to basically, it's a hack to get around paying you for your services. There are two schools of thought on this, and honestly, when I'm bootstrapping, I'm usually trying to get recurring revenue such that when the real estate market slows down, I know I'll have some cancellations, but I have that monthly recurring that's coming in every month or the annual recurring, as the case may be.If I'm truly based on transactions, I would go historically look at how many transactions happen in a given month or a given year in the US if that's the market you're serving. Then I would look at how many were happening in 2008, '09, '10, or in 2020 and try to figure out the swing there. You're trying to figure out the volatility of how your monthly revenue might change up and down if you don't have true subscription revenue. My guess is that number's probably pretty substantial. Maybe it's 40% or 70% back in the great recession of '08, '09, and that would scare me. There's a reason that I love SaaS and believe it is the best business model. It's because the revenue is not so bumpy. It's not so spiky. One other thing to think about is, everyone sells. Eventually you're going to build a company, and if it's successful, it's going to be worth millions of dollars, and you're going to want to go sell it.Whether you think you are or not, trust me, everyone sells. It's just what happens. When you go to sell this, if it is not subscription revenue and the numbers go up and down each month, it is a discount to your valuation. Just something to think about of SaaS is SaaS because of that recurring and always upend to the right mode that it's in. If you're going to charge based on a percentage of fees or when an event happens, it's more of a traditional business. It's not subscription software. It's still SaaS because it's software as a service, but you are changing the model. So I think I am not wildly in favor of it.However, someone who raises a bunch of venture capital and can wait this out, so to speak, or can try it out and doesn't need to get to revenue early, if you had a million, 2 million in the bank, 5 million, whatever, you could screw around with this, you could try to only charge based on when someone closes the deal. Because if it doesn't work out, you just change your pricing later. But if you're bootstrapped, I don't think you can justify taking that risk because I think you can have 6 months, 9 months, 12 months of just bumping along the bottom, not being able to grow. For me, I'm all in on subscription revenue models, and that is what I'd be leaning towards. Thanks for the question, Steven. I hope that was helpful. My next question is about whether to expand the business outside of the core problem that the software solves.Dennis:Hey, Rob, I absolutely love the pod, and I thank you very much for all the help you do for us new founders navigating the controlled chaos of a new startup. I'm working on a startup called FitFeed, which is a social encouragement platform where we build and host wellness challenges for organizations. We've seen pretty good traction with users and have several paying customers now. My question for you is, our business is really focused on the technology of building and hosting these challenges, but we've now had several customers ask us for marketing as a service for their challenge, and we don't currently have the resources nor the expertise to offer this to our customers. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the best way to approach this. We do not have the funds to hire a marketing person. As a small bootstrapped startup, should we try to learn this on our own or outsource it to a third party, either through payment or through some type of partnership? Thanks for all you do and your advice, and looking forward to hearing your response.Rob Walling:This is another one that, in general, I have an answer. Then specifically for you, given what you're up to and that you don't have the expertise nor the money to do it, to me, it's like I probably wouldn't do it. It feels like a huge distraction for you specifically, but there are some factors that I use to weigh this. For example, if doing outside services, third-party services, whether it's hiring freelancers to do it, whether it's learning something internal to my company and doing it such that people get onboarded, a good example of this is with Drip, we would take a customer's ebook or a series of blog posts and we would turn them into an email mini-course. It's copying, pasting, formatting, some things like that. So I had essentially a support person who took that over and would build it for them.That was a pain, and we did it for free if you paid for a few months in advance, and frankly, it helped people get onboarded and stick around. So if you can think of something like that that is truly an addition that will get people onboarded or will keep them around, then I think there's some justification there. The caveat is, you need to charge a lot for this because this is services and it's a pain in the ass. If you haven't run an agency before, dealing with clients who are nitpicky and you're going to do marketing, what happens if you don't get the results that they want? That would put you in a tough situation, obviously. I think, if anything, I would consider partnering with a third party. If I could find an agency or a freelancer who is reliable and who would do this marketing for them, then maybe take a cut. Maybe you take a 10%, 20% commission for the referral.Personally, if I'm building SaaS, I know that I need to focus and go all in to make it because, look, most SaaS companies don't work. Most SaaS products don't get enough users that they're even worth building. So you're thinking about adding to that the additional headache of servicing essentially agency customers, it's folks who want consulting services. Now, I'm not saying never do consulting services. There are absolutely amazing SaaS companies that add consulting services, make buckets of money from them, and then when they do go to exit, eventually the SaaS revenue is multiplied by SaaS revenue multiples and the consulting revenue is multiplied by a much smaller multiple of one x, two x, or some very small number. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. But in this case, I don't know. It just feels like a lot of work.If you said we do have the expertise in house, because usually what I had is, I would say yes to things that I thought we could pull off, whether I had the expertise personally and I could delegate it to someone junior on the team or whether someone else on my team had the expertise and I knew that we could crank on it. But if this truly is something outside of your expertise, folks have asked for, I would look for referral partners and look for a way to potentially monetize that so you don't have to deal with the headache and the lack of focus of actually implementing something that's so far outside your core business. Thanks for the question, Dennis. I hope that was helpful.Finding the perfect software engineer for your team can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, and the process can quickly become overwhelming. But what if you had a partner who could provide you with over 1,000 on-demand, vetted senior results-oriented developers who are passionate about helping you succeed, and all that at competitive rates? Meet Lemon.io. They only offer handpicked developers with three or more years of experience and strong, proven portfolios. With Lemon.io, you can have an engineer start working on your project within a week instead of months.Plus, you won't waste your time on candidates who aren't qualified. Lemon.io gives you easy access to global talent without scouring countless job boards, and it's more affordable than hiring local talent. If anything goes wrong, Lemon.io offers swift replacements. It's like hiring with a warranty. If you need to grow your engineering team or delegate some work, give Lemon.io a try. Learn more by visiting lemon.io/startups and find your perfect developer or tech team in 48 hours or less. As a bonus for our podcast listeners, get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer. Stop burning money, hire dev smarter, visit lemon.io/startups.A reminder that the reason all these questions are audio or video is that those go to the top of the stack. So I still do have a backlog of 30 written questions that are getting preempted by those sending in questions through video ask on the website. If you go to startupsfortherestofus.com, click the Ask a Question in the top navigation, and whether you're on a phone, your laptop, or whatever, you can send an audio or a video question, and those go to the top of the stack. The next question comes to us from Spain.Gonzalo:Hey, this is Gonzalo from Spain. I recently discovered your podcast, and I'm loving it, especially the Q&A episodes. I wanted to ask, I am a worker developer and I also teach people how to build their own websites. I'm focused on the Spanish-speaking countries, and a year ago I bought an online business that is very related to what I do, where worker developers pay a monthly fee to get access to job offers from website owners looking for those professionals, for those freelancers.I'm not having trouble getting the freelancers to subscribe to pay, but I am struggling getting traffic from the companies looking for those professionals. I've tried SEO, I've tried Google Ads, but it's difficult to make a difference in terms of keywords because I cannot differentiate with the search intent. The keywords are the same for freelancers looking for gigs and for people looking for freelancers, at least very similar. Because of that, I'm exploring other ad platforms like Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads, and it does not seem very scalable to me. I don't know if you have any insights on how I could get traffic from that specific kind of people, like the companies or people looking for workers, freelancers. Thanks. I appreciate any inside spot.Rob Walling:It's a good question, and it comes back to my rule. Don't bootstrap a two-sided marketplace. That's exactly what this is, unless you have access to one of the sides, and it does sound like one side. The WordPress developers is easy to get to sign up, and that makes sense. Usually, in a two-sided marketplace, one side will absolutely come because these WordPress freelancers, they want business. So that's not a surprise to me that it's easy to get them, but the other side, that's what everyone's trying to get. That's what Upwork is trying to get. That's what every freelance WordPress developer is trying to rank for.I bet I'm guessing that the ads for those agencies are bidding these up, and I'm guessing the ads are pretty expensive as a result. But with that in mind, in your shoes, when I think about what you're actually trying to do, which is to attract people who have WordPress websites, people, companies, whatever, who have WordPress websites and want freelancers because you've started a marketplace and you already have the freelancers, I would be thinking about one, if you're running Google Ads, which it sounds like you might be, I would hone in on the negative keyword list for your ads to really try to exclude anyone who is a WordPress developer searching for this because you don't want them. You want the folks who are looking for freelancers.If you've already tried that, great, but if not, I would dive pretty deep into how I could engineer that to eliminate folks who are searching for the wrong side of your marketplace. Then the other thing I would do is what pretty much every two-sided marketplace that we know of has done and the way they have succeeded, and it's content marketing and SEO. I have a tough time imagining you are going to build a sustainable two-sided marketplace if you have to fill one side perpetually with ads. Now, ads can be a good way to get started, but it's not scalable. I think in the long term, if you want to build a flywheel, then you need that content engine cranking out content, and you need to start ranking for enough terms. Start with the long tail, and you'll slowly climb up to the head terms that allows you to get 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 uniques a month.They essentially are the demand side, looking for supply. These are the consumers and the businesses with the WordPress websites, and I would be looking to SEO. That's the play here. I guess the only other approach I've seen is audience. I think of the Tropical MBA guys starting Dynamite Jobs, and they had both sides of the marketplace, not because of SEO or of pay-per-click ads, but because of their podcast and their community, the Dynamite Circle, and so they used that to their advantage. That's probably the other way. I'm trying to think... Oh, I've seen a job board started based on audience. Joel Spolsky, back in the day, started, I think it was called the Business of Software job board, and authenticjobs.com, I believe, was started by someone who also had an audience. But usually it's audience or content/SEO. I would be looking at one of those plays for that side of the marketplace. Thanks for writing in. I hope that was helpful. My last question of the day is asking for advice about being a single parent and managing your time.Jake:Hello, Rob. Thank you very much for the amazing content and insight you share about this industry. My question for you is, what advice or examples can you share about single parents who try to get something started in this industry? I know we have very little time, so I know every minute counts, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.Rob Walling:Thanks for the question, Jake. Definitely one that has never been asked on the show. Certainly had time management questions asked, and there, I usually go into being effective versus being efficient, and you really can only work on the thing that needs to get done, and you can't waste time even if you're co-parenting with someone. I remember when each of our kids was born, just how much less time I suddenly had. I can imagine as a single parent, which I've really only been for weeks at a time, let's say, when Sherry will go out of town and then you have even less time and you have to get everything done. The ways that I would think about it aside from just trying to get more effective and really focusing on the things that move the needle are, I would ask myself, "Do I have the budget to hire someone to do these other things?"Whether that's around the house, like I need a personal assistant to make meals and to handle all of my personal mail, dry cleaning, and delivery of things, there's folks called house managers who can do this, and you may not have the budget for it, and that's fine, but that's where I'd be putting my thought to is, like, "Do I need someone to personally handle stuff such that I have just a bit more free time?" Such that when I have that two hours a night after my kids go to bed, do I need to sit down and pay a bunch of bills and worry about scheduling a contractor to come fix the sprinklers, or am I able to focus on work because I've handed that off to someone else? Similarly, I would ask myself, "Is there anything I'm working on now that I can outsource?"Whether it's design work or development, it's only if you have a budget and it's only if things are mapped out. The thing with handing off your business tasks right now is, I know they're so amorphous and all over the place because it's all research, it's trying, it's testing, and it's stuff I think founders need to do versus paying bills, dry cleaning, running errands, grocery shopping, whatever else. Those are things that I think are a little bit easier. It's a solved problem, and it's not that complicated. Again, that comes down to budget. You may or may not have it, but it's one idea. I'm not saying hire someone full-time, by the way. This is not like, "Oh, if you're independently wealthy and you can spend $8,000 a month." That's not what I'm saying. You can find folks for less than that to help out 5 hours a week, 10 hours a week to just take care of stuff. You are more free to do it.The other thing that I would think about is how to build something very small and get a quick win. I would not personally be trying to build a multimillion dollar SaaS company if I were in your position of just not having very much time because it takes so much time and it takes so much focus that I would either be looking at a step one business, like I talk about here all the time from the Stair Step Method, or even writing a course, building an info product, writing a book, doing a video course on one of the two-sided marketplaces, the Udemy, the Udacity, then whoever else is left in that space, teachable, did they have a two-sided marketplace? Anyways, these are things where they won't create revenue forever, but they teach you how to build something, get it out into the market, and do some type of marketing.The time commitment and the focus commitment is so much less than building software. So if you have a unique advantage, meaning you are a good writer, or you are good on the microphone, or you are good on video, then I would consider just building a course because, look, selling information, it is easier, it is simpler than building software. I love that idea as a step one, maybe pre-building a step one software business just to learn and get your feet wet, make a few hundred dollars or a few thousand, whatever you do make. I don't know if this involves building an audience. Obviously, if you want to build a name for yourself long-term in the space that you're building the product for, then maybe this is where you start that podcast, or you start the YouTube channel, or you start the writing, whatever it is you're going to do.But if you just want to dip your toe in the water, I fully think that you can do it without that, and you can get in front of other people's traffic, but they take a cut of the sale. But that's fine. You're not necessarily doing this to get rich. You're doing it for the learning, to get your feet under you, and to start shipping something to realize how much work it actually is. