Comments on: 122: TZ Interview – Ruben Gamez / Bidsketch

By: Egghead

Egghead — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:02:15 +0000

Best techzing podcast PERIOD! — Please find more business like this one!

By: William

William — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:12:04 +0000

I found the content to be quite useful. We are also outsourcing our design work–I’ll see how it turns out…

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:09:29 +0000

@Philippe Monnet – Your TL;DR highlights are extremely useful. Thanks so much for taking the time to write and share them in the comments. I sometimes forget the key points of the interview myself, so being able to look back at your notes really helps.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:05:14 +0000

@Akshat – I’m glad you liked the show! I think this interview and the one we did a few weeks back with Michael Sliwinski of Nozbe, were probably the two most useful in terms of how to bootstrap a SAAS business.

By: Andrew Seddon

Andrew Seddon — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:55:24 +0000

Yep, packed full of useful info about the details of outsourcing. I’m going to try the screencast method for a single page AJAX heavy app I’m working on, will see how it goes.

By: Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:26:10 +0000

I really enjoyed this episode as it covered the whole spectrum of Ruben’s journey from side projects to a newly-minted self-sustaining bootstrapped company. I noted a couple interested tidbits / quotes:
– outsourcing the development of non-core features can really help and also motivate you since you’re financially committed.
– screencasts describing key features or use cases were very effective in communicating design with developers
– you can outsource conversion of Photoshop designs to HTML/CSS using services like Psd2Html.
– the free proposal template incited customers to sign-up
– to get quality feedback Ruben limited the number of beta-testers to a small number (6) and set clear expectations for them
– beta-testers don’t convert easily
– eliminating the free plan helped
– charging upfront with the option to cancel is more effective for conversions
– 3rd-party integration (e.g. Freshbooks and Basecamp) brings good converting customers

I recommend the Bidsketch demo videos to other listeners as good reference examples.

On the Micropreneur Academy topic, as a member, I am very impressed with the content. And paying for it actually motivates you to focus on learning and make steady progress.

By: Akshat

Akshat — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:05:37 +0000

I think the best techzing podcast of all time.

One point about “more” vs “less” customers which was not covered, was that more customers will always improve your chance of referral, and hence increasing the growth.