BC STARTUPS

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Pat Walls
@thepatwalls 4 years, 8 months ago 992 views

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I'm doing an AMA on @IndieHackers.

Drop some questions in there! Happy to answer anything, esp around building side projects with a full-time job :)

https://t.co/da4Ael9TnE

@IndieHackers My high level plans for Starter Story.

@IndieHackers On almost quitting

cc: @daviswbaer

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer How I find so many businesses to interview

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer On balancing different projects

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Why I'm working on Pigeon when it would be more rational to put all my time into Starter Story.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer On the lifestyle change going from full time to free time overnight.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Some thoughts about automation.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Will a better boss (at your full time job) help you with your side project?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Do you ever feel that the journey will be too long and painful, will it ever end?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Starter Story revenue breakdown, and my thoughts on sponsors.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Is having a newsletter a big deal in reaching/growing your audience?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer That's it! There are some more responses in there that I didn't screenshot.

https://t.co/da4Ael9TnE

Super fun and rewarding to write all these answers. What I love about this AMA is that it basically outlines a ton of blog posts and YouTube video ideas!

More from Pat Walls

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

How I auto-share ~120 blog posts to Reddit every month, reached 35k karma, and gotten millions of views.

And why I love building automation so much!

A thread!

I have hit the top of Reddit hundreds of times.

Through all of the love and hate that I get on the platform, I think I've found that it's here to stay.

After years of posting on Reddit, I've slowly built an automated system that is now 100% hands off.

This is my Starter Story backend, where I save the content of my stories in a markdown format.

This is great for Reddit because Reddit is also in a markdown format!

While I edit and publish starter stories, I set the "reddit title" in advance.

This is so I don't really ever have to think about it again. Once that's set, the system knows it should post this one to reddit, and that should be the title.

I also create a "Reddit intro" and "outro"

Although the content of the blog post is stored in my database, I still should introduce myself in the Reddit post.

I use other variables in my database to construct this.

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

After one full year, I'm officially free of credit card debt! 💳

So last year I realized I was in a horrible financial situation 😞

I had to sat down and made a REAL budget 💪

One year 👉 Paid off total of $24,705!! 😱

How I did it 👇

2/ First off, I want to talk about embarrassment. Nobody talks about their financials, unless of course, they are great! So I NEVER hear about other ppl in credit card debt.

This has made me feel like I'm a failure or that I can't even manage basic financials...

3/ So I hope this helps others out there feeling the same way.

Maybe it's how I was raised (my parents aren't great either with it) but I consider myself pretty savvy.

4/ How I got in this situation?

Living in places like SF and NY and never saving, living basically paycheck to paycheck. Then I did a coding boot camp and funded most of it off credit cards. Then I moved to NY.

Spending on my CC and thinking I'll figure it out later.

5/ Going on expensive trips with friends and funding it off my CC. Having friends that don't have to focus too much on budgeting (parents help them) and keeping up with their lifestyle.

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Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

ANDDD IT'S DONE.

Clout Report: Crowdsourced data on hundreds of upcoming rappers.

We compiled a list of over one hundred upcoming rappers and used APIs and scrapers to get over 2,600 total data

Don't let the image fool you! Hear me out!

Features:

Sort, filter, and search by:

- Gender, age, location, record label, region
- SoundCloud follower data
- IG, twitter, and FB follower data
- YouTube subscriber data
- Spotify data

I think this is particularly useful/monetizable for:

💿 record labels looking for new talent
🥁 concert/entertainment venues that want to gauge the size of the audience of an artists
🎧 artists looking to collaborate with other artists
😎 finding artists "before it was cool"

We built this in 24 hours on stream!

Thanks so much to everyone who slaved away at googling for all of these usernames, ids, etc: @AlecOfJones @jnil @DigitalSparky @cameronrohani and sorry for everyone i cant name

Many ups and downs.

Per usual, there's always someone trolling the stream. We had dozens of people editing the google sheet when someone kept deleting data and columns...