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of hours. I think that if you try this and, let's say, you want to put out an ebook in the next couple months, and you get to the end and you're like, "Oh my gosh, that was so much work." From the writing to the copy editing to the layout to the cover design, to then promoting it, to uploading it, marketing it, selling it, refunds, support, whatever else you need to get to the end of that, and it feels like that, then you really know that for now you probably shouldn't do a software product because it is 10 times more complicated on almost all the angles that I just mentioned.It's definitely tough. Each of us has our own headwinds in our lives, and some of those are more challenging than others, and certainly having young kids is super challenging. Whether you're a single parent or you have a co-parent, it is a difficult time. As someone who went through it myself and someone who has raised young kids as I was starting companies, all I can say is, its hard, and I don't know of any silver bullets that can really make it that much easier other than the thought process I offered, which is just pick something a lot smaller that doesn't require as much focus as SaaS. Thanks for the question, Jake. I hope that was helpful.Thanks for listening this week and every week. I hope you enjoyed the listener questions. Still more in the queue. I'll be back at you again in a couple weeks answering more, hopefully with a co-host on that one. But if you keep listening, I'll keep recording. This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 664.You've made it to the hidden track of this week's episode. I got a question where the subject line is not a SaaS question, and it's about Dungeons and Dragons, so if you don't care about D&D or my thoughts or comment on it, then probably just want to move along to the next episode. But the cool part is, it's actually from one of the folks who asked a question in this episode, but I'm going to keep him anonymous here. He said, "Thanks for the amazing content. You said something in the last couple episodes that made me realize I'm not the only one because you also played D&D. I thought I was the only one that loved to talk business, and in the same group could also talk about Dungeons and Dragons." And he's referring back to where I said, I've played D&D with DM, Dungeon Master, once a month right now.I'd love to do it more. I just don't have the time. But I Dungeon Master once a month, and I handcrafted this group. It's my 17-year-old son, and then it's local startup founders, and I guess one guy I used to work with at Drip, but he works at a SaaS startup, so it's all SaaS startup people. I did that on purpose because, for me, while gaming is fun, I like doing it with people I like, and when I don't know the people there, it's less interesting for me. It's much more of a social endeavor. Anyways, back to his email, he said, "The people I played D&D with are good people, but they don't have a drive to create, innovate, drive business growth, or create something new." So me interjecting back in here, I would've a tough time in a group like that personally.Then he says, "It is a commitment to play, and I only have time to play once a month, if that. But it's fun to engage and come up with fun storytelling and creative solutions." I agree. That's what I love about Dungeons and Dragons, it gives my mind a break from business. If I don't distract myself with things like Dungeons and Dragons, then my mind is going all the time thinking about, "Oh, what should the next podcast have? What should the next YouTube video have?" And even just reading books about games, about the history of games, or reading adventure modules that I may never play or never run is interesting to me. It's a bit like reading fiction, but I know that it might have some applicability at some point, and it's a way that I try to turn off my mind once in a while.He has a question for me. The question is, "Do you have a favorite class?" So in Dungeons and Dragons, there's race or heritage, and that is where you can be a human, an alpha dwarf, a tiefling, whatever it is. And then there is the class. Are you a fighter? Are you a sorcerer? Are you a thief or a rogue? They changed the names of these things. Personally, I tend to play either thieves, which I think they're called rogues in fifth edition, but I like folks who can backstab and sneak around and hide in the shadows, or I really like clerics. I like those folks. They have healing, but also they have that brute force. Usually in high armor class, you get that flail, you get the mace, get the hammer, or even you can use an ax because, in first edition D&D, you couldn't use edged weapons. If you were a cleric, it was for game balance, but now you can use them.I really like having the ability to heal, whether it's myself or others, but also be able to deal damage. I will be honest though. I've never played a druid, never played a monk. There's a lot of classes that I haven't played. While I do really playing some type of a magic wielder, again, sorcerer or warlock, whatever, I often find that with the limited amount of time that I have to prepare, if I were going to play as a player, that I tend to want to really dive in and figure out all the spells and optimize that. I just don't want to spend the time or don't have the time. Almost like the simpler gameplay of being a cleric.Yes, I know you have cleric spells too, but those always feel pretty obvious to me. The ones that I'm going to need and use. But I'll be honest, I don't play as a player very often. I Dungeon Master a lot. Once a month, it's not that much. When we go to events, because my son and I go to several gaming cons throughout the year, I don't usually play D&D there. I usually am trying to play games I haven't played before because I like learning new things and maybe figuring out a game that I really like that I can later go by. I can't honestly remember the last time I was a player in a gaming session. Actually, it might have been Mike Tabor who ran a D&D game at MicroConf. He does it every year. I just don't have time to do it. Last time I did, it was maybe 2018, 2019, and I played there.I played a barbarian. We were like 10th level because it was a really hard adventure, and I had some three attacks per round, and when I would rage, I had advantage on everything and double damages. It was just bananas. So I really enjoyed that too, for a one-shot. It was super fun just being a massive tank, really high AC and doing crazy amounts of damage. Anyways, it's nerdy stuff, but I love it. I believe we need pursuits outside of our work and family, even if it's only once a month, once every other month, just to have something that recharges our batteries, something we do for ourselves.
In episode 663, Rob Walling and Einar Vollset share five insights SaaS founders should know about the state of AI. They offer a unique perspective by sharing a mental model around the four categories of AI and how to use this to think about the impact on your business.
Topics we cover:* 2:08 - Einar’s thoughts on the state of AI * 7:11 - Why you shouldn’t ignore AI * 9:33 - The 4 categories of AI * 18:36 - AI is not a product differentiator * 22:01- Should bootstrapped companies try to build their own LLMs? * 24:41- Using AI internally in your company * 30:03 - Is my business model a ticking time bomb?
Links from the Show:* Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) I Twitter * MicroConf Europe * MicroConf Youtube Channel
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.
Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher
Transcript:Rob Walling:Welcome back. To start off, for the rest of us, this is the show where we focus on bootstrapping and mostly bootstrapping SaaS companies. Today, I sit down with my TinySeed co-founder, Einar Vollset, and we talk through five insights SaaS founders should know about AI, about OpenAI, ChatGPT, LOMs. All the things you're probably kind of tired of hearing about. But here's the different tact that we took that I'm not hearing other podcasts and other pundits make on this topic. I tried to put a mental framework around AI that SaaS founders would understand. It's how I would be thinking about this if I were a startup founder, and frankly, it's how I'm advising my almost 150 investments to be thinking about this. So I kick it off by going through four categories of AI. So we had some taxonomy to think about and I talk about generative categorization, summarization, and predictive.And then we walk through five things that I think you as a founder should be thinking about. If you're putting your head in the sand and thinking AI's not going to change everything, that's a problem because it's going to change quite a few things. But before we dive into that, tickets for MicroConf Europe this October are available for sale microconf.com/europe. MicroConf Europe is in Lisbon October 1st through the third speakers include Michelle Hansen of Geocodio, Sherry Walling of ZenFounder, myself, Stephen Innala-Craven of Stridist, and several others yet to be announced. It's going to be an amazing event. Tickets are already flying off the shelves, as they say, microconf.com/europe if you're interested. And with that, let's dive into my conversation with interval set on five insights SaaS founders should know about AI. Einar, thanks for coming back on the show.Einar Vollset:Glad you have me.Rob Walling:It is awesome. We're going to be digging into AI today, obviously talking about things that SaaS founders, whether bootstrapped or not really should be thinking about. I want to kick it off by maybe giving folks an idea of how you've been digging into AI, how you're thinking about it and how much you've been screwing around with it. In essence, you've also, and you've been doing internal presentations to TinySeed companies. Of all the people I know you're one of the people who has given it the most thoughts, so to speak.Einar Vollset:Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I started looking at it I guess in August or September last year, and it wasn't really on my radar all that much. I have to be perfectly honest, we've invested in a couple of AI companies or companies that used AI. It was a key part of it back in I guess 21. And I nearly did my PhD on AI, which actually looking back at it, I'm glad that I didn't because it was, looking back, it was a terrible time to have done your PhD on AI, but it sort of started, came definitely to the forefront in the fall. And particularly with ChatGPT, it became very evident to me that this was probably one of the bigger shifts in terms of a technical capability that would impact startups. I think at the very least the biggest comparative change that I've seen was probably when the iPhone was launched, and I think it's definitely a bigger shift than that and potentially as big as the internet becoming a commercial commercially viable thing to do.So I started really digging into it. I thought AI's an interesting thing. People have weird reactions to it and there are the doomsters out there who are like... We should just call an airstrikes whenever the loss function falls too much. But equally, I think a little bit more of the considered concern meant, well, if you can just ask the AI to do everything, why do you even need SaaS companies anymore? Why do you need needle and stuff? So I started digging into it quite deeply, probably November, December timeframe. And it became evident to me that this was something that we needed to both for the portfolio for TinySeed, but also for the work that I do with Discretion Capital. We needed to lean into it. And probably most of my experimentation today and the systems that we've been building has been augmenting our systems for discretion capital in terms of using AI to understand the SaaS, specifically the B2B SaaS market worldwide.And that has allowed us to basically have a step change. We're basically gone from tracking the number of SaaS companies that we're tracking and what they're doing, and all this stuff has probably gone from 10% of the market to nearly a 100%. So it's an order of magnitude change and it's been key to me to try to understand, obviously that's a huge benefit to us, but also I wanted to understand how it would impact our portfolio at TinySeed. Because we're invested in so many companies, I felt like there's probably at least a third, if not more, which there could be a severe competitive impact on the stuff. So I started digging into it. Most of my focus has not been so much on the visual models like the stable diffusion and dollies and stuff, but mostly on the large language models like ChatGPT or Flan-T5 coming out of Google and just trying to understand like, "Okay, how does this impact, how can we do this?"There's an odd dynamic in the AI world, I feel like, because it's on one hand you have people who think it'll be just snap your fingers and it'll take over the world. And the other hand you have people who are like, "Oh, this is just auto complete, it's bull- like why even bother with it?" The most standard thing I hear is like, "Ah, this is Web 3.0. Once again, it's like NFT craze." And I'm like, "Brother, it's not NFT craze. Whatever it is, it's not that." So yeah, that's been my angle. Like I said, my academic background is very much on the systems applied side, and so trying to understand, reading a lot of papers and trying to understand what can it do, what can it not do, what are best practices? And like you say, also trying to get the TinySeed portfolio companies up to speed as fast as possible in terms of understanding what they can expect.Rob Walling:And there's a certain amount of just learning what it can do and not do as you're saying. And then in three months, six months, 12 months, trying to get ahead around what might it be able to do at that point. Then taking that and viewing it through the lens of SaaS companies, whether funded or not. I mean that's what we're trying to do internally. It's for folks who don't know, you mentioned discretion capital, that is the sell side M&A firm where you help SaaS companies between one and 20 million ARR exit. You're in processes. So a bunch of SaaS companies, tens of thousands, literally private equity companies, all this stuff that you do with that. So they know why both tiny seed and discretion capital. And frankly MicroConf and this podcast has an interest in this topic because I keep saying ignore AI at your peril.I've heard the same thing about is this the next web three? Is this the next whatever other technology had a big hype cycle and then flamed out. Yes, there's a big hype cycle, but I think this is much more no code where no code had a hype cycle and people are like, "I don't know, it doesn't really just code." It's always just code, you have these [inaudible 00:07:06] but no code is changing things at a grassroots level. It's changing things for a lot of people. AI is going to do that times a hundred. I think you and I are both in agreement on that.Einar Vollset:A 100%. I mean, to give you an idea, it's rare. The whole NFT thing like that, in my normy friends in Europe, that's usually my standard measure of how do people interact with technology. And my normy friends in Europe, they never even heard of NFTs. It was like a, "What? Who cares about this? Ran Ethereum, who gives a shit? No code, I don't care." But ChatGPT, it was immediately, I was talking to my brother once and he is like, "Oh yeah, crap." Normally it would take us three, four weeks to write this report that we charge a bunch of money for. And actually, yeah, it can be done in two days now real people are seeing real impact. And I think if you have technical founders who are sticking their head in the sand about the capability just become available, I think it has a massive, massive mistake, a huge mistake.Rob Walling:My brother runs a construction firm in the Bay Area, and similarly, he and I talked about it for 20 minutes and I started showing him, I was like, "It's not like construction is the most high-tech industry." But he was telling me about briefs he has to write or things he has to summarize or things he has to consume or you know what I mean? It's just the moment we got in a text, I was like, "Oh, well let's just... Here, give me that in a PDF so I can copy paste it right in the ChatGPT and just ask it some questions." And it was a 100%, right? "No." "But will it be a 100%, right? In the next three, six, 12 whatever, it's going to get there so."Einar Vollset:It's going to get there. And I think a lot of the time, technical founders, they underestimate how much of the world economy consists of people who take bits of text and produce bits of text and give it to other people, and those people produce other bits of text depending on the inputs of that bits of text. That's a lot of the economy in the world.Rob Walling:Yeah, it's crazy. So, hey, when you said you're Normy friends, so I use the term muggles. Oh, my muggle friends, you know that? It's from Harry Potter when in the Wizarding school, right? Oh, the Muggles are like the normies, the who don't have magic. Anyways, I want to kick it off. I put together an outline of my thoughts. The reason I wanted to have you on is I could totally have done a solo episode around this, but I want someone who knows more about it than I am to say, "I disagree. Oh, I do agree. Oh, I agree plus, plus."Einar Vollset:I'm happy to disagree, bro. Always.Rob Walling:Oh, I know. That's to derail. The podcast is your goal. All right. So I have been trying to get my head around the categories of AI that this is not capture everything in the world, but as I've seen uses of chat, GPT and Dolly and the OpenAI API, I think that in my head there are four categories, is the only word I can come up with. But the first is generative. This is where you type in something and it spits something out. So that's like create an outline for a YouTube video titled How To Invest in Bootstrap Startups.And then it just does an outline. It creates it based on its predictive stuff. Or you can type into Dolly, you can type in create a picture of Einar Vollset with a San Francisco Giants hat on. "Ooh, no, who's your with a White Sox?"Einar Vollset:The Dodgers?Rob Walling:That would be great. The Dodgers, "Oh yeah, no. Ooh. All right." Note to self, putting it on my trailer board, create a picture of Einar Vollset with a Dodgers hat on and waving a big foam finger that says, "I love Tommy Lasorda." Am I in the wrong decade? Is that us?Einar Vollset:I don't