I'm Mike Taber, co-founder of MicroConf and co-host of Startups for the Rest of Us. AMA!
Hi Indie Hackers,
I co-founded MicroConf and am the co-host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast. I've launched almost a dozen products, starting before I left college and have been self-employed since 2005.
Got any questions for me? Ask away!
I'll be back to answer questions on Wednesday, March 28th!
What have you found to be the 'best' way to validate your ideas when starting with no audience?
Well, 'best' is always subjective. I think the answer depends a lot on what question you're actually trying to answer. When people talk about validating an idea, there's usually a lot of smaller questions wrapped up into it and they're looking for a high-level answer as in "go" or "no-go".
The reality is that validating an idea is a LOT more nuanced than that binary answer we're looking for. What is it that you're fundamentally trying to validate? And to answer that question, you need to look at what you do and don't know. In addition, you should be asking "How do I know that I know what I know".
Yes, I know how that sounds. Lots of meta-BS. Unfortunately, it's also very true.
How do you know you can get customers? How do you know where you will get those customers from? How do you know you can build the product? How do you know how long it will take? How do you know how much people will pay you for it? etc etc.
The list of potential questions to validate any given product is a mile long. Some questions, you're probably going to skip over to some extent. If you're a developer, you're more likely to skip over questions that are related to writing code. But there's an inherent bias in most developers to want to push the hard questions around areas they're not familiar with to later because "I'm a smart person. I'll just figure it out."
The problem with that tact is that what ends up happening is that people defer answering those questions until after they've done a lot of work up front (like spending 6 months building the app) only to realize that they don't have a way to acquire customers or built something that nobody is willing to pay for.
So the best way to validate your ideas is to make a list of all the questions you could possibly ask about how the business/product is going to work, all of the assumptions you're making and your confidence level in each of those areas. Maybe do it on a scale of 1-5 and for each score at or below a 3, you need to figure out the MVP to validate an answer to that question.
If your justification is above a 3, analyze how you got there and if your answer is something along the lines of "gut feel" or "experience", I'd heavily consider questioning it and figuring out how to validate your answer to that question. There are sooo many things that can go wrong building a product and the more answers you have going into it, the better off you'll be in the long run.
As for the "no network" piece, you can find people to talk to from your personal network, Twitter, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers forums, FounderCafe forums, etc. It's not hard to find them. What's difficult is knowing what questions to ask. Listing them all will help.
I'm wondering if this is where landing pages and email lists come into play? Put forward your assumptions in the form of a landing page offering a product or service and validation will come in the form of signups and hopefully, money.
I could rant about what constitutes an MVP for days on end. To have an MVP, you need to start with a question. Without that question, there is no MVP.
Once you have the question in mind, then you can determine what the MVP should be. A landing page with an explanation of a product/service and a signup page is fine as an implementation, but what question are you trying to answer?
etc.
These days, I don't think that a landing page, a description and a signup page are enough. Expectations for software are higher than ever and unless you're the only product on the market, you're probably not going to get far unless it's an absolute no brainer, there's insane levels of trust already or you have traffic levels that are through the roof.
None of these are likely for a new product idea when you're starting with "no network". Even if you have trust due to a relationship, you're likely to be rejected by about half the people you speak with for a variety of different reasons.
I have the impression that majority of SaaS companies out there are providing services to other SaaS companies, is that true? Where is the real value coming out of the SaaS field to the real world?
This is a really good question and one that I've thought about for years. It basically boils down to this: "If SaaS companies are all selling their services to each other, then how are any of them making money? It seems very incestuous."
As Rob said, it's easy to believe that most SaaS companies are making the bulk of their income selling to other SaaS companies, but it's actually not true at all. It just feels that way because the SaaS companies we see the most and are most familiar with happen to target their marketing at people like us.
There are literally thousands of SaaS apps which I'm sure you and I have never heard of, nor are we likely to ever hear of because we're not in the business of installing tabletop counters (https://www.moraware.com/) or managing mortgage applications in Canada (https://brokrbindr.com/) or converting geographic coordinates to addresses (https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/).
