Bootstrapped

In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk about running a web-app company vs. running a mobile-app company, having one large product vs. many smaller products, starting out by making products ‘because you can’, instead of products that have a market, SaaS and recurring revenue, Enron email and spam filters, how the iPhone almost brought down Andrey’s company, planning vs. falling into it, being late to the SaaS party, installable software and support, B2B vs. B2C, and things that seemed exciting in the first year of running a software company, but are a chore to do 9 years later.

Two software companies, Userscape, founded in 2004, and Antair, founded in 2005.

Both companies, bootstrapped and profitable.

Join Ian and Andrey, the founders, as they share their experiences in running their companies.

In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk about software version numbers, SaaS apps, hiring, modern web application development, server hosting, what to do with old servers, monitors and hard drives, doing what it takes to fund your business, Andrey’s psychological state, physical world products vs software.

Links:

• Eric Barnes – Laracon 2013 talk
• Laravel – The awesome PHP framework
• CodeIgniter
• BackBone – JS front end framework
• Coffeescript – A little language that compiles to JavaScript
• LESS – The only way to write CSS
• EngineHosting – Sweet VPS based hosting solution
• Linode – Linux VPS provider
• Hard drive station – Find a use for those old hard drives
• Are You Serious About Starting a Business – Ian’s blog post on selling his car to fund UserScape
• Creating a Business Logo – Ian’s blog post on creating the UserScape and HelpSpot logo’s
• Impostor Syndrome – A psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments
• Antair Spam Filter – Andrey’s spam filter product
• Interview with Jason Cohen – talks about tons of useful things including cancellations we reference in the podcast
• QLab – Live show controls for OSX
• FogBugz – Bug tracking
• The Business of Software Forums – Joel Spolsky forum site where a lot of us got our start
• Lollipop Sticks – Andrey on physical products
• Swamp Loggers
• Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
• Uberdeck – the product Andrey is currently working on.

In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk about not being able to remember anything that happened before today, Ian’s rules for the practical entrepreneur, having so many products that you can’t list them all, entering a fragmented market, preferring B2B, The Pivot, Andrey not having any kind of strategy for choosing which products to make, damned phones, when selling to a business is not really selling to a business, clear and simple revenue model, bridging the internet world with the real world, not using your own products, doing support, how recent the 90’s were, dealing with criticism, competitors who are clearly doing it wrong, Steve Jobs being brilliant at what he does, customers not caring about which technology you use, being the perfect developer for your own company, bootstrapping a company when you have kids, the sense of being continuously rushed, BioIsChanged.com, DAS Keyboard, and customer-hosted vs. SaaS.

Links:

• Ian’s 4 Rules for the Practical Entrepreneur
• $10,000 – Ian’s sale numbers from the early days of selling  Helpspot.
• A partial list of Andrey’s products – including the early ones like Printer Friendly, Chinchilla, and Asteroid Jane.
• Uberdeck – Andrey’s upcoming product.
• Pixelmator, and Acorn – Photoshop competitors on the Mac.
• Pivoting, as a company strategy.
• Authorize.NET,  Stripe, and  Square – payment processing.
• Hubspot – marketing
• Seamless Web – online food ordering.
• Patrick McKenzie’s  Appointment Reminder
• Let’s Take This Offline – Joel Spolsky quits blogging.
• Dave Winer – interviews here and here.
• Steve Jobs Insult Response
• Ian choosing a development stack for Helpspot.
• John Carmack
• Eric Barnes, and his talk.
• Ethan – Andrey’s son.
• Tyler – Ian’s first child.
• 37signals on interruptions
• Jim Gaffigan (comedian)
• BioIsChanged.com
• DAS Keyboard
• OpenSourceHelpdeskList.com
• Amy Hoy’s TwiStory
• Fogcreek’s FogBugz
• Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
• GitHub’s enterprise version

In this episode, Ian and Andrey cover a host of issues, including an apology of sorts to Patrick McKenzie, a discussion on if in fact the customer is always right, how you support .99 cent apps, non-mistakes from Ian’s past, VC funding and an extremely important tax tip!

Links:

• Appointment Reminder – by Patrick McKenzie
• Patrick McKenzie Interview
• Podcast with Patrick & Amy Hoy
• Freckle
• Shutting down Charm – Interesting look at shutting down a SaaS app before it launches
• History of “the customer is always right”
• What Now Podcast – Andrey’s other podcast
• Retro Dreamer
• Automattic Hosting – WordPress hosting
• Spiderweb Games – RPG games (not $.99!)
• Ian’s ChatSpot Live non-mistake – Glad I didn’t build it, but still like the logo by Mike Rohde
• Creating a Business Logo – history of UserScape & HelpSpot logo’s
• Mixergy Paul Singh Interview
• Spryfox
• Rob Walling
• Stackoverflow initial VC funding
• Startup.com Movie
• Stardock
• Figure53
• Atlassian financing
• Section 199 Domestic Production Tax Credit – this is awesome, talk to your accountant today!
• Handling B2B Transactions
• DNL – Ian’s Brother & cousins web consultancy
• Jason Cohen on consultancy math
• Business of Software conference – Go, it’s awesome

In this episode, Ian and Andrey talk about a gauntlet of client work, consulting, competitors, talking about your product early, stock options and bonuses, a little bit on wall street programming, hiring, contributing to open source, life after programming, and movies!

