Today’s interview is with one of my favourite people on the internet: Nate Kontny. He’s the solo-founder of Draft, a web application that helps you improve your writing through collaboration. He also blogs at Ninjas and Robots.

Notable quotes

“Solve your own problems!” – Nate Kontny

“Take two or things in your life that your passionate about, and merge them together. Then you’ll start creating cool things.” – Nate Kontny

Show notes

• Draft
• Nate’s blog
• Nate on Twitter

Note from Justin

I’m releasing a new course (based on my sold-out workshops) called Build Your Own Audience. It will be available on July 29th at justinjackson.ca/audience. You can sign up to my mailing list and get early access on July 25th.

I need your help. People don’t know the show is back, releasing new episodes every Thursday. I took a break back in October, and people think the show is still offline. If you could go to  iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb.

Also: if you’re listening on  Stitcher, please leave a review on there!

Cheers,
 Justin Jackson
 @mijustin

PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to  productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!

Music:  Land of the Lost and  Can’t Stop the Rush by Striker, visit them at  striker-metal.com

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This week’s guest is Ryan Hoover. We’ve been online friends for a few years now. Back in 2013, Ryan invited me to join a new site he’d created called ProductHunt.com. In the last 3 weeks, it’s exploded. He was interviewed on Fox News, he was interviewed on This Week in Startups, AND he just announced that he’s joined YCombinator.

I actually recorded this episode on January 24, 2014 (5 months ago) – before Product Hunt got huge. I thought it would be interesting to revisit that conversation: to hear from the Ryan Hoover that hadn’t yet achieved all this recent success.

Once you hear it, you’ll understand why Ryan’s done so well: he built an audience (by blogging, and creating Startup Edition), and then focused on creating something valuable for that community.

Notable quotes

“I’ve always been entrepreneurial: as a child I created little joke books, and operated gum ball machines.” – Ryan Hoover

“I didn’t know what a Product Manager was 6 months before I became one.” – Ryan Hoover

“We built Product Hunt over 4 days, during Thanksgiving.” – Ryan Hoover

“Inspiration is perishable.” – Jason Fried

“I need to keep reminding myself that I can’t predict the future.” – Ryan Hoover

Show notes

• Ryan Hoover’s blog
• Ryan Hoover twitter
• Product Hunt
• Nathan Bashaw
• TWIST interview
• Fox News interview
• TechCrunch: Ryan Hoover joins YCombinator
• Telescope by Sacha Greif

Note from Justin

I need your help. People don’t know the show is back, releasing new episodes every Thursday. I took a break back in October, and people think the show is still offline. If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb.

Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!

Cheers,
 Justin Jackson
 @mijustin

PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to  productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!

Music:  Land of the Lost and  Can’t Stop the Rush by Striker, visit them at  striker-metal.com

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
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Dan Norris is the co-founder of  WP Curve, and the author of  The 7 Day Startup. He gave himself 1 year to build a profitable product. After spending a year on a product called Inform.ly, with no profits to show for it, he came up with the idea for WP Curve, and made it got his first paying customer in 4 days.

Notable quotes:

• “With my first business, I just wasn’t selling something people wanted.” – Dan Norris
• “We’ve launched 4 business in the last 12 months, and 3 of them failed. We started listening to customers and focused on the 1 business that was working.” – Dan Norris
• “Don’t make decisions based on assumption.” – Dan Norris
• “Launch the business in a week; and then don’t make any more assumptions. Make the decisions after you launch.” – Dan Norris
• “With WP Curve I knew right away that people would pay for it. With my first business, I had to build it for 6 months before I could figure out that people would pay for it.” – Dan Norris
• “The only two people who can give you real feedback about your product are people who just purchased it and people who just canceled.” – Jason Fried via Dan Shipper
• “When people cancel, we ask them a simple question: what did we do wrong?” – Dan Norris

Show notes

• WP Curve
• The 7 Day Startup
• Dan Norris on Twitter 
• WP Curve co-founder  Alex McClafferty

Cheers,
 Justin Jackson
 @mijustin

PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to  productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!

Music:  Land of the Lost and  Can’t Stop the Rush by Striker, visit them at  striker-metal.com

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
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Garrett Dimon is the founder of Sifter and author of Starting + Sustaining. We talked about finding an idea, validating an idea, and building your product. Our conversation started with this question: “What are the biggest misconceptions about running a SaaS product?”

Notable quotes:

“If you just want to create stuff, and write code, starting a business is not the best way to do that.” – Garrett Dimon

“I definitely thought I was would be able to do more development and design; but it’s not really like that” – Garrett Dimon

“People don’t describer their problems to us – they email us and tell us what they want us to build. That makes it difficult to see what their root problem is.” – Garrett Dimon

“We don’t compete on features.” – Garrett Dimon

“No is easier to do. Yes is easier to say.” – Jason Fried

Show notes

Cheers,

PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to  productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!

Music by  Striker Metal, Song: Forever

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Brennan Dunn is the go-to guy to talk about marketing automation. He’s build a SaaS, called Planscope, but these days he recommends first-time entrepreneurs build something smaller (like an eBook, or a webinar). He’s also the author of Double Your Freelancing Rate, and has lots of good insight on pricing, marketing, and automating your sales funnel.

Notable quotes:

Show notes

Cheers,

PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!

Music by Striker Metal, Song: Fight for your Right

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Ok, so ages ago I interviewed Sean Fioritto, the author of Sketching with CSS. I like Sean a lot. He’s from Chicago, and he struggled for years trying to build products. Then he wrote this book, and it took off. You’ll hear his story, and how he succeeded after lots of failures.

