I bootstrapped to $1M in my first year without knowing how to code. Ask me anything!

This was definitely a big challenge and it took a few horrendous mistakes before I realized that “all developers did all of the develop-y things” wasn’t quite right. Ha!

When I had the realisation that I didn’t have the control and foresight needed to run my business, I read many books, blog posts and reached out to heaps of people (including AWS themselves!) to ask how they structure their teams.

In the early days I couldn’t have told you the difference between a front end, back end or even what a full stack was. It was a HUGE learning curve, and still is some days when talking about architecture.

What did I do to hire developers?

1. Interview, ask a few key questions where over time friends/mentors/person sitting next to me in a co-working space had taught me what a good answer sounded like.

2. Ask for previous work and Github.

3. Give a coding challenge with a time limit (there are some great companies our there that do this.

4. Buy a box of beers for someone I trusted to read the code and give me very detailed feedback on what they had seen.

My team are such wonderful people and as we’ve grown, I’ve been very forthcoming about my blind spots and they now reach out to help in the hiring process, and teach me everything they can along the way.

I’m incredibly proud of my team, my engineers treat me with absolute love and respect and are always helping me upskill rather than cutting me out for “not knowing what I’m talking about” which was something I was scared of.

Hmm, sustaining a team of 35 people would be a hard ask without revenue (or funding!) If you have access to any app ranking systems you’ll find us!

:-)

Thank you Adam
:)
Thrilled that you loved it, Courtland and I had a great time recording it!

In the early days I had overseas developers and I was able to pay them a comfortable wage to build, but as we grew the local team (in Australia), I was able to offer an amazing culture and workplace, with an OK salary which appealed to those who I wanted in my team too.

For example, we do team retreats every year and I LOVE spoiling my team! They can travel and work, they can choose their own hours (based on them being given time and freedom to understand how their bodies work best), our culture is hilarious and I encourage absolutely everyone to bring their whole selves to work.

It’s not uncommon for us to do team rollerskating, send each other gifts for fun, or catch up on video calls purely because we miss each other!

I guess my answer is, I created a very nurturing, intuitive and emotionally intelligent environment that let people thrive. My team are always asked if they are happy and it’s not uncommon that they share the company wins on their personal social media profiles.

AWww, I could rave about my team all day - but I hope that answers your question!

Gosh, yes you’re right if I added all of this up, it’s a HUGE expense, right?

I’d say when I launched Plann App in the app store, I would have spent close to 100k in lost wages, (but I was working 18hr days so it was probably more than that!)

I wrote this article for Foundr magazine if you’re interested in the complete breakdown of getting to launch: https://foundr.com/create-an-app/

But now that we’ve been live for a bit longer, taking a salary, re-invested all earnings back into growing the team and the tech - and we recently launched our 3rd product: Plann Webapp.

I’d say the total figure invested into the company would now be close to US$1.5M now. Maybe more. Oh gawd, now I feel like I’m going to throw up! Haha!

Understand the competitor landscape, understand the problem that no-one is solving correctly, and most importantly, the PEOPLE who are being underserved by the current solutions and then market like crazy to them. :)

And one more: Why does Plann not yet post without an app?

Thank you - and congratulations to you too!

1. It was really about understanding their challenges and goals and making sure the product addressed them. I was a one off payment when I launched to make sure I had some income, then moved to a SaaS model 6 months later which helped with revenue traction.

2. Yes I have a brilliant team now, we're at 30+ depending on the day in 9 countries. I started with a few VAs that were scattered all over the world, then as revenue grew I got a few part-timers, and then more revenue I was able to start making local full time hires.

I do not have a co-founder :)

Thank you, absolutely!
Delighted to hear you’re doing well!

Bootstrapping is how the company identifies right now, but I just wanted to point out that I’m not married to it - whatever is best for the business, and me as a human, which might be raising capital, I’m not closed off to, we’ve just not needed it yet :)

Both great questions,

I’ve answered #1 in depth if you scroll up a bit you’ll see where I got my first customers! :-)

2. We’ll be adding 8 people to the team over the next 4 months, and would you believe we’re mostly an entirely remote team!

Next Hire if anyone is interested in joining my brilliantly passionate team!

• Senior Product Manager
  (please email [email protected] with your details!)

Another great question, I answered most of this in a Q above, however, to add to this that your brand positioning and voice becomes incredibly important when trying to get market cut-through.

Our brand is fresh, fun, quirky and highly creative, while maintaining a very high thought leadership position in our industry.

Social Media is incredibly people-to-people based so I decided our brand would be incredibly humanistic, transparent and real.

Funnily enough, it appealed to a mass market of Instagram users that thought using a product that was more ‘fun’ was worth spending money on over a ‘corporate’ tool.

I think it comes down to understanding your exact target customer inside out.

Hey, I’d love you to scroll up as I answered this in detail above :)

Plann is my first foray into software development, or even running my own company.

Hmm, ONE thing, the influencers organically talking about me was definitely amazing, but if I have to point ONE thing out I would have to say my SEO strategy right from day one was on the money.

The amount of leads we get to our website is phenomenal (and we’re now ranked in the top 5000 websites in the US), and a DA of over 50, which attests to the quality of content we’re pushing out into the world.

It’s driven brand awareness on a scale that I can’t describe, led to millions of organic searches and warm leads.

OMG, I would do so many things differently if I had my time over again, and to be honest it would probably be hiring much earlier! As Plann grew so quickly and I was doing all-of-the-things, it became almost impossible to teach team members (5 at once) while still being the main ‘doer’.

Absolutely! :)

I absolutely did all of these things!

I asked people in person or over Instagram about their IG challenges, talked about the concept, showed sketches and then when I asked “would you pay for this solution?” I would direct those to sign up to my email list where I nurtured them with weekly instagram tips that I knew were unique
(i.e. what is your best performing colour palette?) and no-one else was talking about.

Launching to a warm audience definitely helped.