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Self-Taught "Coder" With 5-Figure MRR SaaS Company

A topic related to SAAS or APPs

James Fake

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Hey Fastlaners,

I've been meaning to post this and contribute and bring some value back to the place that planted the entrepreneur enlightenment seed in me. If it wasn't for MJ and a few others; my life path would not have been what it has been for the past 10 years and future...

Anyways; one thing unique about me is that I am what you consider having Unicorn Skills by silicon valley standards. I can code, market, and design and all self-taught.

And so combined with a successful SaaS business on my belt now; I think I am pretty qualified in one of the most popular topics here: Should I Learn To Code My App Or Outsource - especially in having been & experienced ALL Sides to this argument and muscling it through to success.

With that said; I am opening up myself like a book; feel free to ask anything and I will give you my honest opinion, advice, and personal experience on hopping the hurdle.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Background On Me:
  • I self-taught myself Photoshop 10+ years ago to edit my Facebook pictures through Youtube. Before then I had zero technical experience or aspirations to get into tech.
  • I needed a website, and made one with the entire thing being a bunch of images fit together by me swapping things in a pre-made html template. I had zero clue on html.
  • An all image website gave much frustration as you can imagine. And I learned how to make hyper-links, text color, sizes, table boxes, etc. through YouTube as I needed to fix things.
  • Got good enough to make an operational (but ugly af) website, and started tinkering with Google Adsense after reading success stories.
  • Got completely obsessed with the Fastlane and learning/observing/researching how rich people got rich and what values/morals/ethics/heart/drive made them capable of doing that.
  • Got obsessed with generating traffic to websites. Had made a few viral YouTube videos (before viral marketing was even a term or thought about) that went well over 5M+ views.
  • A few passive websites making money (nothing over 5 figures though)
  • Kept at it; my ADD made me want to chase SaaS as it was producing a ton of millionaires at the time.
  • Failed miserably at launching my first few into an actual live MVP web app.
  • Decided to self-teach myself Ruby on Rails (was freakin' intense & hard)
  • Finally created one after years of failing to launch, it was met with mediocre success.
  • Went through depression, burnt out, etc. etc.
  • Stumbled across Amazon FBA and straight hustled. Daughter was soon to be here, it kicked my a$$ into a whole 'nother gear.
  • Came back to SaaS world and launched Feedbackz.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Summary On Me Today:
  • MRR (monthly recurring revenue) at 5 figures.
  • My Programming Skills Are Bare Minimum meaning I know enough to launch a very basic web app, but anything beyond me I outsource. I am also slow as balls doing any development work.
  • Content Marketing is where I am really, really good at.
  • Design is a close second, mostly due to the fact that over the years; I learned what little things make something look ugly and doing the opposite. Also, genuine empathy from a user-standpoint helps a lot.
 
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James Fake

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BRING ON THE QUESTIONS!!

Here's some of my thoughts from off the top of my head:

In General: My answer to Should I Learn To Code Or Outsource is:
Yes and No. It entirely depends on who you are and what your situation is.

I Say YES If:
  • Have no other "real focused skill" in life that makes people actively try to recruit you for a job. (example: doctors get head-hunted, developers especially, etc. etc. Anything where that skill is rare and not being filled. The complete opposite of this would be: A college degree in business). Learning to code will give a tremendous safety net for employment that will last a lifetime.
  • You know html & css by self-teaching which shows a general interest and liking in creating stuff with tech.
  • You are bi-lingual at all, easier to pick up languages and patterns in language. (thats all coding is)
  • Low on money & any capital, high on time or stupid crazy determination/drive (even more so than the already high drive FLaners have here, like you're top 10% determination/drive in this community)

I Say NO If:
  • You hate being alone or taking a step further; if you are anywhere near being an extrovert.
  • Need a "course" or "someone to teach you" or any other "online education platform" to learn. And don't have the "just F*cking do it by trying to build something" by any means necessary by going deep into YouTube and Google.
  • You ask people questions that would of taken you 2 minutes to find on Google.
  • Don't have balls of steel and a brain-washed blindness to failure.
  • You have extremely mad marketing skills; and I am not talking about 'you think you are good' or work as a 'social media marketing exec' at some studio selling monthly services to mom/pop shops around town, but you have a proven track record of being able to generate traffic through long-term and viral sources to your own shit. So much so that you are self-employed entirely by these. (PPC and other short term methods doesn't count.)
  • Like being "CEO" and doing "CEO" things because you will be so far head-up-in-your-a$$ inside your business working that you won't be doing "CEO" things until years later

