On today’s episode Corey and Sam interview Brian Casel about his passion for productized services and how you can launch a SaaS product quickly.  They discuss  Brian’s newest product, Ops Calendar and how that naturally evolved from Audience Ops.

Listen to the episode

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:45:43

Guest:

Brian Casel started out in 2011 with a plugin called Restaurant Engine, a hosted website design service for the hospitality industry.  He grew it until 2015 when it was sold.  Now he is the owner of Audience Ops, a productized done -for-you service which he started in 2015.  In 2017, Brian launched Ops Calendar, a software tool that enables content marketers and agencies to plan a content calendar, schedule social media, and track traffic and conversions from content. Brian’s role today consists of strategy for growth, product design, marketing, and customer development.

What you will learn in today’s episode:

Challenges and Opportunities of the SaaS Product:

I’m excited to release this interview with Jason Calacanis during the launch of his new book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups-Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000.

I’ve been a super fan of Jason since coming across his show This week in Startups when he produced it on set with black curtain backdrops and large wooden dining room tables. A lot of people give GaryVee credit for the foresight of thinking like a media company — but Jason got to it first.

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I’m excited to release this interview with Jason Calacanis during the launch of his new book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups-Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000.

I’ve been a super fan of Jason since coming across his show This week in Startups when he produced it on set with black curtain backdrops and large wooden dining room tables. A lot of people give GaryVee credit for the foresight of thinking like a media company — but Jason got to it first.

Behind the bravado is a kid from Brooklyn that worked his tail off to get to where he’s at, challenged with lessons of success & failure weaved into the fabric of his story. Today, Jason leads Inside.com with the same burning passion to take on the big platforms as he did with his first startup, Silicon Alley Reporter. 

Sit back and enjoy this episode with Jason, as he walks us through the mind of an angel investor and how to start thinking scale in your small software business.

Listen the episode

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:44:23

Interview transcript

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Matt Report season five. We’re winding down season five. In fact, folks who were listening, now you should have heard the last episode of season five. But I get a bonus episode with one of my favorite people on the internet, Jason Calacanis. Jason, welcome to the program.

Jason C.: Hey, thanks for having me.

Matt: Creator of Weblogs, Inc sold to AOL. Early investors in Uber, Thumbtack, created a company called Mahalo and fought Google at every turn and corner. Created another company that I originally found you through is Thi...

In this episode Sam and Corey interview Thomas Griffin from OptinMonster. The discussion is how you can successfully shift your business from a plugin model to SaaS model.

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In this episode Sam and Corey interview Thomas Griffin from OptinMonster. The discussion is how you can successfully shift your business from a plugin model to SaaS model.

Listen to the show

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:46:04

Guest:

Thomas Griffin is the co-founder of OptinMonster and CTO of Awesome Motive which houses the brand. Prior to OptinMonster, he founded Soliloquy, the fastest WordPress slider plugin, and Envira Gallery, a revolutionary gallery solution for photographers. He is an expert developer with deep knowledge of building products for mass-market. Thomas knows firsthand that software for marketers is generally poor in quality. He’s proud that OptinMonster is changing that by creating extremely easy to use and technologically sound SaaS (Software as a Service) that works for users outside of the WordPress framework. Thomas is a frequent speaker on topics of performance and scalability.

What you will learn from this episode:

On today’s episode, Sam and Corey interview Darren Ethier and Garth Koyle the co-founders of Event Espresso and Event Smart. They discuss how to take your successful WordPress plugin and turn it into a SaaS. This is a lively technical discussion about spinning up a SaaS startup using the WordPress framework.

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On today’s episode, Sam and Corey interview Darren Ethier and Garth Koyle the co-founders of Event Espresso and Event Smart. They discuss how to take your successful WordPress plugin and turn it into a SaaS. This is a lively technical discussion about spinning up a SaaS startup using the WordPress framework.

Listen to the show

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:58:33

Guests:

Garth Koyle is a Co-founder of Event Espresso and has over 15 years of experience in business management and Internet marketing. He competed in the 2011 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for Event Espresso, taking home the grand prize of 40k for the business plan. Garth has spoken at several WordCamps on entrepreneurship and plugin development.

Darren Ethier has been developing websites for over 18 years and has been a fan of WordPress since (WordPress 1.5). Darren is the founder of the WordPress development shop roughsmootheng.in, and creator of the popular WordPress plugin Organize Series. Darren first started working together with the Event Espresso team to help develop the new website and implement things to work with automatic updates. Darren still believes that all things are possible with WordPress.

What you will learn from this episode:

On today’s episode, Sam and Corey hit the halfway mark of Season 5B by interviewing Tom Willmot, the CEO of Human Made. Tom talks about the agency along with the Happytables SaaS Product which has been the niche product when Noel Tock joined Human Made as a partner in 2013.

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On today’s episode, Sam and Corey hit the halfway mark of Season 5B by interviewing Tom Willmot, the CEO of Human Made. Tom talks about the agency along with the Happytables SaaS Product which has been the niche product when Noel Tock joined Human Made as a partner in 2013.

Listen to the show

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:40:20

Guest:

Prior to founding Human Made with Joe in 2010, Tom cut his professional teeth with lead technical roles on some of the earliest examples of large-scale sites built with WordPress, including the ground-up rebuilds of both Geek.com and Digital Trends. In addition, Tom sits on the board at Happytables and has had advisory roles with Rufflr, Market Realist, United Influencers, and Clickbank. He’s a regular public speaker, both offline and online.

As CEO Tom splits his focus between the big-picture vision of where Human Made is going and how they will get there along with the day-to-day support of their amazing humans and clients.

What you will learn from this episode:

Supporting a SaaS (Software as a Service for WordPress):

On today’s episode, Corry Maass and Sam Brodie are interviewing Bryce Adams. Bryce is the creator of  Metorik. Bryce had been running the largest WooCommerce store for Automattic and became increasingly frustrated with the lack of reporting that was available. During the evenings and weekends, Bryce spent his time building WooCommerce extensions, WordPress plugins, and small SaaS products. The simple Metorik app was built to address the frustration around reporting needs for a WooCommerce store. Bryce’s passion has always been around the metrics for WooCommerce stores. That was the start of Metorik.

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