Build Your SaaS

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**Build Your SaaS**

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

Latest Episodes:

It's just too much Jun 16, 2020

Show notes

This week on the program, Justin and Jon talk about:

A friend, whose SaaS has grown 300% since the beginning of the quarantine. They just hit $6k in MRR.
At that stage, he's in the "almost but not yet."
You're either:
- Brainstorming how to make money faster
- Brainstorming how to work less
Different stages:
- Pre-launch stage: you're working on your product on the side. It's fun! There's nothing stealing your time and attention because you don't have customers yet.
- The beta stage: still pretty fun! You have a few customers who are using your product, and maybe paying you money.
- The "launched" stage: now, you have way more users. Now you're doing way more customer support, responding to feature requests.
How much did we work when we were building Transistor?
- Jon figures we spent 45 to 60 hours a week (each).
Jason Calacanis’ tweet: "It takes 100 hours per week to build a business!"
“Good businesses have margin."
Josh Wood: "At Honeybadger, we work 30 hours per week."
Margin gives you the opportunity, as a founder, to live beyond your keyboard. To engage with the world.
Sandy Hudson (Sandra & Nora podcast): "The quarantine gave people the time and space to wrestle with the current moment."
The Dept of Veteran Affairs
"As your little baby Rails app grows up, you can't just run everything on the same service."
"The whole internet is just patchwork of pipes and duct tape."

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Bootstrapper shout-out of the week:

LessAccounting
https://www.lessaccounting.com/
Cloud base accounting software and services for non-accountants. This used to be owned by Allan Branch (Paul Kogan owns it now). It’s specifically designed for small businesses with 1-25 employees and contractors

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Colt Borg
Marc Beinder
Anton Zorin
Bill Condo
Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

Waking up Jun 09, 2020

Show notes

Structural racism affects every part of the economic system. It affects bootstrappers too! It defines:

Who we hire
Who we invest in
Who we promote
Who we chat with
Who sees our numbers
Who we invite to speak
Who gets access to our platform

"It's not just about being oppressed or being an oppressor, it's about resisting oppression and resisting being an oppressor; being an ally, being an advocate for social justice." – Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum (clip)

Right now, in cities across America, people are protesting systemic violence and oppression against Black people.

We (Jon and Justin) are waking up to how complicit we are in the system. We're seeing our privilege. We're humbled and motivated by the words of Dr. Erin Thomas:

"You can directly impact the extent to which your organization counters historical inequity, inequality & injustice."

The bootstrapping, SaaS, and startup ecosystems need to wrestle with these issues.

"How can you help? By working to dismantle a system of racism from which you reap the benefits. If you are not working to do that then you don’t actually want to help." – Kristina Daniels

Instead of Patreon shout outs, we're shouting out these causes:

Want to take the next step?

Abadesi Osunsade is offering How to be pro-Black at work
Rachel Rodgers is running Reimagining Small Business
Kim Crayton is doing an event called Introduction to Being an Antiracist

Things to read, listen to, and watch:

Peggy McIntosh's "Knapsack of Privilege"
The podcast series, Seeing White
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Bernice King on MSNBC
Documentary: A time for burning, 1966

This podcast was recorded on June 4, 2020.

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 ★

Why there's no episode today May 26, 2020

Show notes

👋 Justin here. This episode is to let you know why there's no episode today. (I've had a few DMs from folks that were worried!)

We're good; we had some server trouble this morning that took all our time and attention today. We're hoping to be back next Tuesday with a full episode.

Thanks everyone; we appreciate your support! ✌️

Special thanks to Dean Layton James, from CloudPeriscope and Benedikt Evans from UserList for giving us ideas on how to fix our issues today! ❤️

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Bootstrapper shout-out of the week:

SeekWell.io
"Send SQL (MySQL, Postgres, Snowflake, Redshift, and SQL Server) to Google Sheets, Excel, Slack, or email"

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Colt Borg
Marc Beinder
Anton Zorin
Bill Condo
Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

Building software for 2030 May 19, 2020

Show notes

This week on the program, Justin and Jon talk about:

The new Transistor UI, and how folks are responding to it.
"Damn the torpedoes!" – seeing if our update worked in IE11 after we deployed.
Tobias Lütke, Shopify: “All the trends have been accelerated. The pandemic has moved everything forward 10 years. So now we need to build 2030 level software in 2020.”
Restaurant trends:
- https://www.exploretock.com/
- https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
Bug bounties - what do other SaaS companies do with these?
Mike Myers on Conan

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Bootstrapper shout-out of the week:

ScrapingBee
"A web-scraping API that takes care of proxies and headless browsing for you so you'll never get blocked again while scraping."
Used by companies like SAP and Zapier!

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Anton Zorin
Bill Condo
Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

Simon is going full-time May 12, 2020

Show notes

This week on the program:

As requested, we're going to start highlighting our listeners who are building their own SaaS.
This week: Simon Bennett, a long-time Patreon supporter and a friend of the show.
He just went full time on his project https://snapshooter.io, which does automatic backups for Digital Ocean.
Simon had just put his kids to bed (he's in the UK) and sat down in his office to have a chat with Justin.

