

Building Stuff To Help You Sell The Stuff You Build - urlwolf
http://www.slideshare.net/patio11/microconf-presentation-2013?utm_source=slideshow&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=upload_digest

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patio11
Personally I'd suggest you guys wait until they post the video and I
transcriptify it, since the talk is better than the slide deck, but if you
absolutely HAVE to read something this morning then skip to the section marked
"Quick Wins for SaaS businesses" and look for the five bits of advice with big
ugly yellow stars next to them.

If you have questions, I'd be happy to... board a 12 hour flight back to Japan
in approximately 5 minutes. Feel free to ask me over email some other day.

~~~
hiddenfeatures
Have a good flight back home, Patrick. It has been a pleasure to meet you in
real life. Thanks for all the information you shared and for entertaining us
at the buffet. Those stories were gold :-)

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Uchikoma
OT: Attended patio11 and Colins email bootcamp, was excellent. Had to share
this.

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rcavezza
Last year's complete transcript and video:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-
who...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who-would-
rather-be-building-stuff/)

~~~
ericabiz
Your link is from his Microconf 2012 talk, where the OP's link on Slideshare
is from the talk he did this year, a few days ago.

Complete notes from all Microconf 2013 talks (including Patrick's, Jason
Cohen's, mine) are here: <http://www.it-engelhardt.de/microconf-2013-hub-
page/>

Videos should be available in a few months.

~~~
patio11
Jason Cohen, Erica, and Rob Walling all delivered probably in the top 5 of
talks I've ever seen for SaaS founders. The notes can't do them justice but
they ROFLstomp the utility of anything you'll read on the Internet this week.
(Obviously, mad props to the attendee who took it upon himself to take notes
for you all.)

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coffee
Here are some great quotes from the same event:

[http://www.it-engelhardt.de/memorable-quotes-from-
microconf-...](http://www.it-engelhardt.de/memorable-quotes-from-
microconf-2013/)

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stephanos2k
Is there / will there be a recording available online?

~~~
bdunn
Yes, LessFilms recorded all the talks. No idea what the turnaround time will
be. IIRC, last year it took 6+ months to get online.

MicroConf was AMAZING. If you haven't seen Patrick speak, you really need to.
And you still have a chance to this month in Philadelphia:
<http://baconbiz.com>

~~~
hiddenfeatures
I think, that it is a marketing thing as well. You just don't want to put out
the videos shortly after the conference, because of all the people who paid
$700+ to attend. They might feel betrayed and appreciate having a bit of a
head start.

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lifeisstillgood
Agreed - I am actually building my own CMS which I really really need to use
to launch my blog Real Soon Now.

So its OSS, which may or may not be a good idea, but this does beg the
question - how much of my needs are likely to replicate into the communities
needs or is it just worthwhile for everyone sticking with their own me-ware
for now?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Let me rephrase that to see why the downvotes

I like patio11's approach and agree we should write our own business systems
to meet our particular need - I am finishing off a CMS that I have also
opensourced (it's text and templates and cookies for tracking, about 100
lines)

Now I am not promoting that codebase, only releasing it cos I don't want to
waste a GitHub private repo. But I do wonder if we should all write our own
CMS / mailchimp / an tester or if we should community build them or just roll
up packages

Partly I am asking what are the common functions we should all have a custom
builds and partly where do we draw the line on build vs "buy"

~~~
WA
What I need and what is almost impossible to find is a good Autoresponder
email system with a template editor, a few stats and basic list
management/segmentation.

The catch: I must be allowed to self-host. This is almost impossible to find
since everybody seems to rely on 3rd party email services.

~~~
ericabiz
Oy. Do NOT self-host an email autoresponder. I wrote a great comment about
this a few years ago on Brian Armstrong's blog--and he's now doing Coinbase
after deciding the email stuff wasn't worth it.

Look in my profile to see who I am and why I'd say this, but as a quick
summary, I have years of experience and have also helped companies set up
autoresponders that do over 1M emails a day, and that's exactly why I say
this. It is a clusterf*ck and a rabbit hole a mile deep and a mile wide. Pay
the money (or in Mailchimp's case, don't pay any money until you get bigger.)
It is worth EVERY penny.

By the way, any good autoresponder (I use Mailchimp and Aweber and like them
both for different purposes) will let you easily export/back up contacts, and
none of the big companies are going anywhere.

~~~
WA
Thanks, I'll check it out. Do you happen to know the blog post title? Since
comments are loaded via Disqus, I can't search for them with Google :(

~~~
ericabiz
Ah, finally found it! <http://brianarmstrong.org/blog/my-next-project/> Ctrl-F
'Erica' and read the whole thread of him/me! :) (He did launch the biz, but
shut it down not long after that. Coinbase is doing much better! ;)

~~~
WA
Thanks for taking the time to find the blog post. I definitely need to
reconsider whether or not self-hosting is such a good idea or not.

~~~
13rules
Do you want to become an expert in email deliverability, DNS, bounces, white
listing, DKIM, SPF?

Or do you want to sell your product?

It boils down to that. Spend your time doing what you are GREAT at and what
you WANT to do. Are you great at email deliverability? Do you want to spend
your time becoming an expert on that? Probably not.

I know how to change the oil in my car. I know how to mow my lawn. I know how
to clean toilets. I don't do any of those things because they are a huge waste
of my time that is better spent elsewhere. Same thing goes here.