even know who that is. That sounds good to be.Rob Walling:Ooh, it's a deep cut for people who watched baseball in the 80s, they totally know what I'm talking about. But anyways, so that's what I'm calling generative AI generating things. Second one is categorization. If I feed it 1000 URLs, can it tell me which of these is an e-commerce website versus an agency versus a SaaS app? And then the third I have is summarization, which is a little bit, you could call this generative, but I'm breaking it out because I'm having a ChatGPT and other tools summarize a YouTube video and try to turn it into a tweet thread, for example. So there's a summary and there's a bit of generation. And then the fourth one I have is predictive. And this is one where internally I think we've talked or brainstormed, just like, "Well, could you input all the inputs of all the successful mastermind that we've matched in Microconf?"And then when the new batch comes in, you put those inputs in and have it try to predict what we should match. Because that matching process is extremely manual right now. And I don't know that we have enough data and we've matched a thousand founders. If we had a million, I would say we have enough data, but I just don't know there's enough that it could do it. So those are the four things, generative categorization, summarization, and predictive. I've gone to Google and tried to type in what are the types of AI, what are the categories of AI to try to get someone much smarter than me has thought about it in this way, but I don't seem to be able to find it. Do you have thoughts? Do you feel like I'm on base there? Any other types that I'm missing?Einar Vollset:No, I think that's reasonably fair. I probably think of it slightly differently. I think in general there is this notion, I mean in general, everything is generative. Fundamentally, a lot of the text models are just like, "They're extremely flexible APIs, basically it's just text in, text out." So that's true. I mean, I think as a broad class as the way I think about, there are classification, which is sort of similar to predictions where it's like, "Here's something, which bucket does this fall into?" It could be anything. It could be like, "Is this URL or SaaS app like we do for discretion capital? Or it's like you say, given this background, does this person fall into this or that mastermind fit?" I think that's true, and I think summarization is probably also one of the key ways to basically get value very quickly. And one of the key things there is, it's remarkable to me, you were saying when you were talking to your brother, it's like it's remarkable to me how often you can just put dirty data in there and it'll just clean it up and figure it out.You could take raw HTL, messed up JavaScript from a website, dump it in there and say, "Hey, give me, what does this business do? Give me the summarize of what this page is." Even though if you were to do that with pre LMs, then that would be a pain in the to do. And I think for me, that's one of the key mind shifts that this technology does is basically programming in general is extremely precise. Math is very precise, programming is very precise. I mean, it's like if you want to interact with text, you better clean up your text. It better be in a specific format. Ideally it's in the table of some kind. You normalize the data, you deal with it. And it's much easier as a programmer to deal with exact numbers and things than it is to deal with different various corpus of text.And I think that's probably one of the main things to keep in mind when you're thinking about use cases is that it effectively gives you new fuzzy tools. So it gives you a way to grasp in a fuzzy imprecise way, grab text and text formats and get value from that in a way that is almost impossible to do in a generic way before. Because before you had to handle every side case and every possible whatever, versus with these tools, you can just roughly grab some text and indicate the sort of thing that you want to be able to do and it'll refine it and like you say, summarize it and put it into a more valuable format where you can interact with it. And in fact, one of the most precise formats or one of the most interesting things is these things around embedding.So I think that's the next step that people get to. They start playing with it and they do the thing and then they sort of, "Go. Okay, how do I represent many of this thing? And being able to take extremely diverse textual, maybe dirty text sources and turn it into a very concise textual representation of something that contained information or even better an embedding that you can embed in a database and do things like vector search on." I think that's one of the key things to really understand when you're trying to think about the use cases and how it applies to a SaaS.Rob Walling:Yeah, and that's why it's helpful for me to have these categories of what it can do, even if they're all generative, you're right, they're all just generative. But as I break it down-Einar Vollset:Breaking down the next step.Rob Walling:But I'm thinking as a founder, let's say I ran an email service provider today, or I ran a CRM, I would want to say, when do I ask my users to generate text or to generate images? Well, obviously when they're writing an email, what are they getting that email from? Are they just trying to summarize something else? So should I build a summarization engine into my ESP, right? Or in my CRM, when I type in the URL of my contact, the sales lead shouldn't AI maybe try to categorize that because that's my second category, categorize it and say, "Hey, is this an e-commerce company?"Or even pull in a summary or write a summary of this company does the X, Y, Z in three sentences such that the sales rep doesn't have to do that. So having those four categories, and again, I'm not saying if we listen to this in a year, I bet we'll be like, "Oh yeah, those categories were off. But I think they're close." And I think that's a model of, if I was running a SaaS app today, I would apply each of those four generative categorizations, summarization and predictive to say, where in the app would my users benefit from it doing one of those? Or where do I ask them to do it today that AI can at least give them a start?Einar Vollset:And I agree with that, and I think it sort of relates to some of the other ways that I think about it and is what I tell TinySeed founders too is, it's important given this new capability to not just... It's completely the wrong approach to think that this is just NFTs and stick your head in the sand that is fundamentally wrong. I'll take an argument with anybody who thinks that, but even if you think it's like this is something that is great and you want to utilize, I think it's such a big change in capability that it's always behooves you to take a step back and look at the businesses that you have and the customers that you have and the use cases and the problems that you're solving for your customers, and take a big sort of step back and get up to the 30,000 feet level and think about what are the sort of jobs to be done in that generically for my customers and what is now possible given that this capability exists that didn't exist a year or two ago, what can I do differently?I think some people will end up not getting the most of this or be left by the wayside because they're a little bit too close to their existing solution. They're like, "Oh, I'll just add a chatbot to my thing, or we can do this." And it becomes very hard to build any defensive mode around that because it's like anyone can add a chat chat. There's got to be, at one point I was looking at product hunt and it was every single thing except two things on that day's product hunt was chat to my PDF docs.Rob Walling:It's too obvious.Einar Vollset:It's like 12 different ones. It's like, "Yeah, okay."Rob Walling:Exactly.Einar Vollset:Well, this is the tutorial case for almost all large language models like, "Come on. This is not a product. This is an auxiliary thing." And it's important that you take a step back and say, "Okay, what problems can I now? Maybe I can solve the same problems or bigger problems for my customers than what I was able to do before."Rob Walling:Yeah, that's our first point really. I have five points in an outline today. We may do more depending on other thoughts you have, but really the first one is to take those four categories that we've just talked about and ask yourself where each of them could be applied to your SaaS to help your customers to just make it better is to mental model. And as you said, the obvious ideas of putting a chatbot is not going to be enough.My second thought or the second point that I've realized ties right into what you just said with the chat PDF and how eight out of 10 on product hunt were that unless you build something novel that is non-obvious and relatively difficult to build, AI is not a differentiator if all you're doing is engineering a prompt and you can build it in a weekend, even though it can do something totally cool, anyone else can do that next weekend. That's a big mistake. Everyone can use it. The obvious idea is, again, summarizing X, Y, Z or building a chat for your PDF, there are going to be hundreds of those, so you have to go further and think about moats are still moats and five hours of code is not a moat.Einar Vollset:Yeah, I definitely think that's true. I think basically the key thing to think about in terms of how I think about founders and their SaaS businesses is like you say, I think it's important not just to think, "Hey, don't just stick your head into that." If it's two hours worth of work and it adds a really cool capability to your app, you should definitely do that. It's a mistake, not two, but you can't think that that's a competitive advantage, an additional mode than what you currently have.What you really want to be doing I think, is to say, "Okay, I have my mode. How can I further add to it with AI?" And I think if you don't do that, if some obvious stuff that people eventually will come around to realizing, "Oh, we should add this capability that the LOM gives us to the problem domain that you're working in. If you don't do that, then someone else will and someone may come out as left field and basically because you refuse to go with the times and add this capability to your product, then that might be a competitive advantage for someone else because they choose to do it and we refuse to do so."There's going to be some failure modes there where people are sticking their head in the sand about this and being like, "Oh, it doesn't matter, whatever." I think a lot of people, not a lot of people, but some people are going to get out competed by this low-hanging fruit. But the flip side is like you say, the low hanging fruit isn't in itself emote,Rob Walling:It's more an accelerant. I think of it, I mean there's a ton of examples we could use, but remember when rails came out for Ruby and somebody... I don't remember if it was DKH or someone on the team there built Twitter, a small version of Twitter MVP version in 20 minutes on a video, and people were like, "Oh my gosh, now I can build Twitter in 20 minutes." And it's like, "Yeah, that's cool. That's no longer a differentiator, like the code to build that." And so if you were still writing Ruby with no rails and building web apps, suddenly you were way slower than everyone else. And in fact, if you were using... I mean, there's a reason Laravel came out with PHP, Django came out with Python because those languages became much, much slower than Ruby at building web apps. And so again, it's an accelerant. It feels like, "Oh my gosh, I'm ahead of everyone, but it's like everyone else can use this too.."Einar Vollset:Yeah, it's true. And the way to think about it, I used the iPhone example early on, this is almost like, which I know is strange. It's almost like you can, if you have a web app, you can flip lick fingers and all of a sudden you have a native mobile app that works and that's what it's like. And if you think about it that it's like, "Well, it's so easy just to add a mobile app." You just click your fingers and you have it, so it's not a mote, but if you don't do that, someone else will. And then that will be a competitive advantage for them.Rob Walling:Becomes table stakes in this space, right?Einar Vollset:Yeah.Rob Walling:All right, so that was the second point. The third thing, I'm curious if you agree with me on this, but I wrote this out, the big AI ideas, trying to build your own models, your own LOMs and the massive horizontal plays, building a search engine with AI, it's like these are big, these are going to be billion and billion dollar companies, I think those are already done. They're going to be won by OpenAI, by Google, by Microsoft, by Facebook, IBM, whoever else gets into it. These players are so massive and so well funded that if you're a mostly bootstrap company like the Saas WISI, it's just too big. What do you think about that?Einar Vollset:I agree with that. So for example, one of the things that I have running in just in my local MacBook is I've taken Google Takeouts, exported all my email from all my email accounts and basically created a chatbot that allows me to talk to about my email. So I can ask, "Okay, when did I meet so-and-so? Or who are the people that I talked to after I went to this conference?" That sort of thing. It's very, very cool. But do I think it's a standalone business? Do you think it's a good business for a bootstrapper to start? No, because it's such an obvious thing for the big email providers just to add out of the box. I'm almost a little shocked that Google hasn't already added away for you to interact with Gmail that is like that. And so that's effectively, I think the big players will take the low-hanging fruits and accelerate on their way and add that compare, add to the existing competitive mode.So I wouldn't want to start an AI email startup type client. That doesn't make any sense, at least not for a bootstrap type business. Now, if you add Neumann and you raised a gazillion dollars, sure, go for it. But most people aren't like that. They don't necessarily do that. So yeah, I 100% agree with that, I still think the same is sort of true for search. Now some of these big hairy ideas that are like, once you realize understand what it does and understand the technology, then it's an obvious idea. If it's an obvious idea and a huge competitive market, but large incumbents what those guys are going to take that they're going to own that piece.And so building your startups around that and thinking like, "Oh, I'm smarter. I'm more nimble, I'm doing whatever." I'm like, "You know what? connecting Gmails data with OpenAIs APIs and calling that your startup, that's not competitive mode." That's not going to work for you. You have to go after like, "What is your existing mode, what is something new, something completely new that doesn't require people to change that behavior in order to be for you to be successful."Rob Walling:Or like we talked about above, you have existing moats probably within your company today. And using AI to make your product better is a way to extend those. And accelerate 0.4 that I'd like to communicate is in addition to thinking about how AI can be integrated into your product as features, which is 0.1, I think most SaaS founders, and frankly most entrepreneurs should probably be using AI internal to their company. Whether you're doing content marketing or you're trying to repurpose a YouTube video to Twitter or a YouTube video to a blog post, whether you say, draft a cold email based on my homepage to this type of buyer and have it give you a 101 oh, no, that's not funny enough. I mean, you can go back and forth with it to help outline YouTube videos. I will admit some of the YouTube videos that I'm putting out.I go to ChatGPT and say, "Outline a video 12 best business books to read this year, blah, blah, blah." But then I'll say, "Nope, not good enough. Regenerate. Regenerate. It's not even 50% for me, it's probably 25% I use or a third of what it gives me, but it helps get me outside of my own box." So we're using it for content generation, and I feel like small software companies especially really took advantage of when virtual assistances were $5 an hour in 2008. That was a game changer for my little company at the time. And I think that if you're not using AI in your own internal workflows, again, this is not building it as a feature in your app, but helping it make you faster. I think it's something that you should be thinking about. What do you think?Einar Vollset:Yeah, a 100% agree with that. I mean, I think the obvious case where this applies immediately is code. I don't write code anymore without AI helping me out, and I probably do only about 20% or 30% of the typing. It just moves faster. I don't bother if I have a new Python library that I need to figure out how to use, I don't bother trying to ask Stack Overflow anymore. I just am like, "I don't read the docs." My standard thing is, "Hey, I want to use this library in Python. Can you write me up some codes to do it?" For example, I wanted some visualization code. I've never been good at a visualization code. And I was like, "Okay, because there all kind of complex. They're a pain in us to deal with visualization stuff." So I was just asking ChatGPT, "Hey, can you visualize these 2000 embeddings for me?"Or whatever it was, and it just did. It was like, "yeah, just cut and paste this stuff in here, make sure you PIP install this library." And boom, it was doing the visualization, the three-dimensional visualization that I wanted to do without me having to really ever look outside ChatGPT to understand how the library works. And I think that applies. I also think it's like if you are in a profession or a party or thing is where you're generating text, for example, reports and things like that, internally, you're in a massive disadvantage if you're not using that. Anything that you're outsourcing to your VA or you have some medium level employee write text for that stuff, you should probably be looking at can, how can I augment this capability with it like an LOM?Rob Walling:I have a caveat to this one and I'm curious about it around with you just a little bit. It relates to this one plus the first point