Build Your SaaS

Jon and Justin talk about: The new corporate condo in the french alps, Crazy to think about where we were last year when we recorded this episode . Spotify's growing market share What happened to our dynamic content feature? A big rant about Apple Podcasts ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Postmark . Postmark delivers your transactional email to customers on time, every time. You'll love their lightning-f...

Jon and Justin talk about: American Thanksgiving Is it better for a product to be simple? The benefits of having a "smaller menu." Why we started a private podcast for our advisors and trusted friends "My opinion is you need to grow fast and become THE platform for managing your podcast. Consider raising venture money." But, if we add investment money and a bunch of employees, and then our company...

Jon and Justin talk about: New albums from DJ Shadow and Beck Why we aren't sharing our revenue metrics publicly anymore "Sometimes, you can worry more about your public image, more than actually focusing on the problem in a safe place." Why did Buffer stop sharing their revenue numbers? Three questions we ask: Who is this for? What is it for? How will we evaluate success? New podcast analytics fe...

Jon and Justin talk about: A stressful Rails 6 upgrade (and how it broke the app). We often use data to make decisions, but we don't often examine the underlying data we're using to make decisions. How do we know if our marketing efforts are effective? "What's happened to your data since last quarter?" "If a billion people are listening, but not reacting, does it matter?" ★ Thanks to our sponsors:...

Jon and Justin talk about: The launch of the new marketing site: transistor.fm Built using Statamic CMS and with Tailwind CSS Got tons of help from Jack McDade, Adam Wathan, Ben Furfie "Tailwind is really nice. I have to hand it to Adam." Why working in tandem is better than working independently. DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. NO. What's the next thing we're going to focus on? ★ Thanks to our sponsors: N...

What's new with the Transistor team? Justin has a Halloween candy hangover. Desktops vs laptops for dev work. Transitioning from your personal equipment and software to stuff the business pays for. Where are we in our Shape-Up cycles? Our new marketing website is suffering because it's "un-shaped work." The benefits of working with a partner. "I'm realizing how single-threaded human beings are." W...

This is a heavy one! Let us know at @buildyoursaas if you listen to the whole thing. On a micro-scale many folks believe "how much MRR is enough?" is a silly question, because, in our current global economic model, your business has to keep growing (or it will eventually die). (CHURN will kill you) But on a macro-scale, our economic system relies on perpetually increasing: resource extraction popu...

We shipped our new feature! American Express called Justin twice at 5am The new enhanced podcasts feed is live. Pete Marcano: “I’ll be honest, when I listened to the Build Your SaaS episode on this feature being launched, I didn’t really think much of it. Listening to this episode connected the dots. This is awesomely game changing.” Now we’re technically in a “cool down” cycle” - is this how this...

Jon and Justin talk turkey: "I'm not used to all this attention. it’s weird. not bad, just…not used to it." "If you're doing anything interesting out in the world, you're gonna have people get mad about something at some point." – Rob Walling "There's a bit of imposter syndrome; like, do we deserve this?" It's more about the way you orient yourself than setting a specific destination. Bootstrappin...

Jon and Justin have a bunch of hot topics this week: Podcast advertising, user tracking, turning away customers? Basecamp switched their podcast (Rework) to us Why Marco Arment gave up on his #1 app $30k in MRR – how does this feel? Shape Up updates: “Small enough to wing it”  ★ Thanks to our sponsors: ActiveCampaign . Get the world's most advanced marketing & sales automation platform. Use th...

Sleep. We never get enough: Justin consistently wakes up between 2am-4am and can’t get back to sleep. Jon woke up at 4am. Often reports bad sleeps. Justin asked on Twitter and got tips: Josh Pigford, Baremetrics, says: “CBD oil. Previously I was a very "active" sleeper...talking, getting up, etc. It'd also take me upwards of 30 minutes to get to sleep and I'd regularly wake up in the middle of the...

Jon and Justin discuss a variety of things. Warning: Justin says the f-word twice. 80s trampolines Jon's new microphone: mic + pop filter = $65 USD Transistor's history: 💻 March 2017: first-line of code ✍️ Feb 2018: signed partnership docs  ✉️ March 2018: invited first paying (beta) customers 🎉 Aug 2018: official launch 👨‍💻 April 2019: I go full-time [kind of] ($10k MRR) 👨‍💻 July 2019: Jon g...