We don't see those on a regular basis so we assume they don't exist. But they absolutely do and many are very profitable businesses. Don't get stuck in the echo chamber.
I'm the co-founder of MicroConf (Mike's business partner) and he asked me to weigh in on a few of the questions.
I believe your impression is incorrect. Perhaps these are the companies you are exposed to on ProductHunt/HN, but the real money in SaaS is serving the broader world. Example is this list of the 50 leading SaaS companies, very, very few of whom are focusing solely on the SaaS startup echo chamber many of us inhabit:
https://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/50-leading-saas-companies.html
Here's a list of 250, with a similar pattern:
http://montclare.com/saas-250/
If you could only do 1 thing to get your first 100 paying customers, what strategy would you use?
For small B2B products: I would generally advocate direct sales via your personal network and referrals.
You might be able to amplify this using an affiliate strategy. My suspicion is that if you can convince people to buy into your vision of the product and the business based on a direct phone/video call and a demo/presentation, you're going to be able to get those referrals for free. This assumes that you're delivering on what people really need and are genuinely helping their business.
For B2C: I would look for channels where you can get in front of large numbers of those customers. Forums are a good strategy here, as would Facebook groups and possibly Twitter or Instagram.
For Enterprise B2B: Asking directly for referrals may work, depending on the business and the level you're getting into them. Keep in mind it will take time no matter what. Big businesses generally are slower to decide anything.
Do most MicroConf attendees stay at the Tropicana and mingle after hours? I need to book my hotel soon and want to see if I should stay somewhere cheaper or stay where others will be.
Yes! We often say that much of the value of MicroConf is "the hallway track." That is, mingling with people in the hallway and after the conference. I would recommend staying at the Trop, especially if it's your first year.
I would also recommend staying at the hotel. There are lots of times I've seen conversations going on very late into the evenings. And while I wouldn't recommend staying up until 6am to be a part of each of them, I will say that I think there's a lot of value in stumbling across them due to the sheer number of people.
We negotiate a room rate which is about $100/night and you can find the link on the website under the Logistics section.
+1 Microconf Tropicana room rates are dirt cheap. If you can find a cheaper room somewhere else, chances are you don't want to stay there.
Their negotiated room rate is much cheaper than Expedia etc. for the same rooms.
Yea, we try really hard to keep the total cost of attending MicroConf low, since we know that founders are paying for it out of their own pockets.
The room rates factor into that, which is exactly why we've never previously had MicroConf in a place like Boston. It's just down the road for me, but at $300/night for a hotel, it feels like there are better ways for founders to spend their money. The two other major cost areas are the airfare and ticket prices.
If you haven't booked hotel rooms yet, do it soon. Once the negotiated room rate expires, I'm told the hotel is jacking up the price by $50/night.
Do you ever just trust your gut about a product, partner or opportunity?
Tough question but generally no. The thing to keep in mind is that nothing operates in a vacuum. There are certain people who if they approached me and asked if I wanted to get involved in them on a particular product, partnership or opportunity, it would be generally a no-brainer. That said, it doesn't mean I have the time or ability to execute on it. So even if I trust that person to have my best interests in mind, it doesn't mean I have the resources/bandwidth available to make it happen.
The opposite side of the spectrum is a place where there's no relationship or prior knowledge on my part. At that point, a lot more work needs to be done in order to garner trust on my part. That will take time but even beyond that, it depends a lot on whether I have the resources to do anything.
As with anything, there are exceptions to this but it's simply a sliding scale. For example, if someone emails me and asks if I want to be a guest on their podcast, I'm usually open to that kind of thing. My assumption is that if I'm being asked, they've done their homework and think I can contribute. I can usually spare 30-45 minutes for that kind of thing but I want to know they've published at least a few episodes. I've done several recordings for a new podcast that never ended up being published which meant it was a complete waste of time.
If there's an expectation of reciprocity to get them onto Startups for the Rest of Us, there's a minimum threshold of trust and reach they also need to reach. So then other factors start to come into play.