Some Pros I Can Personally Vouch For Knowing How To Code:
  • I can launch any idea I want with virtually zero money except some elbow grease and time.
  • My safety net to employment if I "fail" at anytime only compounds my confidence and my risk tolerance to crazy high levels.
  • Prevented many problems before they happened because I can review & understand logic behind the way new features would work. (and if it somehow may interfere with the many ideas I had in my head that I didn't let out yet)
  • Quick, basic fixes don't usually wait on anybody, I can jump in & fix things.
  • I can communicate clearly to my dev team better than veteran project managers with 40 years under their belt.
  • The most crazy pro is that - there isn't a solid con. About the only thing I can think that is bad is sometimes I find myself dipping into the tactical side of business than staying strategical during growth mode after gained traction, but people experience that with aspects outside of coding, so may not necessarily be a true con.
 
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Rawr

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Your YES/No breakdown should be stickied as gold. Great post.


  • The most crazy pro is that - there isn't a solid con. About the only thing I can think that is bad is sometimes I find myself dipping into the tactical side of business than staying strategical during growth mode after gained traction, but people experience that with aspects outside of coding, so may not necessarily be a true con.
Was that supposed to be technical instead of tactical? Otherwise what's the difference between those two?


So my question would be, what would you tell someone who had experience with html about what to pick to code in? What if they wanted to do apps mostly? Do you think there is going to be a problem of too many coders? What separates an intern coder for $10-15 from coder at $30-50/hr from $100-200/hr?
 

ReubenA

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Awesome!

I'd love to see a breakdown of your content marketing strategy (or your main strategy you used to grow Feedbackz). As much/little detail as you want would help a tonne. This is something I currently suck at and I'm trying to learn. I think it fits really well with growing a SaaS
 
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maverick

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Hi James,

Thanks for the AMA. I'm currently working on bringing a SaaS product to market and would like to understand how you approached the go-to-market? What was the thought process that you went through and how did you get your first 10 customers?

Nice, clean website btw!
 

maverick

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Also wondering if you've ran any tests concerning your pricing / free trial approach. Would love to hear your insights on this as it's a science by itself.
 

James Fake

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What lessons did you learn with the failed web apps? Was it too niched down, too difficult or users... ?

@Longinus - Nice questions!

Hmm.... there were two struggles:

1) Failures with getting a web app launched (two times)

2) Failures with a launched mvp web app (two times)

Point #1 Struggles:
  • Outsourcing to Indians on a freelancer website is a really bad idea
  • Outsourcing to a local developer without asking the 'best, leading' developer (or any active developer that engages in the local community like meetups, etc.) what he thinks of him... is a really bad idea
Point #2 Struggles:
  • My competitive advantage was not really competitive advantage at all; it was just another cookie cutter copy of current competitors
  • Before creating any app or identifying any pain you can solve with one; figure out how you're going to get users... exponentially.
  • Me personally; I don't chase or create an app idea unless I am a hardcore user of it myself.

Your YES/No breakdown should be stickied as gold. Great post.


  • The most crazy pro is that - there isn't a solid con. About the only thing I can think that is bad is sometimes I find myself dipping into the tactical side of business than staying strategical during growth mode after gained traction, but people experience that with aspects outside of coding, so may not necessarily be a true con.
Was that supposed to be technical instead of tactical? Otherwise what's the difference between those two?


So my question would be, what would you tell someone who had experience with html about what to pick to code in? What if they wanted to do apps mostly? Do you think there is going to be a problem of too many coders? What separates an intern coder for $10-15 from coder at $30-50/hr from $100-200/hr?

Tactical meaning: Since you have the skill to just jump into fixes and making new features and stuff; it's easy to get lost in working on the small stuff. Instead of the big overall strategy stuff like direction, feature roadmaps, marketing, etc.

I chose Ruby on Rails, but there may be easier. And it depends on what kind of apps: mobile, web, both, native, etc.
Honestly, "too many" of anything means you probably aren't zagging enough while everyone else is zigging.

