• Q: Greg, you transitioned from Chrome Plugin to SaaS. How did your user acquisition change?
  • We mostly stopped selling directly instead trying to get their email address
• Q: Jordan, how do you go about identifying where your users hang out?
  • We tried forums, blogs of gurus, and each platform’s support forums. In the end we realized everything happened in closed Facebook groups.
• Q: James, you increased your exposure on Capterra.com platform. How did that come about?
  • We first did some keyword advertising and tried stuff. But found that Capterra.com delivered much better results.
• Q: What’s an underutilized acquisition strategy that you have seen?
  • Greg: Facebook Ads are underutilized. Laser-focused
  • Jordan: Webinars to push the annual plan
• Q: What keeps you up at night as a founder?
  • James: Bringing people onto a team
  • Jordan: I fear being wrong on the product. Building something that people don’t want
• Q: How do you go about building buyer personas?
  • Jordan: We find our perfect customer, who are desperate to get our product. Then reverse-engineer why they are a perfect fit
• Q: Have you tried FB lead ads? Did it work?
  • Greg: We tried, but didn’t work for us.
• Q: Do you still use SEO as a traction channel?
  • Jordan: We are not good at it. We just produce content and hope for the best
  • Greg: We are pretty active with link building & outreach. Travis seems to outrank us on everything
• Q: What’s your key action item you take away from MicroConf Europe?
  • Jordan: Using the telephone more.
  • James: Build good buying personas.
  • Greg: Gamify the trial. That and being more active about predicting churn
• Q: What is the biggest pain-in-the-ass thing that has worked in your marketing?
  • Jordan: We lost focus on outbound sales and eventually stopped doing it altogether. I didn’t like doing outbound
• Q: How did you get your first 5 – 10 customers?
  • Jordan: brute forcing it with cold emailing. When they would reply, I’d hop on the phone with them

-Christoph

This is the central resource for a recap of MicroConf Europe 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.
If you write/record/create ANYTHING related to MicroConf Europe 2016 please let me know (Twitter: @itengelhardt ) and I’ll be happy to add it here.

Notes on the Talks

• Jordan Gal: Two Years in the SaaS Trenches
• Mike Taber: Drawing the Lines Between Success and Failure
• Patrick Campbell: Lessons from the SaaS Metrics of 1500 companies
• James Kennedy: Zero to $20k MRR in 20 “Easy” Steps: The Story of Rubberstamp.io
• Rob Walling: Game Changers
• Steli Efti: Building and Optimizing your First Sales Process
• Janna Bastow: The Power of Product Focus
• Mike Taber & Rob Walling: Startups for the Rest of Us
• Drew Sanocki: Double Your Business – The Approach I Used to Create $10M in Value in 10 Months at Karmaloop
• User Acquisition Panel with Greg Mercer, Jordan Gal, and James Kennedy
• Peter Coppinger: The Developer CEO

Attendee Talk Notes

• Anders Thue Pedersen: You Can Raise Your Profit with 400% Like I Did. Let Me Teach You.
• Christoph Engelhardt: 3 Emails to Boost Your MRR
• Roman Rudnik: How to Work with Remote Workers
• Daniel Bader: Building and Launching a SaaS Product in 2 Weeks: A Shopify App Postmortem

Articles and Podcasts About MicroConf Europe 2016

• Last year’s notes from MicroConf Europe
• German podcast on key takeaways from MicroConf Europe
• 8 Lessons learned by Victor Purolnik
• 20 Attendees share their key insights from MicroConf Europe 2016
• Key take aways by Chris Kottom

 

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: http://dbader.org
Twitter:
Slides: http://dbader.org/microconf16

• Goals:
  • help you avoid mistakes I made
  • help you evaluate the Shopify App Store as a platform
• Shopify App Store
  • Shopify: hosted e-commerce platform
  • App Store: “Saasy WordPress Plugins”
  • Shopify handles plumbing, takes 20% cut

Nearby Shop Notification

• Notifies people about deals when they are close to one of your retail stores
• What went right:
  • I made $31.92 from it – Woohooo!
  • I didn’t spend a lot of time on it
• Things that went wrong:
  • I just built what I wanted to build

