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Startups For the Rest of Us

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

The original podcast for bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped startups, this show follow the stories of founders as they start, acquire, and grow SaaS companies. Hear when they fail, struggle, succeed, and take you with them through the tumultuous life of a SaaS founder. If you like Mixergy, This Week in Startups, or SaaStr, you’ll enjoy Startup for the Rest of Us.
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Top 10 Startups For the Rest of Us Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Startups For the Rest of Us episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Startups For the Rest of Us for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Startups For the Rest of Us episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Startups For the Rest of Us - Episode 592 | Nine Tactics for Amazing Customer Support
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03/01/22 • 28 min

In Episode 592, Rob Walling is joined again by Cody Duval for a technical conversation about the dos and don'ts for amazing customer support.

The topics we cover

[2:00] Customer success vs customer support [5:10] Response time [8:59] Post-support surveys [10:58] When to hire first customer support person [13:02] Chat widgets [17:09] Doing customer support early on as a founder [18:01] Training customer support to ask a question [19:00] Dealing with abusive customers [21:10] Customer support tool

Links from the show

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We'd love to hear from you!Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

Transcript

Rob: Welcome back. It's Startups for the Rest of Us. This is Episode 592 where we're going to dive into nine tactics for...

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Startups For the Rest of Us - Episode 571 | Deciding When to Move on to Your Next Idea
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10/12/21 • 38 min

In Episode 571, Rob Walling chats with Peter Suhm about moving on from WP Pusher and Branch. We also dive into how he came up with the idea for Reform and his process for validating the idea with a landing page before building.

The topics we cover

[1:28] Intros [2:48] Default alive and selling Branch [8:15] Changing customer behavior is hard [12:25] Struggling through customer interviews from a small studio [16:20] Thinking through all the options and deciding to keep going [18:45] Moving from a list of requirements to a form builder [27:23] Building a high-quality MVP, starting with a landing page [34:52] Entering a big, horizontal, crowded space

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If you have questions about starting or scaling a...

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In Episode 588, Rob Walling chats with Courtland Allen about a wide range of bootstrapper and indie hacker topics including the struggles with motivation/depression, bootstrapping today, fighting the urge to quit, and frameworks for getting your first dollar.

The topics we cover

[3:43] Hiring a podcast producer [6:21] Letting go in business [7:09] Invite-only experiment on Indie Hackers [16:03] Thinking about the future [20:47] Financial freedom and starting a business [25:05] Depression as a founder and rediscovering purpose [37:10] Fighting the urge to quit [41:10] Getting your first dollar [52:35] The bootstrapper scene in 2010 and the relevance of bootstrapping

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If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for...

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In episode 719, join Rob Walling as he embarks on another solo adventure, tackling listener questions. He discusses how to test pricing, addresses the pitfalls of one-time payments vs. SaaS, and he reflects on “building something for everyone.” He wraps up with advice on making better recommendations.

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Topics we cover:

  • 0:58 – Testing different prices for your product
  • 8:12 – One-time or lifetime payments
  • 15:02 – Horizontal products, building something for everyone
  • 21:43 – Making descriptive recommendations

Links from the Show:

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify

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In episode 596, Rob Walling is joined by Einar Vollset and Tracy Osborn for a bootstrapper news roundup episode. They cover a wide range of topics from Google’s decision to bring employees back into the office (and the potential implications for bootstrapped companies), founder salary data trends, email management strategies, and much more.

Episode Sponsor:

Microsoft for Startups Founder Hub Microsoft for Startups is on a mission to help all founders innovate and grow no matter their background, location, or progress. Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub is a platform that provides founders with free resources to help solve startup challenges, including access to Azure credits, development tools like Github, mentorship resources, Microsoft collaboration and productivity software like Teams and Outlook and more. The program is open to all and takes 5 minutes to sign up, with no funding required.Learn more aka.ms/startupsfortherestofus

Topics we cover:

[0:59] The...

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Startups For the Rest of Us - Episode 522 | Revisiting Castos, One Year Later
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11/10/20 • 44 min

Rob welcomes back to the show a frequent guest, Craig Hewitt for a "Where Are They Now?" syle episode. Craig is the founder of Castos and has appeared many times on Startups For the Rest of Us. In this episode, they reconnect and talk about the latest with Castos, from hiring a growth marketer, merging brands, private podcasting, and so much more.

The topics we cover

[3:54] Reflections on hiring a growth marketer 1 year later

[6:92] How did the free trial without asking for a credit card experiment work out?

[8:92] Merging brands and moving into enterprise offers

[19:91] Private podcasting

[23:44] What's new and exciting at Castos

Links from the show

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned.

Click here to share your number one takeaway from the episode.

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We'd love to hear from you!

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

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In episode 523, Rob hosts a rapid-fire lightning round of listener questions ranging from whether to focus on one or multiple businesses, finding the right amount of customer research, breaking through slow growth, and teaching entrepreneurship to kids.

The topics we cover

[4:38] If you were starting a business today and you were earlier on in your career, would you try multiple business ideas at once or go all-in on one?

[8:11] If building your first tiny product, like a WordPress plugin, what level of customer research should you do?

[10:56] What advice would you give to someone entering a somewhat competitive market?

[15:55] What questions would you be asking yourself if you had a slow-growing 12k MRR B2B SaaS?