For example:
There is a huge amount of developers doing freelance work. But most are part-time while they work a day job coding, etc. hence often times poor quality of work and focus, or poor delivery times. You can "zag" this by being a minority of being a truly full-time developer that isn't juggling 5-6 projects but can spend 40 hours a week focused on one project and delivering it.

The costs are usually determined by: Apart from technical experience (which also means they can prob churn out more solid work per hour than someone lower) is... Focus. And attention to detail. The higher up the cost; the more 'focus' they have on your app. They're not F*cking around, and this 'not F*cking around' attitude costs money.

Awesome!

I'd love to see a breakdown of your content marketing strategy (or your main strategy you used to grow Feedbackz). As much/little detail as you want would help a tonne. This is something I currently suck at and I'm trying to learn. I think it fits really well with growing a SaaS

Sure, what industry/niche are you doing?

To keep it general; I sucked at producing content to Feedbackz, but the little that I did produce was pretty high quality: Amazon’s 35 Ranking Factors: A Complete Breakdown List (example)

But... it's all about teaching everything you know. Example:

Coder #1 and Coder #2 both are on the same path and progression to learning how to create a web app.

Coder #1 takes alittle bit more time to brain dump everything he learns in a formatted way to teach others. Coder #2 doesn't, but they progress the same rate.

A year later; Coder #2 organically has a nice sized following, although #1 and #2 are on the same technical level; but Coder #1 is viewed by a huge audience as an 'expert' while Coder #2 is not.

It's not what you know; it's how much you teach! Content marketing should just be re-named to Teach marketing.

End Goal: Teach everything you know.
 
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maverick

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Awesome!

I'd love to see a breakdown of your content marketing strategy (or your main strategy you used to grow Feedbackz). As much/little detail as you want would help a tonne. This is something I currently suck at and I'm trying to learn. I think it fits really well with growing a SaaS

Hi ReubenA,

I can add my 2 cts here. Basically, create content that is high value, sticky, and easy to digest.

Let me break that down:
- High value: The content should scratch an itch that your visitor has. This doesn't necessarily mean it should be new, unique content however the angle should be unique. To get some ideas as to what your visitors are looking for, check out: AnswerThePublic.com: that free visual keyword research & content ideas tool and Keyword Tool: 750+ Google Keyword Suggestions for Free. Use 192 Google Domains & 83 Languages (especially the questions part is very helpful). It's important to note that curating the highest quality content within your niche and summarizing it in 1 post is a highly effective way of achieving the best results with the least amount of effort.

- Sticky: As we all know, google factors in the time visitors spend on your website once they find you in the SERPS. As a direct result longer form copy (in general!) tends to rank better than short form. The focus should always be on quality over quantity so don't use filler text to make it long form. Use javascript elements like timelines (Timeline JS) and accordeons to get people to interact with your content. I'm sure this will be factored into google results (if it's not already).

- Easy to digest / share: the content should be easy to digest, meaning I should be able to go through the content in one sitting. Ideally, you'd plant a seed with your easy-to-digest content. Check out how Kissmetrics does their content marketing for example. They sell a SaaS analytics solution, but if you read their blog you will see that they have created content around all of the problems that prospective buyers have. An example of this: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-calculate-lifetime-value/

How do I calculate lifetime value? One of the biggest questions that people advancing into ecommerce have. The infographic lays this out very well _HOWEVER_ you get the feeling that this is something that is terribly difficult. You would need help in calculating LTV and guess what - they have a solution to help you!

It's effectively pulling customers in instead of broadcasting out. Use answerthepublic and keywordtool to understand the problems that your customers have and build content around that. You want to educate people, help them with their problems and ultimately solve them. But first you would need to understand what the core problem is and how you can help customers with that - either through software or a physical product.

Looks like I spent 1 ct more..
 

BobW78

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Wow! your website is REALLY good. It may be the best I've ever seen and I'm not just blowing smoke up your a$$.

I really like your pricing slider. Very cool.
 
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inputchip

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Hi James, thanks for doing the AMA. What is your advice for finding good outsourced programmers?
 
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Hi James,
Thanks a lot for the AMA and congrats on your success so far.
Here are my questions:

1. If you started from zero again(no knowledge of marketing and coding), what skill would you learn to have that "fall-back" safety net?
I´m focussing on copywriting as a main skill at the moment, but feel like coding could be a nice option as well. Feel like copywriting could boost my self-esteem as well as help with business strategy(I´m not the natural rockstar salesman you talk about).
How many months of learning to code to be employable?