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website:
Twitter: @rudni4ok
Slides:

 

• How to make your remote work successful
  • Speak with the staff about the disadvantages of remote work
• Use tools for remote workers
  • on trust-basis
    • e.g. Excel
  • Autocontrol
    • Desktime, Yaware
    • Pros: Automation
    • Cons: designed to count the time in general, inconvenient to keep records of the tasks completed
  • Big Brother
    • UpWork Client, TimeDoctor, Tahometer
    • Pros: Clear picture of employee, manager knows everything including screenshots during work
    • Cons: It is necessary to control oneself and not to forget to switch between tasks
• Write job descriptions/standards
• Implement 5 minute-meetings
• make 20% of salary dependent on proper behavior
  • “screw-ups” (e.g. not showing up for meetings) result in some salary being taken away
• Do all your work in Dropbox

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: SaaSEmailMarketing.net
Twitter: @itengelhardt
Slides: http://saasemailmarketing.net/microconf-slides.pdf

• Good E-Mail Habits
  • Personalize your message
    • Use their name in the emails
    • Use the name in the main content
  • Always follow up
    • If it’s worth sending it once, it’s probably worth sending it a 2nd time
    • For example: Re-Send this to people who did not open the first one
• 3 Email to boost your MRR
  • Signup Abandonment Emails
    • 2-Step Signup
      • 60% stop at Credit Card info
      • You have their email address from step 1
      • Send them e-mails
      • ~10% lift in conversion rate
      • Offer a free trial without credit card requirement if they don’t sign up after the first e-mail
  • Trial Extension Emails
    • Typical user: signs up, toys around a bit, becomes inactive
    • Should you charge or should you let them go?
    • Offer them to extend their trial!
    • (You can do this manually, just ask them to respond and extend the trial by hand)
  • Value Demonstration Emails
    • Churn is a major problem for most SaaS business
    • Users don’t recognize the value they’re getting out of your product
    • Find a correlation between your key metric and dollar amount
      • “Prevented 13 no-shows results in $910 revenue”
      • “You’ve invoiced $5,000 in the past week. You’re paying us $49… your ROI is amazing!”
    • Ideally customers can print it and go to their boss and get promoted because of the great tool they introduced
• Check out the book: SaaS Email Marketing

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: Timeblock.com
Twitter: @andersthue
Slides:

• Timeblock manifesto
  • We plan ahead
  • We stick to our weekly plan
  • we are transparent
  • We learn from our mistakes and failures
• Focus heavily on getting and maintaining your “Flow”
  • Divide your days into “half-days” ==> “Timeblocks”
  • Do not let yourself get interrupted by “urgent” customer requests
• Bill customers for Timeblocks instead of hours

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: teamwork.com
Twitter: @irltopper
Blogpost: https://www.teamwork.com/blog/peter-coppinger-developerceo-role-microconf/
Slides: http://tinyurl.com/toppermc2016

• In 2006 we were busting our asses off and still broke

2007 – Getting Organised

• We doubled prices to $200/h
  • even our existing customers did NOT complain
  • started charging for extras
• Whiteboard just wasn’t enough
  • No apps met our needs
  • We
• Key takeaways
  • Consultancy sucks
  • Don’t target a small market
  • Don’t sell software components to developers
  • Consultancy-ware software is no fun to build or sell
  • Treat your customers with respect
  • Sometimes you need to go with your guts

