31 Quick Wins for Growing a Million Dollar Startup

In this talk from MicroConf Growth US 2022, Rob Walling walks through 31 quick tactics for that get outsized results in your business. The tactics are broken up into the following categories:

– Growth
– Product
– Productivity
– Operations

Links from the video:
MicroConf US 2023:
Get the slide deck here:
Rob Walling I Twitter:

Watch more videos like this 👇
Baking Marketing into Your Product Roadmap with Patty Radford Henderson –
How to Go To Market Across Many Verticals with Asia Orangio –

📈 SUBSCRIBE:

Welcome to MicroConf – Where Independent SaaS Founders Launch, Meet, Learn, and Grow! MicroConf is the world’s most trusted community for bootstrapped SaaS founders.

MicroConf is a community of SaaS founders that brings together bootstrapped and independently-funded B2B SaaS companies who are not looking to chase “unicorn status” or venture capital.

We provide SaaS training, education and networking opportunities for other founders who are pre-product, focused on scaling their business, and looking for an exit strategy.

MicroConf began more than a decade ago. Since then, we’ve hosted more than 25 events with nearly 200 speakers, helped thousands of attendees, and impacted tens of thousands more through our videos and online community.

Ready to take your SaaS startup to the next level? Check these out:

In Person Events:
Digital Events:
Mastermind Matching:

Let’s Connect…
Website:
Facebook:
Twitter:

---

I broke them up into Categories as I'm apt to do so we're Going to start with growth kind of Growth or marketing uh we have seven in Product five in productivity Um which are kind of the fun ones and Then eight in operations internal Opposite of business what's funny I've Never done a talk like this and I was Joking with Xander this is my listicle Talk right because it's like 31 things To change your business I had an idea For this Um a couple years ago probably five or Six years ago I sketched some things out And I came up with like 15 or 20 like Things you could throw out and I was Going to do it almost as like an Attendee talk at some at microconf Before I get started as I always do I Enjoy I'm really glad that I am not the First speaker to bring on some pictures Of my why of my family because every Time a microcomp I do it and these are the peeps right This is Finn and Fisher many of you have Seen since this guy would carry in into A microcomp like you know on a BabyBjorn Or whatever the dog is the new addition But I appreciated Um you know the from dawn earlier today Because this is always I like to level set this like if you've Heard me on startups for the rest of us

I refer to Freedom purpose and Relationships and the relationship part This is where it starts for me right and This is why I've done entrepreneurship This is why I've done what I've done so I just want to remind folks to be Thinking about that for yourself and not Sacrifice it Okay so let's dive in so growth And I was going to say how many are in Here but I don't remember 11 15. anyways We'll get in it so the first one Is to qualify and Route demos Automatically qualifying route demo Requests automatically so here's a home Page and this is a Tiny Seed company That does re-commerce and they added the Book a demo buttons right as a lot of us Do the moment you add book a demo you Start getting a bunch of demo requests Hopefully the moment you get a bunch of Demo requests you find out a bunch of Those demo requests are people that Really aren't qualified and the people That maybe are only going to pay you 20 A month or 30 a month so we ran into This at drip specifically We were we had so much inbound which is A good problem to have but it's still a Problem when you're getting seven demos Booked per day and you're the only Person doing it so what we did was uh Put a little snippet of JavaScript and This is the form they have today I'll be

Honest ours was much simpler I think Ours was first name and email and Subscriber count basically we have a Value metric right it's more subscribers More money so you got to figure out what Is your single maybe two qualifying Questions if it seats how many seats are You going to use if it's contacts how Many contacts do you have if it's Subscribers how many do you have Um and that's what you're really trying To do and there's a competitor of ours That has done a similar thing this is Not an uncommon thing to do okay but the The cool part and the thing that we had Never seen done when we implemented this Is that Then we decided so our base plan was 50 Bucks a month and in the early days we Wanted to demo everybody because we were Learning it was customer development by The time you hit 10 20 30k Only we're demoing to 99 a month and up Right so with a quick snippet of JavaScript we were able to say Are they qualified our current Definition of qualified is they'll pay Us at least 49 or 99 a month but we can Just change that with line of JavaScript At any time if they're qualified we Would say great we'd send them straight To R then it was calendly and now it's a Savvy Cal link but we send them straight To our booking link right

And if they were not qualified we sent Them straight to a video demo of me they Still got a demo and it started with hey Everyone balling I'm the founder of drip Co-founder of drip sorry Derek I'm the Co-founder drip and um this is my quick You know as a quick demo I'm gonna walk Through some features it was like 10 or 12 minutes so they still got a demo I Didn't like oh you free trial like they Didn't think that they got you know Short shrifted so to speak Um and then over time you know you hit 50k a month and it's like well we're Only going to talk to 199 a month and up And then we hit and then we hired a new Sales person it's like well we have a Bunch of bandwidths so we'd back it off To 99 right and then it was like before Long it was three four five hundred Dollars a month in order to to do a demo So this is a nice thing to implement Definitely can do it in under an hour And uh I hope that one's helpful Number two monitor your sending IPS and Domains I ran an ESP and so many things go wrong With email sending Um so many that I vowed to never start a Startup that ever sent email ever again And I joked that my password resets Would from here on beat Via SMS because I so hated email but the the trouble is Blacklists happen for reasons that may