As with anything, the upfront & ongoing commitment is going to be weighed against the upfront and ongoing benefits of such an arrangement.
You can always take this too far though. If you require solid validation that something is going to work before you do anything (like run Facebook ads, create a podcast, write a book, build a product, attempt a new marketing channel, etc) then you'll never get anything done because you will never have enough information to make a decision.
Data will only take you so far and at some point, you will have to trust your gut. I use data points to identify red flags. Beyond that, yes it comes down to gut feel. But it's never 100% one or the other.
Thanks for this answer. Really solid. It seems you've got the ability to weigh the calculus of a given move in your head pretty quickly. I think you helped unpack in more practical terms what I was thinking of as "gut feeling".
I had some situations lately where I've got many datapoints in the background telling me "this is a good move" and so have gone with it and hence the question because I was interested in getting another datapoint on is that a reasonable way to do things? It turns out if there is an actual calculus which you are able to articulate then the answer is likely yes.
As for data to identify reg flags I think 100% that a lot of people who wind up getting hurt or getting into bad situations lacked the datapoints they needed to be able to identify red flags.
Really looking forward to MicroConf. Went with my gut on that one! Flying all the way from New Zealand. Cant wait for the hallway track!
Glad to hear MicroConf didn't have too many red flags. :) You'll be in good company. We have several people who typically make the trip from Australia and New Zealand. Happy to chat more when you get to MicroConf.
Mike, what is the biggest problem you see in people just getting started?
I'd have to say they make too many assumptions about too many things without realizing that they could be, and in many case very likely are, wrong about those assumptions.
Some assumptions are good to have, such as naivety about your own capabilities in certain areas or thinking something isn't as difficult as it actually is. There are things I've done where had I known how hard it was, I'd have never tried.
But there are definitely situations where I didn't question my own assumptions enough and they became a problem to the point that it was detrimental to or killed an entire business.
To be honest, it's a fine line between knowing too much and not knowing enough. I think in most cases, a developer overestimating their programming capabilities isn't nearly as much of a problem as overestimating their ability to figure out a marketing problem when they have no experience in that area.
Developers tend to grossly overestimate their ability to solve marketing problems and assume that it's more of a 'soft skill' and therefore should be easy because they're smart. On the other hand, non-technical founders grossly underestimate the difficulty and time commitment it takes to solve technical problems.
At the root of it, is that it's easy to make wildly inaccurate assumptions which are orders of magnitude in their "incorrectness" about things you know very little about.
Hi Mike, I am a technical co-founder of a small SaaS business in the construction industry. In the first 2 years my friend and I brought it from 0 to 2600 in MRR. However, growth has stopped about 6 months ago and we can’t manage to grow it beyond this point at the moment. It’s hard to tell why sales dried up. We’ve tried all the usual online / offline marketing strategies, invested most of our revenue into ads and other initiatives, with mixed results. My partner would like to keep building new features and invest in marketing. I am more inclined to hold off on new features and instead work on improving what we already have. I think we should double down on prospecting and “one to one” sales, keeping some of the profits to ourselves rather than spending on things that are not working or fuelling new growth. I feel like we both lost a bit of enthusiasm and motivation after 6 months of stagnation. I am interested in your thoughts and would appreciate some advice. Many thanks in advance and keep up the good work!
Is there zero growth or is churn completely offsetting growth? Also, what does churn currently look like?
In the last 6 months we acquired 5 new clients and lost 8. So we are in a situation where churn is outpacing growth. Clients pay different amounts depending on how many users they have etc. our highest paying customers are sticking with us so far so we haven't dropped too much in revenue. but these are the numbers: 5 vs 8
That's a really low customer acquisition rate. It doesn't sound to me like churn is that much of a problem so adding new features is probably a waste of time.
I think you need to wade neck deep into marketing and find where the bottlenecks are. Start at the top of the sales funnel and work your way down. Where are people getting 'stuck' and not continuing? This isn't going to be very easy because normally you'd use conversion rates to figure out how many people are moving through the funnel at each step but in this case, the numbers are so low that the percentages are almost meaningless.
