Rob Walling's 2024 mid-year update: burnout recovery and business progress

Executive overview

Sustained over-travel through 2023 pushed Rob Walling into deep burnout by year-end. Two weeks of near-total downtime, combined with a hard cap on 2024 travel, cleared it by mid-January.

This episode covers three areas: an update on burnout recovery, a revisit of two 2024 predictions, and a status report on MicroConf, Tiny Seed, and two upcoming books.

Catching and acting on burnout early — before it becomes chronic — is the lever most founders underestimate.

Burnout: what happened and what fixed it

• Seven business trips in 12 weeks in fall 2023 triggered severe burnout
• Symptoms: loss of desire to work, inability to be present, running on obligation alone
• Fix: ~two weeks nearly off work, preceded by a family holiday in Cancun
• Decision: dramatically cut 2024 travel; shelved MicroConf Locals indefinitely
• MicroConf Locals were dropped because a 30–40 person turnout no longer justified the team effort and cost
• 2024 plan: only two in-person events — flagship Atlanta and MicroConf Europe (Croatia, October)
• By mid-January 2024, burnout had fully cleared and has not returned

Prediction revisit: vertical vs. horizontal SaaS

• Original 2024 prediction: opportunity in vertical SaaS (industry-specific software)
• New addition: orthogonal SaaS — horizontal software focused on a specific role or job title (e.g., HR, recruiting)
• Orthogonal differs from true horizontal (e.g., SignWell, Castos) because the ICP is defined by title, not just any user
• Advantage: you know exactly where your buyers gather — events, Slack groups, Stack Overflow
• True horizontal plays face bigger competitors and harder marketing without a clear ICP
• Tiny Seed's most successful portfolio companies tend to be vertical or orthogonal

Prediction revisit: Twitter acquisition in 2024

• Original prediction: Twitter changes hands in 2024
• Rob doubles down — Tesla layoffs and Elon's divided focus increase likelihood
• Speculated buyers include Yahoo, Microsoft, or similar players
• Acknowledges prior predictions have taken two to four years to materialise

MicroConf and team updates

• Producer Xander, who ran MicroConf for 10 years, is leaving for his next venture
• Podcast numbers grow slowly but steadily; the April Fool's episode was an unexpected hit
• An unlisted YouTube channel carries audio-only podcast episodes with a logo

Tiny Seed updates

• Batches 13 and 14 offers complete; total portfolio now just over 170 companies invested
• Rob's personal investment count approaching 200 companies across his career
• At ~150–200 companies, pattern recognition across the portfolio becomes statistically meaningful
• First-ever TinyFest held in Cancun in January — founders from multiple batches met in person; a second is being planned
• Tiny Seed Tales season five is in production; a major pivot by the featured founder has slowed the timeline; expected release: fall 2024

Books: current status

• SaaS Playbook: nearly 24,000 copies sold in under a year; selling 1,000–1,200 copies/month
• Start Small, Stay Small: ~30,000 copies over 14 years — Playbook is on track to surpass it
• Exit book (co-authored with Dr. Sherry Walling): ~20–25% complete; covers mindset before, during, and after a sale; broader than SaaS-only; targeting summer writing push
• SaaS Launchpad: manuscript complete but needs revision; a prequel to the SaaS Playbook covering ideation, validation, launch-list building, and early-stage thinking
• Launchpad deliberately less prescriptive than Playbook — early-stage is "a compass, not a map"
• No confirmed launch date for Launchpad; Rob is avoiding three book releases within 12 months