Product People » Episodes

EP27: Does Amy Hoy get scared? (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:56 +0000

In this episode of Product People: does Amy Hoy still get scared before a launch? How do you choose an audience? And she answers some listener questions.

Highlights

“The 30×500 bootcamp has been moved to June 15/16: Why you should do a tiny product first”

“So much of what we’re doing (with our online courses) is creating community.”

“Our Bacon Biz community will be open to everybody: baconbiz.com”

“People have set-up their lives where they let themselves get jerked around by their emotions all the time.”

“If you launch something, you’re going to get good feedback and bad feedback. No matter what the price is, somebody’s going to complain about the price.”

“People unconsciously prioritize their feelings as an excuse.”

“Sometimes you’ll go to someone, because you need some advice, but they’ll end up re-enforcing the wrong things. You need to find people that can focus on facts.” – Justin

“So many ills are cause by just reacting to feelings.”

“What really scares me is karaoke.”

“Ask yourself: What logical data is telling me I should be afraid? What’s the worst possible thing that could happen?”

“The key, seems to be, to keep trying things. Not everything’s a home run, but they keep trying.”

“A lot of people’s fear is of what people will think of you.”

“The easiest way for me to turn this around, is to quit being so self-centred. To keep reminding myself: it’s not about me.”

“Don’t ask: what do I want to build? Ask: what do people need?”

“You can’t actually help anyone; you can only help people that want to help themselves.”

“You have to help people with something specific, as opposed to being general. You’ll

“When people ask me: ‘what audience should I serve?’ I ask them: ‘Well, what are you? If you’re a Ruby developer, than serve Ruby developers!’ Stick within your own circles.”

“You’ve already chosen your audience by who you’re already associating with.”

“To punch above your weight you need to use every single advantage you have. If you try to pick a new market you know nothing about, you’re giving up one of your core advantages.”

“Start serving the audience you already belong to.”

How can people break out of their insecurity? “It’s not a question of ‘who you are’. Do your research: what does it tell you? You don’t have to wonder ‘what do I have to offer that people want?’ Look at your resume.”

“Always be researching customers; never stop. I look wherever people congregate: forums, mailing lists, blog posts, off-hand comments from people on Twitter, support portals, user groups.”

“Don’t walk up and ask people what their problems are; you have to observe.”

Where do you keep your customer research notes? “I use a text file. Simple as that. Don’t use fancy tools.”

“For content marketing, I take what I’ve learned in my research phase, and write posts around that.”

When we sell people things, are we pandering to their narcism? “It’s not narcissistic to think about yourself, and what you need. It’s narcissistic to think that everything’s about you.”

“We don’t have to add new features to compete. New features don’t always make a product better.”

Show notes

30×500 Accelerated Bootcamp, on June 15-16

Stop networking at events

Brennan Dunn

Grumpy Programmer

Rob Wallling

Premium Sponsors

Sprint.ly

Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter: @sprintly

WPengine

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Shout outs

Welcome to our shout-outs section. This is a chance for you to advertise your bootstrapped product, a job opportunity, or your side-project to our audience of product people, entrepreneurs, developers and designers.

Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

Finally: Ting! For our USA listeners, if you go to productpeople.ting.com. Ting is a mobile service that gives you great rates, no overage penalties, and multiple devices on one plan. If you go to productpeople.ting.com you’ll get $25 off most Ting devices or $25 toward Ting service!

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

Photo courtesy of Webstock: http://www.flickr.com/photos/webstock06/6885525943/in/photostream/

EP26: Amy Hoy sells her My Little Ponies

Justin — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:00:04 +0000

Amy Hoy gives a personal interview on her growing up in suburban Maryland, programming on an Apple Iic, selling her My Little Ponies to buy a Power Mac, and how she ended up building her first products.

Highlights

“I started programming when I was 7 year old. At home we had an Apple IIc, and I wrote some programs in BASIC on that.”

“Programming books suck.”

“I grew up in suburban Maryland. It was a wasteland: the only place to get coffee was at a gas station, or one of those sub shops that don’t have a name.”

“Growing up, I didn’t have any business mentors. I was all alone. I learned from books.”

“I was always hustling trying to get money. To buy my Power Mac I sold all of my My Little Ponies.”

“My entire life, everyone told me I couldn’t do stuff.”

“I dropped out of high school in 9th grade and started freelancing.”

“Communicating and teaching are my #1 passions.”

“To me it’s really interesting how people hear about people, and start following people” – Justin

“Twistori ended up making us a lot of money.”

“Working for this startup was like living in Dilbert, but with lots more money and parties.”

“It took about 1-2 days a week, for 3 months to build Freckle.”

“I remember hearing about the 30×500 formula, and thinking: ‘Whoa! That’s doable’” – Justin

“We’re doing a 30×500 bootcamp on June 9-10. The cost will be $1,550.”

Show notes

Amy Hoy
Thomhas Fuchs
Freckle
The Daily Mac
CBC Television (Venture)
Kids on the Internet
Basecamp
Color Wars
We feel fine
Twistori
Limewire
Javascript Performance Rocks
30×500

Premium Sponsors

Sprint.ly

WPengine

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

Photo courtesy of Webstock: http://www.flickr.com/photos/webstock06/6885525943/in/photostream/

EP25: Hiten Shah “Make your idea a reality” (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:00:59 +0000

Hey Product People! What’s your process for finding an idea that people love? How do you take your initial hunch for an idea, and make it a reality? What is a funnel? Hiten Shah from Kissmetrics is back to answer these questions and more!

Highlights

“Making human connections is the most important thing in any startup.”

“You need some sound reasoning behind why you’re building your product. It’s a balance of having a vision AND taking all the customer inputs you can find to make sure that your vision can be a reality.

“Study great product people.”

“You have to have an unbiased curiosity; like a method actor. You take off your shoes, and go find that other person’s shoes and start walking in them. You start walking, acting and observing like them.”

“Get unbiased facts about your customers. Know them better than they know themselves.”

“We discovered that building a funnel in Google Analytics is painful. And so we started thinking: how can we take the pain out of that?”

“One of the best things about going to industry conferences is learning about your potential customers. It’s full on anthropology!”

“The creation of the product is a big social experiment. As you understand people, you can ask: how can I save them time, make money or save money?”

“Any step by step process that exists in life, has drop-off. And to me, what a funnel allows you to do is figure out that drop-off. It helps you identify where your problems are.”

“One of the key things we’re learning is that you need to build an audience before you build your product. Build your audience not for marketing, but for learning.”

“Our listeners tell us that building and audience is way scarier than building a product.” – Justin Jackson

“Ask these questions: 1) Who is it I’m trying to reach? 2) Where do they hang out? 3) How can I reach them there?”

“In today’s world you should be able to get people paying right away. If you’ve spent a year, and you don’t have anyone willing to pay you, it’s likely they’ll never pay you.”

“An idea is a solution to a problem. What problem does that idea solve? My suggestion to people is asking: how do you know that a lot of other people have this problem?”

Show notes

Derek Sivers – if it’s not a hit, switch

Premium Sponsors

Sprint.ly

WPengine

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Espree at savebusinesstime.com

SaveBusinessTime.com is a curated site featuring the Best Business Software to build and grow your start up. Go to savebusinesstime.com

Shout-out #2: Justin Jackson’s book - Product People Secrets

I’m writing a book called “Product People Secrets”, you can find out more by going to productpeople.tv/book

I’ve interviewed great product people like Jason Fried, Patio11 (Patrick McKenzie), Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry and Rob Walling.

Right now I’m writing a book that will feature their secrets: the techniques, beliefs, and habits they used to launch successful products.

You can sign-up at productpeople.tv/book and get a sample chapter as well as a chance to win a deluxe package when the book comes out.