Look at the raw numbers from the following areas and try to find where it drops off the most:
As soon as you have an email address from someone, try to get them on a call to schedule a demo, walkthrough, personalized onboarding session, etc. Anything you can think of to get them to a call to ask questions about what they're trying to do and why.
Ask what questions they have and write down each and every one of those questions. For each question, see if that question is answered on your website. If not, that's an objection and could be why people aren't signing up.
Ask what's stopping them from signing up. In the case of Bluetick, I wasn't offering a free trial because I didn't think I needed to. This wasn't working so I dug into why people were getting hung up at that point.
I got someone on the phone and was told that they didn't want to sign up for an account because they'd need to either use their personal credit card or ask for the corporate card.
They didn't like the idea of using their personal card because if it was successful, they'd then need to submit a reimbursement form. If they used the corporate card, they needed to justify it in advance and would effectively let their boss know they were trying something new. Their preference was to do it quietly and discretely so that if it didn't work out, they could quietly shut it down without it reflecting badly on them. If it did work out, they could confidently show results and would look like rockstars.
They wanted all upside and no downside, but the only reason I found that out was by talking to someone and asking why they didn't sign up, even though I offered a money back guarantee.
Sometimes you think two things are equivalent only to realize later, they're not. But you need to get these people on the phone or involved in a conversation in order to figure that out.
Great answer Mike. Thank you for taking the time.
You're welcome!
Hi Mike - thanks for taking the time to answer questions here. You and Rob were the major introduction to this culture. I want to thank you not only for your own podcast, but for introducing your listeners to other communities and podcasts, such as this one.
I have a question in relation to product market fit - your current product, blue tick, looks like it solves a problem that your audience might have, and on a surface level certainly looks like it is on the road to success. What did you do differently compared to the security product that you had before where product market fit was elusive. How did you take the learnings from that, and apply it to what you are doing at Bluetick?
With Bluetick, I asked a lot more questions and did a lot more validation before I got started, specifically around whether or not I thought I could get in front of a regular stream of potential customers. The price point and sales models are also dramatically different.
After I stopped working on AuditShark and when I was validating Bluetick, I looked at the assumptions I'd made with AuditShark in an effort to not repeat them. I also took into account the types of things that I learned I didn't want to do and filtered out my ideas for products that would force me down any of those paths.
Bluetick is the end result of that validation process. I arrived there by questioning all of my assumptions and even things that I thought I knew, I would ask additional questions to be sure.
I still made some mistakes along the way, but there's no way I could have known they were mistakes until after the fact. Regardless, the mistakes were small enough to not kill it early on. I suppose it's still too early to be 100% sure, but all signs point to this being a viable product in the long term. Whenever I do a demo, I get a ton of great feedback.
What do you think of the "open source core" strategy? Small medium and huge examples would be Anki, Sidekiq and WordPress.
Have you ever considered creating a business of that type yourself?
I think it's an interesting evolution of software development. For someone who really likes to work on code and with other developers, it probably feels like the holy grail of software businesses.
Your need to do classic types of marketing is likely greatly reduced because you let the product speak for itself and so long as you're solving a legitimate problem that enough other people have, you'll get traction with the product. The downside is how to monetize it in a way that allows you to be full-time. Not every type of product is going to be able to make it work.
I've not heard of Anki before but I've heard several podcasts about Sidekiq and it's pretty slick, both in terms of the product itself and the business behind it. Selling enterprise licenses on an annual basis obviously works really well for them and open sourcing it allows the business to stay lean and focus on solving the problem rather than on marketing which can often be used as a crutch to create the appearance of solving a problem well, even though the product may not.
When you get to companies with products like WordPress, I feel like using them as examples for questions like this is a bit of a mixed bag. It's pretty clear that WordPress is an exception/edge case. But it's used in such a way that it seems like a reasonable example to point to. I don't think that it is.