about building features into SaaS, but I feel like not every SaaS app itself needs or can use AI inside of it as a feature, but I do think every SaaS company or every SaaS founder could be using it internally pretty much, and everyone internally has something they can use ChatGPT or AI for. But I was trying to think of examples, and I mean there isn't a great use case for it. What about Ruben's company sign? Well, right, it's electronic signature. How could AI be integrated in that? Because I can't think of a great example off the top of my head.Einar Vollset:Sure, I can.Rob Walling:Okay.Einar Vollset:Hi, Ruben. Basically you have a company, it signs a bunch of documents, a bunch of contracts. How does the company keep track of its obligations that it's signed? How does it know that?Rob Walling:You mean what's in the documents? Like knowing what it's-Einar Vollset:Yeah.Rob Walling:That's interesting. So it becomes a knowledge base.Einar Vollset:All the contracts that are given, I mean contract management is driven can turn into a contract management. You can add a contract management capability to sign. Well, it could be like, "Yeah, part of the thing, you signed this contract and it says when you're going to get paid, summarizes your obligations to the client. Did you meet this? Yes or no? It understands every commitment you've made and can summarize it for you." So, yeah no-Rob Walling:I like that. This is why-Einar Vollset:That's a good example. There might be, but that particular case-Rob Walling:I like that one.Einar Vollset:... definitely I can see.Rob Walling:How about let's do one more and then we'll move on. I think in the world there is a percentage that won't use, but it's probably pretty small.Einar Vollset:I'm sure.Rob Walling:Yeah. But what about SavvyCal, right? Derek Reimer startup scheduling link competes with Calendly like-Einar Vollset:Absolutely. I want to be able to talk about my SavvyCal account links like, "Okay. Hey, summarize, what did I do with my... How many times have I talked to this person before? When was the last time I talked to these people?" It's unstructured, semi-structured data about what I did with my days that can be generated in text? Absolutely. You can use that built in. And actually it ties into one of the things I haven't done, like I mentioned, my email is a good example of how I'm using it to talk about, basically talk to my inbox. One of the things that I'm not doing that's kind of the low hanging fruit there too, is I want to be able to integrate it into my calendar and just say, so I emailed this person that and that date, and also by the way, I chatted to them, I had a Zoom call with them on such and such a date. That should be part of the information that summarizes into what I'm doing. So yeah, I think both of us two have pretty large, actually large language model in this case.Rob Walling:Cool. So let's move on from there to the fifth point. And this is one I'm sure you've thought about. So I'm curious, I think we both agree on it, but the question here that I would ask myself as a founder, is my business model a ticking time bomb. Because some businesses are, if you're a big team of analysts presenting data and you're doing a bunch of manual work and you're summarizing things like that becomes like you said, what was it the three-week report becomes a two-day thing? Well, once anyone can do that, that's a problem. So how should founders, what should they be thinking about and how can you escape that? How can you not let your business basically be completely deprecated by AI in those cases? It's not everybody, but there is a subset of SaaS out there.Einar Vollset:There are. And I think the use cases where you have... Again, maybe before it, a part of your mote was, "Oh, this is really dirty data. It's hard to deal with. It's imprecise. It requires verification." So you end up outsourcing to a call center in the Philippines, or not call center, but outsourcing overseas, and you're paying people to do textual analysis or updating reports manually because it's super hard to do with the existing technology. I think that particular model, I think if that was my moat, if that's what I did, I would be worried. I don't necessarily think it's like... So here's the thing, it relates to what LOMs are bad at. You can't have it. People say, "Oh, I can't do math. I can't do two times to the power, eight times, whatever, six, whatever." That's not like... Yeah, but that's what it does.That's just a calculator. It doesn't matter. That's what it's good at. What it's also, another thing it's not good at is queries like all the. Give me all the whatever it is in the world. It doesn't do well at that just because that's not what it's good at. That's not being able to iterate every role a database is not something that it's good at. And so I think the moat that exists from building out and managing and quality assurance on a team of people in the Philippines say, I think that's going to go away. But that doesn't mean, I think that the entirety of those businesses are just three lines of code and ChatGPT anymore. It just becomes a different moat.And if you lean then too heavily on that existing moat, then yeah, I think you'll be out competed. But I think a lot, this is what I'm saying is for those kind of businesses, it makes sense to sit down and say, "Okay, let's just admit that this particular thing is no longer a mode. What can we do given the capabilities that we already have and the customer relationships and the understanding of how we get that data, what can we build? It's almost like, "Yeah, if you've been cruising along on that mode by yourself, you're going to be in trouble."Rob Walling:And I'm here less to be, what do you call it, doom and gloom? The world is not over. I mean, we are in as entrepreneurs, we are in the best spot possible. One of the best spots possible to take advantage of this. This is exactly, I keep likening it back to having a VA for $5 an hour because in 2007 and 2008, I was running these very small businesses. I didn't have huge budgets, and I was either writing all the code myself and I was doing all the support myself because the only people I knew lived where I did in LA and I paid developers $75 an hour and I paid admins $30 an hour and I had no profit margin. And then when I read the four-hour work week, I was like, "What? I can do that?" And so I did, and it made my $3,000 a month net invoice suddenly be a 90% profit margin business. And that changed the game for me. And that's when I realized, "Oh, I can do this."So I think AI is that plus, plus, I think it's even more different. And I was in a position, and at the time people were like, "Oh no, offshoring, outsourcing, all Americans are going to have no jobs." And I was like, "A, that's not true. And B, a lot of us knowledge workers and developers and entrepreneurs are at a great place to take advantage of it." So that's my mental model of this.Einar Vollset:I agree. I mean, I think it's an amazing time to be alive and it's also an amazing time to be the bootstrap or nearly bootstrap a self entrepreneur because even just being aware that this exists and being able to write code, they can call an API, they can do some stuff that's an amazing. You're like heads and shoulders above your average, Joe and I think doom and glooming on it is completely pointless. It's going to change. It's change our lives, I think mostly for the better and having an optimistic view of where this is going to go and have it be like, "This is amazing. What cool things can I do now?" I think is the right attitude as opposed to the [inaudible 00:34:45] like, "Oh, all SaaS are going to go away. Everything's going to hell. And then by the way, the AIs will take over and murder us all.Rob Walling:Right. And look, is there a spot to say, "Will people lose jobs and will it have social impact, especially on just the lower end of data processing, data entry, whatever?" Yeah. This is not the podcast where we talk about that kind of stuff, but it certainly could have an impact. So as a listener, hopefully that was helpful to hear Einar and my thoughts on this, obviously we have, I would say a relatively unique perspective being invested in a lot of companies and just being knee-deep in SaaS day in and day out. If folks want to keep up with you, you are Einar Vollset on Twitter, and we mentioned discretion capital at discretioncapital.com as well as TinySeed of course that's what we work on together.Einar Vollset:Indeed.Rob Walling:Thanks again for joining me, man.Einar Vollset:Thank you.Rob Walling:Thanks again to Einar for joining me this week, and thanks to you for joining me every week. I'll be back in your earbuds again next Tuesday. This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 663.
In episode 637, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure as he answers a handful of listener questions. Topics covered range from hiring your first salesperson and acquiring a web app to dealing with the fear of having your idea copied and why bootstrapping a two-sided marketplace is usually a bad idea.
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In episode 636, Rob Walling chats with Claire Suellentrop about the new book she co-wrote with her co-founder, Georgiana Laudi. The book is called Forget the Funnel: A Customer-Led Approach to Driving Predictable Recurring Revenue. Gia and Claire have run a consulting firm for the past several years where they are working with startups and SaaS companies to help them learn more about their customers in order to drive more revenue. And this book is a distillation of their learnings.
Topics we cover:
- 1:09 - Why did Claire name their new book, Forget the Funnel?
- 2:36 - A three-step approach for unlocking customer-led growth
- 3:09 - A framework for getting inside your customers’ heads
- 14:01 - How to learn from future customers
- 20:21 - Applying and operationalizing all your customer insights
Links from the Show:
- Claire Suellentrop (@ClaireSuellen) I Twitter
- Georgiana Laudi (@ggiiaa) I Twitter
- Forget The Funnel: a Customer-Led Approach to Driving Predictable,...
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In episode 635, Rob Walling catches up with Tony Chan, the co-founder of CloudForecast, an AWS cost monitoring tool. Tony shared his victories, challenges, and failures in TinySeed Tales Season 3. It has been over eight months since we recorded the final episode.
In this episode, we reflect and catch up on what’s been happening with Tony and CloudForecast.
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They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. ...
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In episode 634, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure where he answers listener questions on topics ranging from naming your startup to initial aha moments and how to know if you have tapped out a specific niche.
Episode Sponsor:
Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startupsThe competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.
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In episode 633, Rob Walling chats with Matt Wensing, the founder of Summit. Matt is no stranger on the podcast. And we talk about Matt's decision to change Summit's brand positioning and the far-reaching impact on his business.
Episode Sponsor:
Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.
They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as...
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In episode 632, join Rob Walling and Einar Vollset for Hot Take Tuesday, where they analyze and discuss some of the latest news. Some topics covered include the Figma exit, side project distractions, no-code apps, and more.
Episode Sponsor:
Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups
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They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.
When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io/, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as...
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In episode 631, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he answers listener questions on topics ranging from when to rewrite your codebase to founder salaries and balancing your founder vs. developer mindset. Episode Sponsor Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.ioThe competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.And for...
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In episode 630, Rob Walling chats with Jonathan Weinberg, who is the founder of Builder Prime, a CRM software for home improvement contractors. We chat about how he came up with the idea for Builder Prime, getting early traction, and finding product-market fit.
Topics we cover:
- 2:46 - Getting Builder Prime to almost $1M ARR
- 3:32 - Deciding who to hire next
- 4:40 - How did Jonathan come up with the idea for Builder Prime?
- 8:29 - Jonathan's decision to quit his day job and work on Builder Prime before it made any money
- 10:55 - The unique steps that Jonathan took to get early traction
- 17:05 - When did Jonathan realize he had product-market fit?
- 24:04 - Jonathan’s hockey stick growth moment
- 28:31 - What’s next for Jonathan?
Links from the Show:
- Jonathan Weinberg @Jonathan_codes) I Twitter
- Builder Prime
- TinySeed
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In the final episode of TinySeed Tales Season 3, Rob Walling checks in with Tony Chan of CloudForecast. They reflect on some of the most prominent challenges and milestones that the business has faced over the last year.
Topics we cover:
- 1:31 - Tony reflects on attending his first MicroConf Growth in Minneapolis
- 3:30 - An update on how CloudForecast’s content marketing efforts are going
- 7:59 - Getting an article featured at the top of Reddit
- 11:16 - An update on how their new senior engineer is doing
- 16:18 - Why Tony prefers to hire full-time employees
- 18:26 - An update on CloudForecast’s sales pipeline
- 20:50 - Tony reflects on the challenges of figuring out where to invest time and capital
- 24:30 - The importance of getting low-level tasks off your plate
- 28:36 - What is Tony least looking forward to in the next year?
- 30:38 - What is Tony most looking forward to in the next year?
Links from the Show:
- Tony Chan (@toeknee123) I Twitter
- ...
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In episode 628, join Rob Walling on a solo adventure where he dives into his newest framework. The 5 P.M. Idea Validation Framework is a helpful way to evaluate different startup ideas through a set of criteria to gauge the size of the opportunity.
Want to download the PDF version the the 5 p.M. Idea Evaluation Framework? Join the Startups For The Rest Us Mailing List, and we'll send you the link in the first email. Look for the orange email opt-in widget on the page.
Topics we cover:
- 3:37 - Why is it called The 5 P.M. Idea Validation Framework?
- 4:06 - Problem
- 6:23 - Purchaser
- 8:17 - Pricing Model
- 9:00 - Market
- 12:48 - Product-Founder Fit
- 13:21 - Pain to validate the product
- 13:59 - Evaluating two business ideas through Rob’s 5pm framework
Links from the Show:
- SaaS Ideas to Build Right Now, Before Someone Else Does
- Jon Yongfook's Tweet
- MicroConf Connect
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In the penultimate episode of TinySeed Tales Season 3, Rob Walling checks in with Tony Chan of CloudForecast.
Tony shares some recent big wins, including hiring a senior engineer. We also meet Tony’s cofounder, Francois Lagier, for the first time.
Topics we cover:
- 1:49 - The story of how Tony and Francois first met
- 2:14 - Hiring a senior engineer at CloudForecast
- 8:51 - Tony shares two recent big wins at CloudForecast
- 14:31 - The paradox of choice that all startup founders face
- 16:30 - CloudForecast dives into some new content marketing and SEO initiatives
- 18:35 - What are Tony and Francois looking forward to in the next month?
Links from the Show:
- Tony Chan (@toeknee123) I Twitter
- Francois Lagier (@francoislagier) I Twitter
- CloudForecast
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.
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In episode 626, Rob Walling chats with Nick Swan, the founder of SEOTesting.com. SEOTesting helps SEO professionals and agencies automate the reporting of page updates and changes. Nick originally launched it as a free tool under a different name.
In this episode, we cover when Nick decided to charge for it, renaming the tool, rewriting the codebase, and the journey to growing to $18,000 MRR.
Topics we cover:
- 3:17 - Growing SEOTesting.com to $18,000 MRR
- 4:53 - What kinds of businesses use SEOTesting.com?
- 8:11 - The decision to build SEOTesting
- 12:33 - Launching SEOTesting as a free tool
- 15:39 - When Nick started to charge for SEOTesting?
- 18:16 - Nick’s initial pricing strategy and rollout
- 27:06 - Reflecting on the initial launch
- 29:49 - Nick’s thought process for pivoting and changing the company name
- 34:45 - Reaching product-market fit
- 36:01 - Nick’s decision to bring on a co-founder a few years in
- 39:32 - Prioritizing marketing vs. development ... Read more... »
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In the fourth episode of TinySeed Tales Season 3, Rob Walling checks back in with Tony Chan of CloudForecast.
Tony shares that they’ve doubled their MRR in the last couple of months, and it feels like he has unlocked a cheat code.
Topics we cover:
- 2:02 - What’s changed since the last episode?
- 3:14 - Winning a huge enterprise deal that nearly doubled their MRR
- 5:21 - Deploying capital
- 12:31 - A key mindset shift that Tony had to make
- 13:33 - Tony’s experience at a recent TinySeed retreat
- 18:10 - Tony reflects on some low points
- 19:35 - What is he looking forward to?
Links from the Show:
- Tony Chan (@toeknee123) I Twitter
- CloudForecast
- TinySeed Applications are now open
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you
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In episode 624, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he answers some listener questions on topics ranging from customer interviews to transitioning from a free to a paid product and prioritizing marketing vs. development.
Topics we cover:
- 2:11 - What episodes should I start with to get up to speed?
- 3:27 - When to transition from a free to a paid product
- 11:37 - Customer interviews as a service
- 15:03 - Making the jump from software to manufacturing
- 19:32 - Prioritizing marketing vs. development
Links from the Show:
- Greatest Hits
- Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies
- How Much Do SaaS Companies Spend on Marketing?
- MicroConf Locals
- MicroConf Youtube Channel
- MicroConf Connect
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.
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Rob...Read more... »
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In the third episode of season 3 of TinySeed Tales, Rob Walling checks in with Tony Chan of CloudForecast to see how he is faring since his co-founder is now on paternity leave.
During this time, Tony shares a big win along with dealing with some hiring and growth setbacks.
Topics we cover:
- 1:24 - How the business is doing while Francois is on paternity leave
- 2:36 - Tony’s perspective on being a solo founder for the past 6 weeks
- 5:04 - Managing your own founder psychology
- 7:49 - How Tony is dealing with an unexpected sales slump
- 16:16 - Did Tony end up hiring a full-time SDR?
- 21:04 - Dealing with setbacks
- 22:41 - What Tony is looking forward to in the next couple of months
Links from the Show:
- Tony Chan (@toeknee123) I Twitter
- CloudForecast
- TinySeed Applications are now open
- Episode 613 | Hacking Your Founder Psychology
- Summit
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In episode 622, join Rob Walling and fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, as they discuss topics like balancing profitability versus growth and deciding which features to build and not. They chat about some specific features that Derek has decided to build, those he has not decided to build, and the thought process behind them.
Topics we cover:
- 4:02 - Making product decisions
- 9:22 - Deciding on what features you are not going to build
- 19:12 - When to reply to debates on Twitter
- 27:42 - Twitter’s newsletter feature
- 31:40 - Derrick’s perspective on balancing profitability vs reinvesting in the business
- 43:10 - Is Rob scratching his maker itch by being an investor in companies through TinySeed, or is he missing building SaaS businesses?
- 46:29 - Should Rob join TikTok?
Links from the Show:
- Derrick Reimer @derrickreimer I Twitter
- SavvyCal
- Applications for TinySeed’s Fall 2022 SaaS Accelerators Are Now Open
- ...
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In this episode of TinySeed Tales, Rob chats with Tony Chan from CloudForecast about the progress his rapidly growing team has made over the previous few weeks.
Tony is riding the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship and in this episode you get to follow along.
Topics we cover:
- 1:47 - New full time engineering hire onboarding results
- 4:50 - Part time SDR hire onboarding results
- 7:31 - How hiring affects company culture
- 10:19 - Tony’s biggest wins in the last few weeks
- 14:30 - Growing the product to grow Expansion Revenue
- 15:45 - CloudForecast’s summer sales lull
- 19:40 - Keeping sane as a founder
- 22:00 - What Tony is worried about coming out of summer
- 24:00 - The next MRR target
Links from the Show:
- Tony Chan (@toeknee123) I Twitter
- CloudForecast
- TinySeed Applications open September 12, 2022
- TinySeed Tales S2E1 I Introducing Gather
- TinySeed Tales 1 I A Non-Technical Saas Founder
If you have questions about starting or scaling a...
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In episode 620, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he answers some listener questions. These questions range from which SaaS business metrics to pay attention to and how to find good SaaS ideas to helping an employee transition from a task-level to a project-level thinker.
Topics we cover:
- 1:44- What SaaS business metrics matter the most?
- 11:21- Do you have any general observations about building a SaaS for non-technical customers?
- 16:00- How do you find a good SaaS idea?
- 24:41- How can I assist an employee in transitioning from a task-level to a project-level thinker?
Links from the Show: * Episode 480 I Stairstepping Your Way To SaaS with Christopher Gimmer * 2022 State of Independent SaaS Report * The Stairstep Approach to Bootstrapping * TMBA 100 - Rip, Pivot, and Jam * MicroConf Connect * MicroConf Europe * Applications for TinySeed’s Fall 2022 SaaS Accelerators Will Open September 12th * MicroConf Youtube Channel
If you have...Read more... »
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In episode 619, Rob kicks off the third season of TinySeed Tales with Tony Chan of CloudForecast. Tony joined TinySeed in Spring of 2021, and this episode is the first in a series of 6 Thursday episodes following his journey through the program. Links from the Pod
- MicroConf Europe
- Applications for TinySeed’s Fall 2022 SaaS Accelerators Will Open September 12th
- CloudForecast.io
- Tony Chan I Twitter
Transcript Rob Walling: This week, and for the next six weeks, we're going to have episodes of TinySeed Tales season three in your feed on Thursday mornings. So you get a special bonus episode for this next six weeks. If you're not familiar with TinySeed Tales, it's a seasonal show where I interview a founder across about years time. I believe these six episodes were recorded over somewhere between 10 and 14 months. The idea is to give you some insight into the ups and the downs, the struggles, the victories, and the failures of a real startup founder growing a real SaaS...Read more... »
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In episode 618, join Rob Walling as he chats with Sam Dogen, the founder of Financial Samurai, which is one of the longest-running and most popular personal finance blogs. Over the last 13 years, Sam has personally written over 2,500 essays along with a Wall Street Journal Bestselling book. We talk about achieving financial freedom, […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 617, Einar Vollset and Tracy Osborn join Rob Walling for a bootstrapper news roundup episode. They cover a wide range of topics from ProfitWell’s big 200 million exit, spreadsheet mentality, watching an acquirer ruin your company, and much more. Topics we cover: [3:06] What’s your take on ProfitWell’s acquisition? [5:52] Watching an acquirer […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 616, Rob Walling chats with Liam Martin, the co-founder of Time Doctor and author of the new book, “Running Remote: Master the Lessons from the World’s Most Successful Remote Work Pioneers.” We dig into the fundamentals of asynchronous communication, how to do remote work better, and some surprises they saw during the pandemic. […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 615, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he covers what makes a business bootstrappable (and things to avoid), cargo culting, and how large of a business you can build at different customer lifetime value levels. Episode Sponsor: Hiring developers has been tough for years, but it is even tougher these days. […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 614, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer. They start out by talking about Derrick’s decision to take a sabbatical from The Art of Product podcast after co-hosting it with Ben Orenstein for more than 5 years. Then, they answer a handful of listener questions, including when to quit your day job to […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 613, Rob Walling chats with Dr. Sherry Walling about the release of her new book, Touching Two Worlds: A guide for finding hope in the landscape of loss. They cover a lot in this episode, including the hustle of launching a book, the behind the scenes of how Sherry has hacked her own […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 612, Rob Walling chats with longtime friend and repeat podcast guest Dave Rodenbaugh. Dave was even at the very first MicroConf back in 2011. In this episode, we have a candid conversation on our experiences balancing side projects with a day job, struggling with the decision in our own different ways of when to quit, and the surprising habits you have to unlearn once you are finally independent of the day job and consulting work. Topics we cover: [1:27] Dave’s thought process behind expanding Recapture [5:34] The decision to go full-time on Recapture [15:05] Dave’s process for unlearning bad employee / consultant habits [20:07] The danger of the arrival fallacy [24:20] What would you do if you sold the business? [26:03] Balancing a side project with your day job Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 611, join Rob Walling as he chats with Patrick Campbell, the cofounder of ProfitWell, on how he and his co-founders bootstrapped ProfitWell to a $200 million exit. Profitwell was acquired by Paddle earlier this year. We dive into a bunch of topics you have not heard elsewhere, including details about the actual transaction, […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 610, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure where he talks about the benefits of working a day job before launching your company, some bad habits he picked up in the early days, why the college dropout narrative is annoying, and what he would do if he was starting over today. Topics we […]Click the icon below to listen.
In episode 609, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he answers a handful of listener questions ranging from when it makes sense to have multiple LLCs and hiring task-level vs. project-level thinkers to planning for large projects. He also shares his thought process behind ways you can build a complex mobile app prototype […]
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In episode 608, Rob Walling chats with Adrian Rosebrock, who bootstrapped and successfully exited his seven-figure info product company, PyImageSearch, in 2021. PyImageSearch provided digital courses around visual image detection and image classification in Python. Adrian wasn’t always an entrepreneur. He graduated with a PhD in computer science, got a day job, realized early on […]
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In episode 607, Rob Walling chats with Asia Orangio, and they answer listener questions about customer onboarding videos, overcoming revenue plateaus, stealth launches, and founder-driven sales. Topics we cover: [1:12] Where’s the best place to put customer onboarding videos? [5:37] How to scale a content business [15:36] What to do if revenue has plateaued? [21:41] […]
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In episode 606, Rob Walling chats with Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos. They talk about company building, staying up to speed when you are no longer doing the day-to-day tasks as well as their thoughts on a recent string of acquisitions happening in the podcast ecosystem. Topics we cover: [1:24] 2 MicroConf Local events […]
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In episode 605, Rob Walling is joined by Ruben Gamez, and they dig into a handful of listener questions. Topics range from building a SaaS with little development experience and using no-code tools to build your MVP to stair-stepping bootstrapping a two-sided marketplace. Topics we cover: [0:55] Selling to the enterprise [4:31] What level of […]
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In episode 604, Rob Walling talks with Derrick Reimer and gets the latest update on SavvyCal, how he makes product decisions, and they also share the best things they’ve bought for $100 and $1000 that have added much more value to their lives than the price point. Topics we cover: [4:50] Apple’s influence on startup […]
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In episode 603, Rob Walling chats with David Darmanin, one of the founders of Hotjar. Hotjar was bootstrapped to $40 million ARR with a fully distributed team of 170 employees. David and his cofounders sold the company for a 9-figure exit in 2021. From their incredible launch story and their unique DTC approach to sales […]
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In episode 602, Rob Walling explains SaaS metrics to his kid. This is a great episode to listen to if you are unfamiliar or not well-versed in SaaS because we dig into from first principles, starting with dollars, revenue, and the purpose of businesses, all the way to SaaS metrics like MRR, ACV, and LTV. […]
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In episode 601, Rob Walling chats with Nick Fogle of ChurnKey. Nick previously cofounded Wavve which was acquired in early 2021. In this conversation, they chat about how the idea for Churnkey came from his other business, decision to sell Wavve, and some of the key differences between bootstrapping a B2C vs a B2B SaaS. […]
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In episode 600, join Rob Walling for a solo adventure as he dives into topics ranging from when to hire your first manager to a mental framework for deciding which things to work on vs. what to delegate to your team. He also shares his thought process behind when things take multiple iterations and how […]
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In episode 599, Rob Walling chats with Dominic “Dom” and Tracy Phillips of CodeSubmit. CodeSubmit provides a library of real-world, take-home tasks in more than 60 coding languages. Some of their customers are Audi, Netflix, Carbon Health, 3M, and Apple. Dom and Tracy were also a part of the spring 2020 batch of TinySeed. During […]
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In episode 598, join Rob Walling as he answers listener emails. Topics range from diversity in the startup ecosystem and when’s the right time to write your company’s mission, philosophy, and values to how to find good business ideas and the different approaches for developing features for a new app. Episode Sponsor: Microsoft for Startups […]
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In episode 597, Rob Walling chats with Ashley Baxter, the founder of With Jack. With Jack gives peace of mind and protection for UK freelancers through insurance, professional indemnity, public liability, contracts, legal expenses, etc. We dig into the lessons Ashley learned from a failed insurance business she inherited from her father, how she used […]
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In episode 596, Rob Walling is joined by Einar Vollset and Tracy Osborn for a bootstrapper news roundup episode. They cover a wide range of topics from Google’s decision to bring employees back into the office (and the potential implications for bootstrapped companies), founder salary data trends, email management strategies, and much more. Episode Sponsor: […]
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In episode 595, Rob Walling catches up with Brian and Scottie Elliott, the husband and wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management SaaS. This husband and wife duo shared their victories, challenges, and failures, including a cash crunch, moving upmarket, and managing to double revenue over their nine episodes of TinySeed Tales Season […]
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In Episode 594, Rob Walling chats with Dan Andrews and Ian Schoen, the founders of Dynamite Jobs and the TropicalMBA podcast. We talk about how they started over. They started a new business, Dynamite Jobs, a couple of years after selling their physical products company back in 2015. Episode Sponsor: Microsoft for Startups Founder Hub Microsoft for […]
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In Episode 593, join Rob Walling for a Solo Adventure as he chats about accidentally deleting all of his old tweets, retaining talent, the ideal market for a SaaS business, and more. The topics we cover [3:10] Deleting old tweets [8:43] Retaining talent [12:39] Ideal market for a SaaS business If you have questions about […]
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In Episode 592, Rob Walling is joined again by Cody Duval for a technical conversation about the dos and don’ts for amazing customer support. The topics we cover [2:00] Customer success vs customer support [5:10] Response time [8:59] Post-support surveys [10:58] When to hire first customer support person [13:02] Chat widgets [17:09] Doing customer support […]
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In Episode 591, Rob Walling chats with Cody Duvall about his story of acquiring and growing Keeping in a really crowded space of help desk and customer support tools. The topics we cover [4:34] Launching into a crowded market [8:00] Keeping’s sales process [10:01] Background on acquiring Keeping [14:53] Outsourcing a team to rewrite the […]
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In Episode 590, Rob Walling chats with Craig Hewitt about building versus buying internal tools, how to compete in a competitive space, accounting software, a founder who has a zombie company where investors want their money back, and more. The topics we cover [5:03] Finding a co-founder as a non-technical founder [11:20] Balancing priorities between […]
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In Episode 589, Rob Walling chats with Jason Buckingham about how he found a startup idea from making more than 70 cold calls. It’s a great story about staying focused, putting in the time and doing the hard work. The topics we cover [7:14] Finding a problem via cold calls [13:07] Identifying a problem and […]
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In Episode 588, Rob Walling chats with Courtland Allen about a wide range of bootstrapper and indie hacker topics including the struggles with motivation/depression, bootstrapping today, fighting the urge to quit, and frameworks for getting your first dollar. The topics we cover [3:43] Hiring a podcast producer [6:21] Letting go in business [7:09] Invite-only experiment […]
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In Episode 587, join Rob Walling as he answers listener emails including feedback and a critique about the podcast, the state of microentrepreneurship, and where to start with user growth. The topics we cover [2:22] The reason Rob continues to podcast [5:26] Renaming a company or podcast [8:40] Revisiting inflation [15:06] The state of microentrepreneurship […]
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In Episode 586, Rob Walling chats with Michele Hansen about her new book where she talks about how to master customer interviews as a startup founder. The topics we cover [5:00] User experience research for startup founders [11:20] Customer Interviews for developers [12:30] Feature requests as customer research springboard [19:55] Practicing customer interviews [23:37] Comparing […]
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In Episode 585, Rob Walling chats with Sherry Walling about moving outside your comfort zone, the power of relationships, psychedelic-assisted therapy, as well as her new book about grief launching later this year. The topics we cover [3:22] Deciding against self-publishing [12:00 ] Building an audience vs. a network [14:26] Psychedelic-assisted therapy [24:00] The power […]
