The Disruptware Podcast: Online business | Lean startup | Internet Entrepreneur

On today’s show, I’m really excited to introduce someone called Al Bsharah who is the founder of a company called Embarke, which is all about email marketing and optimizing open rates and click throughs.

Today I want to talk about a really hot site that’s recently come out called useronboard.com. So useronboard.com is a creation by a guy called Samuel Hulick, and Samuel is a designer, a user experienced designer. And what he has done is created what’s called teardowns of really good products.

Today, I want to introduce you to Lars Lofgren who’s the growth manager for KISSmetrics. Now Lars is purely responsible for all the numbers on getting people through the front door. So everything in terms of optimization, conversions, the number of leads and all the metrics around that from the marketing team.

Today I’m going to answer a question that I had from a customer. Is it possible, ethical and feasible to take a piece of OpenSource software and sell that as your own? How can I monetize that? And, of course, you can do it, but you can’t do it directly against the software license because it is OpenSource.

Today I want to talk about why Freemium is probably the wrong pricing model for your SaaS product. So let's just look at three reasons why Freemium probably won't work.

Today’s Growth Hack comes from a guy called Ryan Hoover. Now what Ryan did? He came up with an idea where he wanted to create a community that recommends and votes on new startups that come into the tech community. But of course, before committing to weeks and nights of coding a new app to do that...

On today’s show I want to introduce someone called Paul Biggar, who is the founder of CircleCI. This is a San Francisco startup. It’s all about something called continuous integration and continuous delivery. They’ve just closed a six million dollar series A funding round and have got a great story to tell.

Today on our show I’m really excited to introduce someone called Andrew Dymski. Now, Andrew is the co-founder of a company called GuavaBox, which is an inbound marketing agency. What they’ve gone and done is actually start building a new SaaS app called DoInbound, which is all about automating the processes around marketing and managing their client's processes. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Today is Growth Hacking Day and I want to give you five strategies or tips to get free traffic to your business. Let's get started with number one. First of all, one thing that you can do is make your training videos accessible to the public and that has really two benefits. First of all, by SEO optimizing your training videos then you're going to get some more long tail traffic.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He also has a very popular traffic generation blog called Quick Sprout. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine said that he has created one  of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He's been revered as one of the top entrepreneurs by President Obama and the United Nations. Tweetables Today's Podcast Highlights [2.03 -  Improve usability and conversions with heatmaps, like Crazy Egg] [3.14 -  KISSmetrics created to help companies track metrics and improve growth] [3.49 -  Difference between KISSmetrics and Google - Google tells you what happened on your site, while KISSmetrics shows you who did what] [4.20 -   Manual outreach and letting potential customers use software for free helped with acquiring first customers] [4.49 -   Waited until a product that people would pay for before going to the big influencers] [5.42 - Scaling the business with time and marketing] [5.50 - Educating through content marketing to acquire new customers] [6.28 -Know your target customers and hang out in their communities] [7.03 -Growth is tough and full of challenges that over time you can overcome] [7.17 -Technology, growth of the platform, all build in the U.S.] [7.38 -You're going to struggle, you're going to make errors, you're going to make mistakes] [7.53 -Need to test pricing models as every product is different] [9.05 -Where people go wrong with freemium is that they don't reduce features that require an upgrade] [10.25 -'Pay with a Tweet' is a fun strategy to get customers and more traffic] [11.28 -Content marketing, SEO, pay per click, and a lot of the old stuff still works for traffic] [11.59 -Guest posting is still valid if it's from high authority sites and can drive traffic and sales] [12.57 -Big fan of doing stuff out of your own pocket] [13.47 -Funded future projects with current stream of income] [14.25 -Focus on one business at a time] [15.15 -Using an Assistant to plan out days] [17.01 -Inspiration comes from reading blogs, like TechCrunch, Moz, etc.] Disruptware is building the largest community of software entrepreneurs on the planet.  Make sure you are on the list.   Full Transcript Paul:    Hi there software entrepreneurs and welcome to the Disruptware Podcast. This is the show for entrepreneurs who are either just starting out or those who already have a software company and looking for techniques and ideas for massively scaling their business. The way we do that is to interview experts in the market who are already running their software company and whatever level they are at they have great content to share and we dig deep to get factual experiences that you can put into action right now. My guest today is someone by the name of Neil Patel, who is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He also runs an excellent blog called Quick Sprout, which is all about traffic generation. He's also helped companies like Amazon, MBC, GM, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says that he's created one of the hundred most brilliant companies in the world. Neil, welcome to the show. I'm very honored to have you here today. I'm blown away by your amazing achievements over the past few years and obviously I know what you've achieved etc., but in your own words can you just tell us a bit about yourself and your background and what you're doing now? Neil:     No problem. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I like building software products for marketers and at the end of the day my current two software companies that I really enjoy spending my time on are KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg. Paul:    Crazy Egg, I guess for the benefit of listeners is about tracking heatmaps, isn't? So, it's tracking sort of activity, what people are actually doing on your website.

