MicroConf

“In the state of independent SaaS report, it was about 10% of, kind of, the independent SaaS folks in this community had raised some type of funding.”

“And I love the progress we've made over the last decade of having zero underrepresented founders in the first year and then having one the second year and each year it's just a little more.”

“We were able to sell those 700 tickets in less than a month, and so it felt like it was definitely an interesting prospect when you consider the six to eight months that you want to have in terms of runway to sell tickets to a live event.”

“In twenty-twenty, we planned for seven in-person events. We were going from three up to seven, and then we were going to go from zero remote events or virtual events to two, and really we haven't done any in-person events.”

“Certainly it's the biggest microconf event prior to this is essentially growth every year, which runs about two 75, I believe.”

“Most businesses, if you start off B to C, you wind up trying to get to B to B eventually, and typically you start off as B to really small B, and eventually you'd want to raise your prices, because pricing doesn't just make you more money, but it gets you to a…”

“And in fact, the State of Independence SAS survey and report that I did through MicroConf reflected that, you know, what we would expect that, like, lower price points, higher churn, companies with higher price points grew faster, all that kind of stuff.”

“I mean, we do a state of independent SaaS survey through MicroConf, and we just put the report out, and of all the people in that survey running SaaS companies with revenue, I believe it was like 12, 13% had raised some type of funding, so the other 87, you kn…”

“We have the MicroConf State of Independent SAS survey. We do a survey and then put out a report. And we talk about how people found their startup idea, their SaaS idea specifically. And I just pulled the report up and 45% of respondents said they came up with …”

“When we did our State of Independence survey, 90% of the bootstrapped, mostly bootstrapped SaaS founders, 90% of the teams have at least one technical founder, at least one developer, like nine out of 10 in essence.”

“We, you know, we do the state of independent SaaS, and I, it's somewhere between 50 and 60% of MicroConf tiny seed type companies are single founders, and that's very different than the venture capital landscape.”

“If I'm going to join as employee number two through 10, I mean, the tiny C companies, the microcom companies, and even when I was two through 10, always wanted people with multiple skill sets. That was, they were like the unicorns that I looked for, because I …”

“When I first meet people and they say, what do you do? I say, I'm a startup founder. I run startups. Like, that's what Tiny Seed and MicroConf really are. Like, Tiny Seed happens to have raised funding to invest in other startups, but internally we are still, …”

“This is already in the works for us, a microconf. We have microconf connect, right? Which is a Slack channel has like 5100 founders and aspiring founders. We are going to be offering a Premium paid version of that, which is had just has a hand, you know, five …”

“Got a cash offer for microconf, and I was like, ah, it was like, 2018. I was like, ah, I could just walk away from all of it.”

“We're approaching a thousand matches and a 150 to two hundred million in total ARR across many countries.”

“We absolutely get suggestions for speakers like Gary Vee, Seth Godin, whatever other celebrity person who talks kind of about entrepreneurship or marketing or whatever. Look, I don't mind those people. I don't, I like Seth Godin, right? I would love, I've seen…”

“Almost half of the conversations I had were kind of about that.”

“All events need sponsors in order to make them happen. I was under the impression that, oh, you know, when people charge a thousand dollars for a ticket or 500 dollars for a ticket, they sell those tickets and that pays for the event. But no, they're all subsi…”

“We changed the format, or we continued to lean into the adjustment we started making in 2021, in which we used to do nine talks over two days, and now we do about five talks, and with the extra time, it's all founder connection.”

“Steven Craven and he told his founder story, him and his co-founder story of going from launch To 50 K of MRR in a week, and they had an existing audience. The company's called Stritus, and it's software for personal trainers.”

“It's the common story. It is the most common story in, in the MicroConf space.”

“I believe like people come for the talks and they stay for the community. Like that's what keeps people around. Cause if we just had talks year, year in, year out with no community, like no one would stick around.”

“We basically, you know, went from 10,000 subscribers to almost 70,000 subscribers in about 18 months.”

“I've never invested in an app where the founders have cold emailed me. It's always through, it has traditionally been through MicroConf and of course now it's through TinySeed.”

“And in 2018, I had left Drip, right, sold it in 2016, left in 18, and we received a cash offer, a seven-figure cash offer, to sell MicroConf, and we seriously considered it.”

“Microconf, which was essentially run at breakeven. It made a little bit of profit, but the podcast certainly was, didn't take sponsorships, actually, you know, drew money.”

