Founder Views

In this episode, I’m speaking with Mubashar (Mubs) Iqbal. I stumbled across Mubs on Twitter, and immediately wanted to talk to him on my podcast.Mubs was Product Hunt’s maker of the year in 2016, and has been the runner up a bunch of other times.He is what you can only describe as a MAKER. He’s built and developed a countless number of websites and apps, which we’re talking about in this episode. Most recently, he developed an app called PodHunt, that allows people to submit and find new and exciting podcast episodes.He’s already garnered over 600 users in only a few months, and it’s growing rapidly. We’re talking about a bunch of different topics in this episode, including his involvement with Product Hunt and how he won Maker of the Year, his most popular projects, and he also gives some tips on how non-coders can get idea and projects off the ground.This was a really fun episode. Mubs is extremely talented, he’s fun, down to earth, and most importantly, a great person. I hope you enjoy our chat!PS. If you'

Mature businesses with firm roots in the ground can buy a lot of time when going through slow growth periods or rough patches, compared to newer startups. The value of time is a true luxury and could be a major advantage for bigger companies if utilized properly.Established companies can afford to go through sluggish stages where there’s either stagnant sales, slow growth, or even misalignment amongst the team. Mature companies can go through several months or even years before there’s even a hint of genuine going concern. Bootstrapped startups on the other hand, can only afford weeks at most before runway is dry. Startups must have the foot on the gas at all times and be laser-focused, which can be good or bad (more on that later).What’s interesting is that these “rough patches” can actually be really good for companies. One of the main reasons why mature companies go through what seem to be “sluggish” periods, is because they are able to consciously sense a change in how the market is behaving. So what seem

I’m speaking with Jake Stainer, the former Head of Growth at Typeform. Jake is currently the Head of Growth at Travelperk, a company that helps businesses manage and book their travel. He founded an online language learning app Papora, and he also consults companies to accelerate their growth. Most notably, Jake was the Head of Growth at Typeform. He started with Typeform very early on, when they were only doing $1M ARR, and had about 20 employees. He stayed on board with them for just over 4 years and helped take accelerate to $25M ARR in that time! We’re diving into a lot specifics on what strategies Jake used to help Typeform grow exponentially, including tips on product-led growth, how to create viral loops within your app, how he used SEO to help them get from 0 to 30,000 signups per month! and much much more. This is a conversations filled with little golden nuggets, so you’re definitely going to want to listen in full. I hope you enjoy! Contact Jake here! Bonus! Contact both Jake and I on Growthmentor.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Liam Martin, co-founder of TimeDoctor, a company that helps remote teams stay focused, efficient and productive. In 8 years, Liam has helped bring Time Doctor to a comfortable 7-figures in recurring revenue. They’re a team of over 100 employees in 32 countries around the world. Most impressively, they’ve done this all while being bootstrapped! Liam also helped start the conference called Running Remote. It’s a conference where remote companies can get together, learn and collaborate. Next year will be its third year running and going to be held in Austin Texas. Definitely worth checking out! We’re diving into a lot of different topics, including how remote companies can improve their company culture and tips for hiring remote. We get into marketing at some length, as we talk about why Facebook and social ads no longer work, and what SaaS companies should better focus their attention and spend on. This was a really fun and informative chat, and I was glad Liam and I were able

There are a growing number of tech companies that are choosing to be fully transparent with their financial metrics. Some of the bigger names like Convertkit, Buffer and Hubspot, are all publicly disclosing every financial detail for the world to see. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies following this open data movement. From an observer’s perspective, it’s pretty awesome to be able to see how private companies are performing, compare numbers, and analyze data. It’s also great for startups or entrepreneurs to see that information and be able to set realistic benchmarks and goals across industry-specific data. In fact, it’s because of these transparent companies that helped inspire me to start a blog and podcast talking about my journey. I think it’s truly great to share your experiences with your community and even better for the overall business ecosystem. It would be a shame to keep in all of your experiences and unique insights bottled in. It’s great karma, and a true win-win for every

In this episode, I’m speaking with the main man himself, Dan Martell. Dan has been one of my inspirations in the SaaS game, bar-none. I haven’t met too many people in SaaS who haven’t got at least some value from Dan. Dan has built 5 companies, and successfully exited three of those, most notably Flowtown and Clarity.fm. He’s an investor in over 40 startups, including Intercom, Hootsuite, and Udemy, to name a few. For the last several years, Dan has been coaching some of the world’s top SaaS founders to help them scale their businesses. He was also recently named top 5 YouTube channels for entrepreneurs in the world by Entrepreneur Magazine, which is pretty awesome. We’re diving into several topics in this episode, including some of Dan’s exclusive concepts such as: How to perfectly craft your messaging in your marketing. How to build authority in your industry. What’s a North Star Metric (NSM), and how SaaS companies should be using it. Two common challenges most SaaS companies face, and how to tackle them

