Tweets

Millennials / Gen Z are going to solve time travel just so they can afford a house. ✨🏡

Thanks for all the birthday wishes y’all!

🌼 Mental health observation:

Having my 💻 out around my kids isn’t good for me, or them.

I can’t focus on family stuff and work stuff at the same time.

The result is just stress and frustration (on both sides).

We’re all a lot happier when I keep work at the office. 👍

Questions to ask when people cancel their SaaS subscription:

1. Why did you cancel?
2. How long have you been thinking about cancelling?
3. What could we have done to keep you as a customer?
4. What are you switching to?

You never *really* know if someone wants your product idea until they pay for it.

For years, the rule for getting traction with a blog, newsletter, podcast, or YouTube channel was "consistency."

Generally, this meant publishing every week.

But nowadays, it seems a better strategy is to publish only when you have something compelling to say.

Thoughts?

Interesting to see how experienced founders respond to this tweet.

Once you’ve built & launched a few things you understand the advantage of targeting customers *already in motion.*

Most indie SaaS founders should focus on an existing category (don't try to invent one).

Apple is the only company that can announce an SD card reader and have millions of people cheer.

A lot of bootstrappers are trying to avoid fitting into an existing category (because they don't want to be compared to competitors).

That's actually what you want: a slow-moving incumbent, who's already cleared the trail for you.

Mindset changes are incremental.

In my 20s, I had some cult-like beliefs that lead to some truly awful attitudes and behaviors.

What changed my mind? Incremental correction. Hanging out with a new group of people who challenged my ideology. Looking for evidence.

It took time.

No matter your stage of life, the best advice is still: “do what you can, with what you have,” and “start now, start small.”

I didn’t really start building indie projects until I was 33 (and had 4 kids aged 3-11).

At the time I felt like I was behind; but I’m glad I started. ❤️

Exciting news: @HelenRyles is joining us full-time at @TransistorFM! 🎉

She’ll be Head of Customer Success: helping podcasters get their audio out into the world. 🎙

Helen has been helping us part-time since 2019; really exciting for @jonbuda and I to be working with her FT. 🙌

Microsoft crossed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time.

Gaming? $10 billion.
Surface? $4.6 billion.

Subscriptions? $23 billion. 😲

"When I started Balsamiq, my goal was not to have a successful business. My goal was to LEARN about what it takes to design, build, market, sell and support a product. Even if it hadn’t been a financial success, I would have been successful in my goal of learning." – @peldi

New fitness experiment (43 year-old edition).

In the past, “fitness” meant going to a gym for 1-2 hours.

Recently, inspired by @adamwathan, I’ve just started waking up a bit earlier, heading down to the basement, and doing a 15-30 minute workout.

I might extend it over time,…

@jasonfried New @basecamp Racing series between you and @dhh? 😄

🚗🚒💨

⚡️ SaaS sales tip:

PERSISTENCE.

Case study:
- @brennandunn is my friend
- he told me about @rightmessageapp before he’d even built it
- I’m exactly his target customer

And Brennan STILL had to ping me about 20x before I signed up.

(and I’m happy I did).

Follow-ups work!

The verdict is in.

I think most of us who found this site magical and useful in its previous incarnation agree: this site has become considerably worse under the new ownership. https://twitter.com/m1guelpf/status/1848506822963171393

This is going to go down in history as the most epic way to start a @LaraconUS in history.

Was honored to be on the @terminaldotshop team. 🏀☕️🏆

📸 @ninjaparade #laracon

43

I love making videos for @TransistorFM, but my studio setup isn't great.

(It's actually pretty embarrassing 🫣)

I just could never get the motivation/time/focus to upgrade everything.

That's changing now!

When people get deathly ill, they don’t get treatment from their pastor, politician, Nicki Minaj, Joe Rogan, or Bret Weinstein.

They go to the hospital.

They seek out doctors because, deep down, they know that medical expertise (based on science) is their best chance at life.

The challenge for entrepreneurs is you’ve got to build a

- product that customers want
- company/lifestyle that you want

AT THE SAME TIME.

My old desire was for complete freedom, so I became a lone wolf and did everything myself.

My new desire is to have capable people come alongside so everything’s not reliant on me.

⭐️ I've just created a list of mental health resources for entrepreneurs here: https://justinjackson.ca/mentalhealth/

Let me know if there's anything else I should add!

The more business success stories I read, the more I'm convinced that the *market* is the underlying driver of success.