My understanding of the situation is that WordPress is owned by Automattic and while it's an open source product, they make money via advertising and hosting for websites hosted via Wordpress.com. They don't have a licensing model for the software, but rather it's an advertising model. That's no less valid than charging for Pro or Enterprise level licenses the way Sidekiq does, but the reality is that it's not really an "open source core" business strategy where the core of the app is open source but you make money via licensing add-ons.
In the case of WordPress, the plugins are the add-ons that are charged for, but Automattic isn't making those, nor are they making money from them. I don't think it belongs in the same category.
Ah ok. I think I had a more literal and broader meaning when I said "open source core" than you did. I just meant that most of the code produced by a company for their project is OSS. Now that you bring up the plugins, it's interesting that they are also GPLed, and often have premium upgrades that involve communicating with a closed source server.
Anki is the most popular spaced repetition app. People use it to memorize things like definitions of words, countries and capitals or, in the case of Derek Sivers, JavaScript syntax! It started with a desktop Python app that's open-sourced under the AGPL and later the author build freemium web services for it (storing your decks, etc) and a paid iPhone app. Due to the sheer size of their user base Damien has been able to keep selling it in volume at $25/user for years despite the market being flooded with free flashcard apps. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure if Anki really is smaller than Sidekiq!
I guess my interest in this question stems from having encountered so many of these kinds of businesses a dozen years ago when they were tiny and then seeing them really explode. It also seems like most indies are very wary of open sourcing anything, though.
The real value of software tends to be the ongoing updates, fixes and maintenance. Most developers are so tied up in the idea that the value of a business is in the source code and it's not typically as black and white as that. There are software libraries I pay for when there are open source alternatives available because I need them to work. Without those libraries being functional, my business is dead.
I can't rely on an open source project for that kind of support. All the typical arguments around it being open source and letting me dig directly into the code are great and all but the fact of the matter is that "I shouldn't have to do that. I need it to just work.".
You can take that argument in a lot of different directions, but what I'm really paying for is peace of mind that someone running the show has a vested interest in making sure that I'm able to solve my problem with their software and if something breaks, they need to fix it.
That's not generally how open source projects work and they're abandoned at an astonishingly high rate for fringe applications.
Hey Mike! Big fan of your podcast as I have recently discovered it!
I don't know how to code but I want to start my first SaaS application.
What would you suggest? What's the process like after you have your idea to make it a reality?
I would heavily validate the idea by making sure that:
Once you have the basics, you can approach a tech person and ask to partner based on the work you've already done to prove the idea will work. If it's not enough, find out what is and iterate.
In order to convince a technical founder to come on board, you need to prove that they're not going to spend the next 3-12 months of nights and weekends working on a technical solution to a problem that nobody is willing to pay for and that they'll never see a return on their time investment.
I hear a lot of non-technical people saying "I've got an idea, how do I convince a technical co-founder to build it?". This is usually because they have the idea but no money. Ideas are easy, validation is harder and require work. If people could get paid for ideas, they'd be worth something, but they aren't. So you need to bring other things to the table and that includes solid marketing and validation to reduce the risk that the developer is going to be wasting their time and effort.
Would you suggest, saving enough to host a "beta" page at a discounted rate (with the process of improving the site/product/service) in order to prove that the concept works or it doesn't. That way the developer gets paid and you can have a proof of concept at least to get things started?
That would have and did work 10 years ago but the expectations for a product are much higher these days. There are also so many alternatives that the low-hanging fruit for most software applications is basically gone.
I don't see a viable way for this to get enough prepayments in a short enough time period to validate that people will pay you for it and be able to use that to fund the developer. Marketing is an ongoing effort and although it improves over time, it doesn't get exponentially better overnight.
I mean, technically it's possible if your product has some sort of output that can be put together manually and that's what people are paying for. You could build it manually in the early days and when the volume/demand is high enough, you pay a developer to automate it. But most SaaS products aren't like that.
You need to talk to people. A web page to collect email addresses is fine as a starting point but it's highly unlikely to "convert" visitors into "paying subscribers" because you won't have the volume of visitors that you need and enough trust indicators in the website to get people to commit.