“Number two is, that's a loose rule of thumb, but like, don't sell more than 10 or 20% of your company in a single round... Loose rule of thumb, even tight rule of thumb is, I would be super suspect if I was selling more than, if you're doing a bootstrapper fun…”

“Jason Freed on the MicroConf stage said it throws off tens of millions a year in net profit, and that was six, seven, eight years ago, and you know it's probably grown since then.”

“I believe the number is 90% of our kind of MicroConf TinySeed Crew is one or two person companies, which makes sense. One or two co-founder companies, I should say. And then it's another handful, it might even be more than 90, actually, it might be like 92,…”

“There were 218 attendees from 15 different countries, and the shocking stat was, I think it was like, what, 75% had revenue, But that 28% of the attendees had more than a hundred K of MRR.”

“If you do come to MicroConf for another conference and you are not a sponsor and you start selling pretty heavily, it will get back to the organizers and they will remember your name because we have had folks do that.”

“If you go to Sastr, everyone's there to sell their stuff to everyone else. It just is, everyone's trying to put deals together. Everyone's trying to put meetings together. That is kind of the point of Sastr. A lot of people ignore the content because they're t…”

“We even have early stage SaaS masterminds that we match people in, and that one has the biggest failure rate of all of our masterminds, because people don't, it's like, what, what's the playbook?”

“I've quit microconf locals. We were running 10 events per year. We stopped them.”

“Why did we go from 52 YouTube videos a year to 26? That's not quitting. But it was a big decision of like, we ship every week to we ship every other week now.”

“We have spent north of half a million dollars producing free content. And that's YouTube. That's this podcast. Oh, I mean, if I include, actually, if I include this podcast, it's literally, it's gotta be 707 or 50 grand, you know, over the course of the years.”

“We launched local events... The local interest wasn't there. We couldn't charge enough, even to make them break even. We were losing money on them. And it was burning me and the producer out, because we were on the road all the time.”

“Most of the microconf, tiny seed, startups for the rest of this ecosystem tends to skew a little older. Let's say thirties and forties, some folks in their fifties.”

“If I'm doing a full-time, you know, W-II employee hire, we go through Dynamite Jobs remote-first recruiting, just because finding full-time people is so time-consuming. But if we're hiring part-time, we tend, we being MicroConf Tiny Seed, And even, you know, b…”

“We pick one new thing to attack, and we did YouTube for two and a half years, and then, you know, until it plateaued around 90,000, and then we are looking at LinkedIn next, and we're going all in. Like, we hired a LinkedIn consultant. We are spending thousand…”

“We were paying six figures a year for f***ing Slack for MicroConf Connect. It was outrageous.”

“93% of people in the room had a startup with, or product with revenue. Which is the highest it's ever been. I mean, we're typically in the seventies or low eighties.”

“28% of attendees Had more than a hundred K of MRR.”

“You know, you saw when we were dropping 15 grand a month on YouTube, and it worked. It was a lot of money, but it works for us, you know. And then now we're spending a lot of time and money on LinkedIn. Why? Because we have that ability to take a flyer. And if…”

“Doing a talk is like this like friend catcher. Cause like you talk about something you're passionate about and then people find you.”

“90% of our attendees at this event had a product with revenue, and at 30% of attendees had at least a 100,000 dollars in MRR.”

“That's always my concern, right, with attendee created content is, is it going to let people down because the microconf stamps on this, you know, and if you go to a session that isn't good, that's kind of a bummer.”

“Almost 30% of the attendees are above a million in ARR.”

“And this is why approximately zero founders in the MicroConf TinySeed Startups and Restless Ecosystem have patents. There are some exceptions. That's why I say approximately zero. So yes, you can, I can point out two right now, but there are More than what is …”

“More than 75% of our applicants come from referrals from Tiny Seed alumni, from MicroConf, or MicroConf YouTube, from Startups for the Rest of Us, from other word-of-mouth referrals, or from our social media, or email lists, or my books, or my email list, and …”

“Tiny team, think of like MicroConf and TinySeed is nine full-time people and two part-time. And we have invested in 210 B to B SaaS companies in the last seven years. We run all the MicroConf events in addition to mastermind matching and connect. We push out t…”

“And there was almost 25% of attendees are doing seven figures. Had at least a hundred K of MRR.”

“We had about 235 attendees from 12 countries and a really good turnout once again of Folks with real businesses.”

“TinySeed companies, as well as TinySeed itself, and MicroConf, and this podcast, and Rob Walling, are all getting referrals and traffic from LLMs, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.”

“The seven, and only seven ways, that a SaaS app can plateau.”

“Between MicroGump and TinySeed, there are, I think there are 10 of us And people make full-time salaries. You know, these are mostly W-II folks living in North America, so it's not cheap.”