Build Your SaaS

Advice for new software founders going into 2020

Show Notes

Justin does a solo New Year's Eve episode where he shares:
  • Then (Jan 1, 2019) vs now (Jan 1, 2020)
  • Justin's tweet: "Going all-in on Transistor in 2019!"
  • Advice for new founders: "What products get bought every day?"
  • Every day, millions of people wake up and buy a cup of coffee.
  • Every day, there are people who wake up and sign up for web hosting.
  • Will there be people lining up tomorrow morning to buy your product? And the next day?
  • What's still going to be true tomorrow, six months from now, three years from now?

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Creators & Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Justin:

Hey, everybody. It's Justin here from Transistor, and it's just me. John isn't here. It's 6:53 PM on New Year's Eve. I spent most of the day shoveling snow and skiing with my boys.

Justin:

But I wanted to come here to the office and just record something for the year end. So hopefully, Chris isn't going to edit this one. I'm hope hopefully, I can get the sound levels correct. Before I go any further, I wanna thank all of you for listening this year, all of 2019. And also to those of you that listened in 2018, thank you for being a part of our journey.

Justin:

It means so much to us, to John and myself. Also thank you to our sponsors this month, Clubhouse. If you are looking for project management software, go to clubhouse.io/build. It's free for up to 10 people. So if you're starting a new project this year, it's the perfect software suite to use.

Justin:

And Postmark, they've been so generous, and they really do have the best tool for sending transactional email. So welcome emails, password reset emails. Go to postmarkapp.com/loves /buildyoursass. And, you when you use the coupon code, you'll get a free month of sending. Good way to start the the year out.

Justin:

So for this last episode, I thought I would just quickly review what's happened since the beginning of the year. What's happened since January 1, 2019?

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, in terms of full time employees,

Justin:

at the beginning of the year, neither John nor I were full time on Transistor. I was spending a lot of time on it. I remember I had announced that I was going to go all in on transistor. I don't exactly know what that means, but, you know, all in meaning it was going to become my primary focus for 2019. But John was still working at Cards Against Humanity.

Justin:

And now we've both been full time. I've been full time since April, and John's been full time since July. And that is crazy to think that that happened this year. It feels now it kinda feels like we've been working on transistor forever in a weird way. And so, yeah, the fact that that occurred this year is just nuts.

Justin:

In January 1, 2019, we had 260

Speaker 2:

customers. And now we have over 2,000.

Justin:

So we've added a lot of customers. Obviously, we've had some churn in that. So we've the actual number of transistor customers is even higher. And probably most notably, back at the beginning of January 1, 2019, we had $4,957 in MRR, just below 5 k. And I I I remember I actually I made, I I committed to giving up alcohol at the beginning of the year until we hit, 10 k and m MRR.

Justin:

And, I'm actually still not drinking. I I haven't I've had, I think, 2 drinks this year, and I don't have any plans on going back to drinking. So that was an interesting experiment that ended up being coming, a long term habit. It is interesting to think about where we were at the beginning of last year. I'd come off a really difficult 2018, and I I think at the time, you know, Transistor was making money, but we weren't really paying ourselves.

Justin:

And so there was definitely some stress around what are we going you like, when is this going to start paying our salaries? And now we're well over $40,000 in MRR. So, like, that's just so crazy. So not I I I can't believe that that happened this year. And, I think I've said it before, but both John and I are just feel so fortunate to have had that happen.

Justin:

We still get stressed out about it. Every day, we think it's just going to disappear. But it is really contrasting where we were at the beginning of the year and where we are now. Having that all of that anticipation and wondering, you know, is this bet is this going to come to fruition? And then to have it happen and for us to both quit our other full time gigs and both start doing this.

Justin:

Wow. It just is really incredible. Another thing that's notable for me as someone who has been running

Speaker 2:

my own business on the side since 2,008. And I had some businesses before that as well. This business and this market just felt different. And I've tried articulating this

Justin:

a bunch throughout the year, and I know a lot of people don't agree with me. But it's just become so clear to me with this experience with Transistor and comparing it to other people I know and comparing it to my own experiences.

Speaker 2:

Your ability to charge a customer for your product and

Justin:

have them pay you really depends on how the customer perceives your product's value, the intensity of the customer's desire for your product, the availability, supply of your product versus demand, and your customer's ability to pay. And the most important piece of that, I think, is demand. How much market demand is there for what you're selling? And one way to think about this is how many people are going to be lining up tomorrow

Speaker 2:

morning buying a product. So how many people are going to line up tomorrow morning and buy coffee? Lots

Justin:

of people. Right? And, yeah, the coffee market is competitive. But if you do it well, if you can stand out, if you can bring something unique to the table, there's already demand for coffee. And it's worth noting that.