Very few people sign up for a SaaS product the first time they see or hear about it. The ones you'll convert to prepayments are ones you have a live conversation with and convince to pay for it, based on the trust and rapport you establish on a call.
The downside is that this doesn't translate to trust on a website when they don't talk to you. This is a different hurdle that you'll eventually need to get past. But if you can get a few hundred paying customers through demos & word of mouth referrals, you'll have bought the time you need.
Really great information! You really have bridge the gap from where do I begin to what needs to happen.
Thank you for your time.
You're welcome!
Hey Mike! First of all thank you so much for this AMA, I really like your podcasts and I think I learned a lot. My question would be that what is happening with Microconf Europe? Last year I was considering to attend it, but when I heard about Microconf a lot it was zero information still on the website (just like this year) and later I forgot to check back.
I'm the co-founder of MicroConf (Mike's business partner) and he asked me to weigh in on a few of the questions.
If you want to get notified when tickets go on sale for any of our conferences, you'll want to get on the email list (microconf.com, widget in the lower right).
We typically start releasing information for MC EU after the Vegas conferences.
Hi Rob - I'm not seeing the widget.
Sorry about that. The widget isn't shown on the main landing page at microconf.com. You need to select either Starter or Growth Edition, which you can do at the top of the page. It's also on the Europe website.
Also, MicroConf Europe's dedicated website is at https://www.microconfeurope.com but the plan is to combine the Europe site into the main MicroConf.com website over the next couple months.
What does a typical weekday look like for you? How do you manage your time with all the projects you’re a part of?
Not well? :)
I generally block off my calendar on Mondays so if I'm taking a call with you on a Monday, you're apparently in a special club. This helps me get a fair amount of uninterrupted work done. It's also the day of the week where I tend to work the most and it's common for me to work from 8am-9pm or sometimes as late as 11pm with brief interruptions for lunch, dinner, taking the kids to karate, etc.
Outside of that, the thing I find the most helpful to keep moving forward on everything is that each evening, I try to write down what needs to get done the next day. This does two things. First, it unloads it from my brain so I can effectively forget about it that evening. Second, it gives me a solid starting point the next day from where I can pick up and start working.
Outside of that, it's really hard for me to schedule my week too far in advance but there does seem to be a general pattern to it. Mondays, I get a lot of work done that tends to require deep thinking and long stretches of uninterrupted time. Thursdays tend to have more meetings and calls than any other day of the week.
Fridays, not a lot usually gets done. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be flex days for me. I might do a little work or a lot, depending on the week. For example this week, today has been almost a complete bust because I was sick over the weekend and I'm only at about 30% right now so I'm still getting over it. I'll probably do a ton of "real work" tomorrow.
I don't feel like I'm any different than your typical software startup founder except that I happen to have a couple of businesses I work on and a few different products, all of which require some level of attention and need to be moved forward a little at a time. Nothing ever moves as fast as I'd like and I'm never adding as many customers as I'd like.
But it's usually steady progress and that's what counts the most.
Hi Mike, I just started building my business around 1:1 PM interview training for engineers and non-technical people. The best part is that I start making $ from day 1. This is not scalable but it still is a side project that helps generate revenues. Is it still useful to attend Microconf if your business model is based on consulting ?
I'm the co-founder of MicroConf (Mike's business partner) and he asked me to weigh in on a few of the questions.
If you are interested in turning it into a productized service in the future, or launching a product based on it, then yes. If you plan to run a custom consulting business for the foreseeable future you will get much less value out of a product-focused conference like MicroConf.
Yea, what he said. Also, you should look specifically at Starter Edition, rather than Growth Edition if you're going to go down that path.
Are you planning on expanding MicroConf to countries outside the US?
I'm the co-founder of MicroConf (Mike's business partner). We've run a MicroConf in Europe every year since 2013: http://www.microconfeurope.com/
In addition to what Rob said, we've been asked to run MicroConf in Australia several times but I'm not sure that's in the cards in the near future. Running a conference is a delicate balancing act between attendees, speakers, sponsors and the budget.
