Here is an exclusive peek into the minds of some of the most brilliant SaaS founders ever — including FYI’s Hiten Shah, Moz’s, and now Sparktoro’s Rand Fishkin, ProdPad’s Janna Bastow, KYT’s Claire Lew, Wistia’s Brendan Schwartz, and others!
We have consolidated into 23 nuggets, lessons from 350K+ hours (144 years) of collective building. Here is a quick sample of the goodness:
1. On the necessity of eschewing “judo solutions” – from Know Your Team’s Claire Lew
Constraints have become something that I’ve changed my reception of, I think, slowly over time. Previously, I think I’d always been searching for the “judo solution” amidst constraints. That is, how can you get the maximum outcome by doing the least?
And while that’s a useful frame for some problems, I think other times, in the face of certain constraints, it’s frustrating. For example, when you’re faced with certain constraints in your business (e.g., capital, people, time), yes, you can totally seek out the minimum thing to do that gets you the maximum effort. But also, I think if you want to create something special or meaningful, sometimes you have to accept that the constraint just means something will take more time – and that’s okay.
2. “Sustaining a business, through lean times, comes down to being able to be a cockroach.” – from ProdPad’s Janna Bastow
Sustaining a business, through lean times, comes down to being able to be a cockroach. It sounds gross, but cockroaches are able to live on very little and are hardy as anything.
In business terms, this means operating with minimum excess overhead, and without running a month-on-month cash deficit. During this coronavirus crisis, it’s the businesses that are able to hunker down and not run out of runway that will see it through to the other side.
3. “You can put your thumb over the end of a hose…” – from Crossbeam’s Bob Moore
You can put your thumb over the end of a hose and it’ll cause water to come out faster, but it kind of masks how big the original opening actually is.
The niche thing is like that – you can iterate more rapidly, get more pointed feedback, and generally create value faster by focusing on a core group. But it masks the data about the size and applicability to your total addressable market. That’s the tradeoff.
