What do bootstrappers really need? What’s stopping you from building, launching, selling? Or from squeezing more out of the products you’ve got? Not facts. Not figures. Not how-to’s. Oh, sure, you could always use more how-to’s and more stats. But that’s not what you’re really starving for. That’s not what’s stopping you. That’s not why […]
We’re surrounded by the stories — the mytharc, if you will — of The Big Win. (Also the Big Fail.) “Twitter succeeded because…” “I failed because…” I’m here to tell you: That’s largely a load of crap. If you want to know why — and if you want to know how I succeed at so […]
This talk is nominally about copywriting, but it’s not, not really. It’s about product-making. It’s about business-making. It’s about gall. I had a blast at Microconf. Highly recommend it. I’ll be back. And thanks so much to Rob and Mike for making these videos available so I can share them with you. Transcript below! Amy […]
This is part of my 4-year bootstrapping retrospective. Part 1: Why Bootstrapping Was The Only Logical Choice. A couple months ago, I found something I wrote accidentally on Hacker News. Having vitriol spewed at me. (Surprise! Some might say those two phrases are redundant! Why? My husband and I had shut down our second SaaS […]
I think Nathan Barry is the bee’s knees. He’s been killing it with his info products: The App Design Handbook and Designing Web Applications. Even before he announced his Web App Challenge, to build an app from scratch that would reach $5,000/mo revenue in 6 mos, I was sure it would only be a matter […]
Hey, there. Four years ago this December, my husband & I launched our first software as a service, Freckle Time Tracking. Since then, it’s grossed nearly $700,000, and we’ve grown, shrunk, hired, fired, stagnated and worked our tails off. To celebrate, I’m writing a series of blog posts about what we’ve learned. When I was […]
This is an email I sent to my mailing list a year ago. We miss you, Steve. I’ve been following Steve closely for more than a decade. Most folks don’t know this, but I ran a Mac-oriented news & opinion site from 1999 to about 2003. Before that, I was “just” a rabid fan. It’s […]
Seems like most of my best writing goes to the 30×500 Alumni mailing list these days. Including this little bit below. One of my brilliant (and particularly sesquipedalian) students was talking about the way that pedestrian thinking tends to exert inexorable drag on humanity: Wordy Student: Just a zooming out sub specie aeternitatis observation: certain […]
The phrase “Shut up and take my money!” may have come from a cartoon, but it’s not a myth. “Shut Up Money” (SU$ for short!) has happened to me and I’ve watched it happen to my students & my friends. It’s unbelievably life-affirming and awesome, when somebody wants to give you their money even more […]
NOTE FROM YOUR EDITOR: Sometimes you get an email that’s so right, that so captures what you’ve been trying to create for years that you just can’t help but dance and squeal with glee. That’s how I felt when I saw this very powerful story on the 30×500 mailing list. I feel honored to help […]