Or may not be your fault but the problem Is is even if you use third party let's Say you're using mail gun mandrel Postmark send grid any of these you know API layers that you can send emails some Of those we found didn't monitor their Own IPS so we would be sending through Them we had dedicated IPS and it would Ping this is MX toolbox is a tool we Used MX toolbox would ping us and say You're on Blacklist and we'd go ask this Provider and they would say yeah it's Not your fault it was someone else and It's like but why didn't you fix this Like we notified them so Um it's pretty easy for your IPS whether You're sending to yourself or through a Third party API to get on a blacklist And once they do your deliverability Goes to shed and your open rates go in The tank so MX toolbox is a tool we use There may be a better one now but I Swear it was 10 20 bucks it was almost Not a non-existent cost The other thing is you have IP addresses Which you can usually if you have a send Grid account or whatever you can just go See which IPS are being sent through But you also have a domain sending Domain microgrump.com tinyc.com that you Should also be tracking on an ongoing Basis I think because frankly given how Many emails we all send and how critical This is if you're not getting you know

The equivalent of a Google alert when You're when you're a blacklisted it's a Problem and it's really this is 100 Doable in like 20 or 30 minutes the Hardest part is going to be which Domains are we using to send uh I'm Sorry not which domains which IPS are we Using to set that's gonna be the hardest Part otherwise setting it up is not a Big deal Third tip encourage annual upgrades at The right time so a lot of us we like Annual plans as as Founders some some do Some don't but annual plans give us a Lot of cash up front gives us a quick Payback on ad spend and many of us this Is casto's pricing page just as an Example so many of us at sign up say you Can choose self-select pay monthly you Pay annual and you get a discount uh Usually it's like 10 months for the Price at 12. no no it's the other way 12 Months for the price of 10. and That's cool and some certain percentage Will self-select and depending on your Audience 10 20 percent And then either people never pitch again Or they pitch it at the wrong time and What we found was the best time and I've Seen a few other uh companies do this as Well the best time Involves churn and tracking churn so I'm Going to show you this image when I Googled um because I don't really have

Like access easy access to a churn graph Anyway any anymore so I Google like uh Churn graph churn image every single one Is like this and at the bottom if you Can't see it it says Revenue turn 10 and It's just a it's just a smooth graph That's like 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Right well that's not how churn goes if You've ever run an app I mean it's much Much more this is a real turn graph Usually You lose a lot early on 30 60 90 that's The usual range Um the Sasa SAS apps I've run have had Tremendous had the highest turn between Um 0 and 60 or 0 in 90 days and then it Flattens out right and that's Essentially what this does although this One goes almost out six months before it Hits the four the four percent Mark Which still feels a little high to me But anyways you can see that if you're Pitching let's say you're in the app You've converted to paid this is month One and you Um send them an email an automated email That says hey you should uh upgrade to Annual well you're still churning out Eight percent of people in month one ish And then six percent and then five Percent like Everybody's not onboarded yet right are People mentally committed yet so really What we saw and again our graph was

Different Um last three SAS apps I had they all Were in the 60 90 day window so what we Would find is when did the churn when Did churn really start flattening out And in fact if you Actually like Like uh all the time so find where it Starts to plateau in this case it would Be about six months I'd say Um and this is when I would be pitching Annual because you know people turn out At such a tremendously low uh percentage At this point And this is like the email text I said Um that we would put it in an automated Email that went out again for us it was 60 days so then it was about within a Month of that point so it was 60 to 90 Days at some point they would get an Email and it was this it's like hey First name I want to let you know about A way to get two months free if you Upgrade you'll get blah blah blah it Only takes a click you can find out more And upgrade here warmly Rob founder it Was something like that Um and you can feel free to swipe this And edit it you know but it's just a Very simple I always find stuff as the Founder and um we had good you know much Better uptake on this than trying to Pitch it at any other any other time All right number four help yourself by

Helping a B2B writer if you're doing any Type of content marketing or link Building you may have used Harrow which Is help a reporter out That's an interesting service and it Takes a lot of work Um to monitor you get a ton of you get Two or three emails a day each email has A list of like reporters or press or Even just like bloggers content Marketers who are looking to to get an Answer to a question like hey I'm doing A Roundup of the best marketing Approaches and you know b2c to B to C SAS today and you respond and maybe get A link Harrow is cool and it's very big And it takes a lot of work I have Submitted personally probably over the Course of several years and I used to Pay a little agency called bite size PR To do it for me too I've probably submitted 50 pitches to Harrow and I think I've gotten Three or four like links so it you know There's it's just a high signal to noise Uh type of thing or high noise to signal I think for them there's a new service That has just come out in the last year And it's called help a B2B writer and so It's a much more of a bunch of folks Like Us in Microsoft and in fact I Noticed that the domains come through I'm like there was like a Shopify

Article like a month ago there was um There's some other kind of Again B2B SAS startups that have come Out so I signed up for this just to be Curious I'm not even really looking for Links or anything but I get what you and You say you know there's SAS there's Marketing um the categories there is E-commerce there's a few others and you Can tell it's someone kind of in our Sphere more and it's lower traffic Um but I've submitted three and I think I got two links already and so you know Maybe this gets bigger as big as Harrow Someday and it and then it doesn't work Anymore but for now it's a pretty cool Service Um I get two emails a day and they Usually have one or two pitches and They're usually good have been a good Fit for me so this is just an example Looking for SAS business stuff for Buyers to share their experience And purchasing software for their Company they should talk to April she Has a great analogy for that you should Send the toilet analogy to them Alternative.co so anyways yeah that's Just a fun again it's a fun little tip That subscribing to that takes you less Than 60 Minutes I guarantee it All right number five is to consider a Google analytics alternative So

