Product People

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

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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/

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

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

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

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