[18:22] How would you go about offloading tier-one customer support?

[20:28] How do you feel about entrepreneurship being taught to children?

[22:24] What are things you noticed that bootstrappers commonly overlooked that are preventing them from achieving their goals?

[23:18] What are some of the biggest takeaways you can see across your portfolio of early-stage SaaS companies?

[25:01] Have you ever built a business that got a fairly large portion of its revenue from services instead of products, but not just you consulting?

[26:56] How do you prepare financially or otherwise for your retirement?

Links from the show

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned.

Click here to share your number one takeaway from the episode.

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We'd love to hear from you!

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In Episode 546, Rob Walling flies solo for a Q&A episode. With a backlog of great listener questions, Rob discusses qualified small business stock (QSBS), hiring entrepreneurially-minded employees, indie hacking while working at a large company, and more.

The topics we cover

[01:51] Should I switch to a C Corp to take advantage of QSBS in five years?

[05:40] How to attract entrepreneurial employees

[14:19] Indie-hacking while working at a large Fortune 20 company

[19:12] Finding a niche using the Disruptive Innovation

Links from the show

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned.

Click here to share your number one takeaway from the episode.

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

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Startups For the Rest of Us - TinySeed Tales S2E7 | A Global Pandemic

TinySeed Tales S2E7 | A Global Pandemic

Startups For the Rest of Us

play

10/22/20 • 17 min

Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app. Today's episode was recorded after the COVID-19 shelter in place orders went into effect. We talk with Brian and Scottie about how the pandemic has affected Gather as well as their life beyond the scope of their business.

The topics we cover

[01:10] How the pandemic has affected their lives beyond the scope of their business.
  • Brian and Scottie live in Mexico
  • Living in almost what feels like two worlds here. The ex-pat community is very tuned into what's happening in the US and sheltering in place
[03:11] Current financial situation
  • Our situation hasn't changed financially. I think that at the time we had hopes that we could raise some money or at least get alone. We're not even pursuing that at this point
  • We're certainly used to bootstrapping and feeling that stress and coming up with interesting solutions to our cash problems.
[05:57] High point or biggest wins since the last episode
  • We have had a couple of requests for enterprise plans, one existing customer that has a lot of data that they need to be migrated over and they have a custom feature that they want
  • Then a new customer who has a custom feature in data migration.
  • It's unexpected. Feasibly you think they're going to cut back expenses, but larger deals are coming your way.
  • The churn that we have had has been largely solo designers and smaller firms
  • One of the things of going upmarket, the typical pattern is there price sensitive, they churn less.
  • We've had a lot of inbound interest and a lot of them are saying things like now that we're home working remotely, we're sort of investigating better ways to work online
[09:21] Impacts from the COVID-19 crisis and biggest setbacks so far
  • Across the portfolio of companies that are part of TinySeed, there is about 15% that are having real struggles with the impact of the pandemic on the industry they serve. Another 70% are waiting to see what happens, perhaps cutting back on expenses and generally seeing a growth plateau. Then, there's the 15% of companies for whom remote work is a boon and their growth is accelerating faster than ever.
  • Gather has had to cut their developer contract in half
  • Big features are kind of on hold for a little while
  • Staying focused has just been difficult
[13:54] Fears and hopes for the future
  • I think my biggest fear is that the trend that we've seen this month as being a big uptick in sales and opportunities is just a flash in the pan.
  • In different times, we might be able to pivot if we needed to, but because of our financial situation it's going to be hard for us to pivot out of it
  • Looking forward to seeing how these enterprise deals play out
  • Trying to figure out ways that we could get customers to pay for some of the features that we'd like to build

Links from the show

Thanks for listening to another episode of TinySeed Tales. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Season 1 of TinySeed Tales where we follow the Saas journey with Craig Hewitt of Castos.
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Startups For the Rest of Us - Episode 525 | A Bootstrapping Artifact from 2005
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12/01/20 • 27 min

This episode is a walk down memory lane as Rob shares the story of acquiring his first product 15 years ago. We hear how Rob navigated the purchase of the product, a potential partnership with a trusted friend, and pushing through when his back was against the wall.

Hopefully, this episode will inspire you to take action and keep shipping.

The topics we cover

[5:03] Three levels to making money online

[6:36] Discovering the original version of DotNetInvoice

[11:34] The business proposition

[15:10] The counteroffer from Rob's trusted friend

[18:41] Business plan vs boots on the ground

[20:49] Buying DotNetInvoice

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned.

Click here to share your number one takeaway from the episode.

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

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FAQ

How many episodes does Startups For the Rest of Us have?

Startups For the Rest of Us currently has 822 episodes available.

What topics does Startups For the Rest of Us cover?

The podcast is about Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Podcasts and Business.

What is the most popular episode on Startups For the Rest of Us?

The episode title 'Episode 596 | News Round-Up: Google Ends WFH, Founder Salaries, How to Use Email' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Startups For the Rest of Us?

The average episode length on Startups For the Rest of Us is 34 minutes.

How often are episodes of Startups For the Rest of Us released?

Episodes of Startups For the Rest of Us are typically released every 1 day, 18 hours.

When was the first episode of Startups For the Rest of Us?

The first episode of Startups For the Rest of Us was released on Jul 11, 2017.

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