development Archives - Chasing Product

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

Why getting help is important to a solo founder

The exigencies of the game market vs the market for business apps

The depression of watching business start to crumble

Recognizing market opportunities in what other companies leave behind

Mike-related links:

Show-related links:

Mike is an interesting dude. He was successful at building a software business while still being a consultant, and he’s done it alone. Because of my strong aversion to partnering up, seeing a success story like the one Mike has is very important to me. Through it all, he has been able to distill what he has learned in such a way that it makes sense when he explains it.

We touch on Mike’s history as a consultant and founder, discuss some examples of success that doesn’t look like you expect it to, and even share a brutally honest moment with Mike as he recounts watching his business crater when the economy got rough. This last moment is particularly interesting; it’s rare for a founder to be so honest about the ugly side of running a business.

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Josh Pigford, serial maker of things, joins me for this episode. Josh has a wonderfully diverse portfolio of projects. Starting as a designer and gradually transitioning into launching web products, Josh has had both successes and failures as a founder. We talk about some freelancing issues, how to do organic product development, and the exigencies of freelancing for equity.

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

What prompted Josh to make the leap to products
The importance of filling your skill gaps when you can’t outsource
The most accessible go-to marketing techniques Josh has used
Organic product development vs plucking a product idea from thin air

Temper.io – Better Customer Service Over Time; measures how your customers feel about your business so you know what to improve
PopSurvey – Create Surveys People Want to Take; PopSurveys are beautiful, easy to create and more importantly, fun to take
Baremetrics – SaaS Analytics for Stripe
PugSpot – The spot for pugs!
Tiny Farmstead – Learning how to farm in the ‘burbs!

Fugitive Toys – an Urban Vinyl Toy Store
Ruby on Rails
Flippa
The Apple Blog – Started by Josh, later acquired by GigaOm
Track the Pack – Universal package-tracking app that Josh had to shutter
Track the Pack Post-Mortem – fantastic account of the story behind Josh shutting down his app
Package Fox – Stop losing money on late shipments
Rovio – creator of Angry Birds
Entrepornography – the overhyped productivity BS foisted on the startup community by the media
SmallSpec – Christopher’s product-in-development. Join the launch list!

The organic product development idea is interesting to me, as someone who has struggled to come up with product ideas out of the blue. There are probably more examples of organic product development out there, where a founder distills a product from an existing app or starts out with a pain point to solve. But there are also a lot of “if you build it they will come” scenarios playing out, and those often end in ters for the founder in question.

Josh also shares some of his biggest regrets about product development, and three action items for aspiring bootstrappers.

Enjoy!

Tag Archives: development

Episode 16: Building a Software Business On The Road w/Mike Taber

Bootstrapped Product Talking Points

Episode 13: Organic Product Development w/Josh Pigford