Growing Multiple SaaS Products in Parallel w/ Ryan Buckley

I met Ryan Buckley at MicroConf 2018. Ryan’s story is of the roller-coaster kind.

He is the founder of 3 different small SaaS that he was able to fund and code himself.

Before all that he built Scripted.com which was a venture-backed marketplace for hiring writers. It was interesting to hear the story of it, as is an industry I know something about.

He recently published a booked about the concept of Parallel Entrepreneurship. It is about running and growing different businesses simultaneously, balancing between then, doubling on your resources, and measuring the return on those investments.

Enjoy!

Episode Notes

[2:44] Parallel Entrepreneurship. Learning to code his own SaaS. Philosophy to choose the front stack.

“My thesis is that your first 100 customers they’re not really going to care if your page reloads [or has fancy UX].”
“The main problem that your app solves is not how slick is your UI.”
“Understanding Model-View-Controller was, it, after that I feel I can build anything.”

[17:48] How he got into Toofr after working on a screenwriting software. Building Scripted.com and raising up to $16 millions.

“Eventually we figured out it’s a lot easier to sell blogposts than to sell screenplays.”

[24:00] The different business models Scripted tried through the years. Exiting the company, through layoffs, second daughter coming, and cancer.

“It’s a competitive market. There is a race to the bottom in the price per word high volume game.”
“Tying back to the Parallel Entrepreneurship premise, I found a buyer for Scripted through Toofr, that was coming along at this point.”

[36:34] Parallel Entrepreneurship 2, or managing multiple ventures.