In this episode, I'm speaking with Max Kolysh, one of the founders of zinc.io. Zinc is an e-commerce lab that builds products that helps tens of thousands of Amazon and eBay sellers with listing creation, inventory management, pricing and order fulfillment. Max co-founded Zinc back in 2014. They went through Y-Combinator, and raised a seed round of $400k, and are now doing $6M in ARR. It was a great pleasure speaking with Max, I have no doubt you'll get a ton of value and insights in this episode. Enjoy! Visit zinc.io to learn more. Music by sifer2424

It’s very common for companies to get comfortable and settle in a “coasting state”. A “coasting state” is when a company is making money, growing (albeit slowly), and trekking along steadily in their market. Not to say this is a bad thing (far from it, actually). After all, most companies will fail before they even get close to that “coasting state”. The fact is, most founders are satisfied coasting along comfortably, and collecting their stable pay check. This is also the reason why there are only few industry-leaders in a respective market. For the big dreamers, and the founders who decide they want to abandon the “coasting state”, and instead elevate themselves as market leaders, they have to change their mindset and ideology when it comes to thinking about business. When confronted with a decision, you can’t think about today, you have to think about the future. Every decision has to be made with the thought of scale and long-term focus in mind. You can’t think about the effects that choice will have in a

In this episode, I'm speaking with Tom Libelt, the founder of Smart Brand Marketing and We Market Online Courses. Tom is a straight up hustler. His family moved to the US from Poland with to escape communism, with only $500 in their pocket. He was a serial entrepreneur from a young age. He owned a coffee shop, a record label, was a top hip-hop Polish recording artist, created a documentary, sold over 5000 Kindle books, and now runs Smart Brand Marketing, where he primarily helps companies market their online courses. His company does over 7-figures in annual revenue, his team is fully remote, and best of all - fully bootstrapped. This was definitely one of my favourite interviews, I had a lot in common with Tom which made for a really good chat. I hope you enjoy! Visit smartbrandmarketing.com to learn more. Music by sifer2424

Think of absolutely ANY business problem a company might face.
 The one thing that can absolutely solve just about any business problem is… SALES!
 That’s right – in one way or another, more generating more sales can solve those plaguing business problems that are in your way.
 Need to make a few key hires in your business? Increase sales so you can afford to make them.
 Need to launch those products that have been in the back burner for a while? Increase sales so you can afford to hire another developer.
 Burning cash every month? Increase sales to be cash flow positive.
 Expenses outpacing sales? Increase sales to make up for it.
 Need to improve your company’s branding? Increase sales so you can afford a branding person.
 Customer support falling by the wayside? Increase sales so you can afford more support people.
 Need to step up your marketing? Increase sales so you can afford a marketing budget.
 Get the point? Sales can help solve, or at the very least, alleviate nearly any business problem that a com

One of the biggest opportunities I didn’t take more advantage of while growing a company, is not gathering enough feedback from employees more often. Being the co-founder of the company that started from scratch, I personally did every single role in every department on my own. I was a salesperson, support rep, marketer, graphic designer, onboarding specialist, retention specialist, and billing person- all at the same time. Needless to say, I know every facet of my company very well. However, as we started to grow the team, and bring in people with different backgrounds and experiences, I quickly realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. With diversity, comes new insights, thoughts and ideas that can make some of the biggest impacts in your business. When you start managing, as opposed to being wrapped up in the nitty-gritty daily operations, you can easily lose sight of the processes, procedures and efficiencies within each role. This is when you have to put more trust in your team, and continuously

We all know that team building and culture are very important for the success of any organization. In order to push projects forward, achieve company objectives, and live out a company vision, your team must be coordinated with each other, in-sync, and integrated. Team building is not something that comes naturally in an organization. It has to be deliberate and purposeful. In most cases, team members are focused on their particular tasks and department objectives, and don’t really have the time to build meaningful relationships with other people in the company. Team building is something that requires effort. In a remote environment however, that effort has to be magnified significantly. In remote companies, team members are even more isolated and autonomous, for obvious reasons. It’s very easy for employees to fade off into their own zone and get out of touch with the bigger picture. Remote teams are often located in different countries, time zones, and have different cultures and beliefs. Strengthening you

This was a very exciting episode. I’m speaking with Thomas Smale, founder of FE International, the hands-down market leader for M&A and advisory services for SaaS and other online businesses. They’ve completed hundreds of millions in acquisitions over the years. If you own a SaaS or any small business, this is an episode you’re going to want to listen to in full. We talk about what potential buyers look for in companies, how companies can increase their valuation, the acquisition process in detail, and much much more. Oh, not to mention, FE International is fully 100% bootstrapped, which you know I love. Thomas has an awesome bootstrapping story as well. He basically started buying companies with his credit card believe it or not. You’ll hear more about that in the episode. Enjoy! Visit feinternational.com to learn more. Music by sifer2424

