This interviewed aired on January 20, 2020 with Jane Portman of Userlist. I listened to it shortly after. These are my notes and takeaways as they apply to my current place on the journey.
Starting your bootstrapping journey with a SaaS product seems like the default choice, especially for developers. But in reality there are a number of steps that could come before that - from freelancing/consulting to building your expertise while building your audience, to launching info products and productizing your services. Jane did all of that.
👩💻 📖 April Dunford, Product Positioning - they did the exercises in the book to figure how to talk about Userlist.
👩💻 👨💻 Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman - Stacking the Bricks philosophy, sale safari approach, all about building a useful product that solves a user's pain.
👨💻 📖 Nathan Berry, book Authority about teaching what you know, how to write a book
💡Selling pain killers vs. vitamins - high motivation, must have vs. nice to have / preventive.
🤣 The art of H1 is having a header on your landing page that really captures what you are about. It's like the elevator pitch for a SaaS business.
💡Writing about what you're building while you're doing it is a great way to do marketing. Working in public helps you and your potential customers. (context: Jane said this was possible because they had 3 founders and one of them could focus on this effort.)
Jane's advice for someone just starting out - start smaller. Info product experience is good. Existing category is easier. Build something and go through the entire process.
About the Interviewee - open and transparent about the entire journey, humble, full of insights, parent of three children.
You don't have to be an expert to teach people stuff, you can share your knowledge and discoveries as you learn yourself.
To hear the full story, listen to this episode on the IndieHackers Podcast. Full of insights.