The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: pocketrisk.com
Twitter:  @johnndge
Slides:

Talk Recap

• Pocket Risk is an online investment risk questionnaire for financial advisors
  • launched in April 2013
  • $99/mo
  • made it to 6-figures as a non-technical founder

Idea Phase

• Goal: Establish whether you have something valuable
  • Establish what you want to achieve – $10k MRR, quit your job, billionaire
  • Margin of safety – have money in the bank or a job
  • Find a problem – your own experience or speak to market
  • Assess market size – can I achieve my goals in the market?
    • total reachable market given your resources (i.e. you know SEO, PPC –> that’s your market)
  • Validate problem – speak to 20 prospects and see if problem exists
  • Define the solution – create a mockup. Have a vision for customers, product and industry
  • Customer validation – sell the solution using mockup. Get 10 companies to pre-pay

Build Phase

• Goal: Hire developer & build something valuable
  • Minimum $15,000 development budget. $100/hour max. You get what you pay for
  • Finding a developer: HN monthly hiring, Ruby groups, referrals
  • Assess Developer – programming test, level of commitment, past work, references, gut
• Continue marketing and building your list
  • have a plan to generate traffic
  • Listen to episode #239 of Startups For The Rest Of Us

Launch Phase

• Goal: Get to breakeven
  • Generate traffic – read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
  • Find out why people buy, don’t buy, use, don’t use and churn – speak to them on phone
  • Know your metrics and unit economics – traffic, conversion rates, MRR, CAC, LTV, churn, feature usage
    • feature usage tells you “sticky features” that make people happy
  • Develop Relationships – industry journalists, thought leaders, other CEOs serving same customers

Growth Phase

• Goal: Achieve your overall goal
  • Manage churn – don’t die by a thousand cuts
    • reducing churn doubled my LTV
    • every 30 days check which users didn’t use product for last 6 weeks and email them
  • Keep generating traffic – marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable. CAC < LTV
  • Systems – start building systems so the company can grow without you. Use software & hire
  • Vision – steer company towards your vision for customers, product and industry

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: softwarepromotions.com
Twitter: @thedavecollins

Dave published a shortened version of his talk here: The most sincere form of flattery: Useful & effective website ideas to make your own

 

Talk Recap

• “Good artists copy, great artists steal” – Picasso
• “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff I can steal from” – David Bowie
• We know our websites are important
  • But we settle for “Meh” – why is that?
  • Open your eyes to the design – beyond copy and popups and attention grabbers
• Get the originality for your website from copying!
  • Swipe file
  • Copy & Paste vs. Copy & Expand & Paste
• What’s the first thing a website does?
  • give a good first impression!
  • make clear what you DO!
  • make REALLY clear what you DO!
  • focus on the pain
• Why Do you do what you do?
  • Was offered a pay check with a substantially higher salary
  • SEO is kind of boring
  • Looked at our own website: “Does it communicate our why?”
  • never allow users to think “… What do I get now?”
  • Websites without email capture are a waste
• Who are you targeting?
  • adjust your language to your audience
  • Use Avatars
• Logos
  • no one cares about your logo
• Not getting stuck
  • Don’t leave your website visitors hanging
• Make it easy
  • forms need to be obvious, quick
  • reduce nav items where possible
• About what?
  • People like “About Us” pages with pictures of staff
• Balance
  • need to include what is important on website
  • we need to conform to standards
  • BUT: Stand out
• Nudges are good
  • the easier it is, the more likely people are going to use it
• Differentiation through identity
  • Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign
• Clarity beats Clever all the time
  • have obvious headlines

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: softwarebyrob.com
Twitter: @robwalling
Slides:

 

Talk Recap

• last 15 months of my story as a founder – mainly Drip

3-Step Marketing Playbook

• Build something people want
• Find your position
• Scale

Build Something People Want

• Drip: Revenue at Launch: 100% (All numbers relative to that)
• Stayed the same for ~6 months
  • new trials slowed down after launch
  • 40% trial-to-paid rate
• Rules of thumb
  • visit to trial 0.7%-2%
  • trial to paid: 40-60%
  • First 60/90 day churn: 20-40%
  • Post 60/90 day churn: 4-7%
• “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster” – David Ogilvy
• Ask for cancellation reason in a short email
  • How to filter out the useful feedback?
  • Lots of “too pricey” feedback –> Do NOT lower prices; change your product to justify price!
  • Ask customers “What do you need Drip to do to make $50/mo worth it?”
    • “I like automation rules like Infusionsoft”
    • “Tags and a rules engine”
  • Gut feeling: “Marketing automation will justify the price”
    • checked out Infusionsoft via Google image search
    • talked to mastermind group
• Build feature or not?
  • Does it fit my vision of the product?
  • Will this feature matter in 2 years?
  • Will it grow the business?
• Rules Engine
  • Didn’t want to build it: too much work; enterprise-y; not fun
  • building in small steps
  • Revenue went up to 150% – People started talking on Twitter, etc
    • No marketing during that time ==> trial numbers went down
    • Churn rate went down
    • Trial-to-paid went up
    • ==> Product/Market fit