A founder can make multiple mistakes, bumble, flail, and *still* win if there's strong customer demand.

Wow.

"Intuit has agreed to pay total consideration of approximately $12 billion to acquire Mailchimp"

https://investors.intuit.com/news/news-details/2021/Intuit-to-Acquire-Mailchimp/default.aspx

Where have all the WordPress developers gone?

At one point in time, every local market had a handful of devs who focused on building and maintaining WP sites.

Increasingly, I’m hearing that they’re hard to find. Just me? What happened?

Have they all gone “upstream?”

If you're making podcasts, we'd love to have you on @transistorfm! ✌️

@jonbuda and I are working on making it better every day. (We now serve over 9,000 different shows!)

Pretty proud of these two so far:

🙅‍♂️🍺 no alcohol for 57 days straight
💪🏋️‍♂️ 29 days at the gym in 2019

Mental illness is real.

I didn't think I would ever get depressed, until it hit me last year.

There is help!

Here are some resources specifically for entrepreneurs:

https://justinjackson.ca/mentalhealth/

@adamwathan I’ve been doing this since 2014.

It’s the best. 👍

It’s essentially just a group of friends and I who are all remote workers. We share the cost of rent, internet, etc

We go for lunch, have chats throughout the day, and hang out after work.

It’s downtown, so I walk every day.

It's remarkable how much can change in a month.

I’m going to start a club for founders who don’t want to wake up at 4am to journal, but would definitely love to grab brunch at 10:30am. 😄🍳☕️

The speaker lineup for #laracon looks 🔥:

@adamwathan
@freekmurze
@jasonfried
@SamanthaGeitz
@gonedark
@youyuxi
@taylorotwell
@jkglei
@stauffermatt
@RyanHoliday
@SIXLIV3
@wesbos
@colindecarlo
@calebporzio
@unclebobmartin

Looking forward to introducing these folks on stage. 👍

Who wants one?

People often say that the key to success is “hard work” but that doesn’t quite encapsulate it.

For me, it’s more like “consistently pushing forward, in the right direction.”

Every day I wake up, and push the rock a bit further.

"Software developers" is market like no other:

1. Individuals are highly incentivized in their careers to gain more skills, learn on their own time, explore new tools.

2. Employers are highly incentivized to keep devs happy, improve productivity, buy tools that optimize, etc. https://twitter.com/r00k/status/1364697905706258435

Front-end devs: "I'll make your Bootstrap app look better" is a great sales pitch for 90% of new web apps.

(✋ my little app needs some help.)

If your SaaS has 5 users, but you want to get to 100, use a case study:

- User's struggle
- How they found you
- How you changed their life

🎉 Announcement: I'm rebooting the @megamaker podcast.

💻 This season, I'll be helping @joshuaanderton launch a brand new indie SaaS.

🙏 I'm editing the first episode now, but I could use some help building anticipation:

🎧 please, subscribe!

https://podcast.megamaker.co/subscribe

Is it weird that musical artists get paid to stream on Spotify, but podcasters happily submit their tracks for free? 🤔

Two things that drive a successful product:

1. Demand
2. Usage

You need both.

It’s not enough for them to desire it; they need to use it.

It’s also not enough for just a few people to be using it; there needs to a considerable number of prospects who want it.

Love watching @m1guelpf build stuff.

He's a 16-year-old maker who created this in a week! 😮

https://blogcast.host/

⚡ Easy ways to level-up your newsletter:

1. Increase your font size!
2. Use a bold color for hyperlinks
3. Put your photo + name at the top to increase familiarity. ("Oh yeah! I remember signing up for this.")

@CasJam is doing a lot of things right with his emails. 👍

"Would you like us to automatically save your account statements to a Dropbox folder?"

☝️ I want this for all of my bank accounts, and every SaaS I pay for.

(Every quarter, I have to manually save PDFs to Dropbox for my bookkeeper.)

Your competitive advantage should be that you understand the customer (and what they want) better than anyone else. 🤜💥🤛

I'm a fucking webmaster.

https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/

What ruins creativity:

Bitterness.
Insecurity.
Pettiness.
Jealousy.
Shame.
Hurts.
Fear.
Ego.

I used to be one of those tech guys that said “college is a waste of time.”

But my 19 and 22 year old kids are in college now and they’re learning so much about life, meeting friends, finding mentors, building projects, and making new connections.

It’s a great on-ramp for…

If your SaaS targets prosumers, you'll need a reasonably high number of daily signups to outrun churn (and grow net revenue).

