[72] Bootstrapping SaaS for Teams w/ Henry Poydar (Status Hero)

April 13, 2020

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Today I’m talking to Henry Poydar. He is the founder of Status Hero, a little SaaS app tool for teams who need to get status updates from their fellow teammates. Works like a replacement for the daily stand-up, and members get updates into Slack or email.

We talk about Henry’s story, how he bootstrapped this app, how he transitioned from working in a large corporation to consulting, and then starting up his own software business.

He coded most of the app himself and had success bootstrapping his app in the last 3 years.

Enjoy!

Episode Notes

[2:36] Extending the trial for enterprise customers.

“The idea is to eliminate meetings. Specially with today’s remote teams across timezones, it’s difficult to get the tech right, meet everyone on a zoom call.”
“I found that the extensions are the qualifiers. You know a bigger company is interested if a trial extension keeps them onboard.”

[8:11] Before Status Hero.

“I was lucky. I got into the web at a time where full-stack actually meant something.”
“Getting on a plane every week on a Sunday and coming back on Friday is a really tough way to live.”

[13:21] How working from home compares to working in a larger organization and startups.

“I noticed that in a startup, compared to a large organization, the signal to noise ratio inverted. 9 out of 10 emails matters. I a company 1 out of 10 emails matter.”
“It’s ironic that creatives avoid distraction to get into deep to work on software that’s designed to grab people’s attention”

[23:50] Legit MVPs and how to use Product Hunt to launch your product. Cutting features for an easier selling process.

“You really have one shot launching on Product Hunt. You can’t afford to have a crappy MVP.”
“The best outcome for something on Product Hunt is to get email addresses into pipeline, not trials, not customers, because you’re in awareness stage.”

[30:48] Doubling revenue when switching pricing from tiered teams to per user.

“Pricing was very difficult because my initial users weren’t startups who were price sensitive at all.”
“At the time and still now everybody advises against per seat pricing.”
“I wanted the automated credit-card sign-up make-money-while-you-sleep thing to work. I wanted it to be low touch.”

[35:01] The truth about app integrations as marketing channel.

“I think that taking on managing folks is a massive responsibility, it takes a lot of mind share.”

[72] Bootstrapping SaaS for Teams w/ Henry Poydar (Status Hero)

Episode Notes

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