Tweets

@valsopi @megamaker @MicroConf Factors to consider with pricing:

1. Who is actively looking for this type of product?
2. What options are they considering?
3. What is the pricing of those options?
4. Which "value metric" makes the most sense? (bandwidth, team members, storage, etc)

https://youtu.be/z5Zjqz7_9kA

The craziest part about watching this 1991 video of an NYC computer store is realizing how expensive software was back then! 🤯

Nothing surprising about this.

During the initial years of the pandemic many people were stuck at home and decided to try starting a podcast.

It’s natural that numbers would revert to the pre-COVID growth trend. https://twitter.com/chartrdaily/status/1615064787955683332

Old Musk rhetoric: "Free speech absolutism!"

New Musk policy: "I will censor information that threatens my power and interests. I will punish individuals who speak out against me. I will make it difficult for people to gather elsewhere to express their views publicly."

These are the "Prohibited platforms" on Twitter now:

"Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr, Linktree, LinkInBio."

But according to this new authoritarian decree, LinkedIn is still ok.

Today, my friend @valsopi is on @ProductHunt with a great indie blogging tool I’ve been using a lot lately: @blogstatic

Please go and support his PH launch! 👍

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/blogstatic

“ChatGPT is at best impressive as a search engine where you can't tell how reliable the source is.”
– Eugen Rochko

Also: the "real" accounts in this group tweet some truly awful shit.

@zkahn @semafor @lmatsakis @edisonresearch I love the "slow and steady" growth of podcasting.

No hockey stick. No "viral growth." Just slow and steady.

It's calming to be in a category like this. 🧘‍♂️😌

There’s a similar axiom in business:

You don’t get rewarded for the amount of effort you put in, you get rewarded for the results.

Also, “mastery” on its own isn’t sufficient. You need to identify what people want, deliver on it, and do it at scale while generating profit. https://twitter.com/AdamMGrant/status/1592552616831389698

Personally, I want a "level of concern that's commensurate with what’s worth worrying about."

I don't want to ignore the real problems/challenges that exist, but I don't want to stress needlessly either.

The lack of responses here makes me think that Chas' observation is correct: most SaaS businesses are not collecting and remitting sales tax properly.

https://twitter.com/cemerick/status/1583535454573715457

It's OK to negotiate the job offers you get from tech companies!

(Even in a recession)

The big fear is that if you ask for more money they'll rescind their offer. @JoshDoody highlights why this is rarely the case:

Super fun to do a meetup in Montreal, and sit down with people doing interesting work here!

You set off on a journey with a destination in mind, but discover something that makes you change course along the way.

It’s deciding to set off on the journey that matters.

Be open to what reveals itself along the way! https://twitter.com/_rchase_/status/1571960089652723719

Just finished reading @MatthewBogart’s newest Incredible Doom (vol 2).

So good.

One of my favorite @PodcastMovement moments was watching @NICKFRESH get down at the @iHeartRadio party.

Check out his podcast: @choonspod!

#pm22

Just three indie podcast entrepreneurs (@ZachInSpace, 🙋‍♂️, @RockwellFelder) hanging out at @PodcastMovement.

📸 @arithisandthat #pm22

Doing an AMA about @TransistorFM on @producthunt:

"Four years ago we launched our startup (Transistor) on Product Hunt, and it changed our lives. AMA!"

Post your questions here, and I'll answer them tomorrow!
https://www.producthunt.com/discussions/four-years-ago-we-launched-our-startup-transistor-on-product-hunt-and-it-changed-our-lives-ama

Throughout it all, we’ve guided @TransistorFM based on this belief:

“Good businesses have margin. Profit margin? Yes. But also margin for our time, emotional and physical health, relationships, sanity, and integrity.”

https://github.com/TransistorFM/handbook/blob/master/values.md

This is just a hunch, but my guess is these emails from John are spam.

@KateKendall With @TransistorFM, we spent about $500 on Stripe Atlas, which also got us a bunch of AWS credits. We spent another $3k on design work.

That, and tons of hours, got us to launch, profitability, and beyond.

(Completely bootstrapped)

If you're starting a company without any financial margin, one misstep can lead to desperation.

Desperation impedes your thinking. You become consumed by the moment and your immediate needs. You can't see the big picture.

https://justinjackson.ca/desperation

It's easy for tech workers to get excited about disruption because (most of the time) we're not the ones being disrupted.

We have nice jobs, in climate-controlled offices, with good paychecks.

