Everything Jane Portman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Portman: After seven years, I gave up trying to teach new users
“But at this point in my life, after seven years, I've really given up on trying to teach people as they get started. There is definitely a segment of bright folks who are willing to learn. It's not impossible, but a typical busy person is not willing to absorb…”
Portman: SaaS email automation is three times more complex than other automation
“User list provides SAS email marketing automation, which is three times more complex than any other complex automation, because you need to continuously update the information about your users in real time through the API integration.”
Portman: Niching down is the only viable path in crowded SaaS markets
“Niching down, as far as I see the market at the moment, is the only way to move forward.”
Portman: Hiten Shah warned against building high-friction SaaS email products
“Somewhere in the middle, we had a consult with and he said, I would not touch a product like this with a 10 foot pole because it's incredible, incredible friction in the start.”
Portman: Most SaaS email marketing content is shallow and bare-bones
“Just the niche of SaaS email marketing automation, thankfully with the word SaaS in it, is narrow enough for us to be able to plant a footprint there. And then everybody who writes, writes very shallow, bare bones, stuff like lead the users to the aha moment. …”
Portman: Userlist trades backlinks for SaaS email examples to drive SEO
“We have a community advocate, Katharina, who goes around collecting examples in the communities, also distributing pieces there, so it's like, it's a content flywheel of sorts, because we're collecting examples in exchange for backlinks from people, then using…”
Portman: Userlist Paid $1,500–$2,000 per Article but Found Writers Too Theoretical
“We went through the stage of hiring, like, of trying to hire experts to write for us for, like, 2000 bucks a pop. And we did a few like 1502 thousand dollars, and it just, again, we stumbled into the same problem that folks are awesome in theory, and I can tel…”
Portman: If I knew onboarding difficulty, I probably wouldn't have started Userlist
“If we knew what it takes for people to integrate and get started, if I knew as much as I know now, we probably just would not start, would not have started so many years ago because it's insane.”
Portman: Userlist raised slightly under $400k in second angel round
“Our second round was a little bit short of 400 K, something like this.”
Portman: Userlist Sells Onboarding for $1K vs $8K-$20K Agency Rates
“The most popular package is the user onboarding kit. Includes the user onboarding campaign, like trial expired, expired trials, reactivation. So all the campaigns around activation. It's for a thousand dollars and consultants typically charge, I don't know, ei…”
Jane Portman: 80% of Emails on Popular Platforms Like Really Good Emails Are E-Commerce
“If you go to popular platforms, like really good emails. You're gonna find 80% emails from e-commerce, purely curated, so you're not gonna be able to do that.”
Startups For the Rest of Us 14