The Product Business

As I became a better developer over the years, I got worse at marketing. My brain can't seem to do both of those things at once. I put a post out on Twitter, and got some great responses that helped me a lot. Here's the thread: https://twitter.com/scottbolinger/status/1328750436031971328 In this episode I talk about the responses that I liked the most, and what I am doing with AppPresser marketing as a result. Enjoy!

Josh Pigford of Baremetrics talks to me about how he got 90% of the way to selling his business for 5 million dollars, and got ghosted at the last minute. He learned a lot through the process, and he tells all about it. You can read more details in his blog post here.

Cory Miller started iThemes around 2008, built a very successful business in the WordPress space, and then was acquired in 2018. He opens up about what that process has been like, and what he would recommend to other entrepreneurs.

Bryce worked in support for WooCommerce, and had a great idea for a product. He pitched it to his employers and they didn't show any interest, so he decided to quit and go it on his own. He started Metorik 3 years ago, now he has over 1000 paying customers and a couple of employees.

Brian runs Post Status, a membership site for WordPress professionals, as well as Ledger Status, a site for blockchain and cryptocurrency education. He has faced some decline in his membership at Post Status, and he talks about why, and the hard decisions he's had to make as a result. 

Tony started Sucuri, a security company, which was acquired by GoDaddy a few years ago. In this episode he gets real about what acquisition is really like as an entrepreneur, and it's not what you might expect. Tony tells us the struggles he had, including depression and self-doubt, and how there is very little fanfare in this process.  I like to hear from Tony because he plays in the big leagues, even before they were acquired they were doing 8 figures, and now they are with a multi-billion dollar company. Enjoy!

Pippin is the founder of Sandhills Development, creators of Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, and more. He has been in the WordPress product space for years and has had a lot of success. Recently he's been a bit MIA from the WordPress scene, so I talk to him about the brewery he started and what he's learned transitioning from software to beer.

Corey talks about how they are moving the needle with growth at Baremetrics, and he also breaks down a simple 2 step process for small teams and bootstrappers to think about marketing. 1. Talk to customers. Learn what they want and need to inform both product development and marketing materials. Use their language in your tweets, website copy, etc. 2. Build in public. Sell the dream, not just screenshots. Taylor Otwell is a good example. Corey also talks about how he uses mental models to inform his marketing efforts.

Chris and I talked about how people don't like to leave comments anymore, and how that has affected css-tricks.com, if at all. It used to be just him spinning up blog posts, but now he has a staff and they put much more effort into each post. We also talk about his journey creating and monetizing codepen.io, and how that is going. Other things we discuss include JAMstack, React, WordPress and more.

Jason Lengstorf, formerly of IBM and then GatsbyJS, is a developer who loves to learn. His YouTube channel Learn with Jason has tons of great videos on a variety of web development topics. In this episode we talk about if learning the hot new framework is a waste of time, where front end web development is heading, and more.