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda, @MrSimonBennett
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Need a podcast?

Transistor allows you to host all of your podcasts in one place.
We also offer private podcasts: use them with your team, or on your membership site.
Get a 14-day trial here.

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Anton Zorin
Bill Condo
Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

They stole our idea! May 05, 2020

Show notes

What do you do when a competitor steals your idea? (plus: Justin and Jon have the giggles).

People in tech get bent out of shape about who owns certain ideas, UI patterns, and business models.
- “They ripped off my idea”
- "They copied us!"
This blog post by Justin Mitchell:
- https://medium.com/@itsthisjustin/no-idea-is-unique-but-this-is-insane-a247ec80f6a7
Good Stackexchange thread:
- “In the history of science, this is known as "Railroad time". I.e, when the economy has reached a certain state of infrastructure (coal, steel, and land available, plus steam engines and demand for transportation), it's "Railroad time", and the idea of building railroads occurs to many people naturally at the same time.”
Documentary: https://www.generalmagicthemovie.com/
Multiple discovery (simultaneous invention): “the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors”
Synchronicity: “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
Collective consciousness.
How to respond if a competitor rips of your idea:
- Paul Jarvis tweet: "fathom copycats pop up so often that i've lost count. we honestly don't mind them... they STOKE THE FIRE 🔥 to make our product even better."
Hedge against the competition:
- Build your brand: the way people perceive your company; how “top of mind” are you?
- Build your audience: competitors can't easily replicate who you know, and who knows you.
- Customer service: how well you take care of people; how responsive you are
- Continued product improvement: you don’t have to be the most novel; you just have to show continuous improvement in vectors that customers care about.
- Last longer than your competition: don’t hire too many people, keep your costs low; if you can outlast your competition, you don’t have to worry about them stealing your stuff.

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Need a podcast?

Transistor allows you to host all of your podcasts in one place.
We also offer private podcasts: use them with your team, or on your membership site.
Get a 14-day trial here.

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Bill Condo
Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

Starting over again on our SaaS Apr 28, 2020

Show notes

Justin and Justin talk about where they're at.

Podcasts like the Project Journey show, are at the beginning of their journey.
Marie Poulin is a good example of an entrepreneur who's experienced a breakthrough this year; we should celebrate those!
Justin's tweet: "What are we doing this for? Is the purpose of life to "Start business. Make most money. Die." We want to engage with an audience that wants more out of life."
"Stay in your lane." The people who listen to this show aren't one-dimensional. We all live in a social, economic, and political context. We have feelings, families, histories. "Business" exists within these contexts. If our ideas about business are divorced from their human context, how helpful are they really?
22:18 – the Tailwind CSS project is plumbing.
23:15 – what kind of SaaS projects would we start right now?
27:10 – how much money does Nathan Barry have in the bank?
28:50 – you could still build this kind of app (Carrd competitor)
29:30 – Miguel's new product SiteSauce.app

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Need a podcast?

Transistor allows you to host all of your podcasts in one place.
We also offer private podcasts: use them with your team, or on your membership site.
Get a 14-day trial here.

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 ★

What should we build next? Apr 21, 2020

Show notes

This week on the show:

Jon baked bread. Got some sunshine. Avoiding social media, the other disease
Justin WAS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.
- Read this Andreesen post that everyone’s talking about: https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
- That conversation lead to this tweet: https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1251946371050954752
What does the future hold?
- Dan Price tweet: "After the most recent 15 deadly outbreaks, wages grew over the ensuing 3 decades by a lot."
- Jamie Lawrence tweet: "What I’d like to see small local businesses come out of this crisis with."
Can we give ourselves a deadline for the Tailwind project? What should it be?
What should we think about shaping next?
- API
- Helping podcasters make money
- Analytics
- Private podcasting feature
- Podcast websites

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda, @shpigford
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Need a podcast?

Transistor allows you to host all of your podcasts in one place.
We also offer private podcasts: use them with your team, or on your membership site.
Get a 14-day trial here.

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

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 coronavirus is impacting revenue Apr 14, 2020

Show notes

This week, Justin called up Josh Pigford, founder of Baremetrics:

Baremetrics does analytics for SaaS companies
I called him up just to get a sense of how this pandemic (and looming recession) has already started to affect different SaaS companies
He's already noticing some trends: "A lot of SaaS companies are seeing the biggest loss they've seen in the past 4 weeks. I've heard from some companies that are seeing a 10-20% decrease in MRR."
"Payroll is the biggest challenge over the next year. Payroll is our biggest expense."
How are you going to ride this out?
"We use Flight Path + Baremetrics to forecast revenue and expenses."
Justin's tweet: "here are the companies doing well right now."
A preview of a new feature that Baremetrics is building: automated email messaging for SaaS companies.
Josh's side-projects: Cedar + Sail, Lasertweets

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda, @shpigford
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

★ Need a podcast?

Transistor allows you to host all of your podcasts in one place.
We also offer private podcasts: use them with your team, or on your membership site.
Get a 14-day trial here.

Thanks to our monthly supporters: