The Non-Tech Founders Podcast: Recent Episodes
Nathan Powell
Fortnightly conversations about running a business as a non-technical founder. Join Laura and Nathan as they navigate the developer-dominated world of entrepreneurship, bootstrapping and beyond.
Today's episode is a summary of our top advice on becoming a non-tech founder in this developer-dominated world.
We also cover an update on Laura's WordCamp EU experience and share some news about the future of this podcast.
We cover:
- Laura's first WordCamp EU experience and overcoming fears about public speaking
- Why Laura thinks non-tech founders should go audience first when launching a product
- Nathan's tips on the importance of finding product-market fit and testing EARLY
- Our views on bringing on a technical co-founder vs. going it alone
- The question of building a product based on an existing company (e.g. an extension) and whether it's worth it
- Some news about the future of this podcast
Laura talks about how she grew her large audience back in the day and how one blog post (A Simple Web Developer’s Color Guide) for Smashing Magazine triggered a series of events that changed everything.
Nathan talks about how he was thrown into freelance life thanks to the 2008 crash and later went on to build Nusii, a proposal SaaS for design agencies. His MVP cost $3000 and was awful!
One thing that doesn't seem to have changed is that content still seems to rule when it comes to building a business. Both Laura and Nathan used content from the start.
Sometimes being careful doesn't pay...at least in the case of Nathan who built Nusii even though all of his customer development interviewees told him they wouldn't use it!
What happened to forums, comment sections on blogs and design feedback sites?
Links:
https://www.bidsketch.com
https://zipmessage.com/
https://kickassfreelancing.com/
https://client-portal.io/
https://featureflux.com/
https://blogstatic.io/
Laura launches a new look for Client Portal and Nathan gets a senior developer onboard to help him build Feature Flux.
- Is content still the way to market a new product?
- How to get access to your competitor's marketing strategies.
- Content creation is hard!
- The dangers of shiny object syndrome.
- Laura gets back into freelance design work.
- Shiny Object Syndrome. How do you maintain focus on what matters?
- What are the best parts of starting a new project?
- Multiple bets or one main product? Which is best?
- Is procrastination a self-defence mechanism? Are we scared of failing?
Design Academy
Client Portal
Feature Flux
Double Your Freelancing
Expect more detailed summaries soon :)
Links from today's episode:
How to Build the Ultimate Productivity System (2022)
Pieter Levels: Making $2.7M A Year With No Employees
Building a second brain
Hello and welcome to The Non-Tech Founder's podcast. Join us for fortnightly conversations about running a business as a non-technical founder. Laura and Nathan will navigate the developer-dominated world of entrepreneurship, bootstrapping and beyond.
In this first episode, we give a quick intro to why we're doing this, a little about who we are and our backgrounds and what we're up to right now!
About Laura.Laura is the founder of 3 products: Client Portal (a super simple way to store your clients’ deliverables), Design Academy (a design course for developers), and Project Pack (sets of templates and documents for freelancers and agencies). Occasionally, she still takes on design projects.
About Nathan.Nathan is a UX designer by trade but has been creating his own products since 2013. Founder of Nusii (Online proposal software. Sold in 2019), author of What the UX! and Develop Your UX (a super simple course that teaches the basics of UX to developers) and currently building Feature Flux (Design version control for product teams).
You can find them here.
Laura's Twitter.
Nathan's Twitter.