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#753 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS: With Special Guest Jason Cohen The Founder of WP-Engine

Jason is the founder of unicorn WP Engine (200,000 customers, 1200 employees). Previously founder of bootstrapped Smart Bear (sold 2008; re-sold in 2021 at ~$2B) and ITWatchDogs (sold 2004). Original mentor and angel investor with Austin-based Capital Factory since 2009.

Main Questions For Interview With Jason Cohen

#1 - Can you tell us what lead you to see the clear opportunities in the WordPress hosting space when you were thinking of starting WP-Engine?

#2 - What were a couple of the biggest challenges you faced connected to the early days of WP-Engine and how did you and the team overcome them?

#3 - What do you see as some of the biggest changes you see in hosting and WordPress in general in the next couple of years?

#4 - What are some of your thoughts and personal insights connected to the VC industry after what has happened to SVB Silicon Valley Bank?

#5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what key advice would you give yourself?

#6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

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How Do You Get Great Product or Service Market Fit in The WordPress & SaaS Space?

How Do You Get Great Product or Service Market fit?

If you are a freelancer, WordPress digital agency, or a bootstrap SaaS founder market fit is all important. We got some great tips and insight on how you can work on getting a great market fit. Also in the second half of the show, we go into what are some of the best social media platforms to market yourself or your company in 2023.

How to achieve a perfect service or product-market fit for your company

Determine your target customers.
Identify their underserved needs.
Define your unique value proposition.
Build your product features.
Provide a seamless user experience.

You Show Hosts

Jonathan Denwood

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathandenwood/

Kurt von Ahnen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtvonahnen/

#751 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS: With Special Guest Veena Prashanth Digital Access Pass

DigitalAccessPass.com

SmartQuizBuilder.com

WP-Tonic Show Hosts Jonathan Denwood & Kurt Von Ahnen

How To Build A Successful BootStrap Startup Business

Main Questions For Interview With Our Special Guest Veena Prashanth

#1 -Veena maybe you can tell us how you got involved in the world of WordPress and then started DigitalAccessPass.com and SmartQuizBuilder.com?

#2 - What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced connected to growing your plugin businesses?

#3 - Do you see some real opportunities in the WordPress market place in the next couple of years?

#4 - What are some of your own views connected to Gutenberg and full website editing?

#5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what key advice would you give yourself?

#6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

Veena Prashanth

https://digitalaccesspass.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/veenaprashanth/

#750 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS Round Table Show With Special Guest Karmen Kendrick

 Main Topics of this month's show

#1 - This Supreme Court Case Could Decide The Future Of The Internet As We Know It

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/section-230-supreme-court_n_63e3ba9ce4b0c8e3fc88d2dd

#2 - New Proposal Seeks to Update WordPress Release Process for Merging Gutenberg Features After Beta 1 Feature Freeze

https://wptavern.com/new-proposal-seeks-to-update-wordpress-release-process-for-merging-gutenberg-features-after-beta-1-feature-freeze

#3 - Microsoft's Bing AI chatbot has said a lot of weird things. Here's a list.

https://mashable.com/article/microsoft-bing-ai-chatbot-weird-scary-responses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs6JdfOBFyA

#4 - WordCamp Asia 2023

https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/

#5 - Facebook and Instagram are testing selling you blue checks for $12 a month

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/19/23606268/meta-instagram-facebook-test-paid-verification

#6 - Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/23609522/elon-musk-more-twitter-layoffs-sales-engineering-ads-google-revamp

Karmen Kendrick Special Guest

https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamkarmenk/

Heather Wilde Renze

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherwilde/

Chris Badgett

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-badgett-57486325/

Spencer Forman

https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerforman/

Kurt von Ahnen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtvonahnen/

WP-Tonic Show Hosts Jonathan Denwood & Kurt Von Ahnen

The Challenges & Opportunities In Building a Second Career With WordPress

WP-Connects

At WPConnects our Mission is to help United States military personnel find their next career. We understand that this time in their lives and careers can be unsettling with all of the unknowns. WPConnects wants to help soldiers with their transition from Military life to their civilian careers.

Main Questions For Interview

#1 - Talisha maybe you can tell us the founding story behind WPCONNECTS?

#2 - What would you say the present position is connected to the WordPress project that finds itself at the beginning of 2023?

#3 - What are some of the special challenges that the military personally finds connected to getting started in the tech sector?

#4 - What has been your personal journey connected to your involvement with WordPress?

#5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what key advice would you give yourself?

#6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

https://wpconnects.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/talisha-lewallen-57758b85/

Early-Stage WordPress Startup Investing The Key Factors

David was one the first web pioneers, Back in 1992 he developed a line-mode web client and also contributed code to the initial WWW library. Was the first to introduce and promote Hebrew on the web.

He has over twenty years of experience as a CTO and a CEO and was involved in several start-ups and established companies and was the founder of two successful ventures.