Build it and they will come

• Finding the time: we needed to dedicate one day per week to our product
  • No matter what, friday was product-day
• Product Design? Specs? We just started hacking… hackedy hack hack!
• Preparing for Launch – eat your own Dog Food
• First domain: TeamworkPM.net
  • insanely stupid domain
• Worst. Product. Launch. Ever.
  • No market research
  • no PR outreach
  • no email blast
  • no landing pages
  • No unique positioning
  • Just an akward high-five!
• Marketing? Who needs Marketing? Hackedy hack hack!
  • One exception: Engineering as Marketing
  • We implemented an import feature for main competitor
  • We had a monthly newsletter highlighting new features
• We did only 3 things right
  • built great product
  • treated customers like honored guests
  • took every suggestion onboard
• Made $191 in the first month!
• 50 months after we launched we hit $1M ARR (December 2011)
• Hell night in August 2012
  • everything was down –> PANIC!
  • website completely dark, no response from hosting providers
  • flood of tweets coming in
  • We decided to move over to AWS over the next few months
• Hockey stick growth hit us when we purchased Teamwork.com
  • Initial requested price was in the millions
  • Randomly emailed the guy two years later, offering him $100,000
    • Response: “Same lowball offer again? Thanks”
    • Responsed: “What would you consider?”
    • 30 seconds later he wrote: “675k”
    • Pushed my board to agree. I went all Martin Luther King on them.
  • It proofed to be an inflection point – product revenue grew like crazy after that
• Time to be an actual CEO
  • This is my job!
• Things we fixed
  • Meetings suck. But get over it!
    • Quarterly meetings to identify top 5 problems
  • Set the vision: $100M ARR
  • We started hiring deliberately
  • Sculpting our culture
    • Golden rule: Don’t be a dick!
    • Never argue over IM or chat
  • Got a proper marketing team
  • Got a sales team

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: NerdMarketing.com
Twitter: @DrewSanocki
Slides: http://Nerdmarketing.com/microconf

• When I came on board KL, they had tried a number of ways to grow
  • Adwords
  • Social
  • Blog outreach
  • traditional PR
  • affiliate programs
• Nothing worked, until we changed one thing:
  • Going from acquisition to retention focus
• Key insights
  • Most businesses eek by when they could be growing lots faster
  • possible to 2x without 2x the work
• Bootstrapped, grew, and sold DesignPublic.com in 2003
• Since then:
  • Fanprint
  • Karmaloop
  • Old time pottery
  • Discountmugs
  • Fab
  • Teamwork.com
  • and others…
• Strategic perspective
  • Michael Porter’s “Five Forces”
  • Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”
  • not relevant enough to bootstrapped startups
• Tactical perspective
  • “846 conversion rate optimization tips”
  • ended up overwhelmed and not doing anything
• Multiplier perspective
  • only three ways to grow revenue:
    • increase AOV / ARPU
    • increase frequency of purchase / churn
    • increase number of customers
  • Improving one is great, but they are multiplicative, so growing all three is killer
  • Teamwork.com
    • ARPU $53
    • Frequency: 40 months
    • Customers: 13,700
    • Total LTV: $29.6M
  • How to grow
    • Bucket all ideas by Multiplier
    • Within Multiplier prioritize by speed and impact
    • Work back to front Churn > ARPU > # Customers
      • Focus on Multipliers 1 and 2 first (maximize THEN multiply)
      • Do you need more traffic? Or revenue?
    • More info: http://nerdmarketing.com/20
    • Customer churn is expensive and time-consuming
  • Reactivation / win-back campaigns
    • Reactivate lapsed customers
    • X months after defection, win-’em back
    • Teamwork: Sent 50k, re-engaged 300
  • Anti-defection campaigns
    • Predict churn before it happens
    • develop signals: start with Recency
      • last-login time
      • last purchase
      • More: nerdmarketing.com/19
    • Highest ROI campaigns you will run:
      • DesignPublic: $250K in a day
      • KarmaLoop: 500% ROMI on anti-defection offers
    • MOre pro-tips:
      • Ladder your promos give away the farm gradually
        • 10 days w/o login, Offer 1
        • 20 days w/o login, Offer 2
        • 30 days w/o login, Offer 3
      • Sync with FB custom audiences
  • #3 Improve the product
    • Better product, lower churn
    • Delighted app, Qualaroo, Hotjar
    • Gotta communicate it (e.g. weekly feature newsletter)
• Increasing ARPU
  • #1 increase prices
    • most companies underestimate inelasticity of demand
    • introduce annual pre-pay
    • reduce choices (if more than 3 tiers)
    • reverse order (highest first)
  • #2 Cross-sell & upsell
    • Amazon reported 35% of revenue from cross-sell
    • Boosts ARPU
    • Enhances experience (think: email + landing pages)
    • Differentiates offering
    • Expands margin, efficiencies
    • Bounce-back campaign
    • Affiliate marketing?
  • #3 Bundling
    • Think Microsoft Office
• #1 CRO
  • Might not have traffic problem, might have conversion rate problem
  • Run a pop-up with opt-in offer
  • Add content upgrades to your top blog posts
• #2 Content Marketing
  • Honeypot strategy (Buffer, KISSmetrics)
  • Who are your best customers?
  • Target a community and where it hangs out
  • E-Z content marketing
    • Record a video
    • Transcribe (Rev.com)
    • Create article or — better — upgrade
    • Pivot to Slideshare
    • Assemble into eBook
    • Total cost: $20 + 30 min
• #3 Paid acquisition
  • FB Live to landing pages
  • Webinar-like effect
  • Flip to a FB ad
  • Retarget based on engagement
  • Alerts via Pushcrew on site
  • Arb new channel – low CAC
• #4 Acquire the right customers
  • there are good customers and there are shit customers