Justin:

And maybe if you are really into coffee and you think you have a new way of getting coffee into the hands of customers, that might be worth pursuing because you know that tomorrow, Wednesday, January 1st, 2020, what's still going to

Speaker 2:

be true? Millions,

Justin:

maybe billions of people are gonna wake up and want a cup of coffee. The same is true for podcast hosting. Part of me wants to quit talking about this because we have had competitors come in, and it was already competitive before. But, you know, tomorrow morning, there's going to be a bunch of people who sign up for podcast hosting around the world. That is going to be true.

Justin:

Tomorrow morning, a bunch of people are going to sign up for web hosting. Tomorrow morning, a bunch of people will go out and get milk. Tomorrow morning, a bunch of people will need storage for their photos online.

Speaker 2:

And tomorrow morning, there's going to be millions

Justin:

of people reconsidering their jobs and their employment and maybe thinking about doing something different. And I like to think in in these ways because it makes it clear, like, demand, market demand for what you have to sell is so important. And it's why, you know, a lot of seasoned entrepreneurs and investors like to invest their time and money in things that they think will be true today and tomorrow and hopefully for years to come. Tomorrow morning, a bunch of people will wake up and order books off Amazon.

Speaker 2:

And what worries me and especially when I compare it to, you know, some

Justin:

of the products that I built in the past is that I was building something that tomorrow morning, maybe someone would want it. But there was a good chance that there wasn't anybody on the earth looking for that product that day. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2:

There's a chance with these other things I tried, it was like, there wasn't consistent every day wake up in the morning demand. That's what I

Justin:

mean when I say the market you choose matters more than anything else. That's what I say when I use these fishing analogies about going where the fish are and, you know, go where the fish are biting. And if you are hoping to build a software as

Speaker 2:

a service, a SaaS business in 2020, I'm

Justin:

saying this because I want I don't want you to lose any time building something that people don't want, that where there's not people waking up every day buying that thing. And there are other variables here. I think I've used project management software as an example because I used to be in that market. I think project management software is difficult for, indie bootstrappers to go after because there are other factors at play in that market. There's it's decisions are often made by committee.

Justin:

You know, you have to you have to convince everybody on the team. A lot of people feel like what they have already is just okay, and they don't wanna switch anymore. They've switched 3 or 4 times from Jira to Trello to Basecamp. And once they finally you know, they switch 3 or 4 times, they don't wanna switch anymore. They are done.

Justin:

And so I I think that's a harder market to bootstrap in, for a variety of reasons. Even though tomorrow morning, a lot of people will sign up for project management software. I think for independence to get into that specific market is, just more challenging. And, again, you maybe you have a different angle on it, and you could prove me wrong. So I think that's that's fine.

Justin:

But, I would be wary of some of these product categories that are just very competitive, have lots of entrenched players with big ad budgets, and big sales forces and where the the way that customers acquire the product is too complicated. The you know, from the point of you asking for their credit card to getting the credit card is just too that that trail is too long and convoluted. Also consider every market has a natural kind of ceiling. And in podcasting, our closest competitor, sorry. Our biggest competitor has 66,000 podcasts.

Justin:

I on iTunes

Speaker 2:

as an estimate. And

Justin:

that might seem like a big number to you, but that seems small to me that the the largest competitor in our space only has that many customers potentially. Even if they had a 100000 customers, for the largest competitor to be there, the market still feels small in our case, and we might start butting up against that as a business in 2020. Maybe there's a ceiling to this market that we haven't hit yet, and we're gonna hit it, you know, us and all the other competitors, and it's going to become, more of a grind. But if you're starting a brand new product, it's worth investigating the market. It's worth thinking about how many people are in motion every single day buying those products.

Justin:

I think I'm gonna leave it there. If this was helpful to you, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. I'm m I Justin. And let me thank our Patreons quick. We have Ward from memberspace.com, Eric Lima, James Sauers, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things dot io, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Praduma Schenbecker, Noah Praill.

Justin:

Hey. Congratulations, Noah, on getting your driver's license today. I saw that on Twitter. David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray at elite2.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sittber, Paul, Jarvis, and Jack Ellis. All the best to you 2 in 2020 with Fathom.

Justin:

Dan Buddha, danbudda.com, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Mike Walker, Adam Duvander, Dave Junta, and oh, wait. I didn't even do the Junta. Junta and kylefox@getrewardful.com and our sponsors, Postmark and Clubhouse. What do you want us to talk about next in 2020? What do you want us to explore to share with you as you're on your journey?

Justin:

Let us know. Reach out to us on Twitter at build your SaaS or email us or jump in a customer chat on transistor.fm. Thanks again. Oh, and if you are looking to start a podcast in 2020, we'd love it if you give us a shot, transistor.fm. Yeah.

Justin:

It'd be great to take care of you and help you on your journey with all the projects you have. Talk to