Laura Roeder, Transitioning from a Consulting to a Product Business, BoS USA 2016
Transcript of Laura Roeder, Transitioning from a Consulting to a Product Business, BoS USA 2016
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Don’t Let Your Past Limit Your Future
Laura Roeder - @LKR - LauraRoeder.com
MeetEdgar.com
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Or how I got from here to here.
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From 2009 - 2015, I ran a social media marketing
training company.
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There were a few things I didn’t love about the model. I was central to the business.
There were inherent scaling limits.
I was stuck doing work that I didn’t love.
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I wanted to do a SaaS company, BUT . . . I didn’t know how to code.
I didn’t know how to design a software product.
I had zero experience working around software in any capacity!
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Then I met this guy.
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Finding The Idea
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We did NOT build a bunch of ideas to see which one would take
off.
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We tried our best to invalidate BEFORE code was
written. (And still started code on two projects before abandoning
them early.)
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My criteria:
1.Are prospects actively looking to BUY a better solution to this
problem
2. Is our solution better than what’s out there
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Building The Product
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We did not purely bootstrap MeetEdgar, we self-funded from the LKR
profits.
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The Team You Need to Launch Software
1.Dev team to build software (in our case, 6 mo of PT work)
2.Hours from designer to create logo/basic marketing site
3.Hours from writer for initial marketing copy/email sequences
Don’t forget this
one!!
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If you don’t know software, listen to the advice of people
who do.
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Launching The Product
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Our plan was to have a half training, half software company.
(But that didn’t happen.)
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The most important mindset:
YOU ARE LAUNCHING A NEW BUSINESS.
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You would not open a retail store by throwing a few t-
shirts on the floor and seeing if anyone stops by to buy
them.
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If you “wait and see if it gets traction”, you are giving up.
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If you treat it as a “side project”, it will remain a side
project.
Make it a core part of your business plan.
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Hit 50k MRR within First 6 Months
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BUT in 2014, 90% of our income still came from LKR.
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The Pivot:
I decided to go all in on software, shutting down LKR once we reached breakeven
from MeetEdgar.
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WHY would I do this? We were still making $1m from
LKR.
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1.Because I wanted to.
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2. Because the potential upside was larger with MeetEdgar than LKR.
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3. Because building two businesses takes twice the
time, effort, and cash.
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That wasn’t the only pivot going on in my life . . .
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Remove yourself as the bottleneck so the business can keep growing right past
you.
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During the three months that I was on maternity leave, we
went from $74k to $110k MRR.
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We made the hard decision to give up LKR, and let it
become messy so we could stop devoting resources to it.
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First MeetEdgar blog: Dec 2014
Last LKR blog: March 2015
Switched newsletter branding May 2015
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Set the priorities for each quarter and stick to them.
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By the end of 2015 - 2.2m ARR from MeetEdgar
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Here’s how we did it.
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No growth hacks. No hockey sticks. No viral coefficient.
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Stop thinking about one-off tricks or hacks, and start focusing on your funnel.
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Stuff we don’t do:- Integrations-Partnerships
-Biz dev-Free trials-Free plans
-One-on-one sales-Sales team
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Organic is slow, paid is fast.
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2014
2015
2016
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In September 2016, we’re at 3.5m ARR.
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Make a plan, not an experiment.
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Don’t let your past limit your future.