Find Your Position

• If you are in a market with ANY competition, you need to pick a position
• Invent a category (e.g. educate people on “Marketing automation” in 2003)
  • Usually something for funded companies
• Compare features
  • bad path
• Take a position in a category
  • comparing features makes you a commodity
  • better: “One click SaaS metrics for Stripe” – Baremetrics
  • “Drip is the best way to send emails to your prospects, trial users and customers based on who they are and what they’ve done.” –> Worst. Headline. Ever.
• The Choices:
  • Compare Features
  • “Email Marketing”
  • “Marketing Automation”
  • Mastermind group: “Fuck it! Call yourself ‘Lightweight Marketing Automation That Doesn’t Suck'”
  • That headline totally crushed it

Scale

• MRR today: 580%
• First steps:
  • set up email course
  • Retargeting

Concentric Circle Marketing

• Circles
  • Your Audience
  • Colleagues’ Audiences
  • Cold Audiences

• Circle 1: Your Audience
  • Figure out a way to talk about it in a way that your audience appreciates
  • added “Launch. A Startup Documentary“
• Circle 2: Colleagues’ Audiences
• Circle 3: Cold Audiences
  • “Powered by Drip” widget link
  • adding integrations to other software, get featured on “Integrations” page
  • SEO

Tactics we haven’t used

• no split testing (for a lack of time)
• paid acquisition – just recently started
• AppSumo deal
• Webinars – just recently started
• Outbound email – just recently started

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: jitbit.com
Twitter: @jitbit
Slides:

 

Talk Recap

• “You can teach a software engineer how to run a business, but you cannot teach an MBA how to write code” – Joel Spolsky
• Jitbit history
  • 100% self-funded
  • 10 years; first 5 years: just me, all alone, 2 years moonlighting
  • 4 people, 100% remote
  • Flagship product: help desk software app (Really, REALLY crowded market)

The Don’ts

• Don’t wait for an idea
  • start building before you have a product
  • tons of product-agnostic stuff:
    • website
    • blog
    • analytics
    • email list
    • payment gateway
  • less consumption, MORE creation
• Don’t target developers
  • (At least not with your first product)
  • Hard crowd to please – don’t make it hard on yourself
• Don’t worry about pirates
  • Software pirates never switch to paid versions – they switch to your competitor
  • We even tried “cracking” our own software and uploading it
• Don’t worry about incorporating
  • Revenue is important, “LLP or LLC?” is not important
• Don’t be afraid of competition
  • Don’t try to come up with some new cool innovative shit
  • competition is good news – they proof market exists
  • “Me too” products are fine – you can even clone a product
  • “First – learn to draw a horse” – Salvador Dali

The Dos

• Charge More
  • charge from day 1
  • price for the customers you want
  • $5 customer is different from a $99 customer – $5 customer is PITA
  • add completely stripped $5 plan only to prevent disruptive competition (if threat imminent)
• SEO
  • works on all stages of your company
• “Always be marketing”
  • where no one expects it: 404 page, 500 page,
  • support = cheap marketing (no hard selling, but delight people for word-of-mouth)
• “Marketing Mondays” by Mike Taber
  • whole team does nothing but marketing on mondays
• Content Marketing
• Log everything
  • links you build, AB-tests you run, posts you publish
  • have a “commit history” for your marketing – not just your code

Product Management 101

• Monitor feature usage from 1st customer
  • Monitor trial/paid users separately
  • Kill the unused ones
  • Enhance the heavily used ones
  • CRO inside the product

SEO

• SEO should be done by founder
• Do the basics (on page, mobile, speed, Annie Cushing’s SEO checklist, Google Webmaster Tools)
• target long-tail keywords
  • make all your internal content public – publish knowledge base, enduser docs, API docs, FAQs, installation guides, workarounds
• Build links from pages that rank for your keyword
  • even at #218. Export the ranking URLs (serps.com), check for link opportunities
• Build brand mentions
  • Google’s patents: “Non-linking citations are treated as implied links”
• Competitor backlinks
  • use LinksSpy.com
• Track rankings
  • if it drops, check the “marketing log”, check the Panguin tool
  • track top20 rankings to learn when your competitors improve their SEO –> reverse engineer

Other things we tried (Did it work or not?)