We're largely immune from the impacts of what we create.

That has to change.

I discussed a lot of this with @ironmikebve on his podcast:

"When everything falls into place, and you're not relying solely on your own effort to make something happen, but you're able to ride the market, a business can be incredibly life-giving."

🎧 https://share.transistor.fm/s/4b141369

Market first.

If there’s not enough customer demand, no amount of passion will fill that gap. https://t.co/MIjUknQeQC

Here's what a founder can control:

1. The product category they choose (most important)
2. How they differentiate their product competitively
3. Their skills, network, resources, experiences
4. Efficiency + effectiveness of marketing
5. How they control costs
6. How they evolve

Patrick shared this with me in 2012, and it’s still my all-time fave “how I learned to code” story. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1509003692862701571

It feels like tech is still heavily dominated by folks in their 20s-40s.

A growing number of us are in our 40s now.

I know a handful of people in tech in their 50s.

I don't think I know anyone in their 60s and 70s still working in tech?

🤯 So surprising to see @TransistorFM in the wild:

Got an email from a local ski resort about @CollectivePass (get 2 days of lift passes at multiple ski resorts).

Check out the website. Scroll down the page... THERE'S A TRANSISTOR PODCAST PLAYER!

https://mountaincollective.com/

The next @LaraconOnline is looking good. https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1504114125915500546

@AliAbdaal Course creation: @mariepoulin

Understanding customers: @mjwhansen

Podcasting: @OnaOghogho

Michele Hansen: @mjwhansen

“The customer interview maven!” Michele is the co-founder of @Geocodio, and the author of @DeployEmpathy.

Follow her for JTBD, customer research, and building indie SaaS. 💯

I can’t emphasize this enough: humans need margin.

We need to leave a buffer for our physical, mental, and emotional health.

Doing more and more things to “get ahead” almost always ends in burnout.

Being small is an advantage.

The old competitors in your category are likely moving way slower than you. They have all the weight of technical debt, managing big teams, etc

Small = fast

Indie devs have shown they can build world-class products that compete with massive teams.

Here's my take on college:

I got my Bachelor of Business in 2002.

In retrospect, most classes haven't been that useful.

BUT: I took a Business Ethics class that deeply impacted my worldview. I refer to it frequently.

That one class made my whole degree worthwhile.

"Science Vs" was a Gimlet podcast and was forced to go Spotify-exclusive after the acquisition.

But they're releasing this episode everywhere.

Here it is on @OvercastFM:
https://overcast.fm/+Tr3-L8BX4

Most of a startup’s growth is determined by the market itself.

Hard work, good product, and good marketing are necessary but not sufficient on their own.

Your product needs a strong, existing, undercurrent of desire.

@marckohlbrugge Hello from Revelstoke!

@dvassallo For me, most of my direction was determined by:

1. How I wanted my life to be different
2. How I wanted an average day to look
3. The freedom and flexibility I desired
4. My values

This video out of Colorado is so scary it feels like it must be a movie.

But this is real.

All our apocalyptic fiction is becoming a reality because of the climate crisis.

These unbelievable events are becoming more and more frequent.

A reminder: lots of folks (including me) are quick to dismiss other people’s approaches when they don't line up with their personal experience.

One person's approach might not work for another.

Let's not discourage people from exploring approaches that might work for them. 👍

@yongfook @TransistorFM More here: https://saas.transistor.fm/episodes/why-we-stopped-sharing-our-revenue-numbers

Yikes. After the launch of Twitter’s Super Follows, users only spent $6,000 on the feature? 🙈

“Twitter doesn’t seem to know what its users need or want.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-22/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-s-new-product-strategy-is-off-to-a-rough-start

Imagine that Twitter is a house party.

Just a regular party: everyone’s dressed normally, having drinks, talking about stuff.

Inexplicably, a bunch of dudes show up dressed as mascots.

“Hey everyone! We’re here!”

Not saying we can’t adjust for that, but it feels super weird.

@stephsmithio What the…

People live like this?

We can barely get our kids to school for 8:45am 😆

7am start times?!!?!

Just published my conversation with @spencerfry: is venture capital good or bad?

https://youtu.be/fpbGy7Amt9Q

@petersuhm Thanks! I published the whole series here as well:

https://justinjackson.ca/marketing-steroids

🎯 Avoid "starved founder mentality, which many times goes in tandem with the overkill hustle culture."

https://twitter.com/ChristineCarril/status/1425199139260829696

I could be wrong (and maybe @mattwensing has a model that accounts for this?) but it's very difficult to know for sure that "investing money back into the business" is better than not investing it (and taking it as founder comp).