I when I look ahead three five years I Don't know if Google analytics is still Going to be legal in Europe and who the Heck knows what what else is coming Google is still gdpr compliant Technically until it's but not by the Austrian government so they're like nope Google analytics constitutes a violation Of gdpr and it is possible that more European authorities will soon follow so This is an article from I don't know It's the past few months Tell me if I'm hedging my bets I'm signing up for a backup platform and I'm installing tracking code now so I Have history and two platforms It's less than 60 minutes The platform there's a couple platforms I actually asked in tinyseed slack to Find out what it what is everybody using Today for not using Google analytics but I remember 10 years ago it was clicky Get clicky.com they were the only Alternative but they're a little you Know they're a little longer in the Tooth I would say than than maybe you Want to use but fathom many of you know The founders of fathom they have a fun Podcast and they're in the bootstrapper Um you know kind of microcomp related Crowd so fathom's a good one and Certainly reasonably priced they also Have uptime monitoring built in which is Another tip that I have later and then

He heap.io is is the other one people Said there's there's several when you Google for it but these are the kind of Two I think that personally I'd probably Use fathom but I would I would at least Compare the two and again am I saying Uninstall Google analytics today and run Away not not particularly but I do think Having Um redundancy in a lot of these areas I Think can be helpful Tip number six and this is this one is Just so clever and so Simple to do it's to yourdomain.com Meeting Redirect that to your scheduling link Use calendly savvical I got this from a Founder Uh Andy cabasso of postaga you can see It at the bottom and I needed a slide With visuals so I went and I HD access is the top one I was like Breaking out my htaccess Linux stuff Second one is um was that Squarespace And the third one's WP engine that's how You do it but if if you have Linux the Top one is how you would redirect your That would be your meeting link to my Meeting URL you want to do that I'll Suddenly have a bunch of calendar Invites I'll be like hey I can do a demo Of stuff Um that's not my real meeting URL either That would be dumb so oh and it's a it's

A 302 by the way not a 301 because it is Not permanent right you want to be we Want it to check back you want browsers To check back so Simple Two slides but that was when I was like I need to do this that's kind of cool Number seven is to keep a marketing Change log and this is something I don't Remember if we heard about this or if we Came up with this idea honestly but we All know what a change log is in uh you Know for your code where you can see the Commits and the labels and the branches And the stuff you've done over the past X months you can go back through it yeah We changed this oh this broke well why Did it break well because we have a Change log So we were Having trials one month and suddenly we Didn't have any more trials and we said What broke and we said we don't know we Don't have a marketing change law so we Implemented one and it's a Google sheet And this I literally I went into my Google Docs account and I searched for Marketing changelog that is the real Marketing changelog from trip before we Got acquired it it ends in April you can See like real names in here anna right Many of you know her as customer success And all it is is it's a date it's what We did and then we categorized stuff in

Case we want to look for it and this is All manual didn't pull from anything but More than once we referred back and we Were like why did why did this number Change because oh and I just I noticed This right before look at uh number Three It's 11 10 November 10th of 2015 added Subscriber count drop down to request a Demo that was we literally got Ah that's Cool maybe this is all ties together so Anyways marketing changelog I recommend It I mean honestly I think everyone Should do this getting one started is Certainly less than an hour maintaining It maybe a little more discipline right You need some type of process and to let A team know when you do stuff split Tests this would be if I added a removed Credit card this would be if I made Major changes to any type of marketing Campaign rolled out a new one pulled one Back because attribution is hard these Days we know that and this is a way to At least have some dates and have some Uh you know some info Number eight simple one most people know Google Alerts you want your probably Your name you want your company name Your product name probably some Competitors that you're monitoring Monitoring Google Alerts are delayed 12 Hours 24 hours even if you They're not instant because it's

Crawling the web and stuff But I still have all that and F5 bot Which is this free tool that is super Fast crawler of Reddit and Hacker News And this thing called lobsters which I've never even heard of but red and Hacker News is what I use it for and so Now I'm getting Um you know I have startups for the rest Of us Minecraft Tiny Seed I have my book Titles I have my name just in case Something gets mentioned in a Hacker News thread I can pop in and be like hey Thanks for the mention yeah actually and I can clarify or I can say I'm working On an updated version of that book for The 10th year in a row Um but F5 bot is free and I don't know I've been using it for eight months this Is look at this amazing email they sent Me it's not some great ux but I mean I Can't even read that but you know There's a blue line that says Reddit Comment I click on that on my phone it Gets me into Reddit and I'm like oh cool Someone just what did they mention here Startups for the rest of us yeah and so I was like hey thanks you oh it's this Specific episode right they just Mentioned a The podcast itself and I went and Googled the episode and brought it into The thread so it was like just being Helpful on the internet

So that's a cool little tool Number nine is a fun little exercise if You've never done it we often look at Churn and I you should never look at one Churn number my churn is seven percent That don't tell me that okay and number One it should be Revenue churn customer Churn is secondary but number two date Based because you're churned before 60 90 days is high and then it goes down Low so tell me about those and then the Next fun adventure is to segment your Churn by a price point and you can pick Tier you can do it by tiers Or you could just make an arbitrary call And be like well all the chairs below 50 We think churn higher so let's let's Just do that so there's this tweet I Sent that unfortunately accidentally Deleted Um since then for more than a decade I've been saying lower paying customers Churn faster here's another data point It's from a Tiny Seed Company it's Anonymized but it's used with permission So segment a which we're about to see The numbers on segment a is the the less Expensive right 29 bucks a month and Under Segment b 99 a month and up so all right Enormous difference in churn and net Churn and LTV so this is it segment a Who pays less than 29 turned at 11 Segment B it pays 99 and up turns it

