31 Quick Wins for Growing a Million Dollar Startup
Summary
TLDRThe speaker shares a wealth of practical tips for business growth, marketing, product development, and operational efficiency. From automating demo requests to monitoring sending IPs and domains, the advice covers a range of topics aimed at improving business processes and customer engagement. The talk also emphasizes the importance of tracking knowledge base searches, enabling SPF and DKIM for email deliverability, and implementing rate limits for APIs. The speaker's personal productivity hacks and the significance of fostering team culture through traditions add a unique perspective to the discussion.
Takeaways
- 📈 Implement automated demo qualification to route requests efficiently and save time on unqualified leads.
- 🔍 Monitor sending IPs and domains to avoid email blacklisting and maintain good deliverability rates.
- 📅 Encourage annual upgrades at the right time by tracking churn and identifying the optimal moment for pitch.
- 📝 Help B2B writers by using services like Help a B2B Writer to increase the chances of getting valuable links.
- 🌐 Consider Google Analytics alternatives like Fathom or Heap.io to future-proof your data tracking.
- 📅 Keep a marketing change log to track and understand the impact of marketing changes on your metrics.
- 🚀 Redirect domain.com/meeting to your scheduling link for streamlined calendar invites.
- 📊 Segment churn by price point to understand the lifetime value and behavior of different customer tiers.
- 📌 Consider dropping your lowest plan if it has high churn and doesn't contribute positively to your business.
- 💬 Ask for testimonials or reviews after a successful support ticket to leverage positive customer experiences.
- 🔒 Enable S3 versioning on AWS to protect against accidental data loss at a minimal cost.
Q & A
What is the main theme of the talk?
-The main theme of the talk is about providing practical tips and strategies for business growth, marketing, productivity, and internal operations.
How many categories of tips are discussed in the talk?
-There are four categories of tips discussed: growth or marketing, product, productivity, and operations internal.
What is the significance of the speaker's family photos during the talk?
-The family photos serve to emphasize the importance of personal relationships and family in the context of entrepreneurship, aligning with the speaker's values and motivations.
What is the first growth tip discussed in the talk?
-The first growth tip is to automatically qualify and route demo requests based on the potential customer's qualification criteria, such as subscriber count or payment capacity.
Why is it important to monitor sending IPs and domains in email marketing?
-Monitoring sending IPs and domains is crucial to avoid being blacklisted, which can significantly reduce email deliverability and open rates, negatively impacting marketing efforts.
What is the recommended approach for encouraging annual upgrades in a SaaS business?
-The recommended approach is to track churn and pitch annual upgrades when the churn rate starts to flatten out, typically around the 60-90 day window, as this is when customers are less likely to cancel.
How does the speaker suggest using a Google Analytics alternative?
-The speaker suggests considering a Google Analytics alternative due to potential future legal issues, especially related to GDPR compliance, and recommends setting up a backup platform to maintain tracking history.
What is the purpose of maintaining a marketing change log?
-A marketing change log helps track all marketing activities, changes, and their impacts, allowing the team to understand the reasons behind changes in metrics and make informed decisions.
Why is it beneficial to segment churn by price point?
-Segmenting churn by price point provides insights into the lifetime value (LTV) of different customer segments, helping the business understand which customers are most valuable and where to allocate resources effectively.
What is the speaker's advice on dropping the lowest pricing plan?
-The speaker advises considering dropping the lowest pricing plan if it has a high churn rate and if there's little to no upgrading happening from that plan. However, this decision should be made with the understanding of the plan's role in the market and customer acquisition.
Outlines
📈 Growth and Marketing Strategies
The speaker discusses categorizing business aspects into growth, productivity, and operations. They share their experience with qualifying and routing demo requests automatically to manage inbound inquiries effectively. The speaker emphasizes the importance of tracking sending IPs and domains to avoid email blacklists, which can negatively impact deliverability and open rates. They also suggest monitoring the right time to encourage annual upgrades based on churn tracking and share tips on helping B2B writers and finding alternatives to Google Analytics.
🔍 Monitoring and Upgrading
The speaker highlights the importance of using tools like MX Toolbox to monitor sending IPs and domains to prevent being blacklisted. They discuss the impact of blacklisting on email deliverability and open rates. The speaker also shares a strategy for encouraging annual upgrades by tracking churn rates and identifying the optimal time to pitch upgrades to customers. They mention the benefits of using services like Help a B2B Writer for content marketing and link building.
🔧 Alternatives and Redirects
The speaker talks about considering alternatives to Google Analytics due to potential GDPR compliance issues. They mention platforms like Fathom and Heap.io as viable options. The speaker also shares a tip on redirecting domain.com/meeting to a scheduling link, which can streamline the process for booking meetings. They emphasize the importance of keeping a marketing change log to track marketing activities and their impacts on the business.