Too many variables; you can't A/B test reality 🔀

Whenever I hear VCs and billionaires talk about "podcasting 2.0" they don't mean contributing to an open-source ecosystem where everyone benefits...

For them:

Podcasting 2.0 = "centralized platform we control and can monetize" 😡

These comments from Alban (who works at a much larger competitor) confirms my intuition:

"These types of customers need a lot more support than a 3, or even a 15, person company can provide."

https://twitter.com/AlbanBrooke/status/1418675482757828614

I'm confirming my own biases here, but I think I'm going to stop doing demos.

Why?

Supporting enterprise customers would require us to massively change our company (hire more folks) and our product (build iOS / Android apps, add SSO).

Plus: I don't think the upside is there.

@rosiesherry 👋 Been building @megamaker since 2013.

👨‍💻 Working on a new membership platform with @joshuaanderton called @meepsapp:

https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/meeps

VCs: show me the money (you're investing climate change solutions).

You want to make a dent in the universe? Help us clean this shit up.

@Casey Same here. 😞

I started working from home in 2012, but didn’t like being in a closed room, by myself, all day.

Too often, “remote” = WFH

For me, the key was to get out of the house, walk downtown, and hang out with folks at @CoWorkVernon.

I can WFH if I want, but most days I don’t.

@jameswood12p 👋 @joshuaanderton and I are working on @meepsapp together.

https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/meeps

Update: I was finally able to invest in @tylertringas' @calmfund on @wefunder 🙌

(Invested $1,000)

https://wefunder.com/calmfund

From a Jobs to be Done perspective:

"Indie creators are hiring 'start my own business' for certain jobs in their lives: financial margin, creative freedom, respect, flexibility."

As an employer, you can offer those benefits and get those kinds of employees.

People who built their company purely on passion (and succeeded) got lucky.

Their passion happened to coincide with a market where there was demand.

Beware of false-positives: most passion products fail!

There needs to be underlying customer demand for what you’re building.

★ Just published a new episode of MegaMaker 2021: Teaser: trying something new for 2021. Listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/79f972cd

Reading @edzitron's takedown of hustle culture:

"The cold hard truth of a lot of success is often messier and more exhausting than many want to communicate."

https://ez.substack.com/p/hustle-culture-and-the-big-lies-of

A must read: a scientist’s tireless effort to right the science on airborne transmission of coronaviruses.

Thank you @linseymarr! 👏 We are all in your debt. Thanks for caring enough to push this forward!

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/

"Basecamp’s new policies, and how they were communicated, are sufficient evidence of poor decision-making on their own.

The policies are openly hostile to the workforce."

– @fakebaldur

@rrhoover The only speed networking I enjoy is fast internet.

@dr @GlowDotFM Transistor already has a killer private podcasting system.

https://transistor.fm/paid-private-podcast/

(Built-in payments are coming soon)

Just got a walkthrough of @userlist by @benediktdeicke.

If you’re looking to send automated (triggered) campaigns to your customers, it looks like a great choice.

Some nice pre-made templates to choose from too. 👍

http://userlist.com/?via=justin

Cheering for @dominicstpierre and his new SaaS: https://parle.io 🎉

I believe there is a bunch of opportunity in the "live chat widget" space.

It's already a big category with lots of momentum, and there's also growth potential (many businesses don't have live chat yet)

Live conference calls... EVERYWHERE https://twitter.com/verge/status/1377056911124729860

Let’s treat all this crypto tech as “proposed but paused” until it can prove that it can be operated sustainably.

You don’t test if the seatbelts work once you’re on the Autobahn.

Culturally, we’ve already accrued tons of legacy code and cruft (eating beef, driving cars, using gas for heat, flying in planes, cloud tech) that’s going to be difficult to refactor.

We don’t need to be introducing new, non-efficient tech (Bitcoin, NFTs) to this mix.

The point of Gail's talk was: "It takes a long time for SaaS to get to scale."

But... does it?

If it takes the average SaaS 1.3 years to reach $100k in ARR, that seems pretty fast to me?

https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/997550774438842368

Constant Contact's experience isn't a good model for most indie SaaS.

"Every $30k we added in MRR required 1 additional engineer and $15K in sales and marketing." 😳

"We achieved profitability at 15,000 customers. Problem was, it took $21 million of capital to get to that." 🤯

“Many devs make bad customers.”

