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

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

Website: Close.io
Twitter: @Steli
Slides:

• Started as productized consulting offering scalable sales processes to VC funded startups in the Bay Area
• Stumbled into CRM space by releasing internal software
• Show up. Follow up. Close.
• Sales is not difficult. It is just emotionally uncomfortable.
• You have to push yourself to follow up
• Ask for the close in no uncertain words

Sales Process Exploration

• Goal #1: find a predictable sales process
• 3 Steps to Sales Epiphany
  • Customer Profile
    • Who is ideal customer?
    • How do we qualify them?
  • Lead Sources
    • Scalable sources for high quality leads?
  • Sales Process
    • Most successful way to sell to my market
    • Inbound/Outbound; Emails, Calls, Demos, Outside/Inside
• Get steps 1 + 2 right; people tend to over-focus on step 3
• Sales Metrics
  • Activity
  • Quality
    • You need a minimum 15% reach rate – ideal is 30%
    • If you are below that, you’re doing something wrong:
      • wrong channel – try faxes for doctors, cell phones for students, etc.
    • “Reach –> Qualified” rate should be 50% or higher
  • Conversion
    • “Qualified –> Close” rate should be 50% or higher
• Sales Stages (Hiring)
  • Founder Driven
    • At first you have to do sales all by yourself
  • Founder Managed
    • Then you can outsource parts of it and eventually the whole process with close to the same results
  • Junior Sales Leader
    • Someone from a company that was at your stage a year or two again
    • They come from the future – they have all the answers
  • Senior Sales Leader
• You are NOT allowed to outsource sales. You can not outsource your key business problem

-Christoph

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

Website: SoftwareByRob.com
Twitter: @RobWalling
Slides:

Part 1: The Early Years (2005 – 2009)

• DotNetInvoice, WeddingToolbox, LinemanJobs, JustBeachTowels, DIYDuckBoat.com, CMS Themer
• no SaaS, most products were acquired
• Why I got into products
  • Freedom
  • Purpose
    • Personal & subjective
    • For me: learning & teaching
    • I produced/started all my content (book, blog, podcasts) in just 18 months
  • Relationships
    • Having time and headspace for friends & family
  • Stability
    • Ability to not have to worry about next month’s revenue
• Solution: Recurring Revenue

HitTail

• Took all the money I had in the bank and bought HitTail (recurring revenue)
• Full Story here
• grew it to $300,000 Run Rate
• BUT…
  • low price point
  • churn was high
  • $100 LTV
  • Google would change things every other month
• I still didn’t have Stability, because Google threatened HitTail

Part 2: Drip (2013 – 2014)

• looking for another SaaS idea
  • higher price point
  • “core business” application
  • not reliant on a single external data source
• Finding Product/Market Fit for Drip
• Started to scale well after that (recap of the talk from MicroConf Europe 2015)
• Did NOT turn a profit until March 2015
• Lots of unexpected bills made 2014 the most stressful year ever

Part 3: Drip 2015 – 2016

• Drip is making profit starting in March 2015
• Growing companies are rarely profitable
• Big question: how long am I willing to forego profit for growth?
• “$25k in a checking account, no car and a rented apartment in walking distance to my office” – Rand Fishkin @ $12.5M ARR
• My state of affairs mid-2015
  • Freedom
  • Purpose
  • Relationships
  • Stability

Part 4: Drip Acquisition

• Lesson #1: Never leave your phone unlocked with kids in the house
• We had many offers for acquisition/funding
  • 2-3 emails per month offering funding
  • several potential acquirers in 2 years
• What about funding?
  • It would cut down on monetary stress within the business
  • BUT would delay profitability for years
• All my income hinges on Drip – no fallbacks if things go down south
• “Startups are bought, not sold”
  • You get maximum $$$ when they need you
• Objections to selling
  • “My startup is my baby” – don’t get too attached
  • “Selling is selling out”
  • “What else would I do?” – teaching, writing books, angel investment
• My Deal-Breakers
  • “Sunset” Money
  • Can’t screw our employees
  • Can’t screw our customers
  • Keep doing podcasts, MicroConf, etc.

