Founder’s Journey: Building a Startup from the Ground Up

Founder’s Journey: Building a Startup from the Ground Up episodes:

• 12.03.2019

  Saving you millions of dollars: asset sale vs stock sale

  Earlier this year I failed to sell Baremetrics for $5m. But I learned a heaping pile of things from that and one of the biggest things I learned about was the world of asset sales and stock sales. This is about...

  
• 12.03.2019

  5 things I learned failing to sell Baremetrics for $5m

  I failed to sell Baremetrics for $5m. While failure is 100% a part of success, it's only useful if you learn something. So, here are some of the things I learned from this little failure. Hopefully these are some things you...

  
• 12.03.2019

  I almost sold Baremetrics for $5m

  In the past six years of Baremetrics' existence, I've received dozens upon dozens of emails from folks interested in acquiring Baremetrics. When you're running a transparent company that's growing, it just comes with the territory. Generally these conversations quickly fizzle...

  
• 02.28.2019

  Sunsetting Intros: A post-mortem on shutting down a product we just launched

  Intros, a product we launched to great fanfare three months ago, is being shutdown, having never made a single penny and costing our team months of work. https://baremetrics.com/blog/sunsetting-intros

  
• 02.14.2019

  Staying mentally healthy as a founder

  Yesterday I wasn't feeling great, mentally. I had a level of anxiety I hadn't felt in a long time that started in the morning and really persisted through the night. I can't pinpoint it to any one specific thing. It...

  
• 05.09.2018

  Why founders need hobbies

  As founders, a lot of our identities get wrapped up in our companies. Certainly within our industries, but even to family and friends it’s how people know us. And over time, we sort of become our companies. Most founders or...

  
• 04.04.2018

  How to identify your perfect customer

  A couple of years ago, we were in a hard spot. I had just realized we were mere weeks away from running out of cash and had asked the whole team to take a pay cut while we figured out...

  
• 03.14.2018

  No, that thing is not a big deal

  When you’re just getting started, everything feels like a big deal. Everything. The tinniest things can turn in to huge showstoppers that drain time and, in many cases, money. But the longer you’re in the game, the more you realize...

  
• 01.24.2018

  Why we transitioned from Medium back to our own blog

  Where to publish something has becoming a difficult decision for a lot of businesses. You read so many stories about using various channels to distribute content and grow traffic, it's hard to know what does and doesn't work. Medium, in...

  
• 01.10.2018

  Don’t let personal health take a backseat in your company culture

  When building a startup, so much emphasis is put on “the product” or even “the customers”. Everything else takes a backseat. On some level, and at some points in a company’s lifecycle, this makes sense. Of course you’ll make sacrifices...

  
• 08.16.2017

  Everybody’s winging it

  Last week I hit some sort of boiling point with life and work. July was an incredibly stressful month for me both, personally and with work. Just lots of extremes, and it wore me down. Every single founder is struggling with...

  
• 06.21.2017

  Navigating the long, slow SaaS ramp of death

  There can be some really exciting days when you’re building a SaaS company, but the large majority are a slog. Just one foot in front of the other, slowly trudging your way up the hill in the muck. The hockey-stick...

  
• 06.14.2017

  Being a Solo Founder: Pros, Cons, Tips & Tricks

  Founding a company is hard. You’ve got an infinite number of decisions to make while simultaneously trying to catch lightning in a bottle with creating something out of nothing. It’s even harder when you’re doing it alone. Being a solo founder,...

  
• 05.17.2017

  Most startups are not “crushing” it

  https://baremetrics.com/blog/most-startups-are-not-crushing-it Ask any startup founder how things are going and they’ll tell you it’s “going great”. They’ll talk about some new feature they’re rolling out, or a new round of funding. Or maybe they’ll mention how much user growth they’ve had...

  
• 04.12.2017

  Startups: Keep It Classy

  https://blog.baremetrics.com/startups-keep-it-classy-5bba13285cc6 Every day founders have an infinite number of tiny decisions to make and it’s easy to get decision fatigue. In a moment of weakness you may do something dumb that hurts you, your team, your company, your brand or any...

