Topics in ‘Stories’

“I had a product. But having a product wasn’t enough to be a success.”

Jim Gay is a busy dad. A REALLY busy dad, with 4 kids. He started thinking about switching from consulting to a product business so he could spend more time with his family…because he was tired of working endless, stressful hours to pay the bills. He built a product – the obvious next step for… Read more »

I used to suck at shipping.

Are you a procrastinator? Do you have a list of unfinished (or unstarted) projects as long as your arm? Don’t feel bad about it. Do something about it. People often marvel at the amount of shit I manage to get done. Me! With a part-time effort, because I am so often ill and juggling two… Read more »

The Wasp, the Caterpillar, and Cannibalizing Your Own Product from the Inside

This December, Freckle Time Tracking turns 6 years old. OMG! And 30×500 turns 5 years old… after a fashion. You see, the original 30×500 is dead. And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that, too. We killed them. Slowly. And we’re still killing them, even as I write… Read more

The Wasp, the Caterpillar, and Cannibalizing Your Own Product from the Inside

This December, Freckle Time Tracking turns 6 years old. OMG! And 30×500 turns 5 years old… after a fashion. You see, the original 30×500 is dead. And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that, too. We killed them. Slowly. And we’re still killing them, even as I write… Read more

My secret startup past

I’ve been designing & developing for hire since I was 14. But I almost never write about my past. It’s old hat to me. I’m an always-moving-forward kind of girl. This has led many to assume my strongly opinions on bootstrapping come ex nihilo — or possibly from bitchy sour grapes at being excluded from… Read more »

Help! My SaaS isn’t growing! +60% revenue, 1 year later…

Just about a year ago, I wrote that Freckle had hit the Plateau of Doom. We were dead in the water at $28,000 a month. We’d grow a little… then shrink a little, grow a little, shrink a little… for months at a time. Why? y=mx+b. Growth (new accounts) is pretty much linear, a reliable… Read more »

Why You Should Do A Tiny Product First

NOTE: The Bootcamp has been moved to June 29/30th due to conflicts. Expect an official announcement this week! So, one of the major changes that Alex and I are making to 30×500 is to teach our students to create an educational product first. What’s an educational product, or infoproduct? Anything small that teaches (which isn’t […]

Curing the Lie of the Big Win (and the Big Fail)

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 […]

Why We Shut Down Charm on the Eve of Public Launch, at $48k/Year and Growing

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 […]

4 Years Into Our SaaS: Why Bootstrapping Was the Only Logical Choice

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 […]

Hey, why not get a shiny
Freckle Time Tracking
account?