It's time consuming and resource intensive to do that, especially from thousands of miles away.
If it's any encouragement, NDC Sydney is very popular - https://ndcsydney.com/ and I'm sure there would be many who would like to tax-deduct a trip to Sydney. I live there, I'm sure I, and/or others, could run errands for you if you need a local on the ground. Our beer is better too </Fightin'Words>
There's a pretty-big startup scene in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. More info on Sydney-based start hubs: https://www.startupmuster.com/ & https://fishburners.org/
Thanks. We'll keep that in mind. In the meantime, the best way to make it happen would be to join the MicroConf mailing list, encourage other local software entrepreneurs to do the same and email us about it from time to time. Those types of decisions are based partly on feasibility and partly on demand. Without both, it won't happen.
One of the reasons Europe happened was because people kept asking us. And while we've been asked for MicroConf Australia a few times, it's not been very much. Similar to the challenges we have in Europe, I think it would be challenging to organize it remotely.
Problem: I want to go to microconf but I cannot flyto the US until late May.
Solution: Change microconf dates to suit me.
Thanks in advance!
if (username == "patio11" && IsProblemDate(DateOfMicroConf))
MoveMicroConf(DateOfMicroConf.AddMonths(-1));
else
Reply("Sorry, we have to sign a contract with the hotel more than a year in advance and there's nothing we can do.");
Then I humbly - and angrily - shall attend next year. Hope this one is a great success.
My apologies for that. In 2012, it wasn't a big deal to move it with less than 6 months notice.
These days, the Vegas conference is so large that we need to plan it really far in advance. Last year, we signed a 2 year contract so we already know when MicroConf 2019 will be held. I expect later this year, we may be signing a contract for 2020 and potentially 2021, just to be sure we have dates and a location reserved. It's rather odd/difficult projecting that far in advance what your numbers will look like.
Haha don’t apologise! I’m just sad I can’t make this one as I’d really like to go but shall definitely do so next year. I’m glad it’s doing well :)
What are the dates for 2019? I’m asking because I may go to NAB 2019, the gap between that & MicroConf is something I need to manage meaningfully. Yah, I’m already timeboxing 2019, this business of being an adult (with kids) is mayhem.
March 24-26th for Growth, March 26th-28th for Starter.
Thanks. Booked it in my calendar.
lol
I bought a ticket to MicroConf Growth and am really looking forward to it!
Also I just wrote The Parallel Entreperneur (www.parallelentrepreneurship.com) and am planning to "soft launch" the book at your conference. Can you hook me up with any VIP events there? :0)
About 2 weeks before the conference, we'll invite everyone to a private Slack group. When you receive your invitation, sign in make some friends and ask them to come to dinner with you on Monday night.
Now you have your own personal instant VIP event because everyone at MicroConf is a VIP. #win :)
We really don't have VIP events because MicroConf isn't that kind of conference. Sunday night is the opening reception but we intentionally don't plan anything for Monday night so that people can self-organize for dinner.
We take Monday night off, in part to encourage Growth Edition attendees to return on Tuesday night for the crossover evening event. This is where everyone can say their goodbyes, but also to welcome the Starter Edition attendees into the community and help set expectations for them.
How do I see responses
Hi Mike,
The tix for Growth are on waiting list. Is there a way to request one ?
I've taken care of it for you. In the future, these types of requests really need to go through the "Contact Us" page on our website. We can't keep track of incoming support requests through comments like this.
Hey Mike! My co-founder introduced me to your podcast and it's been amazing so far.
My Question - How do you know when you can truly begin to scale?
We're about to cross 50 paid monthly users and have been able to do so because we started building an audience with a private Facebook group. We're now starting to test paid ads, specifically retargeting, but I'm not quite sure how to effectively approach initial scale.