-Christoph

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

Website: rubberstamp.io
Twitter: @JamesKennedy
Slides:

• Launched multiple products over the course of 7 years. Had to resort to consulting each and every time to stay afloat
• “Find out what people want. Go and get it. Give it to them – in that order”
• I suddenly knew what I did wrong all that time

Piehole

• Piehole was the first time I headed that advice
• Piehole is a marketplace for voice overs
• We started to travel the world, starting with Argentina
• Only $20,000 revenue –> essentially trapped in Argentina. Couldn’t return to Dublin if we wanted
• Read “Instant Cashflow” by Bradley J. Sugars
• Implemented weekly schedule
  • Monday: increase # of leads
  • Tuesday: focus on conversions
  • Wednesday: increase average $ per sale
  • Thursday: increase # of transactions
  • Friday: increase margins
• Problem: 50% churn was killing the business
• Steps 1-5
  • Find out what people want
• Attended MicroConf Las Vegas 2013 and heard Jason Cohen’s talk about the ideal bootstrapped business
  • B2B
  • recurring pain point
  • non business critical
  • big market
  • finance dudes pay more
  • No marketplaces!
  • $45/$99/$249
  • CPC = MRR / 25
• Meanwhile in Dublin my co-founder-to-be had two customers with identical pain points
  • Idea for rubberstamp.io was born
• Did sell only one copy at $49/mo in the first 12 months – almost gave up
• Found one customer who cut us a $20,000 check
• We used the Tesla approach to marketing:
  • embraced customization first
• Steps 6-10
  • Watched Jason Cohen’s Talk
  • Found a partner I could trust
  • Used the Tesla Model
  • Picked up the phone
  • Did a Brexit
• Had links from app directories link directly to signup page (App directory IS the landing page)
• Offered a $20 Amazon voucher in return for a review of our software
• Steps 16-20
  • Financial planning for maximum motivation
  • Ordinary things, done consistently…
  • TechHub in South Africa
  • Got funded
  • Went to Barcelona

-Christoph

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

Website: priceintelligently.com
Twitter: @patticus
Slides: http://www.priceintelligently.com/microconf

• Premise: “Building a software company is getting harder, not easier… and it’s going to increase in difficulty.”
• LTV/CAC Ratio:
  • less than 2 results in 4-12% churn
  • 2-5 results in 3-6% churn
  • over 5 results in <3% churn
• What % of total sales is expansion revenue: 10-15%
• How much should you be growing YoY: As much as possible
  • no fixed growth target set by VC, because we are bootstrapped
  • Your growth rate goes down the bigger your annual recurring revenue (ARR) is
• Our world is more competitive, making switching costs easier.
  • 5 years ago: Average of 1.5 competitors per surveyed SaaS app
  • Today: Average of 8 competitors per surveyed SaaS app
• The value of features is declining over time
• CAC is increasing over time
• You need to know your buyers on a granular basis
  • valued features
  • least valued features
  • WTP (Willingness To Pay)
  • CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
  • LTV (Lifetime Value
• Problem: We don’t do a lot of cust dev conversations
  • 75% of companies have less than 10 customer development conversations per month
  • 78% of companies are sending 0 customer development surveys per month
  • 50% of companies do 0 marketing experiments/tests each month
• Looked at over 25,000 growth blog posts
  • 80% are written about Acquisition
  • less than 10% are written on Retention!
• Looked at 6,324 companies
  • 90% are building for Acquisition
  • <5% are building for Retention
• C-Level/Founder spend their time on
  • 85% getting more logos (Acquisition)
• Impact of improving each growth lever by 1% results in the following growth in your bottom line:
  • Acquisition: 3.32%
  • Monetization: 12.7%
  • Retention: 6.71%
• We want customers, but don’t know what to do when we get them!