Links:

• Bitsplitting Podcast – episode 2, with Erika Hall of Mule Design Studio.
• Shipping an Empty Box – Andrey’s blog post about supporting large companies.
• Helpspot – Ian’s product.
• Snappy – Ian’s newest product.
• Uberdeck – Andrey’s upcoming product.
• Snappy on Dribble
• Bill Cosby, “Himself” – full stand-up special
• Code Rush – full documentary
• Jamie Zawinski
• Viola web browser
• Eric Sink – wrote the browser that eventually became Internet Explorer
• DNA Lounge – nightclub owned by Jamie Zawinski
• DNA Pizza – pizza joint owned by Jamie Zawinski
• The Living Room in NYC
• Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee – Seinfeld’s online show
• Startup.com – full movie
• 12 Weeks with Geeks – full movie
• Pirates of Silicon Valley – full movie
• Triumph of the Nerds, Part I, Part II, Part III – full documentary in 3 parts.
• Good Eats
• Bill Nye the Science Guy
• John Carmack’s QuakeCon 2012 Keynote – full video
• Swamp Loggers
• Wall Street
• Scarface
• The Godfather
• The Matrix
• Mad Men
• Breaking Bad
• Grand Theft Auto
• Scarface video game
• Euro Truck Simulator
• Game Dev Story, an iPhone game where you run a game software company
• Whites
• Black Books
• DeviantArt
• PasteVault – Ian’s open source project.
• Laravel
• Kudos – Ian’s open source blog engine
• TurnJS – Javascript library
• Packery – Javascript library
• Tipped – Javascript component
• Highcharts – Javascript library
• id source code
• Dave Winer

In this episode, Ian and Andrey discuss screen real estate, hiring a part time developer, Apple II parts, a segment which went way too long on Authorize.net, funding open source projects and code naming.

• See Andrey’s setup
• Divvy – Mac windows manager
• Antair part time developer position – 20-30 hours a month
• Hacker News – Hacker New Popular Twitter stream
• Vienna RSS – Andrey’s choice for a Mac desktop RSS reader
• Dave Winer discusses the concept of a River of News – (audio)
• Temperature in David Letterman’s studio is 58 degrees ( ref)
• Apple II store – This is awesome
• Wall-E
• Description of Andrey’s first app – sadly no actual zip provided 
• Authorize.net – (please use Stripe or other modern solutions)
• Merchant Accounts
• Stripe
• Brian Kernighan’s “Advanced Programming Techniques”
• PasteVault.com – expiring text/passwords
• Gittip
• Info on Shareware, for you kids
• OpenJDK – open source Java
• Go to UberDeck and sign up for the beta
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

In this episode, Ian and Andrey discuss the Apple app store release process, making video games for a living, people and companies that “get it”, fonts for web development, trademarks and names,

• Helvetica – Documentary about the typeface (and design, in general).
• Indie Game the Movie – Documentary that follows several indie game developers.
• What Now podcast – Gavin’s and Andrey’s podcast about making mobile apps for a living.
• Typography.com – the site Andrey was referring to when he mentioned “typeface.com” in the episode.
• Google Fonts
• Typekit
• Snappy
• Focus Lab – The design team behind Snappy.
• Bloomberg by Bloomberg
• PasteVault
• WordPress open source terms of service and privacy policy.
• Tom Pitegoff – Ian’s (Userscape’s) corporate lawyer.
• Patrick McKenzie
• Lean Startup
• Uberdeck
• Antair Snippets
• TechZing podcast
• Tim Ferriss

In this episode, Ian and Andrey discuss sweet games, SaaS downtime, UserScape Bizarro Week, Brooklyn, Microconf and more.

• Bioshock Infinite – Andrey says this is one of the great games of all times with perhaps the best ending of all time
• Heavy Rain – Another great game
• Rainbow Six – Classic
• The Secret of Monkey Island – I assume you’ve all heard of and played this
• Supervisor – A process control system
• DB Tenancy Information
• EngineHosting – Private resource clusters for your big app needs
• Review of Google Play on Nook
• Google 20% time explained
• Fogcreek remote work position
• Park Slope, Brooklyn
• Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
• Setting up an office for a software company – Details on Andrey’s office setup for Antair
• Microconf – Ian will eventually make it to this conference
• Summary of Jason Cohen Microconf 2013 talk
• Microconf take away summary
• Jason Cohen: Bootstrapped CPC rule of thumb: MRR/25 – Interesting article on how to determine what you should be willing to bid for your cost per click ads

In this episode, which Ian and Andrey discuss Uberdeck, system administration, pricing strategies, news coverage for startups, Jeff Atwood, Trello, and Snappy.

• Uberdeck – Andrey’s latest project
• Alwin Hoogerdijk (collectorz.com) – on email marketing
• Campaign Monitor – email campaign service
• DNS Made Easy – DNS service
• Amazon Route 53 – DNS service
• Linode – hosting for Uberdeck
• Trello – project management
• Coding Horror – Jeff Atwood’s blog
• Amazon SQS – hosted message queue service
• EngineHosting – hosting for Snappy
• Snappy – Ian’s latest product
• PG Experts – PostgreSQL expert services
• BugSnag – real-time bug intelligence
• AsyncHttp – HTTP library for Android
• James Smith – creator of BugSnag and AsyncHttp for Android.
• Discourse – Jeff Atwood’s forum software
• Eric Sink – on the business of software