Minus four percent so net negative churn Which is a 15 turn swing which is you Know catastrophic or or the opposite of Catastrophic if if you're on the the Plus side of that Um you know when trying to grow a Company with 11 net churn versus minus Four percent if that was your whole Business is just night and day it can Mean the difference of having a quarter Million dollars versus a million in Error or more The reason I'm saying to do this is to You maybe you can do it with a SQL query Maybe you do it you export from stripe And you literally do it in a Google Sheet just once just to see what it's Like statically it's not going to change Dramatically it's not going to be 100 Higher 50 lower next month you have an Idea of it do it every few months it Just gives you insights into who your Best customers are I mean the lifetime Value difference think of this like even If it wasn't 99 and up if it was 29 and 99 points and then you do the churn the Lifetime values on those things are like Well you can spend so much more money so It gives you insight into things like That your lower plans probably aren't That helpful here's the caveat I'm going To say because then my next point is to Consider dropping your lowest plan just Because your churn is high on your

Lowest plan does not mean you should Drop your lowest plan because sometimes Your lowest plan you're capturing the Market they don't go to competitors when You know at the lower price points and Especially if they feed an auto upgrade Into your 99 plans but if there's not a Lot of upgrading happening that's when You think do I just have two products I Have an expensive product that's 99 Bucks with great churn and I have a kind Of a product that everyone turns out of And it's 29 and no one's upgrading That's to me the signal to think Maybe I should just hide this plan and See what happens so it's not a direct Absolute yes you should do it but it is Something that is fun to know and good To know as you allocate resources to Different types of customers we actually Pumped in when we used help Scout we had A custom bar on the side a custom widget And we would pull in what plan people Were on how long like what they paid us To date how many support requests all This stuff such that we could I don't Remember doing this but if we could have Like had a priority support tier where Basically if you pay us more we respond Quicker but I don't remember necessarily Doing that So as I said number 10 is drop your Lowest plan can think about dropping Your lowest plan with the caveat that I

Said earlier Um of course we know that the first Order effect dropping your lowest plan Is it should it should increase your Average revenue per user Um and then I have these fancy graphs of These three companies that I uh advise That like all they did was increase Their prices and you know the graphs Went up and these are legit like actual Graphs So The hard part The hard part about increasing prices is There's a lot of hard parts and I did a 50-minute talk on this at microgrump Europe that Talk's going to be out soon Whenever we get it uh launched and all I Talk about is like how to Think Through Pricing changes how whether to you know Grandfather or not Um and then how to communicate it if You're going to do it how much to raise Value metrics all this stuff so it's a Whole talk unto itself And in that talk I have this you know This tip and I say if you if you're just Scared to do all that For a week just hide your lowest pricing Plan and see what happens just play with It Do do your sign ups just go away or do Half your sign ups from 999 plan go away But the other half go to 49.99 because

Suddenly that's a very different Business that you're running right so It's just this is the easiest simplest When I you can't raise prices in under An hour there's too many things you Could hide this on your pricing page in Less than an hour and see You'd then Need to monitor it over the course of a Week or two though All right that was number 10. number 11 Is to make and ask after a successful Support ticket but yeah so uh you can Ask for a testimonial or you can ask for Like a review in captera if you guys are A G2 crowd or one of these things and The idea is if someone great support you Know you've done it you respond and Someone's like oh my gosh I can't Believe you implemented that feature so Fast oh my gosh that was an amazing Experience that you just made my day You're the best and usually we're like Hey thanks archive because I'm in a big Hurry and support so instead of that Could we steal this email that I wrote For this presentation that says hey That's great to hear because I'm acting Like they just complimented us right That's great to hear we work hard to Provide amazing support your email is a Great testimonial for that ooh did Anyone catch what I did there Which has me thinking would you mind if We took a sentence or two from your

Email and used it as a testimonial on Our website we love showing potential Users blah blah blah no pressure If not That's like the me not being a sales guy Right the no pressure thing you can uh Edit to your own accord thanks Rob Because in customer support this Rob Guys a lot of a lot of roles he's the Founder and customers were anyways steal That text if you want to Um Auto you know put it in the uh what Are they called Snippets right when You're responding to support boom it's Just a keyword thing and see what Happens implementing that in your help Desk software will be less than an hour And then send it out five times next Week and just just see what happens Okay so everyone if you've seen me speak Before you know that I have in two Intermissions in most of my talks And that's because I talk fast and I get Tired of hearing myself talk versus this Much and so does everyone else so this Is the first one they tend to be the Short little you know kind of hopefully Fun videos Um this is one of my I'm not on Tick Tock but someone posted this and this is Perhaps my favorite Tick Tock I've ever Seen and it involves Portland Oregon And Minneapolis and how they are so Hipster and similar but not the same so Here we go do we have volume on my on my

Slides awesome Hello Are you a liberal hipster who likes to Collect Tape cassettes or some but you're Not so far gone that Portland is a good Fit for you come join us in softcore Portland also known as Minneapolis here In diet Portland we like vinyl records And ethically sourced coffee But we're not necessarily full-blown Communists here in Portland light we Believe in gay rights but we also Believe that heterosexual relationships Are okay too so I like that because we Portland and Minneapolis are in this Like hipster fight of that we have this Battle every year of like who has the Most bike Lanes right most miles of bike Lane and it's funny everybody from Portland who sees this just cracks up so Um All right Group two is product A couple of these are some suggestions From from Founders Um which I was doing I asked for Founders because it's like yo I haven't Installed like I haven't done a lot of Product stuff in six years so my stuff's A little bit out of date so a few of These I hope are helpful Um the first one which just caught me Totally out of the blue because I'd

