Product People

Normally we cover bootstrapped products: people who are self-funding the stuff they build. We do this because I’m naturally drawn to bootstrapped companies.

For this episode I wanted to go into “enemy” territory: I wanted to talk to the VC community. To do that I contacted Jason Calacanis, an angel investor, and the voice of funded startups on his podcast This Week In Startups. This is part 1 where we delved into the human said of Mr. Calacanis – where he came from, and how he got to where he is today.

We also have 3 new sponsors this month:

1. Looking for a new job? Mood Media is hiring a Jr. Product Manager. They are looking for an energetic, entrepreneurial technophile who is ready to drive Mood Media’s Interactive product lines in North America forward into the next decade. This person must be a visionary, strategic thinker with a hands-on approach. For more details, visit: productpeople.tv/moodmedia
2. I also just discovered KnowAds. The hardest part about online advertising is figuring out what works. KnowAds reveals your competitor’s campagins showing you exactly what’s working for them. You get to see their most successful ad copy & ad placements. Go to productpeople.tv/ads and sign-up for an account.
3. And finally, if you’re trying to set-up an online store, you need to use Shopify. I’ve tried setting up dozens of online stores for clients, and there are always so many headaches: handling payment gateways, multiple currencies, taxes, shipping rates. Shopify solves all of these problems for you. I want you to go to productpeople.tv/shopify and get a 14 day free trial.

Notable quotes

• “My first business was making copies of Star Wars on BetaMax for my friends.”
• “I don’t think being an entrepreneur is the best mode of existence; but I do think it’s important for our kids to see us working hard.”
• “Show me a great entrepreneur, I’ll show you a fucked up relationship with their parents.”
• “There were these things called BBSes. I had a 300 BAUD modem.”
• “In college I was making $3.50/hour managing computer systems.”
• “One of my first jobs was doing LotusNotes scripting.”
• “When I saw Mosaic, the first browser, I was like: Whoa. When they added images, the internet felt like a magazine.”
• “People thought that paying bloggers was sacrilegious.”
• “I thought doing 10 blog posts a day on gadgets was crazy. But we ultimately we ended up doing 40, 50, 60 posts a day.”
• “Weblogs Inc. was a great product.”
• “We sold the first podcast ad ever to Volvo. We commercialized it; we saw there was a business opportunity there.”
• “When people use it, and can’t shut up about it, you know you’ve got a great product.”
• “I like to tinker, I like to build products. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do other stuff, but I like product.”

Show notes

• http://twitter.com/jason
• http://inside.com
• http://www.weblogsinc.com
• http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/10/prweb172213.htm

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Dan Martell discovered computers in rehab. After he overcame his problems with drugs, he taught himself to program. From there, he started building businesses. Eventually, he travelled to San Francisco to learn everything he could from the startup scene.

You might recognize his former product: Flowtown, and his current one: Clarity. In this episode Dan shares his story from the beginning, and how he overcame a difficult beginning to build his own products.

Notable quotes

• “I got the idea for Clarity because I had people emailing asking me to take me to coffee, needing help. I wanted to help them, but I couldn’t help them. I wished there was a way to get their information, and call them back when I was free. I built it on Twilio, which would proxy my number (so no one found my cell number)”
• “It took me 2 days to build that first prototype that worked.”
• “I tweeted out: ‘If you need advice on your startup, give me a call'”
• “I felt like: this is what the internet is supposed to do!”
• How did you know people would pay for it? “Once it was out there, I was getting too many calls. So I put up a paywall. It was crazy; people started paying [big numbers].”
• “The world rewards courageous decisions; I honestly believe that.”
• “What does a hit look like? Retention. When someone uses it, and keeps using it. Even better: if they also tell other people to use it.”
• There’s always this confusion as to what would people would pay for.
• “I didn’t want to admit I was building a two-sided marketplace.”
• “I don’t need engineers to be more productive, I just need to stop asking them to build stupid stuff that nobody needs.”
• “Nobody, listening to this podcast does more customer development than I do.”
• “What’s the key to a good customer development interview? DON’T SELL.”
• “Getting someone to pay is true customer validation.”
• “Once you’ve created and keep a customer, you’ve got a real business.”
• “I want to index people’s brains, like Google indexes text.”
• “People are listening to this podcast because conversations carry a lot more context.”
• “Find 10 people that will pay you money.”
• “The question is not 'can you build it?' it’s 'should you build it?'”