  
• 03.23.2017

  The startup echo chamber is making you deaf

  https://blog.baremetrics.com/the-startup-echo-chamber-is-making-you-deaf-771eec220181 Being an entrepreneur is a lonely place, especially if you’re the founder/CEO. Sure, you may have co-founders, but the reality is, there’s a lot of weight on your shoulders, a lot of pressure (self-applied or otherwise) to not drop the...

  
• 02.01.2017

  Getting out of the startup rat race

  I’m done. I’m tapping out. I’m bowing out of the startup rat race. No, we’re not shutting down Baremetrics. Very much the opposite. I’m just finished subscribing to and following the traditional startup mentality as we build our company. https://blog.baremetrics.com/getting-out-of-the-startup-rat-race-66a5a0ca3055

  
• 01.18.2017

  How removing self-serve cancellations saved our business (and why it’s not as evil as you think)

  There may be no topic in the world of business that spurs such impassioned responses than self-serve versus manual cancellation of a subscription. Let’s just say the word “evil” gets tossed around a lot.

  
• 10.05.2016

  Calculate what feature to build next

  What feature should we build next? Ain’t that the question of the year? While that next feature won’t save your business, it’s still important to actually improve your product and create more value for your customers. And figuring out what...

  
• 09.14.2016

  Our system for scoring & prioritizing every marketing idea

  What if you could put a system in place that instantly scores and prioritizes any marketing idea you had? You could focus in on exactly the strategies that are most likely bring you a return on your effort while minimizing...

  
• 09.07.2016

  That new feature will not save your business

  https://baremetrics.com/blog/new-features-will-not-save-your-business As a founder, you ooze optimism. It’s a necessary coping mechanism to deal with the volatile up’s and down’s of creating something out of nothing. But that becomes problematic when you’re still finding product/market fit as it makes you believe...

  
• 08.31.2016

  Our 7 day launch sequence for announcing anything

  https://baremetrics.com/blog/product-launch-sequence If you launch something on the internet and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I know. Deep. But seriously, how do you launch/release/announce/publish something and make sure people do in fact hear?

  
• 08.17.2016

  How we increased annual upgrades by 30%

  When you’re building a business based on recurring revenue, what you want is predictability. The “recurring” part has a pretty strong measure of that, but getting more of that recurring payment upfront reduces churn and improves cashflow, letting you spend...

  
• 07.20.2016

  The importance of reflection: How writing monthly updates improves our business

  It’s easy to focus on forward momentum. Looking to the future naturally has an optimistic flair and so we spend more time thinking about it and planning it out. But if we don’t stop to reflect on the past,...

  
• 07.06.2016

  How to write a startup culture manifesto

  When I hear the words “company culture” my gut reaction is generally to contort my face in some way that conveys “Ewwwwwwww”. It’s just one of those buzz phrases that gets thrown around without anyone knowing what it actually means....

  
• 06.28.2016

  Embiggening the Mission: We now support Recurly & Braintree

  Today we’re launching the biggest update in Baremetrics history: we’re expanding our platform to support Braintree and Recurly, in addition to the Stripe support we’ve always had (with more data sources on the way!). https://baremetrics.com/blog/embiggening-mission-recurly-braintree

  
• 05.04.2016

  How we’re fixing “unlimited” vacation

  It’s a common startup benefit to have a “loose” or “unlimited” vacation policy. “Take all the time off you need!” “We don’t babysit you, take off whenever you need off!” But does anyone actually take off any more time than...

  
• 04.27.2016

  Remote Hiring: Our 5-step Interview Process

  You’ve plastered your job listing on every job board and social network known to man. Now comes the fun part: sifting through the hundreds or even thousands of applications. But how? How do you narrow down a seemingly endless stream...

  
• 04.13.2016

  The Impossibility of Separating Work & Life

  There’s a lot of talk about “work/life balance” and figuring out how to find some sort of perfect equilibrium wherein your personal life is completely divided from your work building a startup. This is not about that. In fact, it’s...

  
• 04.06.2016

  10 common mistakes founders make

  Bless our little founder hearts. We’re eternal optimists who have great intentions paired with a propensity to try things that common sense would say is a bad idea. That means we try a lot of things, most of which don’t...