Could you clarify what you mean by scale? Are you referring to how to know the product is ready/when to push on the marketing or specifically how to scale up the marketing efforts? I think what you're asking is specifically how to scale up with testing paid ads and retargeting, but the comment about "how to effectively approach initial scale" is a little confusing.
My apologies Mike. What I mean is what are your first steps when you want to really start pushing growth?
So far we haven't really done much, just trying to prove the concept, but now that we've done that we want to really start growing.
So if I understand correctly, you're saying you've proven that retargeting generally works for you, but you want to scale it up and aren't sure how to approach it.
Is there currently a bottleneck somewhere? ie: Not enough website traffic that qualifies to be retargeted such that you've already maxed out your spend and aren't getting a better return by spending more? Is there a conversion rate problem of any kind with the retargeting ads or is it bringing in enough new customers to be able to easily pay for the ad spend? Do you find it too time consuming to manage the program? Are you afraid the app will break or support will break down if you double customers overnight?
What's not clear about where to start and what exactly is it that you're trying to grow => paying customers, traffic, retargeting efforts, etc? I know all of it sort of feeds back into paying customers, but that's the end result so you can't simply toggle that one lever. You need to toggle others in order to make that result respond.
Generally speaking, if ads are working, you scale it up by spending more. The problem most people need to overcome is the fear of opening up the flood gates, but you can mitigate that by incrementally increasing your spend and monitoring it closely.
I have a podcast scheduled to record this afternoon with a Facebook Ads expert so if I can get enough detail before then, I can ask directly if it's not something I know the answer to.
Everything is a test right now. We're just now testing Retargeting, so we're not sure if it's going to work yet. We've gotten to 50 users via our Facebook group so I'm going to double down on that, but I'd love to begin building a system to support further growth. I'm just not sure what that would even look like.
It's all very new to me lol. The goal is 350 paid users in the next 6 months, so I'm working on reverse engineering that to decide what our focus should be in terms of marketing (Retargeting, Giveaways, FB Ads, etc...)
I think I understand the issue now. Sounds more like a throughput issue. ie: getting someone from website visitor to paying customer and the ads are a way to bridge the gap between them.
Retargeting is definitely the place to start. You asked at just the right time. Next Tuesday, our podcast Episode 387 is an interview with Mojca Mars. I dug into the basics of Facebook Ads with an emphasis on retargeting, which is where you should definitely start.
It will cover all of the basics for you to help you get people into your sales funnel. You'll need a lead magnet of some kind and a way to get them onto your email list. Once you've got them there, Facebook has really done its job for you and you'll need to nurture them through an email campaign to convince the person to sign up for a trial.
As you tweak the ads and the emails, you should be able to scale up your acquisition. Getting from website visitor to email address is a big step and should really help move the needle for you. I'd also recommend potentially leaning on personal follow ups with people who get on your list but don't convert by the end of the first email sequence.
You can learn a lot about why they didn't convert based on those conversations. From there, you can tweak your ads, the lead magnet or the email campaign based on what they tell you. Hope that helps.
That's fantastic Mike! I'll be waiting for the episode to go live. I'm going to start building out a funnel that reflects what you said. It makes complete sense to me.
Here is what I'm thinking:
1.FB Ad to get our audience to our site to read an awesome blog post - Which gets a tracking pixel in their cookies.
2. Use retargeting with a lead magnet (think a standalone landing page, could also capture in step 1 assume) to convert them to an email subscriber.
3. An autoresponder series to convert them into trial users.
Thoughts?
Sounds fine. Optionally, you could have Facebook deliver the lead magnet directly, which would get you their email address immediately without the intermediate landing page.
In some cases, having a dedicated landing page and a two-step conversion will work better, but it's impossible to know for sure without testing it. Also, if you do that you would want to use retargeting so if they visit the landing page but don't give you their email address, it costs less in the future to try and get them back.
And obviously once they've converted, you want to exclude them from your ad campaigns.
If you are a none technical founder how should you go about developing your idea/mvp?
Apologies, but it looks like I may have missed this question along the way in here. I've answered several variations of this question so far. If you have any followup questions to those answers, please let me know.