I haven’t put out an episode in awhile. I have a bunch recorded but I haven’t had time to edit them and put them out. I’ve just been slammed: haven’t had time or energy for anything. It’s been pedal to the metal at work – we’re dealing with that Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation right now. Geez. And at home, there’s just always stuff to bring the kids to, appointments, classes, activities. So I’ve been drained!

Anyways. I’m hoping to put an end to this Product People drought, and start releasing episodes every Thursday now. So subscribe, and watch for new episode every Thursday.

On that topic. I’ve got a landing page up for something new: it’s called Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club on the internet, and sign up for the waiting list because I’ll have something to announce shortly.

Notable quotes:

Show notes

Cheers,

PS: By the way, this interview is available in full video in my upcoming book:  Marketing for Developers.  Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).

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This week you’ll hear from Patrick Mackenzie (Patio11 on the internet), an influential member of the self-funded, bootstrapping community, as well as a high profile member of Hacker News. Patrick is a great guest: he’s a great storyteller, and is always completely himself. (He does some great voice impressions too)

Our topic was: how to market yourself, make connections, and promote that app, SaaS, or other product you’ve just built.

Notable quotes:

“I like to play League of Legends. The vast majority of people will never make a living off League of Legends. If you want to build your business on something like LoL, that’s probably not the best things.” – Patio11

“Self-promotion is not accepted by the community at every watering hole on the internet. Hacker News is a bit of an anomaly, because Hacker News is a community who are making or starting businesses.” – Patio11

“I haven’t submitted my stuff to Hacker News in years. I’m also really careful about what I publish. Before I publish a blog post, I ask: ‘Is this post worthy of being in the top 5 of Hacker News?'” – Patio11

“The Hacker News launch is like a mini version of the Techcrunch launch. But I wouldn’t bet the success of my business based on whether or not it gets to the top of Hacker News.” – Patio11

“My first internet business launched to a total of 76 people the first day. You can build your reputation organically, by building awesome things over time.” – Patio11

Show notes

A note from Justin:

A big thanks to Patrick for being on the show!

Cheers,

PS: I’m writing a new book right now called  Marketing for Developers.  Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).

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David Heinemeier Hansson started working with Jason Fried at 37signals about 14-15 years ago. 10 years ago, they created Basecamp, their first SaaS product. This past week they decided to stop using the 37signals brand, and sell off (or stop developing) their other products (notably Highrise and Campfire).

Our topic was: Why is 37signals changing it’s name to Basecamp? How will this change the company? Was it worth building those other products?

Notable quotes:

“Basecamp was special because it was forged out of constraints.” – DHH

“I’m interested in trade-offs where it’s not easy: everyone wants more. More stuff, more money, more, more, more. What I find interesting is: ‘I want more peace of mind, and I’m going to give up some things for that.'” – DHH

Show notes

A note from Justin:

A big thanks to David for being on the show!

Cheers,

PS: I’m writing a new book right now called  Marketing for Developers.  Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
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Alex Hillman is many things: first, he’s the king of JFDI (he even has the tattoo to prove it). Second: he’s the founder of IndyHall, a co-working space in Philadelphia. Third: he’s Amy Hoy’s partner in 30×500. And fourth: he’s just recently launched his own product called  GroupBuzz.io.

Our topic was: What do communities & product businesses have in common?

Notable quotes

“Having a connection with people is really important. A lot of people build tools without thinking about the people that are using them.” – Alex Hillman

“It’s not hard to get a group of people in a room. It’s hard getting a group of people doing something useful together.” – Alex Hillman

“Cult of personality is one of the most dangerous things for a community.” – Alex Hillman

“Customer interviews are bullshit. Not because people are mean, because they’re too nice. You have to observe what they do, not what they say.” – Alex Hillman

“Put a lot more stock in what people do as opposed to what they say. Be a pattern watcher. Pay attention to how people act.” – Alex Hillman

Show notes

GroupBuzz.io

The Bullseye Model

Alex on Twitter

Alex’s blog

30×500

Justin’s JFDI community

A note from Justin:

A big thanks to Alex for being on the show!

Cheers,

PS: I’m writing a new book right now called  Marketing for Developers.  Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
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Amy Hoy is known for her unfiltered, straight-shooting opinions on building product businesses. Her and her husband  Thomas Fuchs have built  Freckle, an awesome time-tracking web app – and have become well known in the bootstrapping, design, and Ruby on Rails communities. Amy is also a passionate teacher: her and Alex Hillman run the excellent  30×500 bootcamp whose students include the likes of Brennan Dunn,  Chris Hartjes, and  Jaana Kulmala.

Our topic was: finding an audience, discovering needs, and building products people want.

Notable quotes

“The core problem with so many businesses is that they’re based on what the business owner wants.”

“They’re fantasizing about being the hero: “I’m going to ride in on my white ‘software’ horse, and save these poor people.”

“As much as you can, you want to sell to people who will use your product. People who buy your product and don’t use it will never buy from you again.”

“Target people already in motion.”

“Selling to wannabes has the least amount of upside; people who already have a business are more likely to spend money.”

“I would rather have no money, than know that the vast majority of people that gave me the money aren’t achieving what they wanted to. If that’s true, I don’t want to be in that business.”

“Being in business forces you to become a better human being.”

Show notes

Freckle Time Tracking

30×500

Amy’s blog post on why Freckle became successful

The legend of 30×500

A note from Justin:

A big thanks to Amy Hoy for being Amy: no bullshit, nothing held back. Just real, hard advice for product people.

Cheers,

PS: I’m writing a new book right now called Marketing for Developers. Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!