This week, we talk look back at 2020, look ahead to 2021, and make some predictions.
Show Notes
Looking back at 2020
- Personal accomplishments
- Rick
- 2019 Goal: Get to a point where he and his wife feel comfortable having kids - ✅ Not only are they ready, Rick's wife is pregnant 🎉
- 2019 Goal: Increase level of play - ✅ He's been playing basketball, skiing, playing water sports, etc.
- Had success writing his newsletter almost every week.
- Tyler
- 2019 Goal: Get a dog - ✅ His name is jolo and he's an idiot.
- 2019 Goal: Exercise three times per week - ❌ Things were looking good until covid hit.
- Got married and bought a house.
- Business accomplishments
- Rick
- 2019 Goal: Grow to $10k MRR - ❌ But did even better by focusing on one business and investing in the long term.
- LegUp Health makes more money than it spends.
- Built the LegUp Health product with no-code and low-code.
- Shut down his old business, Group Current, while maintaining a strong relationship with his co-founder.
- Tyler
- 2019 Goal: Continue product team's momentum - ✅ LACRM put out meaningful product improvements regularly throughout the year.
- 2019 Goal: Write code once per week - ❌ Didn't even come close.
- 2019 Goal: Average 50 paying users/month from the referral channel - ❌ Had the right input, but didn't get the results.
- Launched a major redesign.
- Made it through the pandemic despite a couple terrible months.
- Raised prices.
- Hired two new people.
- Biggest disappointment
- Rick - Not spending enough time with customers, friends, and family.
- Tyler - Had to fire an employee.
- Biggest learning
- Rick - The difference between earning 10% of a business vs 100%.
- Tyler - The role of an entrepreneur vs. the role of a CEO.
Discussing big picture goals
- Why are we entrepreneurs? What drives us?
- Rick - He's good at it, he likes it. It's the best pathway to freedom.
- Tyler - Trust, building things, creating a great place to work.
- What do we want to accomplish over 10+ years
- Rick - $10mm ARR, 20% profit. Become the one-stop shop for consumers finding healthcare. Build a full benefits platform for employers.
- Tyler - Turn the one successful product into a suite of products for small businesses. Be more than a CRM.
- What do we our roles to be long-term?
- Rick - Build a management team. Stay involved in product marketing.
- Tyler - Manage the product team and innovate on the product as an individual contributor. Be CEO, but mostly have non-product things delegated to a management team.
Expectations for 2021
- Personal themes/goals
- Rick - Get sleep under control. Adjust to being a dad.
- Tyler - Spend more time with friends and family once the pandemic is under control (knock on wood)
- Professional themes/goals
- Rick
- Get to $10k MRR.
- Automate/delegate so service can be scalable.
- Tyler
- Get marketing to the point that it can be delegated.
- Design the new appointment scheduler product.
- Biggest worry
- Rick - Being able to scale service.
- Tyler - Growth leveling off after the benefit of the price increase wears off.
- What do we want to learn?
- Rick - Learn more coding, especially working with API data and generating dynamic emails.
- Tyler - Re-learn how to iterate and move fast.
Predictions
- Our predictions from last year
- Rick - An all-in-one solution will emerge in the no-code space ❌
- Tyler - Startups raising money from non-VCs will become more mainstream (sort of happened, but still in progress)
- Next year
- Rick - Asynchronous video will become big in professional settings.
- Tyler - San Francisco will start a new era of opportunity for early-stage startups.
What is Startup to Last?
Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.