Show notes

• http://www.danmartell.com/
• https://twitter.com/danmartell
• https://clarity.fm/#/danmartell
• http://www.twilio.com/
• http://clarity.fm/customers/raphaelpaulindaigle
• http://maplebutter.com/

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

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

Dan Martell discovered computers in rehab. After he overcame his problems with drugs, he taught himself to program. From there, he started building businesses. Eventually, he travelled to San Francisco to learn everything he could from the startup scene.

You might recognize his former product: Flowtown, and his current one: Clarity. In this episode Dan shares his story from the beginning, and how he overcame a difficult beginning to build his own products.

Notable quotes

• “I had a hard upbringing, my mother was an alcoholic. I was removed from my home.”
• “Built tree forts, when I was 8 or 9, and I would charge the other kids to come play in them”
• “I’ve always been into building and selling stuff… so I took to selling drugs.”
• “It was in rehab that I discovered computers. I learned to build stuff that wasn’t illegal.”
• “A lot of the stuff you learn selling drugs, translates to business acumen.”
• “Clarity’s foundation is getting advice from people that have been there before. ”
• “You should only get advice from people that have been there before.”
• “My uncle was selling roller blades in his basement.”
• “As soon as possible, your company needs to make money. If you can get anyone to show up and pay you $1, you’ve made it on the internet.”
• “People don’t [charge money for their products], because they’re scared that their product sucks.”
• “It took me a few failed attempts before I made my first million.”
• “When I was 21, I was hired to work for an oil company in the tar sands. My job title was Solutions Architect.”
• “I almost went bankrupt in 6 weeks.”
• “I became a millionaire when I was 27.”
• “I get 3-4 venture cap firms cold emailing me every week.”

Show notes

• http://www.danmartell.com/
• https://twitter.com/danmartell
• https://clarity.fm/#/danmartell
• http://maplebutter.com/

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com

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

Imagine this: you build a product that you’re passionate about. To demonstrate it’s capabilities, you create a demo that attracts the attention of the New York Times legal department; who promptly send you a cease and desist letter. That’s exactly what happened to Cody Brown and his team at ScrollKit.

Highlights

• “Scrollkit is a way to create powerful visual stories on the web.”
• “We’re trying to bring what you can do in print, to the web.”
• “A kid will intuitively understand what to do when you give them some crayons. But if you slid ‘WordPress’ over to them, they’d probably be confused.”
• “Our biggest cost is salaries: we’re paying ourselves low ‘founders’ salaries right now. The only other big cost is Heroku.”
• “We used ScrollKit to re-create Snowfall in an hour.”
• “Time Magazine loved our replica: they invited us to their corporate headquarters.”

Show notes

• ScrollKit
•  Cody on Twitter
•  Cody’s post on Medium (over 100k views)
•  ScrollKit story on Hacker News
•  Cody’s personal site

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

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

Hey, let me ask you a question: when you were a kid, after a game of Mario Brothers, did you ever take out a pencil and paper and try to draw your own video game levels? The idea of creating video games from a kid’s imagination is something that today’s guest is working on.

Highlights

• “Growing up, playing Mario Bros and Donkey Kong, I would draw my own video game levels.”
• “A lot of us that grew up in the 80’s, we’re in our 30’s, we grew up dreaming of creation our own video games.”
• “Sometimes the press can pick up on an idea that isn’t really viable as business.”
• “We’re seeing other games that have been successful in this niche, like Minecraft.”
• “Monetizing through education markets is really challenging.”
• “A Kickstarter campaign is really time consuming.”
• Why didn’t you get Angel funding? “If one person gives you $100,000 it doesn’t really validate your product idea. Having 1,000 paying customers validates your idea.”
• Does Kickstarter give you the contact information for backers? “Yes, there’s an export button: but you have to be backed, or your campaign has to be over.”
• “It doesn’t always take a big budget to test out your idea.”
• “What was that conversation with your wife like?”

Show notes

• Kickstarter campaign
• Pixel Press: Draw your own video games
• Robin Rath on Twitter

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

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

In this episode of Product People: does Amy Hoy still get scared before a launch? How do you choose an audience? And she answers some listener questions.

