Startups For the Rest of Us
About this creator
Startups For the Rest of Us is a practical podcast for bootstrapped founders building software businesses without venture backing.
Why they're in the library
Included for clear, credible perspective as practical podcast for bootstrapped founders building software businesses without venture backing.
Showing 306 digests for Startups For the Rest of Us.
AI strategy & adoption
Podcast
Five AI insights every SaaS founder needs to act on now
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 30, 2023
AI strategy & adoption
9
Business models
6
- Adding obvious AI features is table stakes, not a competitive moat.
- Big horizontal AI plays will be won by Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
- Founders with manual text-heavy moats should treat them as eroding now.
Acquisition multiples, earnouts, and job-switching decisions for bootstrappers
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 23, 2023
Fundraising & VC
9
Pivoting
7
Customer discovery
6
- Growth rate determines whether you get a revenue or profit multiple
- Optimising for profit early can cap your exit value significantly
- If no one talks to you pre-product, they won't post-product either
Founder interviews
Podcast
How one developer built a multi-million dollar solo software business
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 16, 2023
Founder interviews
10
Bootstrapping
7
Business models
6
- Open source burnout is inevitable unless you monetise the support from day one
- Flat $1,000/year pricing beats per-use competitors at scale
- Ten years of blogging and failed projects built the trust Sidekick needed
Five hard-won lessons for bootstrapped SaaS founders
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 9, 2023
Case studies
9
Delegation
7
Bootstrapping
7
- Contractor teams feel lean but silently cap your growth potential.
- Taking lifestyle-friendly funding without lifestyle-friendly effort breaks the deal.
- Size your bets to grow — survivable mistakes should keep getting bigger.
Indie Hackers goes independent: book publishing, SaaS differentiation, and founder mindset
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 2, 2023
Business models
9
Bootstrapping
7
Resilience & grit
6
- Indie Hackers bought back from Stripe — what that actually cost them
- Self-publishing a hardback book runs $20–30k before printing
- Hire senior people early; staying the bottleneck is the biggest regret
Compliance & regulation
Podcast
When SaaS founders should start caring about sales tax
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 25, 2023
Compliance & regulation
9
Automation & tools
6
- Ignore sales tax until you hit $500K–$1M ARR
- No clean solution exists — merchant of record is pick-your-poison
- Enforcement risk is low today, but acquisitions can expose undisclosed liabilities
MVP & prototyping
Podcast
Concierge onboarding, brand naming, cold outreach, and product prioritisation for early SaaS
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 18, 2023
MVP & prototyping
8
Customer experience
7
Prospecting & outreach
6
- Low churn means nothing if users never reach value — invest human hours.
- Memorable brand names beat keyword-stuffed ones, especially in visual niches.
- Validate by marketing first; manual onboarding lets you skip fixing bugs early.
Taste vs. shipping, being first vs. best, and knowing what you want
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 11, 2023
Niche selection
8
Goal setting
8
Identity & self-belief
6
- Ship before it's perfect — great artists did, and so should you.
- Positioning beats head-to-head competition against well-funded incumbents.
- Copy the wrong role model and you'll optimize for someone else's goal.
Pricing strategy, idea validation, and SaaS career advice from Rob Walling
Startups For the Rest of Us
April 4, 2023
Pricing strategy
9
Customer discovery
7
Pricing psychology
6
- Zero churn at B2B often means you're undercharging, not thriving.
- Seat-based pricing only works when each login shows different data.
- Enterprise deals below $25k–$35k rarely justify procurement overhead.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Shipping a daily tech podcast solo for ten years: lessons from Tom Merritt
Startups For the Rest of Us
March 28, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Processes & SOPs
7
Resilience & grit
6
- The streak itself is the motivation — don't break the chain.
- Fear of failure persisted for eight years before it felt real.
- Build external accountability so willpower isn't required.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Three mental frameworks for founders: resilience, taste, and success planning
Startups For the Rest of Us
March 21, 2023
Resilience & grit
9
Goal setting
8
Identity & self-belief
6
- A symbolic 'Armageddon beer' instantly resets founder panic to rational thinking.
- The taste-skill gap is normal — volume of work is the only way to close it.
- Asking 'what if I succeed?' protects against arrival fallacy before you get there.
Developer superpowers, no-code trade-offs, and when to skip a $5K angel check
Startups For the Rest of Us
March 14, 2023
Business models
7
Bootstrapping
7
Growth hacking
5
- Marketing copywriting beats coding skill as a developer-founder's top asset.
- No-code is fine for peripheral features — never for core application logic.
- $5K angel checks cost more in legal fees and distraction than they deliver.
How BlueTick went from struggling side hustle to profitable SaaS
Startups For the Rest of Us
March 7, 2023
Case studies
9
Pivoting
7
B2B sales
5
- One agency trial — executed well — triggered 500x email volume growth
- Expansion revenue, not marketing, drove MRR doubling in three months
- Being solo let Mike make commitments no larger competitor could offer
Buying vs. building SaaS, growing with a day job, and finding acquisition targets
Startups For the Rest of Us
February 28, 2023
Business models
8
SEO
6
Customer discovery
5
- A $10K SaaS acquisition usually buys only a codebase — aim higher.
- Run one fast and one slow marketing channel simultaneously when time-constrained.
- A bilingual interpreter loses 10–15% of user research signal, not 50%.
Founding Sales: a founder's handbook for B2B SaaS selling
Startups For the Rest of Us
February 21, 2023
B2B sales
9
Objection handling
7
Closing techniques
6
- Founders must sell first — you can't hire sales until the motion repeats.
- Losing 75–90% of deals is normal; mindset, not talent, is the fix.
- Objection handling is where the most important sales work happens.