Shout-out #3: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #4: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #5: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP24: Hiten Shah – “Make things that people love”

Justin — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:00:46 +0000

Can you build a healthy software business when you don’t know how to code? Hiten Shah is on the show today. He and his co-founder Neil Patel, have built two successful SaaS apps: CrazyEgg, and Kissmetrics.

Today you’ll hear Hiten’s secret to being a successful entrepreneur.

Highlights

“I don’t know how to ‘feel’ like an entrepreneur. To me entrepreneurship isn’t a feeling.”

“When you create something, out of nothing, and somebody consumes it and loves it – that’s entrepreneurship.”

“The people that get stuck… they don’t bother to figure out what it is (that they can make) that people will love.”

“To be an entrepreneur you have to build things, and people have to love them.”

“Almost any problem you see in a company boils down to people and product.”

“It’s hard to manufacture genuine customer appreciation.”

“As the creators of things, the people part is huge. You need to ask: ‘how do you humanize a product’?”

“CrazyEgg was 1 of 10 things we tried; and it was the one that resonated the most with people.”

Show notes

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Jon Davis of doihavesomething.com

Jon says: “Google Adwords can be a good way to drive traffic to a smoke test. I am a PPC Analyst offering to help Lean Start-Ups for free. With the customer segment and value proposition for a start-up idea I will create a PPC campaign and email it to them.”

Go to doihavesomething.com

Shout-out #2: Justin Jackson’s book - Product People Secrets

I’m writing a book called “Product People Secrets”, you can find out more by going to productpeople.tv/book

I’ve interviewed great product people like Jason Fried, Patio11 (Patrick McKenzie), Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry and Rob Walling.

Right now I’m writing a book that will feature their secrets: the techniques, beliefs, and habits they used to launch successful products.

You can sign-up at productpeople.tv/book and get a sample chapter as well as a chance to win a deluxe package when the book comes out.

Shout-out #3: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #4: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #5: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP23: Paul Farnell, how does growth happen with a SaaS startup?

Justin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:00:37 +0000

On the show today is one of the best bootstrappers in the business: Paul Farnell of Litmus.com joins me and shares some great stories.

Highlights

“It felt magical to send an email to a random address, and then showing screenshots of the HTML email design. It was a magical thing when we got it working.”

“We found a technical challenge in automating Lotus Notes 7 on an old version of Windows, and then delivering that result to a beautiful Rails app”

“There are a lot of business opportunities in that stuff that people just grind through on a daily basis. Think Stripe, Litmus, etc…” – Justin Jackson

“If you look at our curve of revenue, it starts very slowly for the first 2.5 years, and then gradually picks up pace in the last year or two.”

“2.5 years in we were well under $1 million in revenue a year, probably $200,000-$300,000 in revenue per year. At 2.5 years we had about 500 users. Now we have 100,000 users (7 years in).”

“When we switched from Euros to American dollars, that week we saw a huge increase in sales.”

“How come America still seems to be the place where web apps thrive?”

“The environment in America is different than Europe. There are bigger entrepreneurial hubs.”

“In the early days, one of the things that set us apart was the designed of the software. I’m not sure how replicable this would be now.”

“We’re a company that has side-projects: we build other apps that (if successful) we roll into our main product.”

Show notes

Paul on Twitter

Paul’s blog posts on Litmus

Peanut Software archived page

Paul’s presentation at FOWD

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Justin Jackson’s book - Product People Secrets

I’m writing a book called “Product People Secrets”, you can find out more by going to productpeople.tv/book

I’ve interviewed great product people like Jason Fried, Patio11 (Patrick McKenzie), Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry and Rob Walling.

Right now I’m writing a book that will feature their secrets: the techniques, beliefs, and habits they used to launch successful products.

You can sign-up at productpeople.tv/book and get a sample chapter as well as a chance to win a deluxe package when the book comes out.

Shout-out #2: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #3: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #4: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP22: Paul Farnell of Litmus on building a startup in a college dorm (part 1)

Justin — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:19 +0000

On the show today is one of the best bootstrappers in the business: Paul Farnell of Litmus.com joins me and shares some great stories.

Highlights

“My parents didn’t want me to have a games console; they wanted something that I could create things on. My first computer was an Amiga.”

“I was inspired by my dad. I started publishing a magazine myself, and distributing it in my middle-school. We even sold annual subscriptions! (mostly to teachers, because they had more money)”

“When I was 12-13 years old, I started building different software products. The first was “Instant Theme Creator”. It sold for $19 (although it was always advertised for $29). It was listed on Download.com”

“I’ve always liked the validation of someone finding enough value in something that I built they were willing to pay for it. I didn’t want to just make a magazine that people would read, I wanted to make”

“There are so many hacks that we technical people do every day. We don’t always think that if we could create systems for other people; make these hacks into products” – Justin Jackson

[Did you enjoy business school?] “No. I didn’t enjoy the courses (or find it applicable). But it was time well spent: because I had the freedom to build Litmus.”

“I was so impressed with the design, usability of 37signals.”

“I built the first version of Litmus in a weekend. It was initially called SiteVista.com. It was running a couple of old desktop machines in my dorm, on the college’s internet.”

“It was incredibly exciting to see people using the product. You would literally see customers using the product, because they were testing web pages on the screens underneath my desk.”

“It did cause some trouble: my girlfriend would get woken up by the machines under my desk.”

“We programmed the original app in VB script.”

“We launched with under 100 people.”

Show notes

Paul on Twitter

Paul’s blog posts on Litmus

Peanut Software archived page

Paul’s presentation at FOWD

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Kyle Fox’s blog post on product management

The first I’d like to give a shout-out to Kyle Fox who’s written a great blog post called “Multi-tasking is the heart of product management” Go to kylefox.ca to see that!

Shout-out #2: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #3: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #4: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP21: John Saddington on deadlines, partners, ugly babies and warning bells (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:00:30 +0000

This week we have part 2 of our interview with John Saddington that literally sent warning bells blaring through the 8Bit office. We also hear about his new Kickstarter campaign: Pressgram (an iOS app that allows you to take filtered photos, and publish them to your WordPress blog).

Highlights

“Without deadlines you just never know if there’s progress, or to measure momentum.”

“Without deadlines you won’t know if you’ve succeeded in doing anything.”

“Without personal deadlines you can be slaving away on something and never launch.”

“When you have partners you will have more fun, you will make more money, and you will have more margin than without.”

“Unless you’re a magical unicorn that can do all things, you’re probably going to be a specialist (a designer, business person, developer). Startups need specialists that are kicking butt at being excellent in particular areas, than a bunch of generalists doing everything mediocre.”

“Investors want to invest in people that are at the top of their game.”

“You haven’t launched because there’s something in this product that you can overcome without help.”

“Finding good people is about experimenting.”

Show notes

8Bit

Pressgram (John’s Kickstarter project)

John’s landing page

@saddington on Twitter

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout-out #1: Jesse Storimer‘s post on selling $18k worth of ebooks

The first shout out comes from Jesse Storimer who’s promoting this post he’s written.

This is super interesting, Jesse says: “Learn how I launched my first ebook with *no* audience, and no promotion. Then sold $18,000 worth in the first 4 months.”

Go to bit.ly/ebook18k, leave a comment and let him know you found him through Product People

Shout-out #2: Product People newsletter

Second I’d like to promote our Product People newsletter. You can sign-up (and get product making resources sent directly to your inbox). This week we’re sending out the private conversation Kyle and I had while John was dealing with the fire alarm. Go to: wwww.productpeople.tv/newsletter

Shout-out #3: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

Next up: Hover.com. Register a domain with Hover.com and use the promo code “productpeople” (all one word) to get 10% off your order!