His academic background is in computer science (BS) and educational technology (M.Sc). Was adjunct university professor, an IDF "Basmach - Mamram School" instructor, gave numerous workshops on Information Architecture, UEX, E-Learning, and Cyberwar, wrote two books and several articles on the early days of the Internet and received innovation awards including the Hebrew University Kaye award for innovation (twice).

Main Questions For Interview

#1 - David what have been some of your most interesting and exciting investments in WordPress?

#2 - What is the start-up investment scene like at the present moment in Israel?

#3 - What are some of them of the most interesting start-up companies or sectors on your radar at the present moment?

#4 - What are some of the key factors that you look for in early-stage investing?

#5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself?

#6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

#747 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS: With Special Guest Rob Walling

The AI Robots Are Coming & There's Disruption in The Air! With Special Guest Rob Walling

Rob Walling has built and sold multiple SaaS companies, most recently Drip.

He co-founded the most popular conference and community for ambitious, bootstrapped SaaS, called MicroConf.

He wrote the book on how to bootstrap a startup, Start Small, Stay Small.

And he started TinySeed, the first accelerator designed for SaaS bootstrappers.

He has also invested in more than 55 startups, including WP Engine, CartHook, and SparkToro.

https://robwalling.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwalling/

https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/

Main Questions For Interview

#1 - Rob, are there any particular trends that you have observed in the bootstrap startup community in 2022 that you think are interesting?

#2 - Have you come to any conclusions yourself connected to how you see Ai/ChatGPT is going to affect the bootstrap startup community over the next couple of years?

#3 - Do you generally think it's getting easier or harder for a bootstrap SaaS to the $10,000 a month gross revenue barrier?

#4 - You have invested directly in several WordPress SaaS; the most prominent has been WP Engine do you feel there is still a lot of opportunity in this WordPress space?

#5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself?

#6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

#746 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS: Round Table Show With Special Guest Jason Cohen, Founder at WP Engine

Thursday 26th at 9:15 am PST

With over 27 years of experience in business and software development, Jason Cohen is the founder of WP Engine where he has served in several roles including CEO, Head of Engineering, Head of Product, and CTO.

#1 - The AI Robots Are Coming Is There Any Hope For Humanity?

a - Google is freaking out about ChatGPT

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23563851/google-search-ai-chatbot-demo-chatgpt

The New York Times reports Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have discussed its response to ChatGPT, with plans to launch over 20 AI products this year, including a demo of its own search chatbot.

B - Getty Images is suing the creators of AI art tool Stable Diffusion for scraping its content

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558516/ai-art-copyright-stable-diffusion-getty-images-lawsuit

C - Publisher halts AI article assembly line after probe

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/23/ai_news_roundup/

#2 - WordPress Community Team Proposes Adopting GitHub to Improve Collaboration

https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-team-proposes-adopting-github-for-improved-collaboration

#3 - Google cuts 12,000 jobs in the latest round of big tech layoffs

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23563706/google-layoffs-12000-jobs-cut-sundar-pichai

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the news in an email to staff, saying the company needed to focus on key priorities — as artificial intelligence.

#4 - Awesome Motive Acquires Thrive Themes

https://wptavern.com/awesome-motive-acquires-thrive-themes

#5 - DOJ sues Google over its dominance in the online advertising market

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html

#6- Twitter’s new developer terms ban third-party clients

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-third-party-clients-211247096.html

How To Generate 100 Plus Sales Meetings in 2023

Dave owns seven businesses that have generated over ONE BILLION dollars collectively for over 1000 clients, including major brands and Fortune 100 companies like Target, Time magazine, and American Express.

At the age of 29, his doctor said, “Are you prepared for your heart attack?” Dave realized he needed to learn how to scale his businesses without being overwhelmed by stress. His life depended on it.

Merging conscious capitalism with an unconventional marketing approach, Dave has rapidly grown his businesses by investing money in people rather than paid advertising.

After selling his first business, Dave acquired three more companies and has put $3 MILLION into businesses this year. His mission is to employ over 200,000 people and revolutionize the way we reward good talent.

Dave wants to be so big that governments can’t ignore him because his companies take up too much of their GDP. Simply put . . . he wants to buy back the freedom that greedy individuals and corporations stole.

https://davevalentine.co/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-valentine-95564891/

https://avadel.agency/

But How to Use eLearning As a Marketing & Lead Generation Tool in 2023?

If your company is ready to increase the number of qualified leads, you should definitely give eLearning lead generation a try. From offering resources, they can't resist promoting eLearning courses for lead generation and beyond; here's all you need to know.

----------------------------------- Sponsors of The Show -----------------------------------

Zoho.com: - https://www.zoho.com/partners/

Sensei LMS - https://bit.ly/3VskGBT

BlogVault - https://bit.ly/3VskGBT

WPLaunchify - hhttps://bit.ly/3VskGBT

LfiterLMS - https://bit.ly/3VskGBT

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