Startup to Something

Marc is looking for ways to take some things off of his plate. Marketing takes a lot of time but a contract marketer is too expensive right now, so Marc is settling for people to offload parts of the marketing processes to. Matt is creating his first landing pages to run PPC campaigns against and trying to not get stuck in the muck. The guys are attending MicroConf Remote and hoping to make some new connections in the hallway track.

Marc’s been looking to hire a marketer to help him, but they’re a bit out of reach for now, so he’s investing his marketing budget into PPC. Matt is trying to make progress in his marketing, but is struggling to overcome consulting work busyness and fear.

Marc has had a major breakthrough in his approach to marketing and is finally feeling like he understands the marketing game. He’s having lots of marketing wins by embracing that marketing work flow is fundamentally different from writing code. Matt is researching PPC advertising and continuing his cold outreach campaigns.

Matt shares his good vibes derived from his first full-on week of marketing and is making plans for how to go forward. Marc wrapped up his 1-month experiment of marketing every second week and shares his insights and plan of attack for next month.

This week is marketing week for Marc. The demo video he created last week for CSV upload is working amazingly and going forward, he’s looking for the right balance between dev and marketing. Matt didn’t do the marketing he said he would because of guilty feelings stemming from not working for his consulting clients.

Marc recounts his last weeks marketing activities and talks about how hard it is to create high quality video content. This coming week is a development week for him and he’s looking forward to it. Matt got swept up in his consulting work and has feelings about it. The guys discuss their goals for the podcast and give a peek into how the podcast sausage is made.

Marc is seeking the right cadence between development and marketing, especially when marketing is something he doesn’t enjoy. Matt is on the brink of bankruptcy after being overdrawn in Stripe and is kicking off marketing efforts to get back in the black.

Matt has been struggling with the consulting business he’s been running and talks about what he’s learned and how he feels about it after 6 months of operation. Marc is fighting the battle of fun vs valuable development work as he improves the UX of his onboarding flow. The guys discuss making money while building products and how to juggle living off of savings while indiehacking.

Marc is really feeling like he has achieved product market fit! Now he’s trying to find the right cadence between product development and marketing to be as productive as possible. Matt is getting bogged down with financial year-end activities with his consulting clients and it’s distracting his marketing efforts. The guys discuss a shared love for static sites.

Marc was able to deploy the redesign of PowerImporter and his next project is to tune his user onboarding. Most users don’t like to read, so he needs to find a way to get them through that isn’t a dusty old FAQ. Matt is worried about edge cases around incomplete data from Plaid and how to offer support.