Prosumer customers are, by their nature, not going to stick around as long as B2B customers might.

Here's an example from ConvertKit's open numbers:

Pulled the plug today: removed Google Analytics completely from http://justinjackson.ca! 🙌

Going 100% with @usefathom.

Feels good. Feels clean.

To build a "killer" product, you need to provide desirable outcomes for your users:

Eliminate obstacles in their path.
Give them progress at work.
Provide them with status.
Generate good feelings.
Remove future threats.
Bestow superpowers.

Still thinking about this:

“To be happy, you need:
1. Someone to love
2. Something to do
3. Something to look forward to”
— @frankchartrand

Today the @TransistorFM team launched a big new feature: AI podcast transcription.

Upload your episode, click "Transcribe with AI," and it automatically transcribes, does speaker identification, and generates SRT, VTT, TXT, JSON, and HTML transcripts!

We're excited about it!

I’ll always have a soft spot for young parents who are trying to start a business.

Starting a business when you have kids (especially infants!), and very little capital, is a whole other level.

It’s the “hardest hard mode;” especially for bootstrappers.

Making a list of some of my favorite programming podcasts:

https://transistor.fm/dev-podcasts/

Honestly, listening to podcasts is getting me through this.

Hearing familiar voices, and how people are processing our current situation, is calming for me.

Thank you podcasters. ❤️

Big milestone: @jonbuda and I officially launched @TransistorFM one year ago! 🙌

https://twitter.com/jonbuda/status/1025429575281594369?s=21

I haven't told very many people about this, but I built a quick tool that lets you compare your podcast's cover art compared to other shows in your category.

Useful to see if your show stands out!

https://transistor.fm/preview

⚡ More often than not, your brain will try to dissuade you from doing the things that matter most in your business:

"Don't follow up with that lead; you'll just annoy them."
"This launch is an embarrassment; don't ever try this again."

Push through! Do what matters.

Spoiler: large, multi-national corporations (and their CEOs) don't *really* care about individual creators.

They want:

- all of the leverage
- centralized control
- as much of the upside as they can get

Once they control distribution, they apply downward pressure on creators.

This is the Apple keynote I want to see:

<@tim_cook enters>

“Today we’re announcing a $100 billion dollar investment to fight climate change. This seems like the most sensible way for us to maximize shareholder value. Thank you.”

Got my copy of @pjrvs' new book last night, and I'm reading it this morning.

"Technically, everyone should be a company of one. Even at a large corporation, no one else cares about you keeping your job as much as you do."

Really great stuff. 👍

People are realizing that centralized publishing platforms (Medium, YouTube, Facebook) have real downsides.

"Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, but we think they’re about to swing back in style." – @dhh

This is why I'm investing in podcasting. ❤️🎙️

This book Refactoring UI is a no-brainer for anyone in the web industry.

https://refactoringui.com/book/

It's written by @adamwathan (a dev) and @steveschoger (a designer) so you get both perspectives as you're reading it.

If you want to understand what makes "good design," it's 💯.

Build your landing page first!

"But where am I going to get traffic?"

If you can't figure out how to get traffic to a simple landing page *now*, how are you going to do it in the future once your app is built?

Life hack #1: create an "Encouragement" folder in Gmail. Put anything positive in it (thank you notes, encouraging word). Review it on days when you're feeling down.

Life hack #2: write someone an encouraging note right now.

Questions to ask whenever you come up with a new product idea:

1. Who is it for?
2. What does it help people achieve?
3. Do they care?

Current work status

Folks who are caught up in the frenzy about Clubhouse (and are hailing it as the “future” of media)...

Remember when we were equally as excited about Meerkat?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/30/meerkat-star-of-2015-is-officially-dead/

The categories we saw accelerate in 2020 will continue to gain steam:

- Homeschool
- Remote work
- Home fitness
- Remote events
- Backyard office
- Digital products
- Online shopping
- Creator economy
- Private communities
- Paid podcasts/newsletters
- Video/podcast home studio

Is it just me, or has everything really slowed down lately?

- Less emails
- Less meetings
- Less customer support
- Less activity in Slack groups I'm in

Is there a collective "let's take it easy" now that we've hit late summer? 🏖️

If you've ever tried fishing, and you've been in the same spot all day, and have only had a few nibbles... that feeling is very similar to what it feels like when your business doesn't have momentum.