• Remarketing ==> NO
  • people hate B2B/work-stuff on FB
• A/B testing ==> YES
  • be prepared that 90% of tests will fail
  • Always have a hypothesis behind a test – not just “lets try X and see what happens”
  • Don’t trust your guts
  • Statistical significance (long time + high-traffic pages)
• Email marketing ==> NO
  • at least not at the scale I hoped it would work
• Growth hacks (“invite a friend”, “RT to extend trial”) ==> NO
  • not in B2B
• Net Promoter Score ==> YES
  • surveying method to know customer happiness
  • delivers actionable data

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: writing-skills.com
Twitter: @emphasiswriting
Slides:

Key Takeaways

• Pick a small topic you can cover thoroughly
• Make the user better with each email
• Be supportive personal and confident

 

Talk Recap

• 5 day course: “Homeworking in Brighton”
  • only has 3 emails (!!) – half-finished
  • still converts!

How to write an email course

• Picking a course topic
  1. Everything oyu know about a topic != what you can reasonably teach someone in a week
  2. Example: “Speak in a Week”
     1. Seven-day course
     2. Objective: have a conversation at the end of the week
     3. Solve one problem ==> people think you’re good at solving other problems (Halo Effect)
• Make the reader a better person
  • Example: Brennan Dunn “Charge What You’re Worth”
    • Gets readers to ask questions in a worksheet
    • Focuses reader on problem
  • Example “Serve Mastery”
    • Asks readers to respond to initial email
    • Increases reader’s investment
• Tell people something useful
  • Write things that a user can act on
  • Don’t cram everything into an email
• Course is about more than knowledge – come across as a genuine person
  • Tell stories about your own struggle
  • encourage people to add you on Twitter/Facebook
  • Don’t be timid about giving advice – AVOID underconfidence

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: zenfounder.com
Twitter: @zenfounder
Slides:

Key Points From the Talk

• own your story
• know your past and the weaknesses & strengths you get because of your past

Talk Recap

• When you are the sole driver of your business, everything else matters WAY more
  • emotional well-being, enough sleep, physical fitness ALL affect your bottom line

How your past shapes your present

• Who you are right now in this moment is an accumulation of all the past moments
• If we don’t pay attention to the messages we received, we won’t be able to make the most out of our strengths and weaknesses
• Abuse, neglect and household dysfunction as a child is a robust predictor of how much healthcare support you will need in your adult life
  • People with 4+ categories of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” were 2x as likely to be diagnosed with heart disease or cancer than someone with <4
  • People with 4+ ACEs were 460% more to suffer from depression
  • 6+ ACE shortened an individual’s lifespan by almost 20 years
• We can’t change what happened in childhood, but we can change adoption of health-risk behaviors
• The same things that can hurt us can also make us incredibly strong
• The important thing is NOT how scary your liabilities are, the important thing is that you do NOT look the other way
• the golden child
  • gives you a lot of confidence
  • shadow side: you might lack grit
• the loner
  • incredible ability to trust your own ideas
  • good problem solver
  • you don’t seek permission
  • shadow side: difficult to understand your customers, lacking empathy
• the pleaser
  • growing up in a demanding family (“You’ll be a lawyer!”)
  • able to anticipate needs & wants of others
  • shadow side: perfectionist
• the survivor
  • great ability to protect yourself
  • good at competition, a lot of grit
  • shadow side: difficult to feel accomplishment

The past matters

• From the founder origin stories
  • lots of adversity – but enough support to hang in there
    • use friends/masterminds to talk through tough spots
  • The need to create an original path
    • not following a script
  • intelligence, curiosity and hard work
• Own your story
• not owning your story
  • forcing what has never worked for you

Practical Strategies to own your own story

• Start tonight
• write your personal story
  • go on a retreat
  • use a free writing method
  • work with a coach or therapist
• tell your story in your matermind group
• write or record the origin story of your business
• cultivate self-reflection to watch your story unfold in front you

 

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: casjam.com
Twitter: @casjam
Slides:

 

Key Points From the Talk

• Build a service first, learn, develop software from there
• Customers want results, not tools
• Combining a Done For You Service with software delivers results

