Jonathan Siegel is a buddy of mine who lives in Tokyo. I can’t decide whether I’m more floored by the fact that he runs five businesses at once or has eight kids. He recently wrote a book The San Francisco Fallacy, mostly to share his experience with running software businesses for the last two decades with folks who might be getting a wee bit too much of their advice from Techcrunch. I think this makes an interesting companion interview to the last one we did (~6 months ago) with Thomas...

Jonathan Siegel is a buddy of mine who lives in Tokyo. I can’t decide whether I’m more floored by the fact that he runs five businesses at once or has eight kids. He recently wrote a book The San Francisco Fallacy, mostly to share his experience with running software businesses for the last two decades with folks who might be getting a wee bit too much of their advice from Techcrunch. I think this makes an interesting companion interview to the last one we did (~6 months ago) with Thomas...

I sold Bingo Card Creator, the business I’m probably best known for, through FEI last year. Thomas Smale, the principal of that brokerage, is now a buddy of mine, and he agreed to chat with me a bit about what goes into buying and selling online businesses. I think it is of particular interest to those of you with SaaS businesses already, but it might also be interesting for those of you who might found one eventually, as you can make early decisions (like e.g. technology stack) which built...

I sold Bingo Card Creator, the business I’m probably best known for, through FEI last year. Thomas Smale, the principal of that brokerage, is now a buddy of mine, and he agreed to chat with me a bit about what goes into buying and selling online businesses. I think it is of particular interest to those of you with SaaS businesses already, but it might also be interesting for those of you who might found one eventually, as you can make early decisions (like e.g. technology stack) which built...

Several years ago I wrote a blog post on salary negotiation for engineers. This probably created more value than anything else I’ve ever written — I have a folder in Gmail with thank-you messages from people, and my running total is something north of $2.3 million in added salary per year, mostly in $15k to $25k chunks. A buddy of mine, Josh Doody, has decided to thoroughly own this area, and published a book (Amazon link) on the topic. I rather enjoyed the book, and thought I would have him...

Several years ago I wrote a blog post on salary negotiation for engineers. This probably created more value than anything else I’ve ever written — I have a folder in Gmail with thank-you messages from people, and my running total is something north of $2.3 million in added salary per year, mostly in $15k to $25k chunks. A buddy of mine, Josh Doody, has decided to thoroughly own this area, and published a book (Amazon link) on the topic. I rather enjoyed the book, and thought I would have him...

Keith and I are joined by special guest Jay Winder, CEO of MakeLeaps, in this 11th episode of the podcast.  We talk a bit about doing business in Japan, raising money vs. bootstrapping as a SaaS company, how AngelList is going to eat the world, and the usual eclectic mix of topics. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why you should negotiate from a position of strength and abundance. How to raise a round of...

Keith and I are joined by special guest Jay Winder, CEO of MakeLeaps, in this 11th episode of the podcast.  We talk a bit about doing business in Japan, raising money vs. bootstrapping as a SaaS company, how AngelList is going to eat the world, and the usual eclectic mix of topics. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why you should negotiate from a position of strength and abundance. How to raise a round of...

Keith and I are back with the 10th episode of the podcast.  This time we’re talking about our wives and kids, how much they mean to us (lots!), and how we try to fit being good husbands/fathers around our mutual desire to keep growing the businesses. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: What Keith has been up to with Summit Evergreen and what Patrick has been up to with Appointment Reminder. How having...

Keith and I are back with the 10th episode of the podcast.  This time we’re talking about our wives and kids, how much they mean to us (lots!), and how we try to fit being good husbands/fathers around our mutual desire to keep growing the businesses. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: What Keith has been up to with Summit Evergreen and what Patrick has been up to with Appointment Reminder. How having...

Samuel Hulick, one of the guys I trust most with regards to SaaS user onboarding, joined us for this episode of the podcast.  I met Sam first when he was writing a book on the topic.  The best evidence I can give you for the proposition “Sam knows more than the vast majority of people about user onboarding experiences” is the fact that he’s written up 25+ of them publicly (e.g. Basecamp’s) and that the writeups are of very high caliber.  Check them out sometime. [Patrick notes: The transcript...

Samuel Hulick, one of the guys I trust most with regards to SaaS user onboarding, joined us for this episode of the podcast.  I met Sam first when he was writing a book on the topic.  The best evidence I can give you for the proposition “Sam knows more than the vast majority of people about user onboarding experiences” is the fact that he’s written up 25+ of them publicly (e.g. Basecamp’s) and that the writeups are of very high caliber.  Check them out sometime. [Patrick notes: The transcript...

