Episodes
I chat with Nathan Powell, freelance product designer whose work these days is mainly with B2B SaaS. We chat about how developer founders can go about improving their app's UX and general design.
Published 06/23/23
Published 06/23/23
I chat with Michael Koper, founder of Nusii. We talk about what it's like when your product spends several years at a revenue plateau.
Published 03/12/23
I'm the guest on my own podcast! A year ago, Ben Pages joined my company, Feature Upvote, to be our marketing manager. Ben had questions about the early days of Feature Upvote, and how this product came to be. He also wanted to know the origin of my low-stress approach to running a business. We thought, why keep this conversation to ourselves? Why not record it as a podcast interview, and share it with you? And that is exactly what we did for this episode.
Published 12/02/22
I chat with Maeva Cifuentes, founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing, an SEO and content marketing agency. We discuss Maeva's journey from freelance translator to CEO of a successful marketing agency. Maeva also shares with us some practical SEO tips.
Published 11/18/22
My frequent guest co-host Ed Freyfogle tells us about his recent marketing endeavours, including one that was inspired by April Dunford's "toilet talk". "Toilet talk", you ask? All will be revealing during this episode.
Published 10/28/22
We have two guests interviewing each other! I invited two friends of the podcast, Andy Brice, and Robin Warren, to chat with each other about what it's like running a lifestyle business in 2022 compared to, say, 10 years ago. Although both Andy and Robin run what they call lifestyle businesses, they've taken different approaches, based on what they want to get out of their business.
Published 10/14/22
Marc Jenkins runs 16by9, a small web studio that focuses on building WordPress sites. Marc and I talk about what its like to start and build up this type of company, and how, with some careful thinking, you can avoid letting your business become something you never wanted it to be.
Published 09/30/22
I catch up with my frequent co-host, Ed Freyfogle, after a long summer break. Amongst other topics, we discuss how bad customer support will lose you customers. We also talk about yet more payment problems - a common theme on this podcast, and for SaaS businesses in general.
Published 09/16/22
Something a bit different in this episode: we're playing an episode of the new Pushing to Production podcast, where Ed Freyfogle was the guest. It's a conversation about the technical stack Ed's product runs on. Lots of insightful discussion of the tech decisions you need to make in an API-based business.
Published 08/19/22
Simon Bennett, founder of SnapShooter, returns to the show. We chat about a generous acquisition offer Simon recently received for his company - and why he ultimately decided to not to be acquired. We also chat about Simon's new podcast, Ship SaaS Faster.
Published 08/05/22
An effective content strategy for your product requires getting backlinks. In this episode, I share 9 strategies I use for getting backlinks for my product's website - without doing things that make me feel dirty.
Published 07/15/22
Nick Swan from SEOTesting.com discusses how he took on a co-founder for his already-established business, why he decided to no longer be a 1-person show, and most importantly how he sold a small part of his company in order to join TinySeed.
Published 07/01/22
We are joined by a good friend of the podcast, Peldi Guilizzoni, to discuss how to go about sponsoring events, newsletters, and podcasts to promote your product. In particular we talk about creative approaches that make your sponsorship stand out.
Published 06/17/22
I first recorded this episode for the Business of Software podcast. I chat about the experience of attending the recent Business of Software Europe in-person event, together with Joe Leech, who was a speaker at the event. Joe and I shared our thoughts on the event, Joe from the point of view of a speaker at the event, and me as an attendee.
Published 06/03/22
Ed and I talk about how currency fluctuations are affecting our pricing. And we give our opinion on the recent acquisition of Postmark, a bootstrapping success story, by ActiveCampaign. A brief note about an error in this episode: At one point I complain about a customer support problem I once had when trying to sign up for ActiveCampaign. After recording, I realised I had confused ActiveCampaign with CampaignMonitor. Let the record show that I've never had any experience with...
Published 05/20/22
We talk about why we are switching the podcast from weekly to fortnightly for a while. We also discuss headaches when customer payments fail and what we can do to address the problem.
Published 05/06/22
Ed chats with Pierre de Wulf, co-founder of ScrapingBee. Pierre tells us about the time his company almost got acquired - and how the deal fell apart at the final stage.
Published 04/22/22
My co-host Ed Freyfogle chats with Brian Sierakowski, general manager of Baremetrics. Brian stepped in to manage Baremetrics after it was acquired a year or so ago from the founder. Ed and Brian discuss the challenges of taking over a complicated business, Brian's trajectory from SaaS founder himself to running someone else's business, and how changing prices inadvertently gave him the chance to get valuable customer feedback.
Published 04/15/22
Ed and Steve talk about a dilemma Steve is facing. An open source component heavily used by Feature Upvote has become abandoned by the maintainer, and Steve has to make a hard decision about how to deal with this. We also talk about why and how Steve recently moved Feature Upvote's website from Jekyll to Wordpress. Yes, really, Wordpress.
Published 04/08/22
Ed chats with John Ndege, a former bootstrapper, about how it feels no longer being one's own boss. John was a bootstrapper, he launched and grew a product, and he ultimately sold it. Afterwards, he went back to being an employee, working for a large corporation. Ed and John discuss the advantages and frustrations you might experience when you choose the path of going back to work for someone else.
Published 04/01/22
Ed and I chat about Ed's recent trip to London, my upcoming trip to London, the return of in-person events, and getting exposed to ideas and concepts outside of our normal channels.
Published 03/25/22
I talk with Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage, an asynchronous video messaging tool. Brian has created several successful products in the past, and sometimes ran them in parallel. But he recently sold his entire portfolio of products to focus on ZipMessage. Brian explains why he made this decision. He also talks about why sometimes you need to shut something down, even if it does seem to be kind of, sort of working. And we talk about the feeling when you realise that a new product is...
Published 03/18/22
Ed tells me why and how he obtained a trademark for his business. We discuss when it is worthwhile to do this. We then talk about the trouble with having competitors clone your product or website content.
Published 03/11/22
I chat with Robert Brandl, founder of ToolTester.com. We talk about Robert's recent experience changing the domain name of his website. It was an expensive experience, and one that, for a while, did not go to plan.
Published 03/04/22