Shout-out #4: Get $25 off at Ting

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP20: John Saddington of 8Bit on his adventure as an entrepreneur

Justin — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:00:01 +0000

Before this interview we thought John Saddington was a guy that built WordPress products with his team at 8Bit (we were also intrigued by his new Kickstarter campaign: Pressgram). What we didn’t realize is that John, at a young age, had worked his way up the corporate ladder at big companies like Fox and Dell. Today you’ll hear his story.

Highlights

“I realized that as an executive, you don’t get to code.”

“It was difficult for me to reconcile my interests [in products] with my father’s [as a salary man]”

The power of a start and end date for projects: “I give myself timelines for my side-projects: I’ll say if I don’t hit these metrics within 6 months, I’ll move on.”

“Entrepreneurs do way too much due diligence. Just push ‘start’, jump in!”

Show notes

8Bit

Pressgram (John’s Kickstarter project)

John’s landing page

@saddington on Twitter

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout out #1: Marc-Andre Cournoyer, Advanced training for developers

Our fellow Canadian Marc-Andre Cournoyer is teaching classes at classes.codedinc.com. This is advanced training for developers on Rails, Node.js and other programming languages.

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP19: Jason Evanish shares his process for understanding customers

Justin — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:00:57 +0000

Jason Evanish has made a name for himself as a customer-focused entrepreneur. He caught the eye of Hiten Shah, the founder of KISSmetrics. Hiten asked Jason to leave Boston, and move to the Valley to become KISSmetric’s Product Manager.

Since then, he’s become known as a generous teacher; especially when it comes to customer development, pattern matching, and product development.

If you want the resources that Jason Evanish talked about: the Product Thesis, the customer development process and the process for validating your idea, all you have to do is sign-up for our mailing list. Go to productpeople.tv/newsletter

Show notes

KISSmetrics

Jason on Twitter

Jason on About.me

FogPHP blog post on launching

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout out #1: ThinkMojo and Startup-Videos.com

I love this site: Startup-videos.com showcases the best startup videos around helping you find inspiration & resources for your product demo video.

Shout out #2: Follow us on Twitter

One last shout out for Product People: follow us on Twitter to give us feedback!

To purchase your own shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP18: Jason Evanish moves to San Francisco

Justin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:30:22 +0000

While in Boston, Jason Evanish made a name for himself as a customer-focused entrepreneur. He caught the eye of Hiten Shah, the founder of KISSmetrics. Hiten asked Jason to leave Boston, and move to the Valley to become KISSmetric’s Product Manager.

Since then, he’s become known as a generous teacher; especially when it comes to customer development, pattern matching, and product development.

In this candid interview, Jason shares what he’s learned so far leading product at KISSmetrics.

Highlights

“Your assumptions are not necessarily true.”

“Customer development is a series of tactics to get to the core of what a customer really is. You find out what there problem is, and create a solution that can really delight them. The challenge is that customers won’t flat out tell you what they need. You need a process to draw it out of them.”

“If you want to get the politics out of your organization, become a data-driven company. Now you have numbers and data.”

“A lot of people think customer development is highly subjective. The key is you need to trust the interpreter. If you were having someone translate from Chinese to English, you would need to trust the person doing the interpretation.”

“What kind of data should you track? Look at feature adoption rates: what do people actually use?”

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout out #1: Sam Baumgarten – learn about creating web apps

Checkout Sam Baumgarten’s blog to learn about creating web apps and get updates on his projects such as Nathan Barry’s ConvertKit. sambaumgarten.me

Shout out #2: Subscribe to our newsletter

One last shout out for Product People: if you want to see the video version of our interview with Nathan Barry, all you have to do is sign-up for our mailing list. Just go to productpeople.tv/newsletter

To purchase your own shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP17: Nathan Barry shows you how to write, price and sell your ebook (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:00:53 +0000

Nathan Barry has released two really successful ebooks, and a new web app called ConvertKit. If you’ve ever wanted to write your own ebook, but couldn’t get started, this interview is sure to inspire you to create and launch your own stuff.

Show notes

https://twitter.com/nathanbarry
http://nathanbarry.com
http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/
http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/
Scrivener
iBooks Author
https://convertkit.com
http://nathanbarry.com/competitive-advantage/
http://thinktraffic.net/most-common-pricing-mistake

Sponsors

Shout outs

Shout out #1: Working with Unix Processes by Jesse Storimer

Our friend Jesse has written a great book: Working with Unix Processes
More than 2000 Ruby programmers have discovered the fundamentals of system programming with my ebook. Go check it out and spawn some daemons. workingwithunixprocesses.com

Shout out #2: Beathound by Creature Creative

Beathound is a service for staying on top of new releases from the artists you love. If you’ve ever missed an album from your favorite band, you need to try Beathound.

They’ve just added a cool feature for anyone following SXSW – visit beathound.com/sxsw to follow new releases from all of SXSW’s showcasing artists this year.

Shout out #3: Save Business Time with Espree

Our listener Espree has built savebusinesstime.com: a marketplace for the world’s best web apps for business. These are apps that help people get their work done faster. If you have a B2B app that you’d like to promote, you can submit it at: www.savebusinesstime.com/submit-your-tool/

Shout out #4: Copywriting for Geeks by Marc-André Cournoyer

Next up: fellow Canadian Marc-André Cournoyer has a great book Copywriting for Geeks. Learn how a developer quit his job and started a product business that became profitable from day one. Visit copywritingforgeeks.com

Shout out #5: Subscribe to our newsletter

To purchase your own shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

EP16: Nathan Barry’s story; building iPad apps, ebooks and web apps (part 1)

strongcaster — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:02:05 +0000

Nathan Barry is an amazing individual: when you spend time with him you can’t help but be inspired to create and launch your own stuff. As a young man he’s had tremendous success is releasing his own products: an iPad app called One Voice, two really successful ebooks, and a new web app called ConvertKit.

Show notes

https://twitter.com/nathanbarry
http://nathanbarry.com
http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/
http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/
http://nathanbarry.com/2012-year-quitting-job/
http://unicornfree.com/2013/difficulties-for-nathan-barrys-app-experiment
https://convertkit.com
http://nathanbarry.com/competitive-advantage/
http://thinktraffic.net/most-common-pricing-mistake

Sponsors

This episode by Sprint.ly!

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From Canada:
Add it to your weekly listens — 5 stars
- by Timothy Fletcher from Canada on 2013-02-14
Fascinating interviews with entrepreneurs that have been there and done it. Plenty of useful tips for building your own SaaS apps. Definitely worth a listen!

From the USA:
thorough, no-fluff advice for creating & selling your own products — 5 stars
- by RobertWilliams88 from United States on 2013-02-18
These guys do an awesome job asking questions. I find myself begin to wonder about a topic, then *BAM* someone asks it. They already have a bunch of my favorite people interviewed, I’m looking forward to what comes next. This is my favorite podcast.

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Very insightful interviews — 4 stars
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I’m thinking about making my own products and listening to this podcast is really helpful. Thanks for all the insightful interviews.

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Second Shout-Out: you can follow us on Twitter at @productpeopletv

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Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week where Nathan returns to give us specific steps for building your own info-product.

EP15: Jason Fried on making money, internet fame, and the new Basecamp

Justin — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:00:56 +0000

This week we have Jason Fried of 37signals on the program. We discuss how he made thousands of dollars in high school, why he chose DHH as a partner, what it’s like to be “internet famous”, and the thinking behind the new Basecamp, Basecamp Breeze and Basecamp Personal.

A quick note about the audio quality of this show: Jason had a bad WiFi connection that caused Skype to drop out at numerous times in the interview. We felt like the content was good, and so we released the show (even though the audio is not up to our standard). In order to serve you the listener, we paid to have a transcript made so you can read the interview. You can see this at: productpeople.tv/jasonfried

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Show notes

Jason Fried

David Heinemeier Hansson

Their new book: Remote

Transcript

Justin Jackson: [0:01] Hi, I’m Justin.