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In Episode 584, Join Rob Walling for a Happy New Year edition of the show where looks ahead to 2022 and evaluates what he wants to focus on. The things we choose not to do are just as important as the things we chose to do and Rob encourages you to think hard about what […]
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In Episode 583, Rob Walling chats with Sam Parr about about building an email list, selling to Hubspot, podcast growth, and how to spot business opportunities. The topics we cover [3:53] Building Hustle to 8 figures in revenue [5:52] Growing an email list [11:01] Selling to a B2B SaaS [19:00] My First Million and growing […]
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In Episode 582, Rob Walling is joined by Einar Vollset to answer listener questions about enterprise sales, crowdfunding, replacing yourself, and things that every B2B SaaS founder should know. The topics we cover [1:26] Investing with Reg CF [6:20] Enterprise plans and pricing [13:31] Finding your replacement [19:29] Best way to give software demos [21:55] […]
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In Episode 581, Rob Walling discusses how to grow money sensibly while protecting the principle during inflationary times. He explores real estate, collectibles, crypto, stocks, bonds, and other strategies to consider as inflation and other economic changes occur. The topics we cover [2:00] Inflation is here [7:20] Pricing flexibility with SaaS [9:44] Rules when inflation […]
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In Episode 580, Rob Walling chats with Ross Hudgins, an SEO expert, about seven common things that SaaS founders either do well or frequently get wrong. The topics we cover [4:42] Put your blog in a subfolder, not a subdomain. [7:18] With keyword-focused content, make the URL exactly the main keyword. [10:10] Be thoughtful about […]
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In this special episode of Startups For the Rest of Us, Rob Walling chats with Einar Vollset about not only the announcement of the TinySeed Syndicate but also the investment landscape for B2B SaaS today. Even if you don’t think you’ll raise funding, it’s important to understand the dynamics of the investment and acquisition market […]
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In Episode 578, Rob Walling is joined again by co-host emeritus, Mike Taber for an update on his progress with Bluetick. Today we find out how Mike’s merger that he has been working on for the past year has panned out. The topics we cover [3:55] Mike reflects on time and effort working on partnership […]
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In Episode 577, Rob Walling chats with Jim Kalbach about how to uncover the right problem to solve with the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework. If you haven’t been exposed to JTBD, this episode will be a great primer as we dive into practical examples for bootstrapped or mostly-bootstrapped founders. The topics we cover […]
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In Episode 576, Rob Walling chats about permissionless entrepreneurship, why you probably shouldn’t be a media company if you’re an early stage or bootstrapped SaaS, and the importance of exploring beyond what your customers ask for to find out what they actually need. The topics we cover [2:01] Permissionless entrepreneur [9:25] All startups should not […]
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In Episode 575, Rob Walling is joined by Derrick Reimer for a quick update on SavvyCal and some recent hiring decisions he has made. They also answer listener questions about shipping code as a bootstrapper, pivoting, selling a business through a broker, and more The topics we cover [2:23] The latest with SavvyCal [12:02] Shipping […]
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TinySeed, MicroConf’s venture fund and SaaS accelerator, is launching their Fall 2021 accelerator batch this week. 📈 SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/microconf?sub_confirmation=1 #tinyseed Join Rob Walling (co-founder of MicroConf and TinySeed) and Tracy Osborn (TinySeed’s Program Director) as they announce the 18 SaaS startups chosen out of hundreds of applications for the latest cohort of the year-long program. […]
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In Episode 574, Rob Walling chats with Andrew Fiebert, a founder who just couldn’t get away from software. He’s a software developer, turned podcaster, turned marketer, and now he’s a software entrepreneur and on this episode, they discuss his success and struggles while building Lasso. The topics we cover [2:40] Introductions [4:15] WordPress plugin with […]
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We need your help! The 2022 State of Independent SaaS Survey is now live and we need as many eligible founders of B2B SaaS businesses to complete the survey. This survey will be used to create our third annual State of Independent SaaS report, offering recommendations, insights, and pitfalls critical to planning for a future in […]
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In Episode 573, Rob Walling chats with Einar Vollset and Tracy Osborne about the part-time contractor versus hiring full-time debate, the acquisition of Sandhills Development, as well as the launch of a TinySeed Europe. The topics we cover [02:14] FT vs PT Contractor [09:06] When could part time contracting work? [10:25] Sandhills Development acquisition [14:50] […]
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In Episode 572, Rob Walling does another solo adventure to talk about taking responsibility for the outcomes of your business and the importance of putting in the reps as a founder. Bootstrapping a startup is a marathon, not a sprint and it’s important to enjoy the journey along the way. Thanks to Software Promotions for […]
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In Episode 571, Rob Walling chats with Peter Suhm about moving on from WP Pusher and Branch. We also dive into how he came up with the idea for Reform and his process for validating the idea with a landing page before building. The topics we cover [1:28] Intros [2:48] Default alive and selling Branch […]
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In Episode 570, Rob Walling answers listener questions about the ideal business for bootstrapping, how to create trust with potential customers, navigating depression as an entrepreneur as well as advice for introverted founders. The topics we cover [1:42] Problems that are more conducive to bootstrapping [8:51] Creating trust with potential customers [10:51] Battling depression or […]
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In Episode 569, Rob Walling chats with Anna Maste, a founder who’s been a part of the MicroConf community for several years. They talk about how Anna bootstrapped a two-sided RV marketplace and eventually sold it for a healthy multiple. The topics we cover [1:16] An RV boondocker [2:53] Selling for a healthy multiple [5:21 […]
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In Episode 568, Rob Walling talks about MailChimp selling for $12 billion to Intuit, the largest exit for a bootstrap company, ever. Not that all founders aspire to grow to this scale, but it’s truly an incredible day for bootstrapped founders to know that we have the potential to get to this level without raising […]
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In Episode 567, Rob Walling chats with Don Pottinger about joining a company as a developer, transitioning to CTO within 6 months, buying the company for $1, and then later on selling it for a life-changing sum of money. The topics we cover [1:13] Introductions [4:08] Learning to code independently vs learning on the job […]
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In Episode 566, Rob Walling chats with Hana Mohan about her journey as a SaaS founder. They compare and contrast bootstrapping and being venture-backed, hiring a chief of staff early on as a startup founder, and more. The topics we cover [2:17] Intro [3:36] Deciding not to bootstrap MagicBell [6:34] The team Composition at MagicBell […]
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In Episode 565, Rob Walling answers listener questions about focusing on one product vs multiple, sharing revenue metrics with early employees, and how to overcome the lack of motivation when starting new projects. The topics we cover [05:31] Focusing on one core product vs multiple separate products at the same time [14:59] Sharing revenue metrics […]
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In Episode 564, Rob Walling chats with Sol Orwell about growing his website, examine.com to millions of views per month, changing revenue models, and the importance of doing customer interviews. The topics we cover [2:14] Intro [3:06] How Examine started [7:21] Examine’s differentiated approach based on scientific research [9:33] 10,000 paying subscribers [10:59] Building trust through transparency […]
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In Episode 563, Rob Walling answers listener questions about startup operating agreements for co-founders, common cloud hosting solutions, struggling as a young entrepreneur, and selling your startup when you have over $1M in annual recurring revenue. The topics we cover [1:40] Operating agreements for startup co-founders [5:50] How to do startup vesting when not working […]
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The application for TinySeed’s Fall 2021 SaaS accelerator batch of startups will open for two weeks starting on August 9th, 2021. Watch the video recording of the Fall 2021 Batch Info Session here: https://youtu.be/6dqTClonO2Y Interested in applying? Join us for an info session with the TinySeed team to talk about the application process, what to […]
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In Episode 562, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure to talk about enterprise sales, mental frameworks for founders, undoable decisions, and how to handle being approached about an acquisition. The topics we cover [2:33] Enterprise sales advice [5:48] Measure twice, cut once for SaaS [10:56] Holy Grail of SaaS: Expansion Revenue [13:12] Holy Grail […]
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In Episode 561, Rob Walling chats with Andy Cabasso, co-founder of Postaga, about launching on Product Hunt, having a done-for-you service in addition to a DIY self-service SaaS app, growing to a team of six people, having a free plan, and doing a ton of customer development in the early days. The topics we cover […]
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In Episode 560, Rob Walling is joined by Einar Vollset and Tracy Osborn to talk about deciding when it’s time to hire someone, how to think about which role to hire next, changing location to force productivity, and more. The topics we cover [2:52] Deciding to hire a community manager [9:28] Location hacks for improved […]
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In Episode 559, Rob Walling chats with Andrew Gazdecki, the founder of MicroAcquire, about bootstrapping a two-sided marketplace in a competitive industry. They talk about Andrew’s previous successes, including growing Bizness Apps to $10 million in annual recurring revenue. They also unpack Andrew’s current business, MicroAcquire, and talk about how it was started, its current […]
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In Episode 558, Rob Walling chats with Einar Vollset about bootstrapping versus funding and the many options that exist in between. No longer is it a decision between a bootstrapped or venture path. With their unique perspectives, Rob and Einar talk about all of the funding options that exist. They also share some things to […]
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In Episode 557, Rob Walling flies solo to talk about investing for founders, with an emphasis on retirement. Rob views investing as a long-term game, not treating the stock market like a slot machine by buying and selling stocks. As founders, we’re busy with our work, our family, and our friends. We don’t want to […]
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In Episode 556, Rob Walling chats with Adam McCrea about growing from zero to $300,000 in ARR over the course of three years as a Heroku add-on. Adam is still a single founder with no employees and up until joining the TinySeed accelerator in their Spring 2021 batch, has fully bootstrapped Rails Autoscale. Now, he’s […]
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In Episode 555, Rob Walling answers listener questions with Ruben Gamez. They discuss different models of bootstrapping success, hiring W2 versus hiring contractors, determining if a business is an ideal fit for bootstrapping and they revisit enterprise pricing. The topics we cover [01:24] Bootstrappers Rob & Ruben admire [12:25] Pros and cons to hiring contractors […]
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In Episode 554, Rob Walling chats with Sherry Walling about grief as a part of entrepreneurship and how to get better at handling grief as an entrepreneur. They also discuss burnout and properly evaluating if it’s the right time to sell a company. The topics we cover [02:18] Grief is part of entrepreneurship [05:12] Getting […]
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In Episode 553, Rob Walling chats with Tracy Osborn about the latest bootstrapper news, including the recent Stack Overflow and Moz acquisitions, quitting instead of giving up remote work, and highlights from TinySeed 2020 Batch. The topics we cover [01:52] Intro [03:45] Stack Overflow acquisition [12:11] Moz acquisition [16:33] Quitting instead of giving up remote […]
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In Episode 552, Rob Walling is joined by co-host emeritus, Mike Taber to chat about his decision-making around whether to launch a freemium plan, whether to do an AppSumo deal, how his potential partnerships merger is panning out. The topics we cover [04:93] Update on the CRM partnership opportunity, AppSumo, and Freemium [23:39] Yet another […]
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In episode 551 of Startups For the Rest of Us, Rob does another solo adventure to talk about hiring owner-level thinkers, the fallacy of an autopilot passive income software business, and more. The topics we cover [1:25] Hiring task-level thinkers, project-level thinkers, and owner-level thinkers [07:43] The fallacy of an autopilot passive income software business […]
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In Episode 550, Rob Walling chats with Tony Chan, co-founder of CloudForecast, about his incredible story of perseverance after getting rejected multiple times only to finally find product-market fit and reach six figures in annual recurring revenue. The topics we cover [04:11] CloudForecast’s current revenue and customer base [08:43] Origin story for the idea of […]
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In Episode 439, Rob Walling is joined by Jordan Gal to answer listener questions about starting an e-commerce SaaS and the laws and regulations, and compliance requirements required. They talk about managing enterprise perceptions of risk towards bootstrap startups. They also answer questions about bootstrapping and enterprise SaaS as well as hiring a growth role […]
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In Episode 548, Rob Walling chats with Zack Naylor about Aurelius and the harrowing tale of launching multiple times and having to rewrite and re-platform the codebase before finally finding success. They also discuss how to interpret feedback from your customers and the importance of listening to your instinct as a founder. The topics we […]
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In Episode 547, Rob Walling chats with Craig Hewitt about private podcasting, Apple’s announcement around their subscription podcast offering as well as the accelerating growth of Castos. The topics we cover [1:22] Focusing on private podcasting at Castos [15:50] Mobile app for private podcasting [20:21] Apple’s big announcement [28:08] Castos MRR growth Links from the […]
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In Episode 546, Rob Walling flies solo for a Q&A episode. With a backlog of great listener questions, Rob discusses qualified small business stock (QSBS), hiring entrepreneurially-minded employees, indie hacking while working at a large company, and more. The topics we cover [01:51] Should I switch to a C Corp to take advantage of QSBS […]
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In Episode 545, Rob Walling chats with Tracy Osborn about the importance of learning design fundamentals for startup founders. They also discuss her new book and the pros/cons of self-publishing vs working with a publisher. The topics we cover [00:52] Intros [02:00] Deciding to self publish vs going with a publisher [11:11] Design fundamentals for […]
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In this episode, Rob Walling is joined by Josh Pigford to answer listener questions, covering topics like annual pay increases, B2B SaaS price increases, white-label vs branded product, and hiring startup-minded people. The topics we cover [03:04] Building Maybe, and Rob busts Josh’s chops about starting a business so soon [10:02] Question #1: Annual Raises […]
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In Episode 543 of Startups For the Rest of Us, Rob is joined again by co-host emeritus, Mike Taber as he gives an update on all things startups and they analyze top tactics for superhero success. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned. Click here […]
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In episode 542, Rob Walling chats with Zach Moreno, the Co-Founder and CEO of Squadcast about how they grew their revenue and surpassed $3 million in ARR as a mostly bootstrapped startup. They also discuss the role and importance of having a co-founder, as well as the impact that having a “knowledge investor” had on […]
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In episode 541, Rob Walling flies solo to discuss things like product myths and the misinterpreted Henry Ford quote, selling a company, defining life-changing money, and dual funnels. The topics we cover [02:48] Product myths and the misinterpreted Henry Ford quote [07:21] Post-exit thoughts [15:32] Life-changing money [22:30] The power of dual-funnels Links from the […]
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In this episode, Rob talks with Tracy Osborn and Einar Vollset, about the recent news that’s come out in the bootstrapper community. They talk about the Indie.vc shutdown, the new features coming out on Twitter, LinkedIn’s new gig marketplace, and more. The topics we cover [03:18] Twitter Spaces [10:05] The Network Effect and Twitter Verification [14:32] […]
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In this episode, Rob chats with Dan Norris about selling his productized service to GoDaddy, his latest book, and latest business, a very successful brewery in Australia. They also ruminate on the impact that post-exit money has had on their lives. The topics we cover [07:04] Finding the motivation to write 6 books [07:38] Selling […]
