Startups For the Rest of Us

In episode 637, join Rob Walling for another solo adventure as he answers a handful of listener questions. Topics covered range from hiring your first salesperson and acquiring a web app to dealing with the fear of having your idea copied and why bootstrapping a two-sided marketplace is usually a bad idea. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.  Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America. They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running. When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months.  With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week. And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups Topics we cover:  1:14 - You either die a consumer startup hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a B2B SaaS founder. 2:40 - Hiring your first salesperson 9:36 - Bootstrapping a talent marketplace 15:10 - Acquiring a web app 19:40 - Getting over your fear of being copied when doing idea validation interviews Links from the Show: Daniel Nguyen (@daniel_nguyenx)’s tweet The Mom Test  If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you. Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher Transcript: Rob Walling: If you're looking for the podcast where we talk about non venture track startups, how to build them, launch them, and grow them, you've come to the right place. It's Startups For the Rest of Us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. This week I answer listener questions ranging from which is better B2B or B2C hiring for your first sales role, bootstrapping a two-sided marketplace, and many more. If you're in the US, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving last week, and if you're everywhere else in the world, I hope you enjoy this episode as I dive in to listener questions. Before I do that, if you haven't checked out our YouTube channel, it's MicroConf.com/YouTube. And I'm releasing a video every week where I talk through specific topics. I actually have a full video on B2B versus B2C SaaS, which is better. I've talked through funnels, talked through validation, talked through lowering churn, all kinds of stuff. Every week a new video is coming out. I'd encourage you to check it out, MicroConf.com/YouTube. And with that, let's dive into listener questions. Our first question of the day, it's actually not a question, it is a statement made in a tweet by Daniel Nguyen. He runs KTool.io. And this sentiment just resonated with me, so I wanted to bring it up in this episode. His tweet reads, "You either die a consumer startup hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a B2B SaaS founder." And that is like the nerdiest humor, but I like it. I'll be honest, I have seen quiet a few B2C founders pivot. They see the churn, they see the price sensitivity, and they wind up pivoting into B2B if at all possible. And KTool actually looks like a pretty interesting tool. Send anything to Kindle Fast. So you can send blog posts, Twitter threads and newsletters to your Kindle. When I check out his pricing, it's five bucks a month, eight bucks a month, 15 bucks a month for family. And those price points are in line with something I would pay for. I think I pay, what do we pay $16 for a family plan of Spotify. And you think of the Netflix and the Disney