Kyle Fox: [0:02] And I’m Kyle.

Justin: [0:03] This is Product People. The podcast focused on great products and the people who make them.

Kyle: [0:10] This is a pretty exciting episode because our guest today is Jason Fried of 37signals. Of course, 37signals is the company behind Basecamp and a bunch of other popular products as well as the bestselling book Rework. Jason it’s a pleasure to have you today, thanks for taking your time to talk to us.

Jason Fried: [0:31] Thanks for having me on guys.

Justin: [0:33] Perfect. Well, Jason you guys have been really busy at 37signals. You have built a bunch of new stuff this year but before we get into all that I want to now, have you always been making products? Is this something you have been doing, you know, since you started 37signals or was there stuff you built and sold before that?

Jason: [0:55] When I first got started in computers I was in junior high school, I’m 38 now, so I guess that was, I don’t know, 25 years ago or something that I got a computer. I started messing around with it and one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to keep track of all the different tapes and CDs that I had.

[1:21] So I eventually got on AOL, before the formal Internet was around, went to the file section, searched in the Mac section for like music organizing tools and I found some stuff and downloaded those things. They were mostly based in FileMaker Pro, which is a data base. I had FileMaker Pro so I could run them and I just didn’t like them. I don’t know what it was, they weren’t attractive, they weren’t easy to use, they were complicated, they were doing far more things than I needed.

[1:59] I just needed this really simple thing. I wanted to look good, and be fast. I ended up just figuring that I could figure out how to make this sort of thing myself. I had File Maker, I started screwing around, started learning how to do it, and I eventually made a product called Audio File, which I started using to catalog my music collection.

[2:21] I basically wrote a little text file, a read me file basically, and in there I said, “Hey, if you like this it’s $20.00. Send me a check, or send me $20.00″ and I put my address down. Then I uploaded it to AOL, and see what would happen. I had no idea.

[2:41] Then one day I got a check in the mail, well I got an envelope in the mail from a guy in Germany, and I didn’t know anybody in Germany. I hadn’t heard of anyone from Germany, I had never been there. And so my parents gave me this envelope, this air mail envelope, and I open it, and there was a print out of that read me file and $20.00.

[2:59] That was the start for me of selling software. After that I started taking off, and it didn’t put me through college or anything, but I had a nice amount of spending money, extra spending money in college just from this $20.00 shareware tool that I made. I probably made 10s of thousands of dollars or more selling it over the next few years.

Justin: [3:22] You’re kidding me, actually 10s of thousands of dollars selling this little shareware app?

Jason: [3:27] Yes, 10s of thousands of dollars, $20.00 a pop.

Justin: [3:31] What was it like, did that seem significant to you? I would love to make $10,000.00 now as a high school kid, was that pretty significant?

Jason: [3:41] Oh yeah. I’ve always had jobs too, so I’ve been working since I was 13 at grocery stores and shoe stores and gas stations and all this stuff. I had part time jobs anyway. I would have had spending money, but it was great to have extra money coming in, to have a significant amount, and for it to be sort of this passive money in that I didn’t feel like I was working for it. I had already done the work, making software.

Justin: [4:11] Yeah.

Jason: [4:12] The money just kept coming in, unlike my part time jobs where I had to go after school and work for four hours or something every day. That was a real nice thing. It was great. It was killer. I bought a bunch of stuff I wanted like a stereo or whatever, just a bunch of garbage probably.

[laughter]

Jason: [4:33] But I bought stuff because I’m like, “Hey, I’ve got some money to buys stuff.” Then in college it came in handy because I didn’t work during college so I needed some money to spend. That was handy. Yeah, it was great. It was a revelation.

[4:43] The thing I realized early on is people are happy to pay for things that are good. Don’t be afraid to charge for your services. Don’t be afraid to charge for what you produce. If those people who don’t want to pay for it want to complain about it, that’s fine. They don’t have to buy it.

[5:01] There are plenty of people out there who appreciate something good and are happy to cough up some cash for it, because they think it’s worth their time and it makes their life better.

Justin: [5:11] Yeah. What did your folks think about that when this is going on and you’re in high school? Are you from an entrepreneurial family?

Jason: [5:20] Sort of. My grandfather started a grocery store chain way back when, so he was working on his own. My dad worked for someone else for a while, but then he was working on his own, so a little bit of that.

[5:37] I had always kind of felt like I’d be an entrepreneur at some level. My dad always encouraged me to be that way. The making money thing from this software thing on this thing called AOL, my parents didn’t get it.

Justin: [5:47] Yeah.

Jason: [5:48] And I kind of was surprised too, but they just kept seeing checks coming in the mail for me. Whenever I’d get home from school or something there’d be a pile of envelopes for me.

Justin: [laughs] [5:58]

Jason: [5:59] They liked it at a certain point, obviously.

Justin: [6:04] That’s hilarious. If I all of a sudden had $10,000 in envelopes, my parents would have some questions for me.

Jason: [laughs] [6:10] Well, of course, this is spread out over 10 years, but, yeah. They’re like, “What’s going on?” I showed them. “I made this thing, and people are paying for it.” They understood that part of it. They didn’t understand what the thing was, but they got, yeah, people pay for things they want to buy. “OK, people are paying for it. Good for you.”

Justin: [6:28] That’s great!

Kyle: [6:30] How old did you say you were when you first did this?

Jason: [6:34] You know, I can’t exactly remember but I feel like I was, I started doing the computer stuff in junior high and then I feel it was probably sometime in high school when I actually released the product.

[crosstalk]

Kyle: [6:50] OK

Jason: [6:51] …audio file product. I think, it’s been so long I don’t remember the exact years. But I started before I went to college and I kept it going through college and I sort of stopped after that.

Kyle: [7:02] Got you! That’s got to be quite a revelation for a late adolescent kid. I know around that time is sort of when I got a part time job after school and this whole idea of, hey! I’m going to, I guess this is just how the world works. You kind of trade your hours for dollars sort of thing. [laughs] Meanwhile you were seeing the opposite side of the spectrum. You build this thing one time and collect mad checks.

[7:27] So what was that like as, I imagine not many of your friends were doing something like that. They were kind of like doing the old thing.

Jason: [7:36] Well, you know, I always had tried to sell other things too. I got a reseller’s license when I was, I think, 14 or 15. I went with my dad downtown somewhere. I don’t remember all the details either. It was a long time ago.

[7:53] We got this license that allowed me to buy things from distributors at cost, and then I could resell them to my friends for like double because it was still cheaper than it would have been to get stuff from the store. If it wasn’t double it was like I’d make 50 percent.

[8:10] I had friends who were buying cordless phones from me and radar detectors for the car and stuff. At the store it was like $200, and I paid like $110 and sold it for like $160 or something, so I made $50.

[8:22] I’ve always been into the buying and selling and business side of things. The thing that was cool about software was that I felt like the majority of the effort was up front, and the payments came afterward, which I kind of liked compared to doing a reseller thing where you have to go buy inventory and sell it and then you have to go buy more inventory. You’re always working hard for the same amount of money instead of putting in a lot of that creativity up front and then reaping the rewards down the road.

Kyle: [8:55] Right, yeah, it totally makes sense. If we were to fast forward a little bit to the start of 37Signals, you guys started off as a design agency. Correct?

Jason: [9:08] That’s right.

Kyle: [9:09] So that would be a little bit different, I guess, than selling a product where you do all this upfront work and then collect on it sort of over the life of the product. So you started as a design agency but eventually transitioned into your first product, Basecamp.