Highlights

• “The 30×500 bootcamp has been moved to June 15/16: Why you should do a tiny product first”
• “So much of what we’re doing (with our online courses) is creating community.”
• “Our Bacon Biz community will be open to everybody: baconbiz.com”
• “People have set-up their lives where they let themselves get jerked around by their emotions all the time.”
• “If you launch something, you’re going to get good feedback and bad feedback. No matter what the price is, somebody’s going to complain about the price.”
• “People unconsciously prioritize their feelings as an excuse.”
• “Sometimes you’ll go to someone, because you need some advice, but they’ll end up re-enforcing the wrong things. You need to find people that can focus on facts.” – Justin
• “So many ills are cause by just reacting to feelings.”
• “What really scares me is karaoke.”
• “Ask yourself: What logical data is telling me I should be afraid? What’s the worst possible thing that could happen?”
• “The key, seems to be, to keep trying things. Not everything’s a home run, but they keep trying.”
• “A lot of people’s fear is of what people will think of you.”
• “The easiest way for me to turn this around, is to quit being so self-centred. To keep reminding myself: it’s not about me.”
• “Don’t ask: what do I want to build? Ask: what do people need?”
• “You can’t actually help anyone; you can only help people that want to help themselves.”
• “You have to help people with something specific, as opposed to being general. You’ll
• “When people ask me: ‘what audience should I serve?’ I ask them: ‘Well, what are you? If you’re a Ruby developer, than serve Ruby developers!’ Stick within your own circles.”
• “You’ve already chosen your audience by who you’re already associating with.”
• “To punch above your weight you need to use every single advantage you have. If you try to pick a new market you know nothing about, you’re giving up one of your core advantages.”
• “Start serving the audience you already belong to.”
• How can people break out of their insecurity? “It’s not a question of ‘who you are’. Do your research: what does it tell you? You don’t have to wonder ‘what do I have to offer that people want?’ Look at your resume.”
• “Always be researching customers; never stop. I look wherever people congregate: forums, mailing lists, blog posts, off-hand comments from people on Twitter, support portals, user groups.”
• “Don’t walk up and ask people what their problems are; you have to observe.”
• Where do you keep your customer research notes? “I use a text file. Simple as that. Don’t use fancy tools.”
• “For content marketing, I take what I’ve learned in my research phase, and write posts around that.”
• When we sell people things, are we pandering to their narcism? “It’s not narcissistic to think about yourself, and what you need. It’s narcissistic to think that everything’s about you.”
• “We don’t have to add new features to compete. New features don’t always make a product better.”

Show notes

• Amy Hoy
• Freckle
• BaconBiz
• BaconBizConf
• 30×500 Accelerated Bootcamp, on June 15-16
• Stop networking at events
• Brennan Dunn
• Grumpy Programmer
• Rob Wallling

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

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

Amy Hoy gives a personal interview on her growing up in suburban Maryland, programming on an Apple IIc, selling her My Little Ponies to buy a Power Mac, and how she ended up building her first products.

Highlights

• “I started programming when I was 7 year old. At home we had an Apple IIc, and I wrote some programs in BASIC on that.”
• “Programming books suck.”
• “I grew up in suburban Maryland. It was a wasteland: the only place to get coffee was at a gas station, or one of those sub shops that don’t have a name.”
• “Growing up, I didn’t have any business mentors. I was all alone. I learned from books.”
• “I was always hustling trying to get money. To buy my Power Mac I sold all of my My Little Ponies.”
• “My entire life, everyone told me I couldn’t do stuff.”
• “I dropped out of high school in 9th grade and started freelancing.”
• “Communicating and teaching are my #1 passions.”
• “To me it’s really interesting how people hear about people, and start following people” – Justin
• “Twistori ended up making us a lot of money.”
• “Working for this startup was like living in Dilbert, but with lots more money and parties.”
• “It took about 1-2 days a week, for 3 months to build Freckle.”
• “I remember hearing about the 30×500 formula, and thinking: ‘Whoa! That’s doable'” – Justin
• “We’re doing a 30×500 bootcamp on June 9-10. The cost will be $1,550.”

Show notes

• Amy Hoy
•  Thomhas Fuchs
•  Freckle
•  The Daily Mac
•  CBC Television (Venture)
•  Kids on the Internet
•  Basecamp
•  Color Wars
•  We feel fine
•  Twistori
•  Limewire
•  Javascript Performance Rocks
•  30×500

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended  WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them.  Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

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

Hey Product People! What’s your process for finding an idea that people love? How do you take your initial hunch for an idea, and make it a reality? What is a funnel? Hiten Shah from Kissmetrics is back to answer these questions and more!