How do we fix customer development and focus on monetization

• 3 ways to better monetization
  • Quantify buyer personas
  • Implement a pricing process
  • Utilize a multi-price mindset
• Example: ProfitWell
  • Noticed that one of their consulting clients about to IPO were calculating MRR the wrong way
  • ==> We can build a product that will calculate everything correctly
  • Immediately got compared to Baremetrics and Chartmogul
  • We noticed there are 37 other competitors…
  • We went back to the playbook: Persona-Pricing Fit
    • Startup Steve vs. Miderprise Marty
    • For the love of God. Talk to your customer.
      • set a target – e.g. “we talk to 10 customers each month”
  • Right way to set prices: Value-based pricing influenced by cost-plus pricing & competitive pricing
  • have multiple tiers of your product – differentiated by enabled features
  • “Please rank the following features on a scale of 1 to 10” will show you that every feature is important
    • Better: “Of the following options, which is LEAST and MOST important to you”
    • can be used in conversations, not just surveys
    • much better data quality
    • correlate answers to size of business of your customers ==> tells you what small customers care about vs. what big customers care about
  • How much are your customers willing to pay?
    • “At what price point does PRODUCT become too expensive that you’d never consider purchasing it?”
    • “At what pp does PRODUCT start to become expensive, but you’d still consider purchasing it?”
    • “At what pp does PRODUCT become so cheap you question the quality of it?”
    • WTP for enterprise customers was $150-$250/mo
    • CAC ~ $3,000
    • LTV: $1,500
    • ==> “Oh shit!”
  • WTP for Churn Recovery for enterprise customers: $3,000 / month!
  • WTP for Revenue Recognition for enterprise customers: $2,500 / month
• Implement a pricing process
  • Timeline for changing your pricing (repeat every quarter)
    • week 1-4: Customer/Market Research
    • week 5-7: Communication Plan, Impact Analysis, Customer Advisory Panel
    • week 8-9: Implement changes
• Utilize a multi-price mindset
  • you want to have growth both from new and existing users
  • use a value metric (e.g. Wistia differentiates along “# of videos”)
    • do NOT use # of users
  • value metrics should:
    • Align to your customer’s needs
    • Grow with your customer
    • Be easy to understand

-Christoph

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

Website: SingleFounder.com
Twitter: @singlefounder
Slides:

• built AuditShark
  • Software to ensure security & compliance of servers/computers
  • I had been consulting in that arena
  • I knew the target audience, the problem, the space
  • I still failed!
• Why do these things happen?
  • Our personal sample sizes are too small
  • Lack of publicly available data points
    • is it normal to spend $20,000 on building a SaaS?
    • is it normal to spend 10 months buildings a SaaS?
  • Survivor bias is rampant
    • Buffer, Groove, Baremetrics — We all know the unicorns
  • Self-delusion is far too easy – we are too optimistic with our schedules & budgets
    • I even bought delusionsofgrandeurbook.com thinking “Maybe I’m heading the wrong way and this will make a great story…”
  • Small banks were a mistake: They didn’t actually care about security
    • Bad initial market? Pivot!
    • Problem: The product was built for a different market
  • False Hopes
    • I was waiting for the$500,000 deal with one enterprise customer to go through. It never did
• I failed miserably AND publicly
  • “It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others”
• How do we find relevant data points?
  • It’s not about “I’m doing 5x revenue that you do.”
  • It’s about “Am I on the right track with this?”
  • MicroConf is a place for sharing our stories and data points!