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In this episode, Rob Walling is joined by Einar Vollset as they answer listener questions ranging from when to sunset a product, filling out enterprise security assessments, acquiring a company where the previous owner had sold lifetime deals and not disclosed it, and more. The topics we cover [03:20] Deciding when to sunset a feature […]
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In this episode, Rob is joined by Rand Fishkin for an honest and transparent conversation about his time at Moz, raising funding, his book Lost and Founder, as well as his current effort, SparkToro. They discuss growth levers and the importance of owning the channel where you build your audience. The topics we cover [01:44] Impacts […]
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In episode 536 of Startups For the Rest of Us, Rob does another solo adventure. As we all faced perhaps one of the worst years on record, Rob talks through some things that 2020 taught him personally, professionally, and at a higher level, philosophically. He also looks beyond 2020 and discusses opportunities for 2021 for […]
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In Episode 535, Rob is joined by co-host emeritus, Mike Taber to talk about what Mike has been up to over the past seven months with Bluetick, including an exciting reveal of a big project he’s been working on. The topics we cover [05:41] BlueTick partnership or merger with a CRM for field sales reps […]
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In this episode, Rob talks with Josh Pigford in a first appearance since the sale of Baremetrics for $4m. They discuss his seven-year journey to build Baremetrics, the details of the sale, and Josh’s post-sale, non-software aspirations. The topics we cover [02:42] Intros [04:26] Avoiding capital gains via qualified small business stock. [09:08] Josh’s post-sale […]
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In this episode, Rob speaks with Adii Pienaar, a multi-time founder with multiple exits under his belt. They discuss life probability and the importance of measuring your entrepreneurial success by the things that matter the most to you and your life. The topics we cover [4:36] What motivated Adii to write the book [10:17] Life […]
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In this episode, Rob sits down with John Warrillow, author of multiple bestselling books and someone who has years of experience in building and selling companies. They discuss when to sell, how to create leverage, the importance of hiring an expert, and more. The topics we cover [7:30] The right time to sell a company […]
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In Episode 531, Rob talks with Colin Gray, the founder of The Podcast Host and Alitu. Join us for this great conversation as we talk about Colin’s early days of building a hobby project in podcast hosting, hiring a freelancer to start producing shows. and building a SaaS app on top of an audience. The […]
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In this week’s episode, Rob sits down with Derrick Reimer to answer listener questions. They discuss whether they have any regrets about selling Drip, protecting against web scraping, making the leap from side project to full-time, and making decisions as a development team. The topics we cover [2:10] How development teams think about decisions together […]
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In this episode, Rob chats with John Howard, a MicroConf Connect member and founder of Slingshot. They unpack the business model of measurable swag giveaways and then dive deep into John’s pricing strategy and explore alternatives as well as opportunities to move into a subscription-based model. The topics we cover [9:26] Starting a physical product […]
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In today’s episode, Rob and Mike Taber review and rank their past yearly predictions and then make big, bold projections for 2021 with bets ranging from extraterrestrial life, VR becoming mainstream, the end of commercial real estate, and more. The topics we cover [2:45] Reviewing our predictions for 2019 [7:42] Predictions for 2021 If you […]
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In today’s episode, Rob is joined by Courtland Allen as they answer listener questions. They talk about equity splits, the best cities for bootstrappers, splitting brands, and where to look for business ideas. The topics we cover [2:03] Splitting brands between agency and SaaS [10:55] What percent equity split when co-founding an app [18:52] Where […]
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In episode 526 of Startups For the Rest of Us, Rob chats with a long-time friend, Justin Vincent about his startup successes and failures and the importance of taking small steps when starting as a founder. They also talk about Justin’s latest project, Nugget, a startup bootcamp and academy. The topics we cover [4:04] Building Plugg.io […]
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This episode is a walk down memory lane as Rob shares the story of acquiring his first product 15 years ago. We hear how Rob navigated the purchase of the product, a potential partnership with a trusted friend, and pushing through when his back was against the wall. Hopefully, this episode will inspire you to […]
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In this episode, Rob chats with Michele and Mathias Hansen, the married co-founders of Geocodio. We talk about bootstrapping into a commoditized space and how they’ve grown their SaaS app from a side project to full-time over the past 6.5 years. The topics we cover [01:38] What is Geocodio? [10:29] Innovating in a commoditized market […]
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In episode 523, Rob hosts a rapid-fire lightning round of listener questions ranging from whether to focus on one or multiple businesses, finding the right amount of customer research, breaking through slow growth, and teaching entrepreneurship to kids. The topics we cover [4:38] If you were starting a business today and you were earlier on […]
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Rob welcomes back to the show a frequent guest, Craig Hewitt for a “Where Are They Now?” syle episode. Craig is the founder of Castos and has appeared many times on Startups For the Rest of Us. In this episode, they reconnect and talk about the latest with Castos, from hiring a growth marketer, merging […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Join Rob as he chats with Brian & Scottie for the final episode of Season 2 of TinySeed Tales. In the last year, Gather managed to double their revenue and overcome most of the challenges they faced along […]
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Episode 521 is a roundtable episode where Rob brings on a couple of guests to talk through topics today that relate to bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped startup founders. Today, we have Tracy Osborn and Einar Vollset joining us, as we talk through a potential impending recession, the Google anti-trust suit, Dropbox moving to permanent work […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Last time we spoke, they were bouncing back from the initial shock of the COVID-19 crisis with the potential to sign two large enterprise deals that could help them out with an ongoing cash crunch. In this episode, […]
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In this episode, Rob talks with the founder of SegMetrics, Keith Perhac. SegMetrics is a SaaS product that helps users get clarity on where their leads come from, how they act, and how much their marketing is worth. We dive into the difference between SegMetrics and other options for attributing sales and revenue to traffic […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Today’s episode was recorded after the COVID-19 shelter in place orders went into effect. We talk with Brian and Scottie about how the pandemic has affected Gather as well as their life beyond the scope of their business. […]
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On this episode, Rob talks through profit sharing, stock options, and equity and makes a comparison between these various approaches. If you are thinking of ways to incentivize team members as a bootstrapper, this episode is for you. The topics we cover [04:34] Bonuses [07:52] Equity Grants [11:47] Stock Options [20:09] Profit Sharing [26:09] Which […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. On this episode, Brian and Scottie share with us an update on their unexpected MRR growth, the psychology of raising prices, and the difficulty of making decisions amidst a mountain of unknowns. The topics we cover 01:07] Update […]
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Episode 518 of Startups For the Rest of Us is an experimental format where Anthony Blatner, a LinkedIn expert, live consults with John Samuelson, a B2B SaaS founder on advertising a SaaS business on LinkedIn. There’s a wealth of knowledge in today’s episode so if you are considering or have thought about LinkedIn ads, this […]
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On Episode 5 of TinySeed Tales, we learn about the success of their recent outbound email campaign. We also hear about their progress with raising their prices and transitioning away from Gather’s solo pricing tier. The topics we cover [02:00] Checking in on the past few weeks A little bit of an emotional roller coaster […]
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We’re joined in this episode by the founding team of Scatterspoke, John Samuelson and Colleen Johnson. What started as a lark to learn new technology has now turned into a successful business with more than $12k MRR. In this episode, we learn how they turned a side project into a successful fulltime business. The topics […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Today we’re going to dive into the stress that comes with entrepreneurship and how it shows up in their personal lives. Moving up from one customer segment to another is hard. Each customer segment is like an Island […]
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Matt Wensing returns for his third appearance on the podcast. He is the founder of Summit and was in TinySeed Batch 1. We dive into Matt’s decision-making process for re-writing the entire codebase. We talk about choosing the right features to build, talking to your customers, starting with a blank slate vs templates, and much […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Today, Rob chats with Brian & Scottie about their new hires, setting ambitious revenue goals, and managing stress and anxiety as entrepreneurs. The topics we cover [01:01] Update on hiring, new sales, and more Hired a VA Hired […]
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Rob is joined by Anthony Eden from DNSimple as they answer your listener questions. They cover topics ranging from tax liabilities with contractors, getting feedback on a prototype, and finding a technical cofounder. If you have questions about starting or scaling a SaaS that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for the next […]
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Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. On this episode, Rob chats with Brian & Scottie about taking their product upmarket, focusing on customer success, hiring consultants and contractors, and more! The topics we cover [01:43] Check in on how this week has been going […]
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Producer Xander Castro has been working on MicroConf since 2014 and is a long-time listener of the show, but this is his first time on the podcast. On this episode, we take an inside look at MicroConf Remote from a few weeks ago and discuss what worked well, what we’ll do differently next time and […]
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Welcome to Season 2 of TinySeed Tales, where we follow the founders of one SaaS startup week by week through their struggles, victories, and failures. On the first episode of this series, Rob introduces us to Brian & Scottie Elliott from Gather, an interior design project management app. Show Notes 1:30 Meet the Co-Founders of Gather, […]
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On today’s episode of Startups For The Rest of Us, Rob Walling (@robwalling) talks with David Newell (@davidsnewell), a Senior Advisor at Quiet Light Brokerage, about the dos and dont’s of SaaS valuations. The topics we cover 4:12 Running your business as if it were a sellable asset 5:15 Quiet Light deal count and other […]
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Join us for a Rob Solo Adventure version of Startups for The Rest of Us as Rob Walling talks about the power of optionality. He explores the importance of having different paths and avoiding backing yourself into a corner and being constrained when making important life decisions. The topics we cover 1:27 The story of Gary […]
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Show Notes On today’s episode, Rob chats with Mike Ritchie about how they got their first paying customer in 30 days of launch, listening to your customers, and doing a massive pricing revamp. SeekWell is looking for a freelance SEO marketer to help grow the top of their funnel. If you have experience in analytics […]
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On today’s episode, Rob chats Wil Schroter about the story behind Startups.com, the importance of output vs. hours, being specific about the kind of things you don’t want to do in life, choosing venture capital, and much more. The topics we cover 2:43 How soon after first acquisition did Wil Schroter, CEO and founder of […]
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Show Notes Today, we have a conversation between Rob and Anthony Eden from DNSimple as they revisit the six stages of SaaS growth starting with pre-launch and pre product-market fit to scaling and company building. Be sure to listen in until the end of the podcast as they talk about what lies beyond company building, […]
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Show Notes On today’s episode, Rob is joined by Asia Orangio as they answer listener questions ranging from how to find the right marketing channel, how to build a brand for your business, as well as how to decide whether to start or join a startup. If you have questions about starting or scaling a […]
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Show Notes On today’s episode, Rob chats with Damian Thompson, co-founder of LeadFuze. He’s also the founder of VPSales. They talk about if and when to hire a sales team, the kinds of cold email outreach campaigns that are working well today, the sales stack, and much more. The topics we cover 5:43 Should a […]
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On today’s episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob catches up with guest Derrick Reimer as they discuss shutting down a slack competitor while building and preparing to launch a new calendar SaaS. They discuss topics like user research, defining and validating an idea, choosing a big market, viral loops, and more. The […]
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Show Notes You’ve probably heard a lot about the #NoCode movement but may not know what it means, exactly. Today, we have the great pleasure of talking with someone who is knee-deep in the #NoCode movement. Helen Ryles has launched 42 projects over 10+ years and on this episode, she shares with us why she […]
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This week we chat with Tracy Osborn (@tracymakes) as we discuss 15 of the top tools we use to run our businesses. As a followup to a previous, popular tweet, we thought we’d give an update on what tools we continue to use today, as well as share some of the new tools we have […]
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This week Rob answers some great listener questions. We discuss the best way to validate a product idea, how to expand a product with traction internationally, advice on launching a restaurant product during COVID-19, and whether to start an affiliate program. If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like […]
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In his second appearance on the show (he first appeared on Episode 367), we chat with Benedikt Deicke from Userlist. Along with his co-founder, Jane Portman, they are building an easy to use customer messaging tool catered specifically towards SaaS companies. In this show, we talk about some of the challenges in building a product […]
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In the first episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us since our 500th milestone, Rob checks in with Mike Taber about his progress with Bluetick. It’s been nearly 7 weeks since Rob last checked in (Episode 494) and a lot has happened in the world since then. They talk about business trajectory amidst COVID-19, […]
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This is a big milestone episode for Startups for the Rest of Us. Episode 500. Since the very first episode nearly a decade ago we’ve had more than 10 million downloads, answered more than 1,500 listener questions, and shared more than 292 hours of startup content. Over the years, this podcast has developed a particular […]
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This episode is part two in a two-part conversation. If you haven’t already, listen to Part 1 first. This week is the second part of a conversation between Rob and Jordan Gal, the founder of CartHook. In the episode, Rob and Jordan dig into the 4th, 5th and 6th stages of SaaS growth and compare […]
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This week is a conversation between Rob and Jordan Gal, the founder of Cart Hook. We dig into the six stages of SaaS growth. We compare our journeys 1:1 between growing Drip and growing CartHook. It’s shocking how well the journeys line up with each other. Some of the differences in the journey are also […]
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This week Rob talks with Steli Efti about selling during a pandemic. They also talk about how to set yourself up for success as a founder during a possible recession and how to adjust your sales process. You don’t want to shy away from sales, but you also don’t want to be tone-deaf to the […]
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This week Rob answers listener questions with TinySeed co-founder Einar Vollset. Einar has been on the selling side of many SaaS acquisitions. He is also a developer with a Ph.D. in computer science, so he has a well-rounded experience, and it makes him the perfect person to answer these listener questions. There are some interesting […]
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This interview was recorded several months ago, but is still relevant despite the pandemic. Colin Nederkoorn, the co-founder of customer.io has taken a unique approach to building their company. Customer.io does marketing automation for the entire customer lifecycle. They have raised funding, but not traditional venture money, and they’ve run it more like a self-funded […]