Never even heard of this Install microphone microconf Microsoft Clarity I didn't even know what it was So I Googled it and it's basically heat Mapping and it is Um like uh screen recording But here's the thing and I saw the Homepage and I'm like sweet so it's a SAS product what is what is the hack Here gdpr and CCPA ready no sampling Built on open source and then this is From Pierre de wolf of scraping B many Of you may have seen him on Twitter So I clicked on pricing to say like well If it's just recommending a paid tool I Don't is that make this something I want To do and it says Clarity it's free Forever enjoy all the features of Clarity zero costs will never run into Traffic limits or be forced to upgrade To a paid version gdpr CCPA ready no Sampling built on open source so I I Haven't personally tried this but Pierre Swears by it and I feel like it would be Something I would be trying in less than 60 minutes Tomorrow All right this was another tip that just Had never occurred to me it's to if You're on AWS enable S3 versioning And what versioning does is all your S3 Buckets you start having Versions so if you go in and delete Something you can get it back if you go

In and modify something you can get the Version back we know what versioning is Right The cost is from what I've heard Absolutely minimal Um Benedict daika of user list gave me This tip and I said how much cost has it Increased and he said I don't know I Think our total S3 bill is five dollars Per month or maybe euros and I was like Yeah it doesn't matter if a Euro five Dollars so I like this idea and I have heard now Now that I brought it up I started Talking to a few Founders and I had two Who told me like oh yeah no I deleted a User like something we store an S3 and I Deleted it and we had the version and I Got it back and I was like that is cheap Insurance man so I would I haven't done This but I'm gonna have to assume you Could enable this in like 10 minutes Or since it's AWS console like 30 Minutes by the time you find it All right Council all right number 14 To say 75 of you are already doing so This is also Benedict and there's a Couple Cool Tools that do this a Speedway which is uh it's actually a Tiny Seed Company he doesn't just do Like hit an API endpoint or hit an HTTP Protocol he actually has full-on Protocol Bots and browser Bots that can

See a screen and look for stuff and it's Just a very complicated uh not Complicated for you but a a healthy Implementation of what it does so it can Go deeper than just pinging an end point And telling you if it's a 200 response So speedway.app is one and then as I Mentioned before fathom has uptime Fairly simple uptime monitoring built Into that thanks Derek I had asked him Who he used for uptime and he said uh Speedway or fathom's pretty good Number 15 so we're going we're halfway There Track your knowledge based searches Track the ones where there are no Results returned And log them somewhere so if someone Were to come to your knowledge base and Type in shrimp tacos and they get zero Results we used to well it was super Hacky because we had access to the Source code it was WordPress and I went In with my PHP skills and I hacked thing That like emailed this address and then We just had them in a label And then once a week one of our customer Success people would go through that Label and a bunch of it was junk junk Spam shrimp tacos and then he'd come Upon several that were like oh they're Actually searching for something they Need to find and either we don't have an Article for it or we do have an article

But they're not finding it so he would Take that phrase and add it as like a Tag or you can just add it as a sentence At the bottom or whatever and then that Would start appearing for the search so It's just a way to help your users find Stuff if they're gonna let's be honest Most users or a lot of users don't go to Your KB and so if they're gonna do it Like let's at least give them give them A hand I wouldn't recommend the email Approach it was super hacky but if you Can log it somewhere Um that's what I would be doing and then Reviewing it weekly monthly whatever Number 16 is the one you really didn't Want to hear nobody wants to do this and It's just another email sending one but It's enabling SPF and dkim It's a lot simpler than it sounds I'm Hoping at least half of you maybe three Quarters already have this but if you go To dmarc analyzer which is this free Thing I found on Google I entered my Domain what is that why would I use Rawballing.com and it basically all my Stuff sat except for I have like some Capital letters in my SPF record so this Will tell you things aren't there the Hardest part of this Is you have to think okay I'm sending Through send grid and then my ESP and Then maybe we're sending some well if we Send them through the app they should be

Centered so now you need to go to send Grid on your ESP and you need to find Their spfd chem because you have to pull Some settings from them so that's the Hardest part is just finding it once you Find it you're updating two I believe It's two DNS records and I had to do This for a new domain Sherry setup and It took me Once I had the info it took me like five Minutes but it took me like 20 minutes To find it so this is one of those it's Like do we want our emails to be Delivered or not if you don't care don't Do this but it's definitely the email Ecosystem is kind of abusive on these Things Number 17 is to rate limit your apis Thanks again to uh Pierre of scraping B For this one when he sent it I said well Of course we had rate limiting issues And we implemented it pretty quick I Said you can't do this in an hour right That's the whole point is that the Constraint of this talk because I had About 100 things on a list but a bunch Of them are going to take you longer Than an hour and he said aha contraire Mon frere Um he's French that was a really bad Accident he said sorry Pierre I Apologize Um but he's like All the Frameworks dude if you're using

