There are many risks and advantages to being your own customer. Today, I want to talk about how I am doing this with my current business, PermanentLink, and how my girlfriend and I did this with our previous company FeedbackPanda. So, what do I mean by being customer #1? I'm talking about using your own … Continue reading The Rewards and Perils of Being Your Own Customer
Author: Arvid Kahl
Arvid Kahl is a software engineer turned entrepreneur. He co-founded and FeedbackPanda, an online teacher productivity SaaS company, with his partner Danielle Simpson. They sold the business for a life-changing amount of money in 2019, two years after founding the business.
Arvid writes on TheBootstrappedFounder.com because bootstrapping is a desirable, value- and wealth-generating way of running a company.
In over a decade of working in startup businesses of all sizes, Arvid has learned a thing or two about what works, what doesn't, and how to increase the chances of building a successful business.
When Privacy and Customer Value Clash
This week, I want to talk about a critical decision in the life of my new SaaS project PermanentLink. I've been doing some research on competitors and competitive alternatives. I looked into link forwarders, link shorteners, link branding services, pretty much anything that could technically compete with my core product, which boils down to branded … Continue reading When Privacy and Customer Value Clash
How I Approach Pricing for a Brand New SaaS
It's "pricing week" for my SaaS permanent.link. A few weeks ago, when I made the product public, it had only one price. I had pretty much guessed a random number to start with, and I landed on $25 per month. In the weeks after, I had many conversations with prospective customers. It was clear that … Continue reading How I Approach Pricing for a Brand New SaaS
Sunk Cost Fallacy Engineering
While working on permanent.link this week, I ran into the same issue twice. I had built something that was working great, only to scrap it for another solution a few days after. The first time this occurred, I had just finished my infrastructure for allowing custom domains to be used for permanent links. The other … Continue reading Sunk Cost Fallacy Engineering
Customer Lock-In and “Insurance Features”
Over the last week, I have metaphorically left the building and had several conversations with the audience for my most recent project permanent.link. Since this is a product aimed at authors, I've been chatting with writers about their experiences with links in their work. My service can theoretically solve any number of problems, but I … Continue reading Customer Lock-In and “Insurance Features”
Limiting Beliefs
Throughout most of the last two weeks, I have been working on a new software project. It's called permanentlink, and it's a SaaS tool for authors. When I published my book Zero to Sold, I ran into one particularly annoying issue: after the book was out, many links that I had put into the book started … Continue reading Limiting Beliefs
Early Tech Choices and Analysis Paralysis
I was working on a side project this week, and I ran into an all-too-familiar pattern: the more I thought about the technical requirements for this project, the bigger it grew in my mind. I only want to build this for myself to see if I could be Customer Zero. But it derailed quickly. What … Continue reading Early Tech Choices and Analysis Paralysis
“Audience-First” Is Not Just “Building an Audience”
We live in overly practical times. More and more entrepreneurs have been conditioned to look for the quick fix, the growth hack that will get them months' worth of success within a single day. Many founders are looking for immediately actionable tactics, ignoring the long-term strategies in which those should be embedded. That approach has … Continue reading “Audience-First” Is Not Just “Building an Audience”
Finding an Audience for Your Side Business
A step-by-step guide to building your first product, audience-first It's (almost) that easy! You can listen to this article as a podcast episode here: In this article, you will learn how to use a data-driven method to find an audience for your side business. I’ve seen this approach work for several founders, allowing them to … Continue reading Finding an Audience for Your Side Business
Priming Your Business for Due Diligence
In preparation for a due diligence process, there are a few things you can routinely update and use. Most of these things have to do with financial and business metrics, while others are legal requirements. The Profit & Loss Sheet One of the first things any interested party will expect you to provide is a … Continue reading Priming Your Business for Due Diligence