Every group has bad customers.

I’m not convinced that devs are over-represented here.

(So far, I’ve found devs to be some of my best customers, the easiest to serve, and the most helpful with feedback)

Anecdotally, I suspect that devs are funding a big portion of the creator economy (Patreon, private podcasts, Substacks, GitHub sponsors).

They have a lot of disposable income, and philosophically like the idea of supporting indie makers.

(Any thoughts on this @ljin18?)

Join us in the audio chat!

🎯 “Hype doesn’t pay the bills.” https://twitter.com/zsims/status/1364252951099834370

Who created these big social graphs in the first place?

(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Clubhouse...)

WE DID.

We joined.
We uploaded our contacts.
We invited (and tagged) our friends.
We shared tweets, photos, and discussions.

But now these companies own the network.

Another tip: get in motion.

Most of the folks who found a successful business idea were already in motion (often exploring other ideas).

@steveschoger & @adamwathan were building a web app (in public) when they stumbled on the idea for @tailwindcss.

https://adamwathan.me/tailwindcss-from-side-project-byproduct-to-multi-mullion-dollar-business/

@yongfook @bannerbearHQ Jan was a bad month for us too (way higher churn).

I think it’s a combination of unstable politics and economics.

It’s rebounded in Feb.

@wasimlorgat I used to feel anxious about keeping up, but then I met @JamesClear. His “every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become” and that helped me to focus on my own journey. 👍

Honestly I was more set in my ways in my 20s. It took decades for me to become more open

Live chat (on mobile) is pretty important to us.

(I like being able to answer customers really fast, even if I'm sitting on a ski lift! 😜)

So I'm going to try @crisp_im next.

@jayacunzo This is actually a big issue.

Increasingly I’m seeing Clubhouse interfere with my home life.

The combination of FOMO, going on stage when you’re in “home mode,” and the requirement of being on 3-6 hours a day (if you want to build a following) are downsides to social audio.

"How often do customers visit your office?" Never. We don't have an office.

"Ok. But where do your employees work?" We're all remote.

👍 To determine how much demand you can capture, ask:

- what unfair advantage do you have in this category?
- what unfair advantage do you have when it comes to distribution?
- what will cause people to switch to your product?
- what product gaps do you see?

@yongfook @bannerbearHQ YESSSSSSSSSSSSS 🔥🔥🔥

Congrats Jon! So excited for you.

I just listened to @jessedriftwood1 and @theleviallen’s first episode of Make Stuff Club.

If you’re an online creator you should definitely subscribe. 👍

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/make-stuff-club/id1541726915

Where does money come from?

Good thread 👉 https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/1337739423455338496

One info-product sector that I'm extremely bullish on is anything related to software developers improving their technical skills/abilities.

Launch after launch, that niche is showing incredible revenue numbers (especially if you become an influencer on a topic).

1. Identify a good market

Really, this means "unsatiated demand."

People want a thing, or want to accomplish a task, or want to make their life better in some way... but they still haven't found what they're looking for.

They're unsatisfied with their current options.

@ow @kvlly 🎯

(Living next to a deranged gangster with the largest army in the world is not fun)

We decided to call the podcast "Product People."

Kyle made the artwork, and we started planning our initial episodes.

(Check out our list of "celebs" we wanted to interview! 😜)

“The working class really built this country. And yet, we’re not talking about giving them a ‘living wage’ we’re talking about a ‘minimum wage.’” – @jamesrdotymd

Here's mine:

https://twitter.com/jennifernvictor/status/1314015937557913601

@robwalling Yes! 🙌

Audience certainly provided me with an unfair advantage in the podcasting space, but it's no substitute for overall customer demand.

I'd take "thousands of non-fans actively searching for a solution" over a Twitter/blog following any day.

https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1303420189564833792

I also don't think it's necessary to build an audience before you bake your cake.

It's more important to observe *what types of cake are in high demand*.

Meaning: which types of cake do you see people buying and eating every day?

🚨 Companies: don't silence (or worse, fire) employees who make waves!

Yes, they can be harder to manage, but they're invaluable. These are the folks who create forward momentum!

(They're only a pain in that they'll challenge your company's inertia)

One caveat: accumulated effort only works if you’re (mostly) paddling in the right direction.

Trying to paddle upstream? That’s *wasted* effort.

"Does scratching your own itch count?"

Only if there are many people like you, visibly hungry for the same solution.