This week, I ran into a Tweet by Mike Rubini, who had found that not only his product Groouply had been cloned, but the person behind copying his Facebook group monitoring tool had put up a comparison page, trashing Mike's product. That made Mike wonder if he should stop building in public. It's an alluring … Continue reading When Your Business Gets Cloned
Category: Bootstrapping
The Grief and Loss of Selling a Business
This week, my partner, co-founder, and love-of-my-life Danielle Simpson appeared on the Software Social Podcast hosted by Michele Hansen and Colleen Schnettler. In a remarkably open and honest conversation, Danielle touched upon many different topics regarding our journey with FeedbackPanda, but one thing stood out to me: her story of how she dealt with the … Continue reading The Grief and Loss of Selling a Business
How I Use Twitter
Today, I want to talk about how I leverage Twitter to build an audience, build relationships, and find opportunities. I'll talk about my overall strategy and the little day-to-day things I do, and which tools I use. I started using Twitter regularly to engage with other founders and talk about my work in October 2019, … Continue reading How I Use Twitter
Motivation Will Eventually Go Away: Build Accountability Systems Instead
Motivation is a powerful initial force. It provides momentum. When we start projects, we need that momentum to push us through the initial collision with reality when we learn of all the complex choices we have to make to get things off the ground. It's the motivation to learn, to discover, and to create that … Continue reading Motivation Will Eventually Go Away: Build Accountability Systems Instead
Tech Stacks and Indie Hacking
David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted about Shopify this week. A lot. He was shining a light on their use of the Ruby on Rails framework, which he open-sourced back in 2004. That sixteen-year-old software powers a business that processed over $100m in sales per hour at peak Black Friday. Not only is Shopify running on Ruby … Continue reading Tech Stacks and Indie Hacking
The Rewards and Perils of Being Your Own Customer
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 Danielle 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 product … Continue reading The Rewards and Perils of Being Your Own Customer
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
At a Crossroads: The Different Kinds of Exits
Companies get acquired for a few reasons: they’re interesting economically, they’re interesting strategically, their employees are attractive, or they are a thorn in the eye of the acquirer, a foe to be vanquished. Depending on why someone wants to buy your company, the deal and the whole process of selling the company may be radically … Continue reading At a Crossroads: The Different Kinds of Exits
How I Self-Published Zero to Sold, a Bestselling Book on Bootstrapping
On June 29th, 2020, I self-published a book called Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business and released it on Twitter. Within twenty-four hours, I sold 350 copies. Within another twenty-four hours, the book was #1 on Product Hunt and already a category bestseller on Amazon. After a week, 1000 … Continue reading How I Self-Published Zero to Sold, a Bestselling Book on Bootstrapping
Standard Operating Procedures: Managing Your Future Self
Delegation is most effective if there is an Operations Manual for the company. Michael E. Gerber calls this the "Turnkey Revolution" in his book The E-Myth Revisited: the idea of documenting your business like a franchise. Build your business in a way that you could hand it over to someone else, and it would still … Continue reading Standard Operating Procedures: Managing Your Future Self
