Feb 16, 2021 · 23m · startups-for-the-rest-of-us
Episode 536 | A Few Things I Learned in 2020 (A Rob Solo Adventure)
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In this solo episode of Startups for the Rest of Us, host Rob Walling shares critical personal and professional lessons on resilience from 2020 while outlining emerging SaaS market opportunities and startup ideation frameworks for 2021.
Statements from this episode (7)
Economic Downturns Create Great Opportunities for Bootstrapped Startups
“In fact, there can be even added opportunity in big economic bust times. You'll see all, you know, how many great companies came out of 2001 that were Almost bootstrapped or just had tiny amounts of funding, and then once the economic cycle comes back, these t…”
TinySeed Paused Fund 2 for Two Months at COVID-19's Onset
“We started raising tiny seed fund two. We're going to start raising it in March Of 20 20, and we had all the assets and everything ready to start pitching it, and this happened, and everything just locked up, and we wound up waiting one month or maybe two to s…”
Founders Needed Pre-Existing Remote Tools to Catch the COVID Wave
“You couldn't look at the pandemic happening and everyone sheltering, starting to shelter in place, and then suddenly build and launch Zoom, or build and launch Tuple, build and launch Squadcast, or Castos. You had to be in the game doing something. In order to…”
Walling Predicts Freelance and Gig Workers Will Hit Record Highs
“Number one, I think there are going to be more freelance and more gig workers than there ever have been, and I think part of that is due to the economy.”
Freelancers Make Tough Software Customers Due to High Churn and Price Sensitivity
“Marketing and Having freelancers as your main customer base is tough because they're price sensitive and they churn and they go out of business because then they get a job.”
Walling is Writing a Book on Bootstrapping Multi-Million-Dollar SaaS
“I am working on my next book. And it is, in essence, it's not a sequel to Start Small, Stay Small, but it is like the next step. So Start Small, Stay Small focused on these tiny little niche businesses... This book I'm working on now is maybe that next step...…”
Avoid Tackling Markets With Hated Incumbents For Your First Startup
“Another way is to go into a large space with a hated competitor. So that's what we did with Drip going against Infusionsoft. Xero did this against QuickBooks. Stripe did this against every payment gateway ever. I would say that's probably more of a step three …”