Bootstrapped

When you run your own little software company, be it a SaaS or old school downloadable software, and you've been doing it for several years, and you've got through the major initial challenges that were interesting and fun and rewarding to conquer in the first few years, and you've now got to that point where your product revenue is stable, and your product is pretty much feature complete, it becomes boring.

Here's 3 projects I've been working on to alleviate my bootstrapper boredom, while not putting my company in peril.

Mentioned in this episode:

• My coaching: https://steveofmcleod.com/
• My book-in-progress: https://killthehippo.com/
• My public speaking, as recorded at Business of Software Europe in April 2025: https://businessofsoftware.org/playlists/playlist-europe-2025/#SM

In this episode, I talk about how I'm using podcasting as a business tool. Not as a guest, not to promote my product, not as an advertiser, but as a way to build up and strengthen my network amongst my "Ideal Customer Profile" in the video games industry.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Feature Upvote, my SaaS product
• The Community Lounge, the podcast I'm creating as a business tool

I want to tell you what's happening with my product, Feature Upvote, over the last year or so. I've dramatically changed the positioning, to be a feedback management platform for the video games industry.

Here's the story of why I repositioned - and how I did it.

Check out the new "video games industry"-focused Feature Upvote home page.

I was recently a guest on The Gross Profit podcast, hosted by James Kennedy. In that interview, James and I talked about our business heros, and well, it seemed to me that the conversation was a perfect fit for this podcast too.

So, with James's permission, I'm sharing with you here the entire episode of The Gross Profit podcast in which I was interviewed.

• The Gross Profit podcast
• Feature Upvote, my B2B SaaS
• My B2B SaaS coaching services

I chat with Nathan Powell, freelance product designer whose work these days is mainly with B2B SaaS. We chat about how developer founders can go about improving their app's UX and general design.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Nathan's website: https://nathanjpowell.com/
• Descript: https://www.descript.com/

I chat with Michael Koper, founder of Nusii. We talk about what it's like when your product spends several years at a revenue plateau.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Michael's company, Nusii
• Michael on Twitter.

I'm the guest on my own podcast! A year ago, Ben Pages joined my company, Feature Upvote, to be our marketing manager. Ben had questions about the early days of Feature Upvote, and how this product came to be. He also wanted to know the origin of my low-stress approach to running a business. We thought, why keep this conversation to ourselves? Why not record it as a podcast interview, and share it with you? And that is exactly what we did for this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Feature Upvote
• A blog post we mentioned: What I learnt in 2018 while running Feature Upvote.

The Bob Dylan quote I mis-remembered in this episode is:

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

I chat with Maeva Cifuentes, founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing, an SEO and content marketing agency. We discuss Maeva's journey from freelance translator to CEO of a successful marketing agency. Maeva also shares with us some practical SEO tips.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Maeva's company, Flying Cat Marketing
• Maeva on LinkedIn
• Product-led SEO by Eli Schwartz

My frequent guest co-host Ed Freyfogle tells us about his recent marketing endeavours, including one that was inspired by April Dunford's "toilet talk". Toilet talk, you ask? All will be revealing during this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Steve’s company, Feature Upvote
• Ed’s company, OpenCage
• Geomob website
• April Dunford's "Toilet talk"
• Ed's newly published Geocoding Buyer's Guide