[9:24] Do you want to talk about what that was like, going from agency to creating a product? What prompted you guys to build Basecamp? Was the idea of changing into a product company something you guys had from the start, or was it sort of like “Let’s build this and see what happens?”

Jason: [9:42] Basecamp came from our own need. We were a consulting firm and doing website design for people. We just got busier and busier doing that work. We needed a better way to manage these projects we were doing for clients.

[9:56] We were basically delivering things via email, which is fine. It works, but it just didn’t feel that, I don’t know, profession is the word I used. I don’t like that word today, but back then I was like, “This doesn’t feel professional” or something.

[10:12] There was no permanent record of things. It was just in in-boxes spread out all over the place. I’m like, “There’s got to be a better way to do this sort of thing.” So we looked around at some tools that existed in the market, but they weren’t really solving the problems.

It’s very similar to me way back in the day looking for music cataloging tools. I couldn’t find something that did what I needed it to do. All these things were doing other things that I didn’t need, so we decided to build our own project management tool [inaudible 00: [10:26] 10:42] .

[10:45] As we were building it we were using it. We were using it with our clients, and they were saying things like, “Hey, I need this sort of thing too. What is this? I’ve got projects. I need to manage my projects. Where I can I buy this thing?”

We said, “Well, we’re building this thing. You’re helping us figure it out as we go.” So [inaudible 00: [11:03] 11:05] goes off and goes, “Hey, maybe this is a product.” We finished it up, used it some more, and then polished it up to turn it into a product and then put some prices on it and threw it back out there. We made a website and talked about it on our blog and released it in February 2004 with a goal that if it could make $5000 a month after the first year.

[11:34] We figured it would take a year for it to make $5000 a month, but we’d be happy because that’s about $60,000 a year which is like a nice client project. We’d be doing our client work, and we’d have this “free money” this free $60,000 coming in every year.

[11:43] It turned out that we hit that number in like five, six, seven, eight weeks, something like that. I don’t remember the exact time. It didn’t take a year. It took like a month or two months, and it was doing more than $5000 a month. So we knew we were onto something.

[12:03] It just turned out that a year later it was doing more money than our consulting business was, so we stopped doing the consulting stuff and started doing product development, not developing products but just focused on Basecamp. The rest is sort of history for that.

Kyle: [12:11] Right, yeah. Cool.

Justin: [12:13] So, Jason, maybe we can talk a little bit about…because along that time you met this guy named David Heinemeier Hansson. Maybe actually you can give Kyle and I some advice, because him and I are new partners on this podcast.

[12:33] It’s similar. We met each other online, and now we’ve got a little bit of revenue. I think in some ways Kyle and I are at the point where we’re saying, “Do we want to actually partner up for real and make this official?” How did you go through that process with David?

Jason: [12:52] Well, I originally hired David. He was in school at the time and I hired him to give me 10 hours a week. Actually, let me step back because that’s actually not accurate. Actually there’s something before that.

[13:00] I hired him to do a project for me. I’d been working on a program in PHP and I made a thing called Single File which is a book collection database. I made it and I was kind of getting stuck and so I asked some people for some help and David was one of the people who heard about that I needed help.

[13:31] He wrote me an email and started helping me back and forth. This is just free, like advice. And then like, I really like this guy, his advice and how clear he is and whatever. So I hired him to do that project for me, to finish that tool.

Justin: [13:44] OK.

Jason: [13:45] It worked out really well. That was the first project we did together. Then this other project came up at 37signals, which was an Internet project for a client of ours, called Summit Credit Union. We were doing the redesign, then we said, hey, maybe we can add some awesome functionality to it.

[14:08] I said, “Hey David, would you be the programmer on this, we will do the design, you the programming and we will sell this thing.” He said sure, he was a student, he was looking for money. We worked together on that project, which was a great project, we worked on some other projects like that.

[14:25] He was getting out of school, we were talking and so I hired him as a contractor to do Basecamp, then hired him as an employee and then from the employee he eventually became a partner in the business. It was a series of tasks basically, but they weren’t really tasks.

[14:41] Looking back it looks like they were tasks but they were really just experiences working together at a different capacity along the way and realizing that we got along well, we would be good partners in the business. The key was that he was introducing a skill or he was bringing a skill to the table that I didn’t have.

[15:03] So he was a programmer. I was a designer. He wasn’t a designer. I wasn’t a programmer. So we complemented each other well which I think is important for partners. So it happened over a series of years, gaining trust working together, and that’s how it all came together eventually.

Justin: [15:23] Was there any part of you that was still nervous when you made that jump to saying I’m actually going to give you part of this company that we built? Was there any sort of hesitation, or by that point had you built enough trust to say “I trust this guy. We can go ahead on this.”

Jason: [15:43] Well, there was hesitation just because it’s a big step to do the…I’ve had a couple of partners before at 37 Signals and, at this point, I was back on my own again at 37 Signals, so it’s a couple of things. One didn’t work out really and the other guy just left a few years later.

[16:05] They were all good amicable separations but I’m back to my own again. Do I want to go back in this whole partner thing again? Do I want down that road again? So there was that, of course. But I could tell that David was a special, unique guy and that had we not partnered up he would have gone off to do his own thing. So I kind of saw it as a bigger risk not to get him more involved. I also thought that he would contribute a lot more as an owner and everything.

[16:49] While there was that initial sort of, do I really want to go down this partner thing road again, there was also the, yes, this makes sense, I’m going to take a risk, I’m going to bet on this guy and believe in him, and I’ll make a bet and see what happens. It was good obviously.

Justin: [17:02] Yeah. It paid off.

Jason: [17:04] Yep.

Justin: [17:04] Well, maybe one last question in kind of just the background story. When you guys started doing Basecamp and started blogging, you were kind of the underdogs. No one really knew who you were and your biggest competitor was Microsoft in the project management space. But now, especially in the tech community, a lot of people know who you are.

[17:34] How does it feel to have all of this attention now? What’s it like? Has it changed from when you first started and does it make it harder? Does it make it easier? Do you like the attention? What’s that like?

Jason: [17:50] I don’t really think about it. I know that we have the ability to get attention by saying things or announcing things, but it doesn’t affect our decisions day to day. People do care about what we are doing, some people love it, some people hate it. The point is if we have something to say, people will listen. So, that’s good, that’s a huge advantage.

[18:23] But day to day, I don’t think about it. Personally I’m more of a private guy, I don’t like to seek attention and I would rather be at home, I’m kind of an introverted person. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t like conferences and stuff. I don’t really want the attention, I just want to do great work and build cool stuff and that is what I was doing.

[18:50] One of the things is of course when more people know about you their expectations are different. In many ways it’s very hard to meet those expectations on a consistent basis when they have their own expectations that are sort of impossible to meet.

[19:16] When you’re releasing your product it’s very easy to go is that all? Is that all they could do? Is that it? You know that sort of thing which you wouldn’t get that normally if you were brand new. So there is a little bit of that stuff, but for the most part it’s great. I mean it’s great to have the ability to not have to pay for attention because we’ve earned it over the years. That’s definitely helpful.

Interviewer: [19:40] Well this segue ways into something that Kyle was asking me about. What was, with the Basecamp relaunch, right Kyle?

Kyle: [19:53] I think it’s been close to a year since you guys relaunched Basecamp correct? I think you launched in the start of March 2012.

Jason: [20:01] That’s right.

Kyle: [20:05] I’ve worked in the past at places where we’ve decided to rebuild the product from scratch. It ends up being good but it’s also in some ways never really as good as you imagined or it takes a little bit longer. Some people tend to say you should never rebuild your product. Which I don’t personally think, but there’s a pretty strong following for that line of thinking.