Anything flask has flask limiter Django Has Django rate limit rails has Ruby Limiter laravel has rate limiter and the Best part is he literally just type that Out Boop top and like he knew these by Heart in the slack so Um that's it right limit your apis if You have any type of API someone's gonna DDOS you by accident is what happens Um now I will call out zapier and Segment who I still don't know that they Honor rate limits and used to DDOS us About once a month by accident because Someone would enable it and it would Just poof and like Crush our servers but Frankly especially custom Integrations They will they should and will honor This All right Number 18 we're getting there ask why People are canceling We took out our in-app ask why people Are canceling because people just typed ASDF in our text box And submitted so what we did That I found slightly better results Your mileage may vary easy enough to Test right I think you could test this In under an hour I'll put it that way You hide your Bot the the text box and You put this into an automated email That goes out is we had an email that Went out I think it was like 12 10 Minutes 12 minutes after someone

Canceled Rob's back to being a Founder Here hey I noticed you canceled your Product name account as we continue to Improve it'll be super helpful if you Could hit reply let me know why you Decided even if it's just a few words Thanks I'm the founder that was the Appeal and we didn't get 100 replies for Sure but the replies we did get might be One sentence I decided this I moved to MailChimp because XYZ Um you know your ux isn't what I want But it we at least got some helpful Feedback there Moving on to the next one this one is Probably the least It is it's the least SAS specific it's More like these are some of my own Personal productivity hacks or things I'll just throw out I think there's like Five of them but we should go through Them quick number 19 is to use my text Expander so I have three text expanders That I use Daily and They are my address my add my ad for my Address mycal which is my Savvy cow link And my zoom which is my private Zoom Room link And I put those I use the Apple Ecosystem I'm sure Android has the same Thing but like in apple it's like you go To settings you go to keyboard and you Just type these things and you copy man

And then you're done and now on any Apple device because I have two iPads And a computer and I have my phone it's All the same and all the time I'm typing An email on my phone and I'm like Ugh Okay hey yeah let's just connect uh use This link my Cal and it's like poof and It expands and it's like magic right I Know some people who are amazing with This and have like 50 expanders I'm not Smart enough to remember that many so I Really rely on these three and then You'll see my no pitch which is no Thanks we don't take guest pitches on Our podcast please remove me from your List that's what that one is but the my Ad my cow and my zoom uh I've come to uh To really like and enjoy Number 20 is an email processing hack I Have which is have an email label for Lower priority tasks so anything that Comes in that isn't someone on my team Is not waiting on me or I know that I Can wait a week two weeks I mean there's All kinds of stuff right where it's like I'm not gonna file that thing with the IRS in two and a half weeks Um I need to respond to this thing but It's it's next month or whatever but I Know I don't want to lose it I label it In Google and Gmail and I have it called Underscore this week because underscore Moves it to the top you can pick Whatever label you want but I go

Underscore this week boom it's out of my Inbox and I get to inbox zero that way And then once a week from 9 to 10 a.m on One particular day and I'm not going to Say the day because if all the emails You get from me are on that day then you Know that I'm this week in your email But from 9 to 10 a.m I sit down and I go Through all of the this weeks and I have There's one in the business account one In my personal account and I've never Had a week where I haven't gotten Through all of them there's usually not That many I will actually emails like Jason Cohen wrote a cool article last Week and it's like I don't have time to Read this like 3000 words so I threw it Into this week and there was a there was A YouTube video I wanted to watch Um some Rand fishkin stuff he said like There are certain things that I want to Consume as well now don't go crazy with It I do filter because you can throw in Three hours worth of content into this You don't do that right you throw in Things that need to be responded to or That you really want to uh to consume And think about And then I don't worry about that stuff At all until I get there All right number 21 is to upgrade to the Audible annual plan if you're an audible Listener I think we have Close to 680 books in our audible

Account between the family and so we buy A lot of books and frankly the monthly Plan your books are 11.50 a piece and on the annual plan They're like nine dollars and something And that will save you money that you Can use to grow your startup you're Welcome So that was that was maybe the lamest Tip in the whole thing I promise I you Know if you don't use Audible it was Just a whiff but Um number 22 is to consider asynchronous Voice so there are a lot of meetings That should not be meetings but they Also shouldn't be slack threads and Having A three minute or a five minute voice Text in essence Can be super helpful And there are ways to do this we I used To use a loom or a screencast to just Record my screen of some emptiness and Then send it to someone the beauty of Loom is or an equivalent is you can say 1.7 x this person because 2x right even I talk fast you can still 2x me and and Hear it and it's so even if I do like an Eight minute review of something you can Do a quick there's this other tool that I've used and still use actually my team Hates it but you know it's it's my Favorite it's called Voxer and it's Um it's fine it's free and it's only a

Tiny bit buggy but you can do it from Your phone or your desktop browser but Basically I can ping up uh like here's a Great example of a great use case for This is when we're doing interviews Um for some new roles that we're hiring For I am a second interview a lot right Xander's a first interview for an event Producer and then I do the second Interview so I interviewed someone and I Have a bunch of thoughts for Xander He's in the middle of stuff we shouldn't I don't think we should schedule a Meeting It's just me saying here's some Nuance Of how I think here's the pros and cons Of this person here's you know uh yellow Flags and some things I think you know She did really well so Boop I touch the Button it's push to talk on Boxer notify Xander and it sends an audio and then Anytime later right he gets a Notification like a text but he can pull It up it can just be like Oh I'm 3xing Rob on this because this guy talks Forever Bing and then he can listen to My thoughts and he can respond via voice Most people on my team respond via slack Which is fine too but it's it has Changed it has reduced the number of Meetings and long ass emails I have to Send because if I'm going to send an Email to Xander summarizing all the Things I think about this candidate it's

