I'm headed out on (another!) trip, this time for a wedding. Before I leave, I wanted to send you three things. ------------- Draft: I'm 44, and my brain is getting worse 🧠🔥I'm working on this draft for a future newsletter/blog post. If you want to read it in its current form and give me feedback/comments, it's here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15mrg8c3HGKEJyC9tgSwBVuIvWPYUr9Xw0fEkReRH0Fw/edit#heading=h.kgdbinp41iso If you have thoughts, please comment on the Google Doc or reply to my email. ---------------- Today is International Podcast Day!
I'm doing a deal for people who want to try Transistor and podcasting: 👉 40% off for 4 months of podcast hosting when you use this link I'd love to see more people start a podcast! ---------------- SwagFan updateThanks to everyone who gave such nice feedback about the "pipeline problem," my hiring Ferdinand over the summer, and our project, SwagFan. I just recorded a new video demo: We're still working towards a launch, likely sometime after October 18th. 🙏 Thank you so much to the ten people who signed up for early access! (If you want to try it out, it's a 14-day free trial, then $99 / year; sign up here) Cheers, PS: If you're a Transistor customer, we're holding a contest for anyone who publishes an episode today. This newsletter is brought to you by the MegaMaker Slack |
I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
I didn't expect the last newsletter to generate so much debate! It ended up getting posted to Hacker News. Aaron and Ian talked about it on Mostly Technical, and many other folks responded in comments and emails. Some folks felt the tone was too pessimistic/defeatist. Others felt like I was discouraging older founders from starting companies. (I also had quite a few folks who responded and resonated with the spirit of the post). I recorded a response to all this feedback here: A few...
I recently listened to three podcast episodes, all with bootstrapped founders over the age of 40: Paul Jarvis has retired from Fathom Analytics Matt Wensing steps down from Summit, takes job with Customer.io Brian Casel and Jordan Gal talk about building SaaS at this stage of life It's interesting to see how differently this stage of life is compared to our 20s and 30s. (I'm 44). An Evolving Definition of Success: "I've been at Summit for 5 years. My last company took 15 years, and I didn't...
Every day in Transistor's #marketing channel in Slack, we track our new trial signups: Like most SaaS companies, our growth relies on new people finding us every day. Whenever I see these numbers, I ask myself: "Where are these signups coming from?" There's this idea in marketing that we'll be able to find a magical channel that brings in thousands of customers. But, when I look at where these signups come from, there's never one dominant source. Here's what we saw in August: Search (40%):...