[20:32] I’d be curious to know, now that you guys are a year into it, looking back on it what originally prompted you guys to take on this huge risk of rebuilding a successful product and how did it go? Did it take longer than you might have thought or have you been overall happy with how this went?

Jason: [20:54] It was a pretty [inaudible 00:20:56] mostly between me and David initially. The new Basecamp was my idea. I want to build a new Basecamp, let’s start over, let’s solve similar problems but new ways. I started working on this. And this typically happened [inaudible 00:21:13] I’ll have some idea and I’ll just start mocking it up and screwing around and whatever.

[21:17] And then I’ll show Dave and get his feedback on it. Because David has really insightful take on things and he also reacts quickly which is good and bad. But really good when you’re showing him because good to see quick reactions on things.

[21:38] Anyway, I go off on my own and work with another designer or something and do something and then I show David. Actually David wasn’t convinced because he’s always thought, like you mentioned, and it’s sort of said in the industry that total rewrites are usually a huge mistake. They usually don’t turn out as well as they should. It’s a ton of time spent for very little return. It’s like the curse of software development.

[22:07] He was naturally opposed to that, which I totally understood, too. I was talking to him like, “Let’s not get stuck not doing something because we’re not supposed to. Let’s try something and see if we can do something that we’re not supposed to. Let’s not stop doing it because we’re not supposed to. Let’s start doing it because we’re not supposed to and see what happens.”

[22:32] We went back to the drawing board to look over some stuff. He had some really good feedback on a few things. I went back, changed the design around, messed around, went to him again. We started seeing where it was going and then got really excited about it.

[22:46] The idea behind it was not to recreate Basecamp that we already had. That’s what happens with a lot of rewrites. A team would rewrite a product. What will come out of it is the exact same product with a new code base. That’s not worth the time.

[23:02] We were going to approach the same problems, which was communication and collaboration, and sharing information and keeping it all on one place online and that kind of stuff.

Kyle: [23:11] Right.

Jason: [23:12] Priorities. That’s why it made sense.

Kyle: [23:18] Yeah, and I think that’s a perfect example of when it does make sense to possibly do a rewrite. When a lot of people say to not do a rewrite or it’s a mistake is, I think because, in a lot of cases, when a company decides to do a rewrite the decision is technology based, like let’s migrate from this old technology stack to a newer technology stack because of these technology reasons.

[23:45] In you guys’ case it sounds like you learned a lot and gained a lot of insight from running Basecamp, the first version, and it probably gave you some different ways to approach the problems. It’s kind of like a problem solving reason to approach a rebuild rather than technology.

Jason: [24:09] Yeah, we have gotten to use a lot of new technology. One of the reasons why we couldn’t improve…one of the reasons we talked about was could we take these ideas that we come up with and sort of fix Basecamp the classic, the original Basecamp. Could we change it in these ways?

It just turns out that when you have a product that’s been around for years, there is so much [inaudible 00: [24:27] 24:31] built up, technology wise and also customer expectation. If you go off and change it drastically it really ends up being very difficult.

[24:40] So we decided to keep the old Basecamp which we renamed classic around forever. As long as people are using it, it’s going to stick around. A lot of people still use it. But we’re going to focus our efforts on the new Basecamp, new tech, new ideas, the whole thing, and run both versions.

[24:56] When you’re a new customer you only get the new one. Anyone who is on the old one can stay on the old one, or they can move if they want. It took about a year to do. We wanted to take a little bit less time. We thought it might take six months originally or something. We made a lot of plans and we went and changed a lot of things and did some stuff and worked for months on something and threw it out and things like that.

[25:22] We went back and forth. But I’m extremely happy with how it came out. Aside from the original decision to make Basecamp, it’s the best decision as a company we’ve ever made to redo it. I think it gives us a lot of opportunity to do some really interesting things moving forward as well.

[25:38] We’re really thrilled with it, customers are loving it, the numbers that we care about are all up. It put us back up on the map which was good for us too because we built this thing eight years ago and that’s long time ago. So it’s good to show that we can do something like this.

Justin: [25:59] In the last few minutes we have here I want to talk about Basecamp Breeze and Basecamp Personal. Because you recently got rid of a bunch of products that were low cost or for consumers like Draft, Backpack, Ta-da, and Writeboard. I was a little bit surprised when you guys came out with these two personal products. I think they’re both, you just pay once and you can use it forever.

Jason: [26:31] Right.

Kyle: [26:32] What was the thinking behind that? Why launch these products aimed at consumers?

Jason: [26:37] Well, they’re not really aimed at consumers necessarily. Let’s kind of throw that word just for a second. The idea behind these two products was we were actually setting up some mailing lists. I was realizing how complicated it is to set up a mailing list. It’s kind of ridiculous how hard it is.

[26:57] Google lists, or Google groups, and Yahoo groups and stuff. You can do it, it’s just they’re really complicated for just simple things, which is I just want an email address I can send an email to and have everyone get it. Anyone who responds to that email it goes to everyone else too. That’s all I wanted.

[27:11] A lot of people actually use Basecamp this way. A lot of people use Basecamp as a mailing list where they’ll post messages and it gets sent out to everybody and the whole thing. So we just said what if we totally strip this out and built a real simple mailing list tool as sort of an experiment in single pay software. Everything else we’ve ever really done has been subscription based.

Could we make something that was so damn simple and [inaudible 00: [27:37] 27:40] and just see what happens. We did that and that’s what Basecamp Breeze. The idea maybe is that perhaps people cross over to Basecamp when they hear about Basecamp Breeze. They’ll check it out, they’ll get on a list, they’ll find it out, they’ll follow a URL and they’ll find out hey, there’s this other Basecamp thing. It’s a little bit of a marketing experiment and a pricing experiment.

That’s kind of [inaudible 00: [28:02] 28:02] all about. Basecamp Personal on the other hand is a direct response to customers asking us if they can use Basecamp for personal projects or projects for their volunteer group or church group or something. Because they want to use Basecamp for that, but the pricing model just doesn’t work. It’s too expensive.

[28:22] And the subscription model isn’t a good model for a home renovation project, which might take six months, or a month, who knows, and it can get really expensive to keep going.

[28:33] We had this idea that we could basically sell individual Basecamp projects for 25 bucks each, and you can use them as long as you want. You only have to pay 25 bucks. There’s some limitations, like there’s only a gig of space, and you can only invite five people. There’s no calendar, and some other stuff.

[28:56] It’s pointed currently, at people who already use “Basecamp.” Already know “Basecamp.” They don’t have to be sold on it, they love it already at work, but they want to use it for other stuff. It’s just 25 bucks, one time, per project.

[29:07] That was a fun experiment. That’s an example of selling the same product, in a different way. We didn’t have to change the code base really. We just pulled some stuff out. It’s the same exact code base, Basecamp Personal, and Basecamp are the same thing. It’s just a different pricing model, and there’s some different walls up in different places.

[29:26] So far, Basecamp Personal has been really successfully sold, close to a 1000 projects. That’s like $25,000 in less than a month, just putting this thing out there, barely making any noise about it. Pretty soon we’re going to open it up to everyone in the world. Right now it’s only available to Basecamp customers. We’re going to let anyone create their own Basecamp project soon, but for now it’s just focus on existing customers.

Justin: [29:52] I’d love to check-up on you in a year, and see if there was a marketing benefit from that. If there was a crossover from Breeze and Personal. That would be interesting.

Jason: [30:04] Yeah, I’m curious. I don’t know, we don’t know. It’s just a guess. It’s way too early to say anyway, but yeah, maybe in a year we’ll know more.

Kyle: [30:13] All right. We’re just about out of time here. I thought maybe we would end with one last quick question.

Jason: [30:20] , what sort of advice would you offer for a solo product creator? Based on your experience, should they may be set out to build a full SaaS app like Basecamp? Do you think there’s a market for smaller products like Breeze? Like a one off, one price, a little bit smaller scope. Where would be a good place for somebody to start?