Luckily Gsheets has revisions..

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

Last month, 250k people visited https://t.co/nkcmLxbhzC, mostly from Google search.

Here are some things I've learned about SEO:

1. Second-and-third-order consequences

SEO is a "mind game" of second-and-third-order consequences. The work you do today will not yield results immediately.

Write an article, publish it, and then get no results. This makes you think you "did it wrong". Most people quit here.

Just go in with the expectation that you won't see results for six months after publish.

Instead of getting discouraged, just write more and publish more. By the time you published your 20th article, you might start finally seeing the results of your first.

2. SEO industry is mostly BS

Try to avoid SEO experts and industry nonsense, they are mostly distractions.

*Examples of distractions*: Google algorithm updates, schema markup, page speed, meta tags.

Do you think you’re smarter than Google’s algorithm? Maybe today, definitely not tomorrow.

Write and publish compelling content that answers the searcher’s query. That’s it!

@Moz:

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

1/ Starter Story September Results

💵 Revenue: $1,737.84
📈 Uniques: 20,205 (Sept)
✉️ Email Subscribers: 2,956

#openstartup

Read more 👇

2/ For all my new followers (will get to that in a sec) I do a revenue & traffic #openstartup report every month for my main side project https://t.co/nkcmLxsSra

I've been working on this project for nearly a full year.

3/ Biggest thing that happened this month was obviously the 24 hour startup!

I won't talk about it too much in this thread, but after that happened everything just blew up. I'm still trying to catch up on everything and keep my head above water.

4/ All of this craziness sparked a big decision for me.

I QUIT MY JOB! 😁😅

I know it sounds kind of crazy to quit your job over that, but as I was heading into my 1:1 with my manager it just felt like I had to do it. It felt like the right thing to do.

5/ I had planned to grow SS for 6 more months and then quit, but then the 24 hour startup happened and it felt like it was the right moment to quit.

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Justin Jackson
@mijustin

You can't pull the market towards your solution.

Markets move towards desired solutions naturally.

(Like folks lining up for ice cream on a hot summer's day).

Our ability to influence the market is much lower than you think.

It's better to build your product to conform to the direction the market is moving.

Before folks start mentioning Steve Jobs and the iPhone ("Steve built a product we didn't even know we needed!")

Nope.

Steve recognized the market's existing momentum and saw an opportunity.

"Everyone has a cell phone." (momentum)
"But nobody likes it." (opportunity)

Markets move towards solutions on their own; founders can't pull markets over to their solution.

If you're struggling to gain traction, you likely have a problem in your:

- market
- product
- channels

(or all three)

Marketing Examples
@GoodMarketingHQ

🔥 I got 2000 new subscribers from my Product Hunt launch

THREAD...

Last week I launched Marketing Examples to Product Hunt.

✔️ 1,500+ upvotes
✔️ Product of the Week
✔️ Email list grew from 1,300 to 3,300

This is the step by step account of how I did it

Step 1 - Don't launch straight away

23rd May 2019 Marketing Examples v1.0 went live. The site had a few case studies, several bugs, and an email box which didn’t convert well.

The old version of me would have thrown it on Product Hunt straight away. But I decided to wait.

Why?

1) I didn’t want to waste my “turn” with the very first iteration of my site.

2) I didn’t want to launch in a vacuum. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way.

So I set myself a target.

✔️ 1000 email subscribers
✔️ 1000 twitter followers

And then I would launch. 70 days later I hit my target.

It was showtime.

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$Paul Metcalfe \U0001f3a7$

Paul Metcalfe 🎧...
@pauldm

New startup does $150K in 12 months but still doesn’t have a landing page 🤔

Listened to Jeremy Thiessen explaining how and why, on the Sales for Founders podcast

3 takeaways...