2. What was your thinking process when choosing your niche? I guess being in the trenches with Amazon crystallized the idea?
So basically you need to have experience in 2 industries to solve the problem effectively?(namely the niche as well as the tech stuff)

3. What are your top 5+ favourite books(for founding a SAAS company)?

Again, really appreciate your helping us aspiring newbies. ;)
Vote for GOLD.
 
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Hey man! Thanks for doing this.

I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS and Wordpress. I know you mention Ruby on Rails quite a bit here but I'm curious...

- If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?
- For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?
- How's your lifestyle looking now with feedbackz.com?

Thanks again man, this could definitely steer me on a path that I'd love to go down.
 

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Thanks for sharing your cool story! It's inspiring to hear about your journey for the last ten years!

My question is kind of hidden within all the other one a but it would be cool to hear about it from a big picture perspective.

If you had known your path would take you to where you are now, what advice would you give yourself ten years ago that would have sped up your journey and saved you time and energy? Is there anything you would do different if you were to do it all again?
 
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BobW78

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Hey man! Thanks for doing this.

I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS and Wordpress. I know you mention Ruby on Rails quite a bit here but I'm curious...

- If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?
- For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?
- How's your lifestyle looking now with feedbackz.com?

Thanks again man, this could definitely steer me on a path that I'd love to go down.

Check out this handy chart. Probably won't answer your question but I like it.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*OF594B5qtCJR9MFSRTI-5g.png
 

KSR

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AustinS28

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Hey man! Thanks for doing this.

I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS and Wordpress. I know you mention Ruby on Rails quite a bit here but I'm curious...

- If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?
- For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?
- How's your lifestyle looking now with feedbackz.com?

Thanks again man, this could definitely steer me on a path that I'd love to go down.

I taught myself Ruby over the last 6 months and it's probably the best thing I have ever done for myself. I'm not the OP, but I think figuring out the best language to learn boils down to what you want to do with it. Want to write trading algorithms at a Hedge Fund? Java and Python seem to be the big ones. Start-ups, dynamic languages like Ruby and again Python are big since you can easily deploy an app in a relatively short period of time.

If you want to learn, I'd spend a week or two figuring out the basics on Code Academy, but the biggest tool for me has been codewars.com - it has coding problems in over a dozen languages from the most basic to super advanced. To me it's been like playing a puzzle game, but in return I've retained and learned so much more code doing a couple hundred problems since November. I find it fun.

Would love to hear the OPs reply to this.
 
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TKDTyler

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With Feedbackz (which I am a happy customer of... thank you for timely email updates btw), what was your learning curve like since launch? What kind of issues and situations came up post-launch that you were not expecting and had to tackle?

Being a semi-solo entrepreneur (I know you hired a couple employees now), your time was split between development and running the business. Were there any pros to being more hands on the day to day task rather than focusing on growth and outsourcing?
 

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Thanks for doing this @James A . I'm at a point very similar to where you were years ago (learning to code, planning to build Subscription Software, but lots of personal experience running my own show in a different arena).

You mention something that caught my attention:
  • Before creating any app or identifying any pain you can solve with one; figure out how you're going to get users... exponentially.
As a strong believer in "Build Something People Need," I've been going the "Customer Development" route: interviewing a ton of potential customers across various industries, recording the interviews and going over them with a fine-toothed comb, looking for a NEED a lot of potential customers have, before I write a single line of code. I've got a lot of patience to keep looking until I find a Need that I can capitalize on.

With that said, I'm curious if you could expound on "How you're going to get users exponentially."
What tactics have worked best for you?
Inbound Marketing? Facebook Ads? Adwords? Email Marketing? Cold Calling?
Are there any tricks to figure out a plan for Exponential User Growth before you build an app?

Thanks for your time.
 
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eliquid

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Hey man! Thanks for doing this.

I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS and Wordpress. I know you mention Ruby on Rails quite a bit here but I'm curious...

- If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?
- For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?
- How's your lifestyle looking now with feedbackz.com?

Thanks again man, this could definitely steer me on a path that I'd love to go down.

