growth
The third and final day of MicroConf 2017 was focused on a few themes: revenue, time and value. Any conference Patrick McKenzie (patio11) speaks at will surely have a simple message: double your prices. Patrick has been making this case tirelessly for years and with good reason. His own page
growth
"Leverage your failures." if i were to summarize day 2 into a single statement, that would be it. In a conference focused on bootstrapping products, a lot of the information has been about parlaying opportunities. The first full day of talks was equal parts inspiring and exhausting. You
growth
I bet you've considered building a product and earning enough income to quit your job. I'd even bet you already have one; partially built, sitting in digital mothballs. You are not alone. The dream is shared by us all. As is the reality: our SaaS products,
tech
"A/B test everything." Those of us in the startup world hear it routinely. But it is a useless statement. Ask "how" and you will be met with the shifting eyes of the ignorant. Indeed, A/B testing is powerful but tricky. Whole companies have been
product
Software engineers are an opinionated bunch. We hold unreasonably strong opinions on how code should look, read, be styled and where it should go. Hell, we can't even talk about tabs and spaces without rising to violence. This isn't a bad thing. It is important that
tech
There is a [modified] adage about attracting users to web apps. "Build it and spammers will come." The fact is that if your users can enter text others will see, your app is going to be a target for spammers. This means comments, profiles, messages, feeds and even
product
Software developers have two things in common: we write code and we suck at making things look nice. Or so we think. The truth is we aren't actually bad at making stuff look nice. Our issue is that the blank canvas of a new site is daunting. Ironic,
process
At companies, we spend a lot of time using intuition to solve problems or increase revenue. But it is rare that these features, in their first version, end up working as we intuitively expect them to. Heck, some of them outright fail to produce the desired effects at all. If
product
Ask an engineer to list all of the features in a product they work on. The result will be long. Next, ask a non-technical employee the same question. The list will be much shorter. Finally, ask a customer. The customer will give you a list you can count on 1