Build Your SaaS

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Podcasting
**Build Your SaaS**

Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Latest Episodes:

How should we price our SaaS? May 22, 2018

Show notes

We're hoping to launch Transistor officially in July 2018.

And that means we need to figure out a pricing strategy. What types of tiers and plans should we offer?

SaaS pricing examples:

Patrick Campbell, from Price Intelligently, says there are three aspects of a pricing strategy:

Positioning: who are the right customers for your product? How will you target and attract them?
Packaging: what features are included in each tier? What value does each type of customer want from your product?
Pricing: putting a price on your tiers that reflects the value your customer receives.

Where did we get stuck? Jon and I started by looking at who had signed up for early access to Transistor:

Hobbyists – podcasting for fun, two people talking, no advertising.
Prosumers – side-project podcasting, may have a bit of income, want to go pro.
Solopreneurs – solo founders building smaller tech products.
Small tech teams – teams of 3-10 people building larger software products.
Bigger brands / enterprise companies.

This list brought up a question: how do we define our target customer? Is "podcast hosting and analytics for professionals" too broad?

Here's our homework for this week: we're going to let this simmer, we're going to talk to smart people about pricing, and we're going to come back to this next week.

Question of the week:

Tweet to @jon and @mijustin and let us know: how should we price our SaaS?

Show notes

Jason Fried - Ass pricing
Patrick Campbell - Price Intelligently
Jason Cohen - WPengine tiered pricing
Transistor.fm
Transistor.fm on Instagram
Transistor.fm on Twitter
Jon Buda is back on Twitter: @jonbuda
Justin Jackson on Twitter here: @mijustin

★ Please review us in iTunes – T-shirt contest! Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Should we make our revenue numbers public? May 15, 2018

Show notes

How transparent of a startup do we want to be?

There's an app called Buffer that really kickstarted the "radical transparency" movement with startups. Over time, they've revealed almost everything: how much their employees make, their company's revenue metrics, their internal emails, and their hiring process.

But is this something that we want for Transistor.fm? Listen to the episode to hear what we decided. ;)

Show notes

Buffer Transparency
Article: How radical transparency kills stress
Article: How to Build a Transparent Company the Buffer Way
Buffer: Why are we transparent?
Right Message goes public with revenue
Whisper network
Spencer Fry on public roadmaps
Baremetrics Open Startups
Indie Hackers – transparency numbers
Video: Our new analytics feature
SnapShooter on Indie Hackers
Announcement: We did it. We’re sharing our revenue on Indie Hackers!
Marco Arment: “podcasters have enough data”
Transistor.fm
Transistor.fm on Instagram
Transistor.fm on Twitter
Jon Buda is back on Twitter: @jonbuda
Justin Jackson on Twitter here: @mijustin

T-shirt contest! Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!
★ Please review us in iTunes ★

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How to validate your product idea May 08, 2018

Show notes

Play this episode | Download MP3

Jon is busy launching our new podcast analytics feature, so this episode features Justin's talk from MicroConf 2018 in Las Vegas.

You need more than product/market fit. You need alignment between you as a founder, your market, and your product.

In this episode, you'll hear Justin's step-by-step approach for:

Identifying who you are, and what you want
Choosing a market
Discovering what they want
Shipping a (small) initial solution

Show notes

Justin Jackson's 2018 MicroConf talk - video and notes
Download the slides
James Clear's list of core values
MicroConf Growth
MicroConf Starter
Transistor.fm
Transistor.fm on Instagram
Transistor.fm on Twitter
Jon Buda is back on Twitter: @jonbuda
Justin Jackson on Twitter here: @mijustin

T-shirt contest! Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!
★ Please review us in iTunes ★

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Live from Las Vegas May 02, 2018

Show notes

T-shirt contest! Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!
★ Please review us in iTunes ★

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How to organize your time when your startup is your side-hustle Apr 24, 2018

Show notes

What’s been happening?

New iTunes review from Shane Smith in Australia: "Keep up the great work. Love hearing the behind-the-scenes part of setting up your SaaS."
T-shirt contest! Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!
New features inside Transistor:
- Embeddable players
- Shareable links
- Direct MP3 download URL
- File uploader
We've closed early access. Official launch coming soon!
Marketing website is almost done
We're working on a secret new thing - stay tuned to hear more.

Main topic: organizing your time

This will be interesting because we’re coming at it from two different perspectives:
- Jon works full-time
- Justin runs his own business
What’s hard about it?
- Jon: I’m other people’s boss. Running the tech team at CAH/Blackbox. So people are depending on me. Blackbox is also a startup that requires a good deal of product decisions day to day. Both are exciting so it’s hard to juggle sometimes!
- Justin: I’m my own boss. I tell myself what to do. The hardest part right now is Transistor isn’t making money, but it’s the funnest thing to work on.
How do you overcome those obstacles?
- Jon: Two separate Pivotal Trackers and Apple Reminders lists. if I can think of something for Transistor during work I just throw in the list for later. I have to smart about not doing Transistor during the work day and letting my team down. Transistor is mostly relegated to after hours and weekends.
- Justin: notepad, I split it into two sections: “MegaMaker” and “Transistor.” I have a Trello for MegaMaker that tracks what my contractors are doing.
What does your ideal day look like?
- Jon: ideally I’m only working on Transistor in reality, wake up a bit early and see if I missed anything overnight for Transistor. errors, support emails, etc. Go do the fulltime thing. take a break after work to work out or make dinner and then work on Transistor at night a couple of times of week. Ideally I deploy at least something to Transistor everyday.
- Justin: I’ve realized I really get energy from interacting with people. I recently did this “Strengths finder” test and activities like doing sales, doing demos, interacting with customers, writing, making videos and podcasts, hacking on ideas, building prototypes… these all play to my strengths.
Tips for listeners:
- Define the end result first:“what does your ideal day look like” is a really important question.
- Distinguish between big milestones and daily tasks.
- Have a way of organizing tasks. Try a bunch!
- Contextual zones. Have a different place to work on your side-hustle.