I don't want to answer for James, but I answered this on another forum recently since I'm on successful SaaS #5 atm

"If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?"
You need to learn several to really make it fly on your own. I'd start with just one and see what your demands are.
Personally, I feel you can't go wrong with PHP 7 and MySQL as a starter, but an alternative would be RoR. However, it might be good to use a language that doesn't update versions as much because it already have everything, like Perl.

If I could learn 1, it would be C++ because of the pure speed it offers.

"For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?"
Depends on your needs.
If you are talking massive scale ( billions and billions of rows of big data and need for speed ), you are going to need languages like C++ backed with Redis. Smaller stuff you can get by with PHP or Perl or RoR or Go, etc backed with MySQL/Mongo/etc

Language though isn't the hard part. Its the scaling when you get big and knowing the proper way to shard database, have task managers/flow, and using possibly 3rd party stuff like Hadoop and Amazon services when the need appears.

If I were to pick one for a starter, it would be PHP7 with MySQL or RoR. Why? Easy to pick up and TONS of online resources to learn with sample code.
 
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James Fake

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Hi James,

Thanks for the AMA. I'm currently working on bringing a SaaS product to market and would like to understand how you approached the go-to-market? What was the thought process that you went through and how did you get your first 10 customers?

Nice, clean website btw!

Will you be a user of your own app?

For me; since I was a user myself, I knew things that many sellers wanted to know but no one thought to bring it to life in content. Three of the bigger articles took me about 7-8 hours to write each. I then spent another 7-8 hours on each curating and marketing just the article out to communities around fba sellers like facebook groups, reddit, this forum, etc. etc.

Also wondering if you've ran any tests concerning your pricing / free trial approach. Would love to hear your insights on this as it's a science by itself.

Nope, no tests yet! I'm actually going to change the pricing a bit as the cost of running the app has increased significantly as new features become more server hogs.

I've always believed in free trials; along with that, I made a live demo version of the app so somebody wouldn't have to sign up to see the app. It's transparency that I think people really appreciate.

Wow! your website is REALLY good. It may be the best I've ever seen and I'm not just blowing smoke up your a$$.

I really like your pricing slider. Very cool.

Thanks so much!!

Hi James, thanks for doing the AMA. What is your advice for finding good outsourced programmers?

I actually don't have a good answer to this. Only because I took a different route (meaning I was only able to find good programmers because I myself could program); this was my path:

1. Tried to get app made by Indians over Elance = Fail + $1,500 lost
2. Tried to get app made by local developer without researching his reputation = Fail + $4000 lost
3. Decided to learn RoR myself = First app launched
4. Created second app = Hired outsourced programmers (but at this point I already knew the in's and out's of what makes a good programmer)

If I could re-do it; a possible alternate route I would have taken would be:

1. Find an idea that people would be willing to pay for now before app is made
2. Use money and some capital to hire best reputable programmer in town
3. Launch app

Hi James,
Thanks a lot for the AMA and congrats on your success so far.
Here are my questions:

1. If you started from zero again(no knowledge of marketing and coding), what skill would you learn to have that "fall-back" safety net?
I´m focussing on copywriting as a main skill at the moment, but feel like coding could be a nice option as well. Feel like copywriting could boost my self-esteem as well as help with business strategy(I´m not the natural rockstar salesman you talk about).
How many months of learning to code to be employable?

2. What was your thinking process when choosing your niche? I guess being in the trenches with Amazon crystallized the idea?
So basically you need to have experience in 2 industries to solve the problem effectively?(namely the niche as well as the tech stuff)

3. What are your top 5+ favourite books(for founding a SAAS company)?

Again, really appreciate your helping us aspiring newbies. ;)
Vote for GOLD.

1. Wordpress. And then eventually customizing beyond what a template would allow via html/css. Good web designers can get jobs fairly easily; maybe not head-hunted like programmers, but easy compared to most other non-focus-skilled having job seeker.

I would say 4-6 months full-time learning by building something like a super basic blog app to be entry level programmer.

People might bash me, but Copywriting isn't something you really have to learn. It isn't really a skill. It's merely a by-product of having great empathy. Empathy can be gained by effort and energy into understanding and learning another's perspective...fully and deep.

If you know exactly what your users/market's mind and perspective is; writing in their language & emotion comes easy as talking.

2. Exactly.

3. Hmm.... that's a great question. I moved and don't have my books here to look. =( I do remember ReWork, another Jason Fried one, a few others I can't recall. =(

Hey man! Thanks for doing this.