1/ When you build a landing page, you’re putting all your assumptions out there. In the early stages of a business you need facts. To do that, you’re better off talking to a prospect. Instead of making wrong assumptions, in a place where you can’t control the conversation. 🤷‍♂️

Later, when you’ve got facts, build the landing page

2/ Figure out who you’re serving and where they are. Then start calling. Need to have one person who wants this “thing” other than you 📱

3/ When cold calling get to the point. Don’t sell. Ask good, authentic questions. Show that you want to help 🎯

Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

I just interviewed the man who invented Amazon Prime.

He started a business worth $40 billion today and served on Amazon's board for 15 yrs.

Here are lessons from Bing Gordon that'll save you years of mistakes:

When you have a business idea, take action now before it dies.

• Write 1 paragraph about the idea

• Write a 4 slide business plan

• Write your 1st line of code

When you start a job, ask your boss 2 questions:

1) Who is the best boss you've ever had and what does that mean for me?

2) What does top 10% performance look like?

Hold yourself accountable for high achievement.

If you're a cab driver, drive the most miles

if you're a fisherman, get on the best boat.

How to succeed

• Be a learning machine.
• Find a way to maintain high energy

Logan Herzog
@logansherzog

1/ I recently read about Adjacent User Theory and, despite it being focused on expanding existing users. thought there were some great takeaways about prospecting.

2/ General concept is that just beyond your existing users are groups of potential users who would better adopt your product if it were positioned differently. As you expand your positioning, you convert under-engaged users.

In outbound sales it's the same.

3/ Too many startups try too hard to guess their exact prospect profile. This is necessary to find their first successful customer profile, but beyond that, identifying new types of prospects should be more formulaic.

4/ Here's how I've done it to identify 12 different successful prospect profiles in a few months:

- Use the 80/20 rule: 20% of the leads you reach out to should fall outside of your current core prospect profile.

5/ Priority should be on profiles with only 1-2 differences from the current core. Perhaps a slightly different pain point, but not dramatically different.

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Quinn Cummings
@quinncy

Gather round, Gentle Readers. It is time I tell the story of the worst decision I ever made in an office. Some of you have heard this. Some have not. Whatever you do in your office today, this week, the rest of this year, you can console yourself by recalling this tale.

A long time ago, I was a talent agent. I worked for a woman named Susan Smith, who had her own small boutique agency. She was known for three things:

1. She had fantastic taste in clients. If there is someone you admire, odds are good that at some point, she was their agent,

2. She could negotiate a deal like few who have ever trod the earth. Casting would give her all the money they had budgeted for that part, plus a little more, plus promising to get her dog Barnaby groomed. She was magnificent to watch.

3. She was insane.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Quinn, it's the entertainment industry, they are all insane." Yes, many are. So consider this; if you told someone you worked for Susan, people who worked for insane people would look and you and whisper, "I hear she's insane."

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Cookie Cyboid
@CookieCyboid

“Why are Tumblr and Facebook cracking down on sex so much? And why is Facebook in so over zealous about it? It’s all Apples fault!” Etc etc

I can explain all. It is largely the fault of a set of US laws called SESTA and FOSTA.

Noah Smith
@Noahpinion

1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.

4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.

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@FT__Trading

Ever wonder how traders get in stocks before they explode? 🧐

Or find options that move 1,000% in a single day/week?🤯

I made a thread going over exactly how I find these stocks BEFORE they take off 🚀
👇👇👇

So, let's start with the software I use…

Finviz!! Finviz is a free website that I use to scan for stocks.

They have a lot of other cool features as well, but I only use their scanner.
👇

Head on over to finviz and go to the screener

Click on the “All” tab on the top and put in the criteria in the next tweet
👇

This is the first scan that I use for bullish swing setups
✅Quarter +10%
✅Week Down
✅Vol over 400k
✅Optionable
✅Price > $20
👇

The next scan I use is the opposite of the first one.

Simply change:
✅Quarter +10% to -10%
✅Week Down to Week up

This is my bearish scan for swing setups. 👇