Talk Recap

• 3 goals:
  • What a productized service looks like as an actual business
  • Combining a productized Service and (SaaS) software
  • Showing opportunities to use productized service to transition from freelance to products
• Restaurant engine history
  • freelance developer/designer – living project to project
  • Plan/Dream: within a year transition from freelance to customer
    • build software
    • first customers
    • $10k/month
    • Quit! (and focus on product)
  • Fast forward a year:
    • some customers, growing – not quite $10k/month
    • ready to take a leap of faith and quit freelancing
    • no relation between time and money lead to a number of bad decisions
    • within a year back to taking client work
    • This is how it went
      • build software
      • first customers
      • $10k/month
      • Quit! (and focus on product)
• Factors of Resistance (things that slow you down)
  • Client work
  • Day job
  • Bills
  • Kids
  • Family & Friends
  • No experience (working in a product business)
  • No chops
  • No help
  • No network
  • No idea
  • RISK
    • time investment with little to no payoff initially (hard to sell to family & friends)
• Actual timeline for Restaurant Engine
  • Build software
  • First customers
  • Quit freelancing
  • Resistance, Mistakes, Back to client work,
  • Re-Focus
  • $10k/month

The Path of Least Resistance

• Audience Ops – actual timeline:
  • Launch
  • First Customers
  • $10k/month
  • Building software
  • Launch software
• SWaS – Software With a Service
  • Software product with a “Done For You” component (DFY)
  • The Software provides the tool
  • The Service delivers the result
  • Services = higher form of onboarding – ensures great experience
• SWaS is easier to buy
  • no/minimal learning curve for the customer
• SWaS is easier to sell
  • you are identifying ONE problem
  • you’re delivering the perfect method to solve ONE problem
  • “Onboarding/learning curve” no longer a valid objection by the customer
  • Cancellations become less of concern as customers are seeing results –> customers are happy –> lower churn –> higher LTV

Case Studies & Tactics

• LeadFuze – DFY cold emailing lead generation
  • “Invisible Software” – they use software internally, but customers never see it
  • software streamlines & scales the Service
  • Used revenue from the Service to turn internal Software into a SaaS product
• owning the tool is optional!
  • build your service on top of existing tool
  • Leverage popularity of existing tool OR keep it opaque
• Test Triggers – runs & manages A/B test on your websites
  • built on top of Optimizely
  • 3 clients ($1500 MRR) within 30 days – from 50 hand-crafted outreach emails
• AuditShark – security auditing software
  • enterprise sales territory –> 6 month sales cycle
  • “The Service sells the Software”
  • 3 sales in the first month of offering the DFY service
  • much faster & more efficient delivery of service, thanks to tool
• Podcast Motor – DFY podcast editing & production
  • “Launch with a day job”
  • 20+ paying customers in less than 6 months
  • Targeting business podcasts
  • Re-investing all business revenue to grow team & product
  • Plans to launch a software component later

But Can it Scale?

• Benefit of SWaS: revenue and results (and business lessons!) from day one (for the founder)
• customers want the RESULT, not the tool ==> DFY component for Restaurant Engine
• I removed myself to the point that I spend <3 hours/month managing the business
  • outsource and automate using freelancers
  • First: Get the solution right – then: remove yourself from the delivery
• Focus
  • on one problem, one solution for one ideal customer
  • standardized and predictable delivery of the solution
  • come up with a marketing plan for your ideal customer
  • Your DFY solution is a no brainer value proposition
• Audience Ops
  • “10x The Speed”
  • 4 months in:
    • 90% removed
    • $10k/month MRR
    • self-funding software product
  • If you’ve done it before, you can do it again 10x faster

Price on Value. Scale the Costs.

• value-based pricing is key
  • price high, charge upfront
  • tool + service == more value – charge accordingly
• Streamline with predictability
  • lowers costs
  • delegate work / remove yourself
  • software boosts efficiency

Leverage Everything

• leverage existing software to deliver a service

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: productpeople.club
Twitter: @mijustin
Slides: here

Key Points From the Talk

• Ask for money
• “sprinkling some marketing on top of it” is NOT the magic formula to success
• Content + Email Marketing works really well right now

 

Talk Recap

• In 1980 Iron Maiden was a brand new heavy metal band, they were about to release their first album
  • one problem: too cute for metal
  • Marketing problem
  • solution: new brand “Eddie”
• We are all in search of the magic formula to (marketing) success – but there is none
  • Marketing has dependencies
    • product that people want
    • audience
    • channels that work
    • combines into “Message that resonates”
  • You have competition, etc.
  • Your way out: UNIQUENESS
• 3 ways to be unique
  • bake uniqueness into your product (Balsamiq)
  • use your own personal uniqueness (DHH)
  • Create unique branding (Rovio – Angry Birds)