I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS and Wordpress. I know you mention Ruby on Rails quite a bit here but I'm curious...

- If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?
- For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?
- How's your lifestyle looking now with feedbackz.com?

Thanks again man, this could definitely steer me on a path that I'd love to go down.

I think @AustinS28 nailed it. RoR for SaaS apps can get you up and running quick. For me; Getting something up and working is the key to success in learning code. I would learn theory, syntax, etc. later after I had a basic blog app up live.

Lifestyle is great. I work for myself which is really nice, but I work just as hard (if not harder) now than before. More responsibility = more stress and pressure.

Thanks for sharing your cool story! It's inspiring to hear about your journey for the last ten years!

My question is kind of hidden within all the other one a but it would be cool to hear about it from a big picture perspective.

If you had known your path would take you to where you are now, what advice would you give yourself ten years ago that would have sped up your journey and saved you time and energy? Is there anything you would do different if you were to do it all again?

That is a really, really deep question. I would have recognized internet goldrushes like adsense websites, ecommerce, web apps, amazon fba wayyyy before it went main-stream and only a few knew about it; so that I could dominate and have first mover advantage.

I also would have tamed my ADD a bit more; meaning stopped chasing two rabbits at the same time, and focused and doubled-down on one idea until it was a success.

With Feedbackz (which I am a happy customer of... thank you for timely email updates btw), what was your learning curve like since launch? What kind of issues and situations came up post-launch that you were not expecting and had to tackle?

Being a semi-solo entrepreneur (I know you hired a couple employees now), your time was split between development and running the business. Were there any pros to being more hands on the day to day task rather than focusing on growth and outsourcing?

Thank you so much for your support!!!

Customer support, sending emails via automated jobs is much harder than one would imagine, having embarrassing goof ups like where duplicate emails could be sent, learning a bit more about how servers work, bugs, bugs, glitches, and more glitches, and learning to deal with damage control..

Hmm... being more hands on in like customer support really gave me a in-depth knowledge of issues going on with the app and direction it needed to go, but I still keep my hand fairly close to anything dealing with UI/UX design. (I'm kind of Steve Jobs'ing it; he had his hand deep in design too but somehow balanced his ceo duties well) so we'll see how that goes lol.
 

James Fake

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Thanks for doing this @James A . I'm at a point very similar to where you were years ago (learning to code, planning to build Subscription Software, but lots of personal experience running my own show in a different arena).

You mention something that caught my attention:
  • Before creating any app or identifying any pain you can solve with one; figure out how you're going to get users... exponentially.
As a strong believer in "Build Something People Need," I've been going the "Customer Development" route: interviewing a ton of potential customers across various industries, recording the interviews and going over them with a fine-toothed comb, looking for a NEED a lot of potential customers have, before I write a single line of code. I've got a lot of patience to keep looking until I find a Need that I can capitalize on.

With that said, I'm curious if you could expound on "How you're going to get users exponentially."
What tactics have worked best for you?
Inbound Marketing? Facebook Ads? Adwords? Email Marketing? Cold Calling?
Are there any tricks to figure out a plan for Exponential User Growth before you build an app?

Thanks for your time.

Sure! So I look for a couple things:

1) Is there opportunities of growth hacking I can do. Growth hacking is like 'doing anything (that might even be borderline spam) to generate users and interest that is just a shade above ethically good lol.

Examples of some businesses who growth hacked:
  • AirBnB spammed Craigslist for land lords posting on CL to post on their own site. This is how they gained initial traction.
  • WorldStarHipHop recorded music videos off TV and posted them on Youtube as "official music video - artist name, song name" and got millions of views and then funneled them back to WorldStar.
  • There's another big company that growth hacked too but I can't recall at the moment. =/
Growth hacking can also be using a marketing method that isn't even defined yet. Like viral videos before it was named viral marketing. Content and teaching online before content marketing was named. FlatTummy tea & Shredz killing it using paid influencers and popular social media accounts before it was called 'influencer marketing'.

Creating the marketing method before it's recognized by the early majority is huge.

2) Is there content that users need that isn't out there and being meet. Deep content. (this is the route I went) Could you build resources like free tools or other things that could bring in users/awareness/interests?
 