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Today, Rob flies solo to talk about 7 different things that he has learned in his 20 years of entrepreneurship. He also offers some feedback about what he is seeing in the startup communities today, advice on how to deal with competition, marketing tips, and how to build a team of developers. The finer points […]
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This week we catch up with Mike Taber, he comes on the show every once in a while to share his progress as he grows his SaaS App, Bluetick. We haven’t checked in with Mike since before the quarantine, and the last time we spoke to him, he had more than doubled his revenue in […]
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This is a round table discussion with Craig Hewitt (founder of Castos), Einar Vollset (cofounder of TinySeed), and myself. We are in three different cities on two different continents, so we have plenty of different perspectives on the COVID-19 crisis. We are talking about our own businesses and the advice we give to other founders. […]
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This bonus episode of Startup For The Rest Of Us is from a MicroConf On Air live stream in which Rob interviews Courtland Allen, founder of Indie Hackers, about interviewing 155 startup founders and what he learned from building a community from scratch. It was such a great conversation, I wanted to put it in […]
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews Danielle Simpson and Arvid Kahl, co-founders of FeedbackPanda, a SaaS business they bootstrapped to $55k MRR with no outside funding and no employees. They sold directly to teachers, a price-sensitive market, and they used referral programs and word of mouth to create rapid […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with guest Matt Wensing, answer a number of listener questions on topics including reaching high-touch prospects, finding advisors and more. Items mentioned in this episode: RiskPulse Olive Crewbooks Out of Beta Podcast Patrick Campbell’s MicroConf Talk Transcript Rob: Welcome to this […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with guest Einar Vollset, talk about the current crisis and as a founder what your mindset should be and what to do to be prepared. #1: Don’t panic, clear heads will prevail #2: No business is recession proof #3: Be cautious […]
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Show Notes 10 years to the day….Startups For The Rest Of Us was born. In this episode Rob reflects back on he and Mike Taber starting the podcast all those years ago and the journey its been. This episode includes a 5 minute play of the very first episode of the podcast. Items mentioned in […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Matt Wensing about his exit from his company Riskpulse, dealing with multiple investors, his new company Summt, and why forecasting is crucial. Items mentioned in this episode: TinySeed MicroConf On-Air Castos Summit Out of Beta Podcast Transcript Rob: Welcome to […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber about his progress with Bluetick. They talk about new growth, where that growth is coming from, theories on why customers are choosing Bluetick over competitors, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf Connect Bluetick.io Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob is joined by Jordan Gal and Tracy Osborn for a roundtable discussion. Some of the topics in this episode including Basecamp reinventing email with Hey.com, Leadpages being acquired by Redbrick, the growing popularity of subscription based pricing and how many active subscriptions […]
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Show Notes In this episode Startups For The Rest Of Us Rob interviews Maren Kate of Avra Talent about her entrepreneurial journey. She talks about her first company that raised 5.5 million in funding, hit $1mil in MRR, had over 400 employees, but ultimately failed. She talks about how she recovered both mentally and professionally, […]
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, the tables have turned as Rob is interviewed by Dr. Sherry Walling. They talk MicroConf, the podcast, state of independent SaaS report and TinySeed but also explore bigger themes like what Rob wants to accomplish with all of his businesses and a unifying theme he’s […]
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with guest Ruben Gamez answer a number of listener questions on topics including current marketing tactics, scaling from 5 to 10 employees, SaaS longevity and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Docsketch Bidsketch MicroConf Connect Peldi’ s article about profit sharing Quiet Light […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews growth marketer Andy Baldacci about how he got his start, his early days at Hubstaff, marketing for Groove, and he gives some practical tips/advice for the listeners. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf Connect SaberSim The Effective Founder Podcast Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob does a discussion show format with guest Derrick Reimer. They discuss multiple topics including the pros/cons of remote work, value vs. stress of Twitter, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: The Art of Product Podcast Derrickreimer.com StaticKit Baremetrics Blog Post: “I […]
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber’s progress with Bluetick. They talk about his big new customer, traction on the podcast tour, Mike’s outreach to his LinkedIn connections, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Bluetick.io Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of Startups for […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Christopher Gimmer of Snappa, about his journey to making SaaS his full-time income. He details how he stair-stepped his way from small apps and products to 7 figure SaaS. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf Baremetrics Transcript Rob: In this […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with Tracy Osborn , answer a number of listener questions on topics including founder hotseats, forgotten subscriptions, two-sided market places and more. Items mentioned in this episode: State of Indie SaaS Report Metcalfe’s Law Stack Overflow GrowthHackers Tracy Osborn Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob reflects back on his goals of 2019 and shares some lessons that are broadly applicable to founders/entrepreneurs. He also shares how he “unplugged” from the internet/devices while on a recent vacation with his family and the benefits he experienced. Items mentioned in […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Brian Casel of Audience Ops, answer a number of listener questions on topics including assessing product market fit, finding a mastermind and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Bootstrapped Web Podcast The TMBA Podcast Dynamite Circle Productize Course MastermindJam Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Jordan Gal of CartHook about his big move to stop his free trials, move to demos, and increase his prices. Items mentioned in this episode: CartHook Bootstrapped Web Podcast CartHook Pricing Change Blog Post Lincoln Murphy blog post about Qualification […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber on his continued progress with Bluetick. The final conclusion to the Google audit is revealed, and they check in with the .Net component problem, the podcast tour, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Bluetick Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this half episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob makes the biggest announcement in MicroConf history and talks about the future of the conference. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf
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Show Notes On this final episode following Craig Hewitt of Castos, Rob checks in to get the results of the “no credit trial” decision, and to see whether or not the move increased conversions.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Brian Casel of Audience Ops, about recovering from a 40% decline in MRR. They start the story back in 2016 and work through the decline, audience ops rebound, the start of Ops Calendar, and Brian’s decision to learn how to […]
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Show Notes This week Craig Hewitt of Castos, feels the pains of a growing team and talks about how his role as a founder must evolve as the team continues to grow.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Laura Roeder joins the podcast to answer a number of listener questions on topics including managing annual subscriptions, being a non-developer founder, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: MeetEdgar MicroConf Stripe Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of Startups for the […]
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Show Notes In this week’s episode Craig Hewitt “turns the business on it’s head” by implementing a no credit card trial.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Shai Schechter of RightMessage, about his amazing launch and then finding himself near bankruptcy and how he was able to right the ship. Items mentioned in this episode: RightMessage RightMessage.baremetrics Shai.io MicroConf Europe Transcript Rob: In this episode of Startups […]
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Show Notes Rob is back with Craig Hewitt of Castos. They talk about learning to delegate more of his responsibilities as a new growth marketer joins the team.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Jane Portman of Userlist. They discuss the struggles of growing slowly, gaining traction in the crowded space, and some of the lessons learned from her first SaaS app. Items mentioned in this episode: Userlist UI Breakfast Podcast User Onboarding: The […]
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Show Notes Rob does another follow up with Crag Hewitt of Castos, they talk about his new hire (growth marketer) and news of a major break-through.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber on his progress with Bluetick. They talk about the finale of the Google audit, a new integration. and trying to find differentiation in the market. Items mentioned in this episode: TinySeed Zapier Transcript Rob: In this week’s […]
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Show Notes Rob follows up with Craig Hewitt of Castos, as he shares some big news on the podcast
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike walk you through some of the talks and key takeways from MicroConf Europe 2019. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf MicroConf Europe Balsamiq HubSpot picture of an evening reception at MicroConf Europe 2019 at Vala Beach Transcript Rob: In this […]
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Show Notes Rob continues his conversation with Craig Hewitt of Castos in this week’s episode of “TinySeed Tales”.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, the tables have turned as Tracy Osborn interviews Rob about his past year. They talk life after Drip, focusing on the backstory of TinySeed and the ups and downs that have come along since its launch. Items mentioned in this episode: TinySeed TracyOsborn […]
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Show Notes Rob starts his new podcast series “TinySeed Tales,” with an interview with Craig Hewitt of Castos.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Adii Pienaar of Conversio, about his life changing exit, when and why he decided to sell, and what the whole process was like. Items mentioned in this episode: Conversio TinySeed Adii.me Discretion Capital Transcript Rob: In this breaking news edition […]
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Show Notes Rob introduces “TinySeed Tales”, a show that follows one SaaS founder week by week through their struggles, failures, and victories.
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Craig Hewitt returns to the show to answer a number of listener questions on topics including productized services, podcasting, and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Bean Ninjas Podcast Motor LeadFuze Castos TinySeed Transcript Rob: In this episode of Startups for the Rest […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber on his progress with Bluetick. They talk about Mike’s motivation, specifically over the long term , the continuing Google security audit, differentiating from competitors and more. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf State of Independent SaaS Survey […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Steli Efti of Close.com, about his highs and lows of the past year as well as a in depth dive into starting your first sales process. Items mentioned in this episode: Close.com MicroConf Europe The Startup Chat Zapier CartHook LeadFuze […]
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Show Notes In this half episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob announces the inaugural state of independent SaaS survey. A survey that looks at SaaS benchmarks for non-venture backed companies and how you can participate. Items mentioned in this episode: State of Independent SaaS Survey Rob’s Video setup
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob does a Founder Hotseat with David Heller of Reimbi, about dealing with his specific issues with enterprise sales. Items mentioned in this episode: Reimbi TinySeed Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. I’m your host […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with co-host Jeff Epstein, answer a number of listener questions on topics including competing against a giant company, splitting from a co-founder, having enough features and more. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf TinySeed Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob checks in with Mike Taber’s progress on Bluetick. They revisit some topics that were brought up from their last episode together including motivation, personal retreat, accountability, the Google audit and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Bluetick TinySeed Airmail Zapier Transcript Rob: […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and co-host Tracy Osborn answer a number of listener questions on topics including funded competition, growing an email newsletter audience, white-labeling and more. Items mentioned in this episode: MicroConf Europe MicroConf APSE.io Build Blockchain Tech UpCounsel Tracy Osborn Transcript Rob: Welcome to […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews Craig Hewitt of Castos, about the unique set of challenges to starting and growing a SaaS product as a non-technical founder. Items mentioned in this episode: RogueStartups TinySeed Podcast Motor Seriously Simple Podcasting Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Mike returns to the podcast to give updates on the fate of Bluetick as well as progress updates on his motivation and health. Items mentioned in this episode: BlueTick Seriously Simple Podcasting FounderCafe Transcript Rob: In this Taberrific episode of Startups for the […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob answers a number of listener questions on topics including starting a marketplace, marketing channels, resellers and more. Items mentioned in this episode: Kiwi for Gmail TaskTrain RobWalling.com Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. I’m […]
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Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews Ruben Gamez of Bidsketch, about his 10 plus years of bootstrapping, lessons learned, improved decision making, and his new product. Items mentioned in this episode: Docsketch FounderCafe ZenFounder AppSumo Transcript Rob: Welcome to this week’s episode of Startups For the Rest […]
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Tracy Osborn about things she would of done differently during the 9 years she ran WeddingLovely.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob does a throwback episode. Almost 9 years to the day Rob and Mike published episode 14 about overcoming fear and taking risks which is a message that is still applicable today.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews Jeff Epstein, Founder of Ambassador, about building and selling his multi-million dollar startup as a non-technical founder. They dive deep into the details of the acquisition and the toll it took on him.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Jordan Gal answer a number of listener questions on topics including LinkIn outreach, building features versus fixing bugs and more.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of US, Rob interview Laura Roeder, Founder and CEO of MeetEdgar. They talk about her fast success with growing MeetEdgar, dealing with platform risks, and the humbling experience with her second venture.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of US, Rob does a Founder Hotseat interview with Matt Wensing of SimSaaS. They talk about how to develop a strong cadence of work as a one person company.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob along with co-host Tracy Osborn answer a number of listener questions on topics including two side marketplaces, automated testing, building like-minded relationships and more.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike talk about the current status of Bluetick. They discuss the Google approval process, external/internal motivations, current roadblocks, and Mike's future with Bluetick.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike answer a number of listener questions on topics including pricing and customer development. They also continue to discuss Mike's verification journey with Google.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike talk about how to build more successful integrations. They discuss how to approach the different areas of risk including work estimates, API integration, co-marketing opportunities and more.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike talk about some of the pitfalls of absolute thinking. Things are rarely black and white, they are more nuanced and on a spectrum. The guys explore the advantages to this approach.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike answer a number of listener questions on topics including what are their biggest regrets, how to deal with the loneliness of building a startup, and task management.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Mike answer a number of listener questions on topics including which signals matter, staying on task without external motivation, and how they manage their time.
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In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob and Einar Vollset talk through the different kinds of corporate entities, how they differ, and how they can impact you in the future.
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