I recently met Steli Efti, founder of Close.io, in Palo Alto, and did a podcast episode with him.  Transcript and links below as per the usual. Sidenote: I listen to a lot of podcasts and have been using Marco Arment’s Overcast app recently to do so.  It was the best $5 I ever spent.  Give it a whirl. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why engineers speak a different language than sales people. How we can...

I recently met Steli Efti, founder of Close.io, in Palo Alto, and did a podcast episode with him.  Transcript and links below as per the usual. Sidenote: I listen to a lot of podcasts and have been using Marco Arment’s Overcast app recently to do so.  It was the best $5 I ever spent.  Give it a whirl. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why engineers speak a different language than sales people. How we can...

Keith and I recorded a new episode of the podcast last year, but we didn’t get around to releasing it. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: How to pick a small, self-contained product, which is good to cut your teeth on as a dev-turned-entrepreneur. How Keith extracted Summit Evergreen out of his consulting work (improving infoproduct businesses). How to use concierge onboarding to increase conversions and...

Keith and I recorded a new episode of the podcast last year, but we didn’t get around to releasing it. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: How to pick a small, self-contained product, which is good to cut your teeth on as a dev-turned-entrepreneur. How Keith extracted Summit Evergreen out of his consulting work (improving infoproduct businesses). How to use concierge onboarding to increase conversions and...

Happily, there are many ways to productize your relationships with customers or your expertise as a consultant. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why vegetarians do not give great advice on pricing hotdogs, and Hacker News comments about the inadviability of selling information very rarely come from people with actual budget to buy information Why having multiple packaging options (for example, at an X /...

Happily, there are many ways to productize your relationships with customers or your expertise as a consultant. [Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.] What you’ll learn in this podcast: Why vegetarians do not give great advice on pricing hotdogs, and Hacker News comments about the inadviability of selling information very rarely come from people with actual budget to buy information Why having multiple packaging options (for example, at an X /...

Keith Perhac and I are back with the 5th epsiode of the Kalzumeus podcast. Keith and I both have experience working as consultants in software development and online marketing.  People often ask us how to transition away from the feast-or-famine nature of freelancing, where you do very well when you’re delivering engagements and getting them paid quickly, and then do very poorly when work dries up or you have invoice collection issues.  One way to improve on this is building recurring revenue...

Keith Perhac and I are back with the 5th epsiode of the Kalzumeus podcast. Keith and I both have experience working as consultants in software development and online marketing.  People often ask us how to transition away from the feast-or-famine nature of freelancing, where you do very well when you’re delivering engagements and getting them paid quickly, and then do very poorly when work dries up or you have invoice collection issues.  One way to improve on this is building recurring revenue...

Matt Wensing from Stormpulse (disclaimer: I’m an investor, long story below) generously took some time off of managing the nation’s severe weather risks to appear on our podcast.  (Keith Perhac couldn’t be with us when we taped this, as he was celebrating the birth of his second daughter.)  It’s been about six months since our last episode but I think this probably makes up for it, as it’s a cracker of an episode. I apologize in advance for my audio quality — I was calling internationally...

Matt Wensing from Stormpulse (disclaimer: I’m an investor, long story below) generously took some time off of managing the nation’s severe weather risks to appear on our podcast.  (Keith Perhac couldn’t be with us when we taped this, as he was celebrating the birth of his second daughter.)  It’s been about six months since our last episode but I think this probably makes up for it, as it’s a cracker of an episode. I apologize in advance for my audio quality — I was calling internationally...

Keith Perhac and I recorded our 3rd podcast episode with special guest Brennan Dunn.  Listen to it (or read the transcript) for: why you should increase your freelancing rate how to discuss your value with your clients such that they’re happy to pay your increased rates how to scale to a multi-employee consultancy, without being bankrupted by poorly timed receivables three stories from successful consultants on three very different trajectories in their businesses how you can use drip email...

Keith Perhac and I recorded our 3rd podcast episode with special guest Brennan Dunn.  Listen to it (or read the transcript) for: why you should increase your freelancing rate how to discuss your value with your clients such that they’re happy to pay your increased rates how to scale to a multi-employee consultancy, without being bankrupted by poorly timed receivables three stories from successful consultants on three very different trajectories in their businesses how you can use drip email...