Five minutes of audio you know how many Words is that that I'd be typing out It's way more efficient for me to to Talk it And the last one I think in this Category this may be my favorite of the Whole thing people may laugh I cannot Watch online video at 1X anymore I can't Watch almost any video so every browser I'm in I have a plug-in uh and I this is The Chrome one it's called video speed Controller it has Two more than two million users and 3 100 4.8 star reviews it's incredible Every video in your browser on Chrome uh Will have now you can see the little um Controls and you can do like I believe It's like shift d to make it faster Shift s or you can use your mouse Maybe it's command D you know how when You remember yeah I remember as the Thing but I don't remember what the the The actual keys are and so you'll see That like best one of the best Bootstrapping talks of all time by Jason Cohen here I have this control up there And so I I rewatch this talk like every Year or two but I watch it at about 2X And it just lets me zip through Uh ZIP through I will never when I get On my kids computers I'm like no guys You have to install this because I can't Sit here I can't even I know YouTube now YouTube has speed control which is cool

And Netflix does too I think it's only Up to 1.5 x Um but most of the other platforms don't So this has saved me hundreds of hours Of time since I started using it Okay Intermission two This is from Fast Company And it's something about reading between The lines in meetings [Music] Allow me to play devil's advocate here But allow me to be a dick for a second But with no consequences let's pull back On that for a second I fell asleep while You were talking and I have no idea What's happening huh I've got a stupid Question it's actually like a really Smart question but I was wondering if I Say stupid beforehand does that make me Like kind of modest is that like sort of Charming thing to do right let's pick That up in the next meeting I need a few Days to figure out what the hell you're Talking about But will this scale one of the managing Directors once used that phrase in a Meeting so now I use it all the time Sorry this is just At you Um do you know a four-letter word for Long-winded there's an outside chance You might be right you're wrong You're definitely wrong I think what

You're trying to say is so what I'm Gonna do is take that idea and then make It sound like it was mine Let's try to make this viral okay I just Heard about this site called reddit.com Can we get on there I think we should Make this a cross-platform opportunity I Watch Shark Tank let's take this offline Yeah can we pick this up again Um let me just maybe 15 minutes after uh Never again All right so thanks Fast Company all Right we're getting there so this is the Last section this is on internal Operations Um number 24 of 31 is to use team Password management Hopefully you're doing this already but Um we didn't uh frankly I had never Really seen the Ambassador management Until we got acquired in 2016 and I was Like oh I totally get this so LastPass Has LastPass teams one password has one Password teams From day one when we like formed Tiny Seed I said everything's going into a Business uh team's password management Account and what it does is if people Like let's say you settle on LastPass Teams any of your employees who has a LastPass personal account can link it so That in their browser they can see both But the company can't see their personal Stuff and then when they leave you just

Unlink it so you retain your passwords You can there's also a shared folder we Can just dump a bunch of passwords in And everybody can access it in their Browser so it's a relatively simple tip If you're already doing it you know this Is a no-brainer if you're not doing it It's it's you gotta like it we just you Can't have the password sitting around In text files and whoever else you have Them this is a super simple one that I Saw at leadpages when we got acquired Use an email Alias for for every SAS Account you sign up for and it was like There was like Accounts at leadpages.net Or whatever and that's usually what it Is if you haven't done that already it Is not impossible but it is a challenge To go back and change them all so if you Haven't done that already I'd make a you Make this a group right where it's like My co-founders plus maybe an Ops person Or whoever you have on your team like It's two or three people get that email So if there needs to be a password reset And you're on vacation which is what Used to happen because all bunch of crap Is set up under Rob get drip.com and I'd Be in Mexico and like on the beach it's Like you have the login dude and we Can't do it this keeps that from Happening from you being a single point Of failure Um it's a relatively simple hack

This one is super fascinating because I've never heard anyone say this and It's a suggestion from a Founder use Privacy.com For spending management So this is Rahul from nestify and Basically privacy.com you can generate These credit card numbers and so you Generate a credit card a virtual payment Card is what they call it and you can Say It's a one-time purchase and only up to Twenty dollars and then you enter that In a in a store you can say it's a Recurring purchase Max 20 reject Anything generate another one and Um you give it put it in Netflix or you Put it in GitHub maybe it's a better Example and it locks itself to GitHub And if anyone else got that number no One else can charge it but GitHub so It's just it's an abstraction layer of Your actual credit card number I don't Know I mean my personal number is stolen At least every 18 months I have to redo All my subscriptions I'm thinking about Doing this for me personally but um Rahul was swearing by it as something For the business so I think it's kind of An interesting one hard to go back and Do but it's again it's one of those Things moving forward is this something That we think about also it helps you If you want to put a you can pause you

Can unpause you can put limits so that Such that you don't have to track Everything and it can just get rejected When you don't want that to be charged Anymore 27 is to keep a manual updates list what I mean by this is there are certain Things on your websites that you just Can't code so an example of this is that Number right there 590. I can't write code to populate that Number because it's not the number of Posts we have in the startups for the Rest of us site it's hard coded in the WordPress so I can't just do a count on The column or whatever because there's a Bunch we exclude and it's not in the Column why we exclude you know that kind Of thing so it's literally we're it's Just a number and it's embedded in there And it's a tiny seat about page it says We've backed more than 60 fast growing SAS companies across four continents That's just the number and guess what in A month we'll be at like 84. so are we Going to remember to come back and edit This no and so it's going to sit there For 60 for like eight months and then Someone's going to mention it to us Because we never read our own websites Right so what I did like two months ago Was I created another uh Google sheet And I say I called it things that need Periodic updating and I have a recurring