Jason: [30:43] It’s hard to say, but what I can tell you is that Basecamp Breeze on its own, would not support anybody. It’s 10 bucks. Let’s just say we even sold 10 thousand Breeze accounts. That’s 100 grand, which is nice obviously, but we haven’t sold 10 thousand. We have to sell a lot more to get even close to that.

[31:10] It would be very hard to make enough money selling one off things like this, that need ongoing support. It’s different when you’re talking about an iPhone app, or something, where you sell once. You’re not supporting the server, and the infrastructure. It’s just the app.

If you want to go down the one price road, to start, I wouldn’t build a Web app that does that, because that requires 24/7 up-time, and that kind of stuff. We’re fortunate that we have that [inaudible 00: [31:27] 31:40] structure already set-up, so we can do that sort of thing, and experiment with that sort of thing. But it’s not going to support someone very long.

[31:49] I would definitely suggest to people if they’re going to build their first product, and maybe they’re just on their own right now, to try something with recurring revenue. Because it will take a lot of the pressure off making sure the bills get paid and that you have some money to spend yourself. You can control the cash flow a lot more, and I just think that’s a better place to start. I think once you have a successful customer base and infrastructure you can really start to experiment with single pressing options and stuff like that.

[32:21] I also wouldn’t try and build something very big either. I think you can build something real simple and you could charge 20-30 bucks a month for it if it’s a solid product. I would also focus on business stuff because businesses are happy to pay for things generally. It doesn’t need to do a lot, it just needs to be useful. And you can build a nice business that way.

[32:42] I would stay away from the consumer business too as a single product person who’s starting out because it’s very hard to get the consumers to pay for things when it comes to software unless it’s like two bucks. Everyone seems to be stuck with the 99 cents or $2 products now so that’s what people are used to. Businesses are used to paying a lot of money for things, 20 bucks a month sounds like a huge discount to them so there’s a lot more opportunity there I think.

Kyle: [33:09] Right. So in summary probably a smaller scope, some kind of recurring product ideally geared towards businesses. That’s kind of a good place to start.

Jason: [33:21] I think so. Real focused, you know, what do you need as a business owner? In fact, we’re working on another product right now that we need as a business, and we’ve been building it for just like about a month really.

[33:34] Well, it’s been floated longer than that, but really seriously for a month. It’s just me and one other guy doing it here. We could technically release that product in a few weeks if we wanted to. It is six to eight weeks worth of work, two guys, could probably have been one person.

[33:53] It’s a tool I think a lot of businesses are going to be interested in paying for. I think it’s certainly possible to do that. You don’t have to think that things are going to take you a year to do. If you’re focused and you do a few things well, then you can be in a good spot.

Justin: [34:05] So we’ll wait for that, and maybe in two weeks there’s going to be another product announcement.

Jason: [34:08] No, not in two weeks. It could be technically, but there’s no chance.

[laughter]

Jason: [34:14] Yeah, we’re working on something that’s going to hopefully be out later this year. I’m just saying that you really could, technically we could get it out there with eight weeks worth of development. It’s certainly possible to do that.

Justin: [34:29] You’re being too conservative. You’ve got to get it out now. [laughs]

Jason: [34:33] Maybe we’ll get it out sooner than later. We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.

Justin: [34:37] OK. Well, Jason, thanks so much for your time. In the show notes we’re going to put links to all of Jason’s contact information, the 37Signals website, and a link to the landing page for the new book that he and David Heinemeier Hansson are working on. It’s called “Remote.” You guys can check that out in the show notes. Jason, thanks so much for taking the time today to talk to us.

Jason: [35:02] You bet. It was really fun. Thanks for having me on, guys. It’s good to hear from you again, Justin, by the way. We hadn’t talked in a while.

Justin: [35:07] Yeah, yeah. It’s good to hear from you too.

Jason: [35:09] Cool.

Justin: [35:09] Cool.

Kyle: [35:10] See you later.

Jason: [35:11] Bye now.

EP14: Kyle Fox on launching, metrics, and lessons learned (part 2)

strongcaster — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:00:20 +0000

Kyle Fox is back for another episode: this time he talks with Justin about the power of design, how big their launch mailing list was, and why it’s important to track your metrics from the beginning.

How should you run your beta program? Should you give beta testers free access for life?

Besides co-hosting this podcast, and working as a Product Manager at Granify, Kyle runs his own SaaS app on the side: FotoJournal. FotoJournal allows photographers to create a professional looking photo blog.

Show notes

FotoJournal
Buffer
Jon Smelquist
Techvibes write-up on FotoJournal
Petapixel write-up
FotoJournal launch party
Mixpanel

EP13: Kyle Fox on building his own SaaS app

Justin — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:00:37 +0000

Kyle Fox is a real Renaissance man. Besides co-hosting this podcast, and working as a Product Manager at Granify, he also runs his own SaaS app on the side: FotoJournal. FotoJournal allows photographers to create a professional looking photo blog.

If you’ve asked these questions, you can learn from Kyle’s experience: what should I build? Should we incorporate? Should I get the .com?

Kyle talks about why he decided NOT to launch a competitor to Freshbooks, why perfectionism is his enemy, and how he had people sign-up and become paying customers when he launched.

Show notes

FotoJournal
Lift Interactive
Parade
Jon Smelquist
Techvibes write-up on FotoJournal
Petapixel write-up
FotoJournal launch party
They incorporated online at Staples.ca
Mixpanel

EP12: Brennan Dunn on startup launch tactics (part 2)

Justin — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:18:45 +0000

Learn Brennan’s trick for identifying a good market: ”find a community, and just keep adding value.” Whether that’s a forum response, blog post, info-product, or SaaS app, learn how choosing an audience and sticking with them can pay off.

Highlights

“Most of my users don’t care that [Planscope] is project management software; they care about outcomes.” – Brennan Dunn
“Instead of listing out technical features, which is what [we as developers] want to do, I need to tell a story.” – Brennan Dunn
How did you get people to care? How did you get people to notice your product?
- “My entire marketing strategy is marketing through education. I knew the problems my audience was having, so I started blogging about those problems.” – Brennan Dunn
- “People don’t buy software just to buy software: they buy software to make their lives better somehow. A blog post is equally able to do that (to make their lives better).” – Brennan Dunn
What kind of traffic did you get on your blog when you started?
- “I got a few thousand views over the months that I was building Planscope” – Brennan Dunn
- “Blogging allowed me to get out of the code and answer the question: ‘Why am I doing this?’” – Brennan Dunn
How did you build your email list?
- It was a mailing list of 300 people when he launched.
- Brennan built his list over the 4 months that he was building Planscope.
- Most of the sign-ups to his email list came from his blog.
- 1/3 of his mailing list signed up for a trial account (100 people)
- 25% of his trial users converted to paying accounts (25 people)
Where does growth come from?
- Most of Brennan’s customers have come from his blog posts, and his email list
- Another important source of traffic: his book Double Your Freelancing Rate.
How much money has Brennan earned so far? (as of December)
- Planscope – $29,904 ($6,000 / month)
- Books – $35,00
- Classes – $41,000

Show notes

Planscope.io

KISSmetrics

Stripe

Double Your Freelancing Rate

EP11: Brennan Dunn on building his startup, Planscope

strongcaster — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:06:54 +0000

How do you make a name for yourself, and your product?

That’s the question we posed to Brennan Dunn. It seemed like almost overnight he was everywhere: blog posts on Hacker News, popping up in my Twitter stream, and promoting a new product for consultants called Planscope. In this episode we delve into how he made this happen: we asked him how he got his start in products, how he promoted himself, and what Latin has to do with all of this.