Analysis of 60 Product Launches

• Basic Disclaimers:
  • Everything is self-reported
  • Most questions were optional, so not everyone answered everything
  • Not all results came through the online form
  • There is some interpretation involved
  • There’s some inherent bias in the data due to the audience
  • This is FAR from a complete analysis. A larger study would be needed to establish statistical accuracy
• Break down by Product Type
  • 60% SaaS
  • 14% Books/Courses/Training
  • 10% Desktop apps
  • 15% everything else (Marketplace, WP plugins, Productized Service, etc)
• 70% had paying customers
• Current Product Status
  • 28% launched & growing
  • 25% launched, but didn’t go anywhere and I’m not actively working on it
  • 19% making a non-trivial amount
  • 12% Not launched or recently launched
  • Rest: Sold or shutdown
  • ==> 58% didn’t go anywhere and were either shut down or abandoned
  • ==> 30% became a success
• Resources spent getting to launch
  • Avg calendar time in months: 9 (min 0.5, max 27)
  • Avg product development time: 5 (min 0.25, max 26)
  • Avg customer development in hours: 20 (min 0, max 200)
  • Avg marketing time before launch in weeks: 1 (min 0, max 10)
  • Avg cash spent in Euros: 5,785 € (min 0, max 133,500€)
  • Conclusions:
    • People spent ~40x time on development compared to customer development! Lack of focus on (prelaunch) marketing
    • Succesful businesses spent less time on customer development than failed products (and that is probably a statistical flake and you should ignore it)

Safeguarding against business risks

• Avoid operating outside of “normal parameters”
  • e.g. your SaaS makes less than $300 MRR six months after launch
• Self-funded has a better success rate than VC funded
• SaaS and non-SaaS product guidelines are different
• SaaS products can generally be launched with:
  • 8-12 hours of customer development
  • < $2,000
  • 6-9 months of effort
  • Revenue ramp is really slow
• Non-SaaS products can generally be launched with:
• Tested two different product ideas: ETL Studio vs Bluetick.io
  • Mike was in love with the idea of ETL Studio
  • ETL:
    • Almost impossible to get conversations for ETL
    • not a single discussion got to the point of talking price
  • Bluetick:
    • 16 conversations out of 35 outreach efforts
    • 13x yes, 3x no
    • well-defined, obvious problem
    • 17 Prepayments at $50/month (over $2,000 total)
  • Better response rate AND conversion rate for Bluetick –> build Bluetick
• Common advice: “Talk to more customers”
  • can mislead you into a false sense of comfort
  • Following things are extremely different:
    • Identifying the need ==> Problem identification
    • Identifying the target market ==> Who has this problem
    • Identifying features needed to provide value ==> MVP
• There are many steps, but not just one path
  • Objectivity is critical to developing a product
  • Initial traction can overcome a lot of other hurdles
  • If you’ve launched but revenue isn’t increasing, be cautious of it turning into a zombie product
    • kill it or sell it, but move on
    • Hope is not a strategy
  • Pivoting after launch is a warning sign, but one of many
• Technical difficulty is not a product value
  • Nobody cares how hard your product was to build. They care about how much easier you made their lives

-Christoph

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

Website: Carthook.com
Twitter: @JordanGal

• Started out with solarlightstore.com – didn’t know a thing about eCommerce
  • sold after 12 months
• Lessons learned:
  • eCommerce doesn’t have MRR
  • 4000 customers, but as soon as you stop advertising revenue is gone
• With the next business, I don’t want to do development. I’m going to focus on marketing
  • Got lucky while looking for a developer for the next project
  • Having expertise in eCommerce was helpful in convincing developer to come onboard

Carthook

• Carthook is a cart abandonment software
• Initially brute forced my way into sales
  • scraped a list of potential customers
  • hired VA to find email addresses
  • wrote tons of cold emails
  • Result: 20 first customers
  • Lots of conversations with strangers/potential customers
• At around $3,000 MRR I was unsure on whether to go all-in or just let it grow by itself
• Got a acquisition offer shortly after
  • acquisition didn’t go through, but it showed me that this idea is bigger than I estimated
• over christmas 2014 a bunch of friends offered to fund Carthook with roughly $100,000
• I had lost my developer because he got offered his dream job
• Early January a new signup on the mailing list: A developer trying to reverse-engineer Carthook
  • Started a conversation with him
  • met in Los Angeles
  • decided to work together and raised money
• We scale to 10x and immediately hit a wall in tech
  • key lesson: Be prepared to rewrite your MVP
• After rewrite, we focused on integration marketing

The rest of the notes have been removed on request by Jordan. 
Jordan, thanks for a great & candid talk!

-Christoph