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: startupsfortherestofus.com

Podcast episode:

• MicroConf Las Vegas 2017 will be 2 conferences back-to-back
  • Traditional MicroConf: April 10+11
  • MicroConf Starter Edition: April 12+13

Four Unfair Advantages for Faster SaaS Growth

• Why is it that HitTail got traction so quickly?
• All 4 are unfair advantages, but one is a requirement for fast early growth
• “The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought” – Jason Cohen

Be Early

• Most common unfair advantage
• works only temporary – especially if you talk about your success
• feasible in small or emerging markets
• requires swift execution
• Examples
  • Baremetrics
  • Balsamiq
  • Bidsketch
  • WooThemes
  • Basecamp

Who You Know

• Your network
  • People willing to endorse, promote, advise, or intro you
• You know people that competitors cannot access
• Examples
  • AppSumo
  • Clarity.fm
  • WPEngine
  • CartHook

Who Knows You

• Your audience
• An existing customer base
• People who know, like, and trust you
• Examples
  • SumoMe
  • Edgar
  • KISSMetrics
  • LeadFuze
  • Drip

Growth Expertise

• Tactics, Strategy, Experience in growing a business
• Examples
  • Qualaroo
  • Buffer

Not Unfair Advantages

• great design/UX
• technical or design skills
• Money
• an uncopyable idea
• domain expertise
• passion/interest/time/focus

 

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: prodpad.com
Twitter: @SimplyBastow
Slides:

 

• Started in 2010 by scratching own itch
• We quit jobs in 2012
• Launched product in 2013
• 2015: The year of faffing about
  • Hiring (and unhiring)
  • Some outside help
  • Let’s try advertising!
  • Events and outings
  • Founder “hobbies”
  • Should we raise money?
  • Bonus: New product version
• Reaching $10k – $20k MRR is the most dangerous period for your business
• Redesigns/Rewrites suck
  • Splits team attention
  • Temptation to do front and back-end at the same time
  • Mahooosive projects
  • Always more to do than anticipated
  • The unleanest thing you can do
  • No new features
• MRR Plateau of Doom
  • around $30,000 MRR
  • a lot of products hit that plateau
  • Idea #1: Just ship the redesigned version
    • Didn’t really help, metrics were shit
    • had to still support old version
  • Idea #2: Can we throw $$$ at this problem
    • Additional work in managing investors
    • How much is enough?
    • Uncertainty about future (With funding some sort of exit is expected)
    • Why give up a good thing?
    • Lessons learned:
      • Until you can clearly define what you’d do with investor’s cash AND what the return would be, don’t take it
      • Just the process of thinking about funding showed us we didn’t need it
  • Our goal became to increase the trial-to-paid rate from 0% to 15%
    • Experiment #1: Shorten trial time
      • started with 30 day trial
      • We could say with certainty after 9 days whether they’d convert
      • shortened it to 14 days, doubled conversion rate
      • resulted in lots of customer service requests about increasing trial time
      • logical action: shorten trial time to 7 days
    • Experiment #2: Gamify the trial
      • give us your CC now –> get 5 extra trial days
      • tell us your company name –> get 3 days trial
    • Experiment #3: Persona-specific emails
    • Bonus Experiment: Playing with pricing & introducing annual pricing
• Results
  • Back to Sky-rocket growth
  • Cash in the bank
  • lots of customer love

-Christoph