Highlights

“Businesses value [services] more than consumers, because [time lost] is literally costing them money.” – Brennan Dunn
“Listen to what people, who have a financial interest, are complaining about!” – Brennan Dunn
It’s clear that Brennan’s real advantage is that he’s passionate about his customers: he honestly wants to make their lives better.
“People don’t buy software, they buy outcomes” – Brennan Dunn

Show notes

Planscope

Build a consultancy workshop

Book: Double Your Freelancing Rate

Book: Sell Yourself Online

37signals on Apple.com

Brennan Dunn (@brennandunn) on Twitter

EP10: Rob Walling – outsource on oDesk, find your idea, market your product (part 2)

strongcaster — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:30:40 +0000

Have you ever wondered how much personal brand affects software sales? Check out this is great episode with Rob Walling. In our interview he reveals a ton of tactics for outsourcing your development on oDesk, finding a good idea for your business, and marketing your product effectively. If you’ve ever wanted to start and launch your own software products as a solo-founder, this episode is full of practical advice you can use. Rob is the founder of HitTail, and co-founder of Startups for the Rest of Us and the Micropreneur Academy.

Highlights

How to outsource your work: techniques for oDesk:
- Browse the listings: look how boring most of the tasks are!
- Post an interesting job description
- Build relationships, and treat the people you hire well
What makes a good idea, in terms of building a business?
- Build something people want, solves a problem (problem-solution fit). Rob recommends Steve Blank’s customer development approach: contact people, tell them what your product does, how much you’ll charge, and ask them if they’ll pay for it. Rob
- And you can find that market fairly easily: if you can’t communicate to them easily, you don’t have a business
What is the actual genesis of a good idea?
- You can solve your own problem: but make sure you validate it with 10 other people. Also, think about how you’re going to market it to “people like yourself”. “Scratching your own issue isn’t enough”, says Rob, “you have to solve a problem and have a market.”
- You can also find a market that you find interesting, and where you have some sort of traction in. Then you can look for problems to solve. With Drip, Rob chose it because he really likes working with the entrepreneur market.
What are the characteristics of a good market? (and a bad market)
- “There are no bad markets,” says Robs, “some markets are just harder to communicate to than others.”
- Rob likes markets that are online, that talk to each other (virality), and open to trying new things. (For example: Realtors and lawyers are not as open to trying new things)
- Ability and willingness to pay: don’t create an app for college students or school teachers! There’s a lack of an ability to pay.
Which is better: B2B or B2C?
- “I prefer B2B because businesses purchase based on value”, says Rob, “if you can save them money or make them money, you can justify your price. Consumers don’t value their time as much.”
- Should you go after hobby markets? Rob thinks they can work for info-products and mobile apps, but not SaaS apps.
- “Consumers are harder to support” – Rob
How to market your product:
- Personal brand: “Personal brand has very little to do with B2B sales,” comments Rob, “in terms of HitTail’s growth, most of it has come from other channels.” He says that books, conferences, and training courses can benefit from a strong personal brand. You have to have an interesting perspective: this is often formed by what you’ve achieved (personally). What projects and products have you launched? “The earlier you can be laser focused on a certain audience, the faster you’ll build a following. Rob started focusing on solo-founders, who were bootstrapping.
- Content marketing: this is building info graphics, writing viral blog posts that get shared: it’s socially driven. It can be really effective: The problem with this approach is that it’s time-intensive and can be expensive. Look for long-tail search terms: these are low competition phrases, that can still attract a significant amount of traffic. This is why Rob bought HitTail: it surfaces those long-tail keywords for you. Rob currently has his Product Manager do a lot of writing for him, he outsources other things (like the infographic). Rob outsources as much as possible. “Be sure to measure”, says Rob, put out a lot of content and then look at the ROI for each.
- SEO: this is finding keywords, and writing good content that matches those keywords. “This isn’t just ranking in Google; it includes ranking in Amazon, in YouTube, in the iPhone app store, ranking in WordPress theme directory. It’s really hard to contract out SEO. “What has always worked is writing good content,” says Rob, “start with keywords that people are going to be searching for, blog about it, and then get links to those posts. It is a lot of work.” There’s not as much opportunity to game Google.
- Advertising: It’s hard to get right, but it can really grow your customer base. “You really want to have a customer lifetime value over $150 to even look at advertising”, says Rob. Click advertising has gotten really expensive (especially on Google Adwords). New opportunities: Facebook ads, depending on your market BuySellAds, Reddit ads, LinkedIn (you need a higher lifetime value for it), and StumbleUpon ads. Rob manages all of his advertising campaigns in Google Analytics – use the Google URL Builder to identify which campaign you’re running.

Show notes

oDesk.com

Software by Rob

GetDrip.com

13 pre-launch marketing strategies

Google URL Builder

HitTail

justinjackson.ca

Startups for the Rest of Us

EP09: Rob Walling – Get off the hamster wheel, build your own products!

Justin — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:28:03 +0000

Rob Walling is the man behind products like HitTail, DotNetInvoice, and Drip. But he also helped start a movement of micropreneurs: solo-founders, who launch their own products. These small startups don’t take venture funding and don’t hire employees. In this part 1 of our interview you’ll hear how he went from consulting, to building products full-time. Learn how you can acquire a product (instead of building it yourself) and why the code is less valuable than the product marketing.

“Building something people want is not enough”, says Rob “you have to be able to market it at a cost less than what the customer will pay you back over time.”

He also talks about how to launch products if you’ve already started a family (wife, kids, and a mortgage).

Rob and Mike Taber host podcast that you’ll want to check out: Startups For the Rest of Us.

Show notes

EP08: Sacha Greif on choosing a co-founder and building MVP

Justin — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:00:21 +0000

This is part 2 of our interview with Sacha Greif. In this episode we talked with him about how to find a partner, and the pain involved in building up a product income.

Sacha is a designer and coder from Paris, France, but he’s now living in Osaka, Japan. He’s worked with companies like Hipmunk, but he’s best known for his cool side-projects. His most recent, called Telescope, is an open source platform for creating your own Hacker News.

Highlights

When searching for co-founders, Sacha says: “If you try to find [partners] motivated by money it’s a lot different than finding people who are interested in the project itself”
He said that his “internet popularity” didn’t help him find a partner to build Telescope with him; what worked was getting involved in the Meteor community.
Sacha talks about the importance of side-projects: “The cool thing about the web is that anyone can create a hit. But it helps a lot if you already have a network, and an audience. When I launched Folyo I didn’t really have that audience. I think getting people to pay attention to what you do is the hardest thing on the internet.”
“If you think about it, there are two sides to the equation: having people pay attention, and the other side is having people pay money. Step 1 is doing something popular [where they pay attention]. Step 2 is getting people to pay for products.” – Sacha Greif
“The biggest problem people make is they think too big with their side-projects. They instantly jump to: ‘I’m going to build a social network.’ My advice is to bottle it down to the Minimum Viable Side Project. It should be something you can build in 10 hours.” – Sacha Greif
“My inspiration for Sidebar.io is Daring Fireball; but a multi-user Daring Fireball.” – Sacha Greif
Building a product income is hard! Sacha was really transparent about how he’s not earning a lot of money right now as he attempts to bootstrap his current projects: Sidebar.io and a book on Meteor.
At the end of the interview, Sacha shared this: we don’t hear about the failures of product people; we only hear about the wins. This makes people think that everyone is winning, when that’s not reality.

Show notes

Tom Coleman
Telescope
Sidebar.io
Sacha’s website and blog
The side-project project
Sacha’s ebook: Step by Step UI Design
Medium
Amy Hoy – 30×500
Twistori
Getting Real by 37signals
Branch
Startup Chile

(Photo: Sacha Greif on Instagram)