MicroConf Remote broke the fourth wall(ing) and featured the stories of founders from 4 critical points in the journey of building successful, non-venture track startups.
The event covered the full gamut of founders representing vastly different stages of experience - but all had one thing in common - a pursuit of a businesses that served their and their customer needs while not chasing after venture capital to make it happen.
Chapter 1: Launch
1.1 How I Inadvertently Launched Speckled with Corinn Pope, Founder, Speckled
Our opener tweeted back in early June that she had inadvertently launched her company. It doesn’t get much earlier stage or right at launch as that. Corinn Pope is the Founder of Speckled, and has been following the stairstep approach to move from an employee to a info-product maker, to now a self-taught technical Founder of Speckled. And her approaching to building the company leaned so far into the concept of “Just Ship It” that she had launched her MVP before she had really realized. Check out her story.
1.2 Startup Founders In Cars Getting Coffee with Dr. Sherry Walling, Founder, ZenFounder
Dr. Sherry Walling has spent nearly 300 episodes on her podcast, ZenFounder, talking about the in’s and out’s of the founder psychology. That, along with a doctorate in clinical psychology and years of working with entrepreneurs, has helped her put together a couple of avatars for the variety of founders you see in the startup work.
Join her and Rob as they talk about the origin stories of many founders, and see which one you relate most to.
1.3 Quick Fix #1: Communicate with New Customers with Rand Fishkin, Co-Founder, SparkToro
Rand wants you to know that it is OK to have a conversation with your customers(!!!), and one easy way to start that conversation in your first onboarding email.
Chapter 2: Reaching $10K MRR
2.1 The Road to $10K MRR with Colleen Johnson, Co-Founder, Scatterspoke
Our next storyteller is Colleen Johnson, the Co-Founder of Scatterspoke. The winding road that her and her husband co-founder have navigated in the last three years as they’ve build up a product that served a specific need within the Agile community has brought them to the door of $10K MRR. Take a step by step walkthrough on the various turns she and the Scatterspoke team took as they slowly made their way to that $10K MRR mark.
2.2 Quick Fix: Finance for SaaS Founders with Meryl Johnston, Co-Founder, BeanNinjas
Meryl takes a deep look into things that founders at a few different stages of their journey can be optimizing their finances for the future.
2.3 Between Two Plants We Stole Off Someones Patio with Andy Martin, Founder, BlueRithm
Join the MicroConf Remote host, Rob Walling, for a conversation with Andy Martin, Founder of BlueRithm and Minneapolis Native who joined us in the MicroConf Remote studio to chat about his experience building BlueRithm on the back of a successful career supporting large scale projects.
2.4 Quick Fix: SEO Hacks with Viola Eva, Founder, Flow-SEO
Viola Eva has a few quick tips on how to optimize your best performing content for SEO.
Chapter 3: Crossing the $100K MRR Milestone
3.1 How Squadcast Blew Past $100K MRR with Zach Moreno & Rock Felder, Co-Founders, Squadcast.fm
Up next are lifelong friends and co-founders of Squadcast.fm , Zach Moreno and Rock Felder. It took them nearly 2 years to go from Launch to $10K MRR. In the last year, they’ve 10X to beyond $100K. In this talk, they’ve cover the three things that they can point to that carried them through this milestone, and the direction that they are currently headed.
3.2 Quick Fix #4: Pay Off Your Analytical Debt with Asia Orangio, Founder, Demand Maven
Asia thinks that paying off your Analytical Debt as early as possible will clear up a lot of question marks later on in your business.
3. Training Your Team to Get the Job Done Without You with Nate Grahek, Founder, Sticky Albums
Nate is going to share a few pointers for how he optimizes his internal operations so that his team of much smarter people doing their own thing can get their jobs done without him being the bottleneck.
Chapter 4: … And Beyond
4.1 Ask Me Anything with Jason Fried, Co-Founder, Hey & Basecamp
As we see the end of the story that we’ve weaved during MicroConf Remote, we come to the story of Jason Fried, Basecamp, and his newest project - Hey.
The story of such resounding success as a bootstrapped startup is rarely challenged by the story of Basecamp. What happens when you’re not looking to exit, but are ready to work on something new…. This is an Ask Me Anything that the audience submitted questions for.
4.2 A Fireside MicroConf ROAST: A Comedy Feature by Lianna Patch, Punchline Conversion Copywriting
To get the audience warmed up on a Tuesday at (insert random time across 20 time zones), we invited our legendary MicroConf Starter Emcee that never was (RIP 2020), Lianna Patch, of Punchline Copy to tell a couple jokes, ya see?
Here, Lianna is going to roast MicroConf, Mike, Rob, polos, name badges, and a $70 pizza. Oh how we miss Las Vegas.
4.3 Make Your Own MicroConf Commercial
So, we grabbed a bunch of green screen footage with some quick advertisements during MicroConf Remote… If you are so creatively inclined, we’d love to see your hand at turning some RW Green Screen Footage into a MicroConf Masterpiece.