  
• 01.14.2016

  Why we’re changing how we calculate metrics

  We just rolled out a change to Buffer’s very public revenue dashboard that resulted in a $25,000 increase in MRR. This provides some backstory in to how we originally calculated metrics and the transition to a greatly improved version of...

  
• 12.09.2015

  How we generated a $14,000 influx of cash in 7 days

  https://baremetrics.com/blog/saas-annual-plans We recently tried something that got us an extra $14,000 in cash in seven days. Let’s take a look at how we did it.

  
• 11.10.2015

  How freemium nearly caused our business to implode

  Three months ago, we introduced a Free plan…and it nearly brought Baremetrics to its knees. Let’s take a look at what we did, how it affected our business and how it was ultimately a failure. https://baremetrics.com/blog/freemium-saas-implode

  
• 07.08.2015

  How to use customer feedback to drive your business

  While customer feedback is crucial to your startup, it’s also something most founders have a love/hate relationship with. How do you decide if feedback is valuable or not? How do you keep complaints from dragging you down? Where do you...

  
• 06.24.2015

  Maker to Manager: What a startup founder does

  I’ve struggled with what exactly it is that I do here. I’ve hired people who are each exponentially better at their craft than I ever could hope to be. So where does that leave me? I rarely make things anymore....

  
• 06.18.2015

  How to Deal with Competition (or Not)

  As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest sources of stress you have with your startup is likely your competition. It’s easy to become really paranoid about each move they make, each feature they launch and each piece of content they’re...

  
• 05.06.2015

  3 things we did to reduce churn by 68%

  If recurring revenue is a rainbow leading to a pot of gold, then churn is the dirty leprechaun trying to keep it all from you. I’ve written before about how to reduce churn in SaaS, so I won’t rehash that...

  
• 04.29.2015

  Build vs. Buy: How to blow $100,000 saving money

  When you’re just getting started and you’re strapped for cash, you typically do all sorts of things to pinch pennies. It’s just part of surviving, and it’s a healthy thing to do when you’re not actually making any money. The...

  
• 04.08.2015

  How to organize the daily chaos of running a startup

  As a Founder, you’ve got your hand in everything imaginable, from legal paperwork to hiring to product management to support and everything in between. You’re pulled in every direction from everyone who’s got your contact info and you feel obligated...

  
• 04.01.2015

  The Startup Guide to 1-on-1's

  If there’s one thing I’ve found to be true over the past year and half of building this company, it’s that I’m completely winging it. Sure, I’ve read articles and books on how to build a company, but I've never...

  
• 02.11.2015

  Why we spent $250,000 in 120 days (and the mistakes we made)

  A few weeks back I wrote about our experience going from bootstrapped to funded as we raised a $500,000 round, why it was good for our business and some of the things we’ve learned along the way. Now, I want...

  
• 02.04.2015

  The Fallacy of Motivation

  Most days now I wake up before my alarm goes off (at 5am) and I immediately hop out of bed, excited to get the day started. But that wasn’t always the case, especially when things weren’t going so well. It’s...

  
• 01.29.2015

  How to Pull Off a Startup Retreat

  In mid-January we did our first retreat as a team. Since we’re completely remote, this was the first time most of our team had met and worked with each other face-to-face. I’ll take you through how we planned and budgeted...

  
• 01.21.2015

  How we grew from $0 to $25,000/month in 12 months

  One year after Baremetrics was launched, we hit $25,000 in monthly recurring revenue. I’ve tried a lot of things to grow the company over the past year. A few things have worked well. A lot of things have flopped. We...

  
• 01.15.2015

  How I hired a team of 6 without having a clue what I was doing

  Last week I wrote about our experience going from bootstrapped to funded, why it was good for our business and some of the things we’ve learned along the way. I mentioned there were some big shifts for me and one...

  
• 01.07.2015

  Bootstrapped to Funded: What's it like? Was it worth it? Should you do it?

  What’s it like going from a decade of bootstrapping to running a funded business? And what’s it like transitioning a business that started out bootstrapped to having a pile of cash at my disposal? Has it been worth it? Is...