Quarterly calendar reminder all it says Is check things that need updating and I Come in here and I zip through them I Click click click and you can see it's Just a location and uh and a what that I That should be updated and I actually Just updated start off the rest of us I Think it was at like 560 or something And I was like yes systems working 28 similar to this is at a quarterly Calendar reminder or maybe a monthly one To review credit card transactions if You don't go through your business Transactions at least once a quarter Put an hour on that calendar you can do It you can do a quarter in less than an Hour and if you don't put on the Calendar you just don't do it or at Least I don't 29 is to push live chat and email Support into slack I had not actually I've got I bet several of you are doing This but this is a suggested by Andy Cabasso of postaga and um I thought it Was a pretty cool one he was talking About like chat Leo you can do live chat On your website directly in slack Intercom integrates directly in Slack Help Scout has a slack integration even Stripe events he's pumping in like Refunds and trials churn like all kinds Of stuff and I asked him why he does This and he said because now like stripe I'm sorry slack is our Hub of our

Business Um and I don't want to be switching in And out of a bunch of apps and I'm Already talking to my co-workers in Slack so why not have it ping up and you Know do a DM ish thing to me if I'm on Call for support that now I just chat And chatting with a customer they're Just an anonymous you know user So that's a fun one last two 30 is to Send a monthly advisor email and this Was one I recommend to people anyways But uh this is one that specifically I Remember Mark Tobias in that original Talk of his 50 of open cage data that Was in the talk and I just gave you a Sample format again it'll be in a PDF This is what we give to Tiny Seed Companies What this does and I there are several Totally bootstrap Founders in this room Who do this already and I'm on some of Their lists um and I get around 100 ish Of these a month both from Tiny Seed and Not Tiny Seed I read everyone I don't Respond to all of them but I read Everyone what this gives you is a lot of Our bootstrapping we don't have the Rigor necessarily you don't want to you Don't want the rigor of a VC back Company you don't want a board you don't Want but seriously to sit down for 20 Minutes a month and to write something That talks about wins

Over the last month losses plans Problems And has just the metrics for the last Two months and you pick some people at Microconf pick people in your Mastermind Pick you know an advisor ask me if I Want to get it just send it and if you Get into that discipline you'll often Find that problems section at the bottom Will uh generate an intro right or it'll Generate some feedback of like oh I Already know how to fix that so you Should think about it so I think it's an Interesting one The last one is One that I thought about including I Almost had 30 and uh I really wanted to Include this one because I think this Gets beyond the Tactical nature of a lot Of these and it digs into like team Culture and Company culture and it's Something that I have done I would say Naturally and I'm not sure why but I've Seen a lot of people not do this and so We have we had some traditions at drip And we now have Traditions we've just Kind of accidentally done at Tiny Seed That are actually They make us feel like we're They make us know that we belong because We get we understand these and they have A lot they start to have a lot of Meaning over time so our tradition back In the drip days was to troll each other

There's way early pre-acquisition I Think it was like four of us on the team Derek's England missing so in this one We are trolling Derek because he's at Home and we're eating drinking wine and Hanging out at bitwise in Fresno This one we're also trolling Derek with Cupcakes And it just starts spontaneously Happening and then this one Derek's now In the picture my kids are there and Derek's wife and Zach and we're trolling Ian and Anna who were in the other one Right so this just became a thing and I Just stumbled upon these and then this Is Derek and Ian now I think trolling Anna uh because we're eating sushi and She's not so this became kind of a fun Thing that we would do and there's There's a lot of these photos and then What I realized is I was like wow what Do we have for for tiny scene I realized That when we did a headshot this is our About page that Anar was gone he had to Fly out to see his family and so we Pulled him up pick up on my iPad and we Just kind of pointed to Anar and said ah Isn't it funny he's missing and then a Couple months later we're in California And Xander's not there and so now it's Tracy in our and I'm mocking sander so That that's our I think going to be our Our Tradition but I will say the one that I

Think that I still Derek and I still Text about and I honestly get a little Choked up about it because it is has Such deep meaning for me is there's this Stuff called fire cider and it's Um habanero infused Apple cider vinegar Wellness tonic Firesider.com or you can buy it on Amazon we got in a little snap monthly Snack subscription and some of the Snacks weren't great but there's this Little Fireside thing and I was like I Don't know let's all try it out so we All took a little sip and we're like oh My God this is awful it's not alcoholic But it just it lights you up and so we Were joking a little bit and and the Fire starter just sat there for like a Month and then I said all right Folks at Some point you realize this is launch Juice and anytime we launch a big Feature we're all doing a shot and Instantly everyone's like hell yes this Is a challenge so I bought the firesider Shot glasses and uh on the firesider Shot glass they make it's like there's Different levels and it's like repel Vampires Um you know clean out your innards and Blah blah blah so we'd line it up and We'd hit ship it boom and we'd all take A shot it was great and so by the time I Was leaving drip when we had because That was when we had two Engineers by

The time I was leaving drift no joke I Was buying it by the gallon And on your first day as an engineer on The product it was the product and Engineering team we would say hey here You are here's a shirt here's a sticker And here's your shot glass and people Are like what is this what is happening We always had to say is not alcoholic Like it's not but it became a thing that I believe still happens today because When I left my my successor said where Do I get the fire starter because I want You know I want to keep this going Because it became such a cool thing so Anyways that is all for me today [Music]