7 Tactics for getting more leads

• #1 Rank highly on a list
  • most of the major properties are ranked lists
    • Google
    • iTunes App Store
    • Reddit
    • Product Hunt
    • Quora
  • list hack: Quora
    • edit “Answer Wiki”
    • Answer a question
    • summarize the answers into the “Answer wiki” – put your product up top
  • List hack: Product Hunt search
  • List hack: Google Image Search
    • Justin is #1 result for “nerd mullet”
    • Really easy to rank for
    • For StageCMS: “band websites”
      • add <img src=”band-websites.jpg” alt=”Band website example” title=”Example of a band website” /> to your website
• #2 Create a free tool that naturally leads to your product
  • engineering as marketing
  • e.g. Bidsketch “freelance proposal templates”
  • for StageCMS: “Free spreadsheet for managing band finances”
• #3 write a surprising blog post that gets people interested
  • e.g. Sascha Greif – What kind of Logo do you get for $5? – an epic tale of deception, stolen artwork, and crappy logos
  • Benedikt Deicke – Launching a product, in just 3652 days
  • good idea: “Why you should treat your band like a startup”
  • publish on blog first, then 7-14 days later republish on Medium
• #4 Give away an ebook
  • trade eBook for email address ==> build an audience
• #5 ask for referrals
  • word of mouth is great – but you can encourage people
• #6 share a journey
  • share your story from 0 to $20k/mo
  • For StageCMS: Nightwish (one customer) has a documentary on Youtube
• #7 Email people you know
  • you are already building relationships
  • you can ask them to use your product, if you have the relational capital

2 Tactics for guiding leads through the funnel

• #8 Drip email campaigns
  • for SaaS businesses this is the #1 driver of trials & paid customers
  • build trust over a time – automatically
  • In the last email “I told you all these things, why don’t you try my product now?”
  • StageCMS: “Turn your band into a business in 5 days”
• #9 use retargeting ads
  • test retargeting against not doing retargeting – some people don’t see results!
  • For StageCMS: Retarget on Facebook to people who “like” Bandcamp and SoundCloud

2 Tactics for closing the deal

• #10 Follow up with your leads
  • no CRM needed; use Google spreadsheets, track:
    • name
    • email
    • estimated LOW/HIGH value
    • ask date
• #11 Ask for their money
  • we are getting worse at this!
  • “Shut up and take my money” –> Entrepreneurs: “OK, I’M ready to take your money”
  • use phone to close deals

-Christoph

This is the central resource for a recap of MicroConf Europe 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
If you write/record/create ANYTHING related to MicroConf Europe 2015 please let me know and I’ll be happy to add it here.

Notes on the Talks

• Justin Jackson: How to acquire your first 100 customers: 10 tactics to use after your launch
• Brian Casel: Productizing to $10k/month: How to use a productized service to accelerate your transition to software
• Sherry Walling: Limits and Liabilities: How to use where you come from to get where you’re going
• Alex Yumashev: From solo-founder with a day job – to a million dollar software business
• Rob Walling: The inside story of self-funded SaaS growth
• Peldi Guilizzoni: CEO grows up. Reluctantly.
• Dave Collins: The most sincere form of flattery: Useful & effective website ideas to make your own
• John Ndege: How to build a self-funded SaaS as a non-technical solo founder
• Rachel Andrew: No exit plan
• Patrick McKenzie: Leveling up

Attendee Talk Notes

• Anthony Eden: Going through the lows of business
• Jacob Funnell: How to write email courses
• Jane Portman: The 1-Hour UI Audit
• Marc Hoffmann: Small Data Science
• Thomas Smale: Mistakes That Will Kill Your Business Value
• Anders Thue Pedersen: How I Tripled My Windows Software Revenue In 3 Days

Articles and Podcast Episodes About MicroConf Europe 2015

• MicroConfChat.com – Semi-Official MicroConf Europe Chat
• Rebooting into entpreneur mode – a personal recollection of MicroConf by Felix Rabe
• MCE 2015 by attendee Nico Graff
• Recap by Chris McGrath
• Reflections on MicroConf Europe 2015
• Britstrapped #30: Notes from MicroConf Europe
• MicroConf Europe Recap, and Why WordPress Product Sellers Should Attend
• Startups For The Rest Of Us #253 – Key Takeaways from MicroConf Europe
• MicroConf Europe Thoughts and Takeaways by Graham Ashton
• How to Enjoy Your Next Conference by Jane Portman
• Bootstrapped Web #84
• Nebenberuf Startup #46 – MicroConf Europe Recap (German)
• The best conference I’ve been to – MicroConf
• Micro-preneurs, Super-powers

-Christoph