Landon Bennett & Kyle Conarro

Made with Grit

Technology EN ↓ 62 episodes

A show about bootstrapping SaaS businesses. Hosted by Landon Bennett and Kyle Conarro, co-founders of Zeromile.io.

Author

Landon Bennett & Kyle Conarro

Episodes

11: TinySeed - Grappling with an offer 10.01.2020 31:51

Kyle and Landon reflect back on a funding offer from their dream accelerator and wrestle with whether or not they made the right decision... Today’s Topics: An offer from our dream accelerator Sudden influx in cash At what point does it no longer make sense to take funding? Things to factor in when considering funding (VC or otherwise) Links & Resources: TinySeed MicroConf Techstars Tweet by Krist...

10: Funding, hiring, benefits, projections & more 20.12.2019 30:58

Notes After a few weeks off, Kyle and Landon return to chat about what they've been up to: hiring, funding, benefits, projections, and more... Today’s Topics: An opportunistic hire appears (and then disappears) Funding offers on the table Projecting profit and burn The power of the annual prepay (free working capital!) Links & Resources: Startup Runway Profitwell Take Command Health Gusto (get a $...

9: Staying connected as we grow - the human side of remote teams 18.11.2019 33:33

Landon and Kyle chat about the human side of a remote team, keeping people connected, and adding a monthly "investor" letter into the mix. Today’s Topics: Kyle working on back-end upgrades (i.e. Rails) Staying connected as a remote team Monthly "investor" letters Landon going vegetarian (for now) Links & Resources: Standups.io - async video standups Standuply Remote HQ Grayscale Labs - conversatio...

8: Wearing the sales hat + tick-tocking between products 11.11.2019 37:22

Kyle and Landon discuss Ad Reform growth, sales, tick-tock development, and more. Today’s Topics: Finding time to work (and record, and sleep) Ads still working (driving leads, trials, and revenue) Landon getting back in sales mode (custom deals, procurement, and more) Tick-tocking between 2 products Moving to a hosted website provider to make it easier to experiment (with messaging, pricing, etc....

7: Keeping perspective on a down week 28.10.2019 37:45

Kyle and Landon try to keep things in perspective after a down week. Today’s Topics: Restricting feature access: Hard limits vs. soft limits Userfeed challenges: Churn, slow activation, messaging Revamping a marketing site: Wholesale vs. step-wise Reinvesting in growth Links & Resources: Userfeed's marketing site Made with Grit on Twitter Landon on Twitter Kyle on Twitter

6: Babies and bootstrapping 22.10.2019 28:39

After missing a week, Kyle and Landon return to chat about babies, family, and the personal side of bootstrapping. Today’s Topics: Kyle is a two-time dad! What's it like so far with two daughters under two? Landon holdin' it down while Kyle's out. What's different this time around? An update on the advertising efforts: it's paying off so far! Kyle ditches a contract development opportunity Links &...

5: Manual vs. self-serve onboarding 07.10.2019 36:34

Kyle and Landon discuss the idea of making their onboarding process more manual. Could a concierge onboarding service improve activation? Today’s Topics: Atlanta sports sidebar Manual vs. self-serve onboarding Concierge onboarding to improve activation Qualification steps for prospective customers Kyle is (almost) a two-time dad Links & Resources: Fullstory Superhuman's onboarding process (via gro...

4: Rolling out a new feature: beta testing, communicating, and launching 30.09.2019 37:10

So it's time to roll out a new feature. What's the process? Kyle and Landon share how they do it: from identifying beta testers to closing the loop with stakeholders. Today’s Topics: Landon played golf (badly) What's typical for SaaS product announcements Feature flags for testing in production Identifying candidates for beta Personalizing your product updates Links & Resources: Using Intercom tag...

3: Our foray into advertising (plus: how much is enough?) 23.09.2019 34:42

In this episode, Kyle and Landon discuss their foray into advertising. They also discuss "how much is enough?", the much-discussed topic recently on bootstrapped Twitter (is that a thing?). Today’s Topics: Landon's bourbon blunder Userfeed ops fun Notion, Basecamp, and hill charts Ad Reform's new advertising channels How much is enough? ( Here's some of the convo on Twitter ) Links & Resources: Hi...

2: Talk to your customers 16.09.2019 34:29

In this episode, Kyle and Landon discuss the importance of talking to customers. Today’s Topics: Increasing prices Shape Up (everybody's doin' it) "Talk to your customers" buzzwords Kyle gripes about a poor support experience (as a customer) Platform risk (for Userfeed) Is live chat a distraction? Support as a differentiator Links & Resources: Shape Up book by Basecamp Intercom Made with Grit webs...

1: Hello world! Also, we hit $250k in annual recurring revenue 09.09.2019 33:43

Welcome to Made with Grit, a show about bootstrapping SaaS businesses. The show is hosted by Kyle Conarro and Landon Bennett , co-founders of Ad Reform and Userfeed . In this episode, Kyle and Landon chat about their recent revenue milestone and what things they've done to get to this point. Today’s Topics: A bit of background on Ad Reform and Userfeed Why bootstrap? Focusing on profitability from...

0: Trailer 05.09.2019 0:29

Coming soon: Episode 1 of Made with Grit