Entrepreneurs get too emotionally involved, and you know what it's really easy to do. It's inbred basically. As an entrepreneur, you are massively enthusiastic about your creation. You have an idea and you think, "That's it. I'm going to go and conquer this market and build my idea and just sell it," of course, but it's the wrong way to think about a product. What you really need to do is find the problem and provide the solution.

Vinay Patankar, the founder of Process Street, a new SaaS startup, discusses the lessons learnt from his first startup failure, why Process Street solves a big itch for any business that needs to scale.  We discuss why its important to focus on product feedback and validation, get traction (new customers) and focus on the user experience long before you attempt to get funding. Todays' Podcast Highlights [2.10 - being in San Francisco really helps your networking] [3.16 – Build your product and get customers before talking to investors] [4.49 - Mistakes to learn from – not getting traction, team too expensive to scale, no UX testing] [8.25 - Balsamiq is a great tool for building wireframes] [9.20 - UX (User experience) is more important than screen design] [11.22 – Used a pitch deck to get Tech co-founder on board] [12.44 – Get a tech partner who believes in the vision] [13.56 - Outsource Wordpress site build, recruiting a content marketer and mobile developer] [15.49 – Scratched my own itch with outsourcers] [16.29 – Wanted a rich experience with creating SOPs] [17.31 – Could not find another solution] [18.16 – We want to make it amazing] [20.00 - Step by step checklist with Rich content to support it] [20.25 – Helps remove yourself from being the bottleneck in your business] [21.35 – The Lean Startup should be at the top of your reading list] [21.57 – Make decisions based on real user data] [22.17] - Your startup is proven when you’ve proved your product market fit and your growth hypothesis] [25.20 – We see Process Street going a lot bigger than just outsourcing market] [26.53 – Master one niche first, then expand] [31.40 – Using a lot of great tools gives you insight into good user experience] [34:00 – Only put in features that are essential] [36.18 – Never promise a feature timeframe] [36.40 – Technical Platform] [38.00 – For $125 per month we have an infinitely scalable platform that’s super lean]   Disruptware is building the largest community of software entrepreneurs on the planet.  Make sure you are on the list.   Full Transcript Paul:               Okay. I'm really keen to introduce you guys to Vinay Patankar from Process Street. Now Vinay is just in the process of launching his MVP. He's in beta phase and Process Street is a tool to manage basically teams tasks as a productivity tool. So if you think of standard operating procedures and outsourcing, then he's really come out with an ideal solution for a real market need. Vinay, welcome to the show. Vinay:             Thanks for having me Paul. Paul:               Excellent. First of all, tell me a bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do with Process Street? Vinay:             Sure. My background is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm originally from Australia. I've got a background in IT and sales, marketing business. I worked with software recruiter for a while as well as worked in technology and for the last four years I've been traveling as a digital nomad running an online lead generation company, launched two startups. Process Street being my second one and I've been working building Process Street products for about the last six months. Paul:               Wow! You're not actually based in the U.S, are you? You're based in Argentina, Buenos Aires? Vinay:             Yeah, we're currently in Buenos Aires. Basically the last startup that I ran I was in San Francisco and we went through an accelerator and didn't get the traction we wanted so kind of ended up shutting that down. When building Process Street, we thought, okay, we could stay in San Francisco or go to another U.S city or we could just go to somewhere that is cheaper and having a new experience of living in a different city, kind of like a semi-holiday if you will. But because we were just building the product, we didn't really need to be near any of our customers or anything at that current stage of the company.

I want to talk about accelerating your application with ready-made code that's already done for you. Now at the very basic level you've probably heard me talk about PHP as an example programming language which you can use. Well, together with PHP you can also use PHP frameworks. And those frameworks are things like CodeIgniter, CakePHP and one called Yii and a whole load of others.