Highlights

• “Making human connections is the most important thing in any startup.”
• “You need some sound reasoning behind why you’re building your product. It’s a balance of having a vision AND taking all the customer inputs you can find to make sure that your vision can be a reality.
• “Study great product people.”
• “You have to have an unbiased curiosity; like a method actor. You take off your shoes, and go find that other person’s shoes and start walking in them. You start walking, acting and observing like them.”
• “Get unbiased facts about your customers. Know them better than they know themselves.”
• “We discovered that building a funnel in Google Analytics is painful. And so we started thinking: how can we take the pain out of that?”
• “One of the best things about going to industry conferences is learning about your potential customers. It’s full on anthropology!”
• “The creation of the product is a big social experiment. As you understand people, you can ask: how can I save them time, make money or save money?”
• “Any step by step process that exists in life, has drop-off. And to me, what a funnel allows you to do is figure out that drop-off. It helps you identify where your problems are.”
• “One of the key things we’re learning is that you need to build an audience before you build your product. Build your audience not for marketing, but for learning.”
• “Our listeners tell us that building and audience is way scarier than building a product.” – Justin Jackson
• “Ask these questions: 1) Who is it I’m trying to reach? 2) Where do they hang out? 3) How can I reach them there?”
• “In today’s world you should be able to get people paying right away. If you’ve spent a year, and you don’t have anyone willing to pay you, it’s likely they’ll never pay you.”
• “An idea is a solution to a problem. What problem does that idea solve? My suggestion to people is asking: how do you know that a lot of other people have this problem?”

Show notes

• Hiten on Twitter
• Hitenism
• KISSmetrics
• Crazy Egg
• Derek Sivers – if it’s not a hit, switch

Premium Sponsors

• Sprint.ly – Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly
• WPengine – Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them. Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Espree. SaveBusinessTime.com is a curated site featuring the Best Business Software to build and grow your start up.
• Shout-out #2: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #3: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #4: Get $25 off at Ting

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

Can you build a healthy software business when you don’t know how to code? Hiten Shah is on the show today. He and his co-founder Neil Patel, have built two successful SaaS apps: CrazyEgg, and Kissmetrics. Today you’ll hear Hiten’s secret to being a successful entrepreneur.

Highlights

• “I don’t know how to ‘feel’ like an entrepreneur. To me entrepreneurship isn’t a feeling.”
• “When you create something, out of nothing, and somebody consumes it and loves it – that’s entrepreneurship.”
• “The people that get stuck… they don’t bother to figure out what it is (that they can make) that people will love.”
• “To be an entrepreneur you have to build things, and people have to love them.”
• “Almost any problem you see in a company boils down to people and product.”
• “It’s hard to manufacture genuine customer appreciation.”
• “As the creators of things, the people part is huge. You need to ask: ‘how do you humanize a product’?”
• “CrazyEgg was 1 of 10 things we tried; and it was the one that resonated the most with people.”

Show notes

• Hiten on Twitter
• Hitenism
• KISSmetrics
• Crazy Egg

Sponsors

• Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #2: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #3: Get $25 off at Ting

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

On the show today is one of the best bootstrappers in the business:  Paul Farnell of  Litmus.com joins me and shares some great stories.

Highlights

• “It felt magical to send an email to a random address, and then showing screenshots of the HTML email design. It was a magical thing when we got it working.”
• “We found a technical challenge in automating Lotus Notes 7 on an old version of Windows, and then delivering that result to a beautiful Rails app”
• “There are a lot of business opportunities in that stuff that people just grind through on a daily basis. Think Stripe, Litmus, etc…” – Justin Jackson
• “If you look at our curve of revenue, it starts very slowly for the first 2.5 years, and then gradually picks up pace in the last year or two.”
• “2.5 years in we were well under $1 million in revenue a year, probably $200,000-$300,000 in revenue per year. At 2.5 years we had about 500 users. Now we have 100,000 users (7 years in).”
• “When we switched from Euros to American dollars, that week we saw a huge increase in sales.”
• “How come America still seems to be the place where web apps thrive?”
• “The environment in America is different than Europe. There are bigger entrepreneurial hubs.”
• “In the early days, one of the things that set us apart was the designed of the software. I’m not sure how replicable this would be now.”
• “We’re a company that has side-projects: we build other apps that (if successful) we roll into our main product.”

Show notes

• Paul on Twitter
• Paul’s blog posts on Litmus
• Peanut Software archived page
• Paul’s presentation at FOWD

Sponsors

• Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at  www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter:  @sprintly

Shout outs

• Shout-out #1: Kyle Fox’s blog post on product management. I’d like to give a shout-out to Kyle Fox who’s written a great blog post called “ Multi-tasking is the heart of product management” Go to kylefox.ca to see that!
• Shout-out #2: Product People newsletter
• Shout-out #3: Save 10% on domains at Hover.com
• Shout-out #4: Get $25 off at Ting

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