Just published on @IndieHackers: "Bootstrapper's paradox"

Sometimes you can't self-fund your business.

@mijustin/bootstrapper-s-paradox-441f3287fe" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.indiehackers.com/@mijustin/bootstrapper-s-paradox-441f3287fe

“Work, hustle, grind…”

People, we’re moving pixels around while drinking lattes. We sit on ergonomic chairs in climate controlled pods.

Do you have a personal site/blog?

I’d love to see it.

Reply here with your URL. 👍

(I’d also curious to know what the “primary purpose” of your personal site is, for you)

Why did you want to start a business?

(I’m sure there were multiple factors; what were they?)

Is it worth doing sales demos for a self-serve SaaS?

📆 I just went through my calendar and counted every demo call I did.

Then I went into Stripe and calculated how many of those calls turned into $$ for @TransistorFM.

Here's what I learned 👉

Seinfeld tickets: $100-$450
Cirque du Soleil tickets: $100-$450

Seinfeld is a one-man show.

Cirque shows require $25+ million to develop, 150 stage technicians, and a cast of 85 performers

Capitalism rewards simplicity.

So grateful for everyone who's bought something from my little indie business.

You're enabling me to provide for my family. That's an incredible gift (to all of us).

Thank you! 🙌

"We become a product of the environment we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment."
– @JamesClear, Atomic Habits

Forget "Net Promoter Score."

The best way to know if you have product/market fit is to take your app offline for 15 minutes and see how many people complain...

How to make $1 million this year:

1 client pays $84k / mo.
25 clients pay $4k / mo.
80 clients pay $1k / mo.
900 clients pay $100 / mo.

Here's the @TransistorFM news:

@joshuaanderton is joining the team full-time! 🥳

He's been helping us as a part-time contractor since Oct 2022. It's clear he gives us web dev superpowers and we're excited to have him on board FT! 🎉

https://transistor.fm/josh/

Drove through the Rockies today. ⛰

I saw these salary numbers in @danmartell’s newsletter.

I’m curious what founders over $1M ARR think about these salary suggestions.

(Also curious to see how answers differ between funded startups, and bootstrapped)

DM me if you don’t want your answer public. 🤫

Demo: use @Statamic as a static site generator and deploy to @Netlify. ✨

This is the future.

Now, instead of paying hundreds (thousands?) of dollars every year for hosting, you can buy a Statamic license once, and host for free/low cost on Netlify!

https://youtu.be/4bTk5JeKydU

My friend @adamwathan is on @ProductHunt today, with (what I would argue is) the best new CSS framework I've seen: @tailwindcss.

Check it out here:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tailwind-css-2

All of @TransistorFM's revenue metrics are public right now! 😱

https://transistor.baremetrics.com/

Have a business idea?

This is what starting small looks like 👉

https://justinjackson.ca/rockstar/

Looking for a Sticker Mule alternative.

Who do you use to print high-quality stickers?

This is your annual reminder that teenagers are still kids, and trick-or-treating is one of the few opportunities us adults have to show them some kindness.

If a “big kid” shows up at your door, don’t do be a Halloween grinch!

Bootstrapping a new startup with kids: is it possible?

What context makes it harder/easier?

What have you done that worked?

What didn't work?

Here's the AI tool I want 👉

Take my 10-minute video and automatically generate "summarized" versions for:

- TikTok (3-5 mins, portrait)
- Twitter (2 mins, landscape)
- YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, etc. (60 seconds, portrait)
- YouTube ad (3 mins, landscape)

If your ship is sailing in the wrong direction…

…going faster isn’t going to solve the problem.

…motivating your crew isn’t going to solve the problem.

…building a better ship isn’t going to solve the problem.

Make sure you’re on the right course, then make adjustments.

“Why do people listen to podcasts? If you ask people, they’ll tell you they want to learn things and be entertained. But if you observe their behavior (and reflect on your own) I think a more primary driver is to develop “relationships” with interesting personalities.” – @nbashaw

Old: "you can mine for gold or you can sell pickaxes."

New:

⛏️ Software: here's a pickaxe.
⛏️🏬 E-commerce: here's a pickaxe store.
⛏️📆 SaaS: here's a pickaxe you rent monthly.
⛏️👨‍🏫 E-learning: here's a course on how to use a pickaxe.

It’s weird that the main kids vitamins are still called Flintstones Vitamins.

Do kids even know who the Flintstones are anymore?

If your New Year's resolution is to "start a podcast" I'm here to help. 👋