What Is The One Word That Causes Projects To Fail //     Video Transcript: Paul: Hi. It's Paul Clifford from Disruptware and I want to tell you about one word that stands between you and a software disaster. That word is communication. Now, essentially, let's look at just four examples throughout the development process where software projects go wrong and it's all down to this one word. Firstly, in the design, what a lot of people do is to submit a design to a freelancer or oDesk or something like that and they select a developer and off the project goes. They're surprised when they get something back, which is not really what they wanted. So the first thing that went wrong there is that the developer didn't communicate back to you or basically the questions. You must have questions coming back, because no developer is going to understand your design and just go off and do it. The more questions you get back, then the more that validates that the developer really understands your design. Secondly, when you're actually selecting someone for your implementation, make sure you interview them. It's all too easy just to do everything via your email, but doing interview at least via Skype chat so you can actually establish your rapport. Now, establish a set routines of when you will communicate and ensure that they are understanding what you're saying, because it's all too easy especially in the global economy when you have people in India, China, Russia, wherever for miscommunications to happen and that's where a lot of this goes wrong. So make sure you interview the developer before you select them. When you're in your project and you have a conversation either a Skype chat, or anything like that, often these chats can go on a long time and what is essential is that you record that either through voice or at least make a bullet-pointed list of what's been agreed. And ideally, you should be using some sort of project tracking or task management system like Trello at the very basic level and put all the bullet-points on what's been agreed in there. So that you both have a really good understanding of what was discussed and what the next steps were. Number four, ensure that you are hearing from your developer on a daily or weekly basis. Obviously, it depends on the length of the project. If it's many, many months, then weekly basis might be fine, but if it's shorter project or shorter module, then make sure you're talking to them on almost daily basis or a minimum every other day, because as soon as that breaks down, then things start going wrong, and then three weeks later you try and communicate with your developer and you find out he hasn't started it, or he's been sitting there, or he's on some other project, or he's disappeared altogether. You need regular consistent communication with them and that way then you can be assured that he is working hard moving your project forward and you're getting any questions, you're able to deal with any problems really straight away. The fifth thing, is just to understand why developers sometimes don't communicate back to you, and often it's because, in a way their embarrassed, they have a problem and they don't have the solution and the thing is you know, you could probably work around any problem that comes up. And between you - you can find the solution, but when the developer has it on their own, then they can really struggle and instead of coming back to you, and this is often the cultural thing, instead of coming back to you and saying, "Hey, I got a problem. I can't solve this." Often, they'll just go quiet and you can lose weeks of time that way. That's why it's important to be on top of it, hear from them every day, check on progress and see your code and your project developing really, really nicely. I hope you found that useful. That's Paul Clifford from Disruptware.   Recommended Resources: 1. oDesk - https://www.odesk.com/ 2.

Growing your business using APIs // Video Transcript: Paul: Hi. It's Paul Clifford from Disruptware and I just want to talk about the four ways of increasing your revenue and growing your business using APIs. Now an API stands for an 'Application Programming Interface' and essentially all it is - is a way of two different applications communicating with each other. Essentially it's something you should incorporate into your SaaS model if you're building an online app, because it's a really a great way of growing your business. You can do this in four different ways. 4 Ways To Use APIs: 1.      To get new customers. 2.      Charge for usage. 3.      Content syndication. 4.      Increasing the consumption of data or service. First of all, you can use it simply to get new customers and you do that by sharing your API with another Cloud application or another SaaS app and integrating the two and of course the partner who you've integrated with, they'll communicate to their customers that they're integrated with you. So you're going to get a slice of their customer base and the reverse is true as well. Secondly, you can just charge for usage of the API. So if someone has some other tool that they want to access the same sort of data that you're giving away in your API then you could just charge them based on usage. So charge them based on clicks or queries or the amount of data transferred. There are lots of different ways of doing that. The third thing, is content syndication and this is what newspapers do. Newspapers and news organizations, they publish content and they're dependent on users consuming that. They will provide APIs to consumers and to second tier news organizations so that they can get more people reading their content, get more traffic, more clicks and of course more revenue. The fourth thing, is just generally increasing the consumption of your data or service and it's something that for example Amazon will do to their current customers. They'll ensure that there's lots of different ways of using their API to grow the usage, because of course at the bottom within Amazon they charge based on storage and usage and that's what they want to increase. So providing as many avenues as possible for customers to use their service, increases their overall revenue. So, I hope you find that useful, that's four ways of using APIs to grow your business and this is Paul Clifford from Disruptware.   Recommended Resources: 1. Amazon Simple Storage API Documentation - http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/s3/