The Developer CEO – Peter Coppinger – MicroConf Europe 2016

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