Jon and Justin discuss: Good mics for podcasters. Justin recommends the Samson Q2U and the ATR2100. Make sure you get a pop filter! Starting our 6-week cycle (based on Basecamp's Shape Up) Working through unknowns for software projects: "Where do we start?" What's it been like being a transparent startup? Is it still a good idea? "It feels less and less comfortable, and I don't know why." – Jon "A...

This week Jon and Justin answer a few questions: From Jason Zook: "How much MRR is enough for Transistor?" From Yaz: "What do you think of this new Supercast thing that helps podcasters start a paid podcast?" How many people are really asking for this? Looking for evidence: "I just bought X." "I just started doing X." "I just switched from X to Y." "My friend uses X, so I tried it." "Using X, but...

Hear what's new from Jon and Justin on their bootstrapping journey: Nothing like throwing yourself down a mountain when you're tired We're seeing a big increase in support tickets here at the end of August Justin has a theory: more support tickets is leading indicator for an increase in revenue "When people have 'summer brain' they don't want to think about work." Jon's learned some things about h...

Jon and Justin share their SaaS journey: "There's so many great feature ideas, but we can't do them all." Jon's wondering about the constant feature request/release cycle “You’re doing a good job if you’re enjoying the journey” - Jason Cohen (on Art of Product) Tweet: “Any other SaaS companies seeing that revenue generally drops in the summer? I thought it was just me.” Nathan Barry: “The summer i...

Jon and Justin are tracking a bunch of stuff this week: We're moving from WordPress to Statamic CMS "I had no idea how to set up PHP on my laptop." We want to treat our marketing site the same way we work on our product We're trying to optimize our PageSpeed (our current mobile score is 63, we want to get over 90) "And then you came in a like a magician and lazyloaded the JavaScript" "Collaborativ...

Justin and Jon have started the process of implementing Shape Up . Lots of folks feel like it’d be hard to implement in their team "This would be hard at my agency." “What about feature requests? Is the idea that you also don't write those down?” “Hmm no backlogs? Maybe I am not understanding some backstory/context? Where do they put ideas, comments, quick bits that they might look at later on” So...

Justin and Jon are joined by Jason Fried to talk about: The philosophy behind their new book Shape Up . Does Basecamp's approach to 6-week cycles differ for smaller teams? "Long projects destroy morale. When things don't ship, you get frustrated." – Jason Fried Why projects ship late (it's human nature). Why work is like a hill. How they make product decisions at Basecamp. How do you know what you...

Big week. Justin was in New York and Jon found an office! Justin lost his voice. Jon doesn't work from home or coffee shops anymore. Jon found an office: "It’s inexpensive, but quiet, with nice people in a nice area. Inexpensive enough to where I won’t feel bad if I do want to work elsewhere once in a while." Justin's Spotify visit (very interesting). Laracon conference on Times Square (Justin was...

Justin and Jon are starting to feel that stress. We start with an unscripted bit. Our backlog and todo list are still stressing us out. We want to improve the app, but we get stuck fixing bugs. Justin is going to be at Laracon, NYC . Should we fly less? ★ Thanks to our sponsors: ProfitWell gives you free subscription metrics for your SaaS. Just plug in your billing system (Stripe, Zuora, Braintree...

Justin and Jon dive into the growing backlog of features, bugs and tasks, and talk about how they might better manage it as a two-person team. A big new milestone is reached! Jon had a bit of anxiety over the growing backlog in Clubhouse New ideas were being thrown into an unscheduled list, but weren't yet actionable. Some ideas can be left alone for awhile and revisited to see if they're still wo...

Now, Justin and Jon share are both focused full-time on Transistor. This week they discuss:  Emotionally processing what it's like leaving a full-time job. What was it like working at the Cards Against Humanity office? What's it like now? Contextual zones: “I noticed that when I entered the library, I was already thinking about reading and writing.” - Kunal Shandilya. Why you need local and online...

Jon had some personal news for Justin this week. This week they discuss: What does this mean for the product? What does this mean for us as a team? ★ Thanks to our sponsors: ProfitWell gives you free subscription metrics for your SaaS. Just plug in your billing system (Stripe, Zuora, Braintree, Chargebee, Recurly are all supported) and get free access to your MRR, churn, cohorts. Sign up for free...

Jon is away, so Justin is tackling these questions: "When you were early on and desperate, were you tempted to take investor money?" "How do you position yourself in a crowded market? What's your marketing plan look like?" "How do you prioritize feature development? Are new features coming from customer feedback, intuition, or some combination of both?" "Are you planning on experimenting with paid...