Pedro Henrique

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Appreciate the post.
Man, I don't have anything in mind to build, but I would like to build a mobile app. What languages would you recommend me to learn ? (I am already learning java)
 
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maverick

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Excellent website - really nice style and perfect fit for your product.

You coded it yourself in the end?

Just to add to this, you should create a template out of your website and sell it as a minimalist startup template. I've been scouring the internet for a template such as this but never really found a suitable one.
 

Young-Gun

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Sure! So I look for a couple things:

1) Is there opportunities of growth hacking I can do. Growth hacking is like 'doing anything (that might even be borderline spam) to generate users and interest that is just a shade above ethically good lol.

Examples of some businesses who growth hacked:
  • AirBnB spammed Craigslist for land lords posting on CL to post on their own site. This is how they gained initial traction.
  • WorldStarHipHop recorded music videos off TV and posted them on Youtube as "official music video - artist name, song name" and got millions of views and then funneled them back to WorldStar.
  • There's another big company that growth hacked too but I can't recall at the moment. =/
Growth hacking can also be using a marketing method that isn't even defined yet. Like viral videos before it was named viral marketing. Content and teaching online before content marketing was named. FlatTummy tea & Shredz killing it using paid influencers and popular social media accounts before it was called 'influencer marketing'.

Creating the marketing method before it's recognized by the early majority is huge.

2) Is there content that users need that isn't out there and being meet. Deep content. (this is the route I went) Could you build resources like free tools or other things that could bring in users/awareness/interests?

Thanks man this is beautiful, rep ++

Ok, so I am big on using similar terms and language. This helps me understand. Let me try to repeat back in my own words:

You've been looking for and using Growth Hacking style, free / viral / shareable content-marketing style traffic.
Creating Evergreen content (mostly blog articles?) on your website for your target audience.

You spend a lot of time carefully crafting the right message, for the right people.
Then you put a ton of effort into DISTRIBUTING it to the right communities; making an effort to get Eyeballs and Engagement.

This builds Warm Traffic... maybe you capture to an Email List... eventually some percentage of visitors Sign Up.

So perhaps, before writing a line of Code, you'd verify multiple Forums, places to share your Content Marketing that your Customers already exist?
Confirm that there's some FREE way to Get Eyeballs from the People who Need What You Have?
Because even if you build the Perfect Solution to a Giant Need, it doesn't matter if you can't get that Solution in front of people for Free?

Am I getting warm?

If so...
If you wanted to make ten times as much Revenue - six figures a month - how would you approach that?

Would you....
Do even *more* Great Content, and *more* Content Distribution (perhaps an employee) would get *more* Sales?
Use another Marketing route (paid Ads?) to scale "another 0" onto your income?
Or would you go back to the drawing board and design a new Product?

Apologies if I've assumed or asked too much - thanks again for your time :)
 
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Last edited:

Thoelk

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I don't want to answer for James, but I answered this on another forum recently since I'm on successful SaaS #5 atm

"If you could learn any programming language, what would it be?"
You need to learn several to really make it fly on your own. I'd start with just one and see what your demands are.
Personally, I feel you can't go wrong with PHP 7 and MySQL as a starter, but an alternative would be RoR. However, it might be good to use a language that doesn't update versions as much because it already have everything, like Perl.

If I could learn 1, it would be C++ because of the pure speed it offers.

"For SaaS, which would be the best language to learn and why?"
Depends on your needs.
If you are talking massive scale ( billions and billions of rows of big data and need for speed ), you are going to need languages like C++ backed with Redis. Smaller stuff you can get by with PHP or Perl or RoR or Go, etc backed with MySQL/Mongo/etc

Language though isn't the hard part. Its the scaling when you get big and knowing the proper way to shard database, have task managers/flow, and using possibly 3rd party stuff like Hadoop and Amazon services when the need appears.

If I were to pick one for a starter, it would be PHP7 with MySQL or RoR. Why? Easy to pick up and TONS of online resources to learn with sample code.
I dabbled a lot between Python (and Django) or RoR. But I'm actually glad I went with python. It takes a little bit more effort, but you have more Sense of control.. and the possibilites in other domains are huge within python too. Great post and awesome thread!
 

Chazmania

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Just wanted to say your site looks awesome and congrats on your success!

I remember a quote from limitup's AMA a few years back where he basically said "Marketing + techie skills = M-O-N-E-Y."

Your story reminded me of that. Keep crushing!
 

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