In today’s episode, I'm speaking with Laura Roeder, the founder and CEO of MeetEdgar. MeetEdgar helps professionals and small businesses manage their content and promote it on social media. Laura founded MeetEdgar in 2014. In less than 4 years, they’ve grown to over $4 million in annual recurring revenue, all while being fully remote, and bootstrapped, which is absolutely incredible. We dive into a lot of different topics, including how she grew to $100k MRR in less than 12 months, her bootstrapping story, marketing tips, challenges of managing a remote team, tips on churn, and much much more. I had a great time chatting with Laura, and I think you’ll get a ton of value from this episode. I hope you enjoy! Visit meetedgar.com to learn more. Music by sifer2424

You marketed your product, your sales team pitched the product to a prospective client, had a few follow up meetings, and finally closed the sale! Congratulations, the client is in the door! Now the hard work begins… NOT to take anything away from those in sales – in fact, sales is the most important department in business, in my opinion. Without sales, companies slow down, flatten out and eventually die. No matter what turmoil a company is going through, in almost all cases, sales will help solve that problem. In SaaS however, the hardest part is engaging the client post-sale. Most companies make the mistake in assuming just because a client signed up, they understand the value they’re supposed to be receiving. Even if your sales reps have properly informed the clients about the great benefits and value that your service provides, that’s simply not enough. The silent killer in SaaS is churn, as we know. Therefore, from the moment your new client signs up, each piece of communication and engagement has to be

I'm chatting with Foti Panagio, the founder of growthmentor.io, a platform where you can get advice and mentorship from vetted experts. We're talking about the challenges of a double-sided marketplace, how he plans on growing his startup, marketing opportunities, and much more. This was a very fun and insightful chat, with a lot of great takeaways. Enjoy! Visit growthmentor.io to learn more. Music by sifer2424

One of the most important topics in SaaS that isn’t too often covered, is the dunning process. For those who might not be familiar with dunning, it’s the process of communicating with customers that are past due, to collect payments before their accounts get cancelled or closed. Dunning is usually a structured automated process whose form of communication is email or sms. For SaaS companies with a large number of customers, dunning is a crucial process with several benefits, including revenue retention, helping churn, increasing cash flow, and more efficient use of resources. An effective dunning processes requires a lot of thought and strategy, which usually depends on what you choose to optimize for. That usually depends on the nature of your business, industry and types of customers. A typical dunning process lasts about 30 days, however that could vary more or less, depending on your business. What strategy to use? If you’re optimizing for revenue retention and churn prevention, than you will want to have

For the first six years, we ran our company out of offices. We’ve experienced everything you could out of an office, from expanding into bigger spaces, growing the team, launching products, hitting milestones, etc. For the past two years, we decided to make the drastic switch and ditch the office to become a fully remote company. After comparing the two experiences, I can confidently say that there are clear overall company benefits of working remote. Although everything about working remotely is not positive, the benefits certainly outweigh the drawbacks by a wide margin, in my opinion. A lot of what you read about working remotely is geared towards the individual’s experiences. There are definitely a lot of personal advantages of working remote, but in this article, I will explore the benefits to the company itself. Here are 5 of the clear-cut company benefits of working remote Bigger hiring pool globally Being a remote company, you’re not restricted to hiring people from a particular vicinity or regional

Since I started being more active on social media, many people have been asking me “why do you blog and podcast?”. My answer is an important lesson that I think several people can get value from. First, one of my jobs in running a SaaS company, is developing strategy. A lot of my own strategy and thought-process is done through writing. I’ve been writing for several years now. It helps me absorb my thoughts and understand topics and situations I’m thinking about, a lot better. Personally, I need to write in order to continue my mental and business growth. A blog is also a great way to stay accountable and continue writing. I consider the posts on this blog, as my “business diary”. I’ve been an avid podcast listener for quite some time. I’ve even joked with friends about recording our conversations in a podcast. Eventually, my itch to start a podcast finally got too much to bare. So, I bought a microphone and started recording my thoughts. Instead of talking about starting a podcast, I just did it. It’s really

I recently attended a live podcast panel discussion in Toronto, hosted by Drift. The main focus on the discussion was on marketing, specifically branding. The topics really resonated with me in my current journey and stage with Web4Realty. In most cases, startups don’t think about branding in the early days. The early days are all about the grind- selling, gaining traction, building out your team, looking for efficiencies in your processes, and more selling. Assuming you execute on those above items, and your startup makes it out alive after two years (more than 50% of companies will fail in the first two years), your brand will organically begin to take shape in your market, without any real effort or focus on it. In general, the concept of branding gets thrown around pretty loosely. When you really unpack what branding truly is, it becomes much more valuable and important than most people realize. Nowadays, whatever business you create can easily be copied very quickly. In eight years since we launched Web4