📊 Churn Analysis and Alerts
The speaker delves into the importance of understanding churn rates and segmenting them by price points to identify the best customers. They discuss the impact of churn on lifetime value (LTV) and suggest considering dropping the lowest plan if it has a high churn rate and doesn't lead to upgrades. The speaker also talks about using Google Alerts and other tools like F5 Bot and Lobsters to monitor mentions of their brand and products across the web.
📝 Productivity and Support
The speaker shares personal productivity hacks, including using text expanders for common phrases and managing email labels for lower priority tasks. They discuss the benefits of upgrading to the Audible annual plan for avid listeners. The speaker also talks about using asynchronous voice communication for meetings and the importance of watching online videos at higher speeds to save time. They mention using tools like Loom, Voxer, and the Video Speed Controller plugin for Chrome.
🤝 Team Culture and Traditions
The speaker emphasizes the importance of team culture and traditions in building a strong company. They share personal experiences from their time at Drip and Tiny Seed, highlighting how traditions like trolling each other and celebrating launches with Fire Cider shots have created a sense of belonging and camaraderie among the team. The speaker suggests that these traditions can have deep meaning and contribute to the overall culture of the company.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Growth
💡Marketing
💡Productivity
💡Operations
💡Internal
💡Demo Requests
💡Email Deliverability
💡Knowledge Base Searches
💡API Rate Limiting
💡Company Traditions
Highlights
The speaker shares 31 actionable tips to improve business operations, marketing, productivity, and internal processes.
For growth and marketing, the speaker suggests automating the qualification and routing of demo requests to save time and resources.
Monitoring sending IPs and domains is crucial to avoid email blacklisting, which can significantly impact deliverability and open rates.
Encouraging annual upgrades at the right time can lead to better customer retention and revenue stability.
The speaker recommends using tools like MX Toolbox to monitor the health of your sending IPs and domains.
Help a B2B writer service can be an effective alternative to Harrow for content marketing and link building.
Considering a Google Analytics alternative, such as Fathom, can provide redundancy and potentially avoid GDPR compliance issues.
Redirecting a generic domain (e.g., yourdomain.com/meeting) to a scheduling link can streamline the process for booking meetings.
Maintaining a marketing change log can help track the impact of marketing changes and identify issues more effectively.
Google Alerts can be enhanced with tools like F5 bot for faster notifications about mentions in popular forums like Reddit and Hacker News.
Segmenting churn by price point can provide insights into customer lifetime value and inform pricing strategies.
The speaker suggests considering dropping the lowest plan if it has high churn and low upgrade rates, as it may not be contributing positively to the business.
After providing excellent support, ask for testimonials or reviews to leverage positive customer experiences.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and improving the customer experience, especially in the context of churn and support interactions.
Using tools like Clarity for heat mapping and session recording can provide valuable insights into user behavior without violating GDPR or CCPA.
Enabling S3 versioning on AWS can serve as a low-cost insurance policy against accidental data loss.
Tracking knowledge base searches with no results can help identify gaps in content and improve the user experience.
Enabling SPF and DKIM for email can improve deliverability and reduce the chances of emails being marked as spam.
Rate limiting APIs can prevent accidental DDOS attacks and ensure the stability of your services.
Asking customers why they are canceling can provide valuable feedback for improving the product or service.
The speaker shares personal productivity hacks, such as using text expanders and managing email labels for lower priority tasks.
Upgrading to an Audible annual plan can save money, which can be reinvested into the business.
Using asynchronous voice communication tools like Voxer can reduce the need for meetings and long emails, improving efficiency.
Watching online videos at increased speed can save time and improve productivity, especially for content consumption.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of team culture and traditions, such as celebrating launches with a non-alcoholic 'fire cider' shot.
Transcripts
I broke them up into
categories as I'm apt to do so we're
going to start with growth kind of
growth or marketing uh we have seven in
product five in productivity
um which are kind of the fun ones and
then eight in operations internal
opposite of business what's funny I've
never done a talk like this and I was
joking with Xander this is my listicle
talk right because it's like 31 things
to change your business I had an idea
for this
um a couple years ago probably five or
six years ago I sketched some things out
and I came up with like 15 or 20 like
things you could throw out and I was
going to do it almost as like an
attendee talk at some at microconf
before I get started as I always do I
enjoy I'm really glad that I am not the
first speaker to bring on some pictures
of my why of my family because every
time a microcomp
I do it and these are the peeps right
this is Finn and Fisher many of you have
seen since this guy would carry in into
a microcomp like you know on a BabyBjorn
or whatever the dog is the new addition
but I appreciated
um you know the from dawn earlier today
because this is always
I like to level set this like if you've
heard me on startups for the rest of us
I refer to Freedom purpose and
relationships and the relationship part
this is where it starts for me right and
this is why I've done entrepreneurship
this is why I've done what I've done so
I just want to remind folks to be
thinking about that for yourself and not
sacrifice it
okay so let's dive in so growth
and I was going to say how many are in
here but I don't remember 11 15. anyways
we'll get in it so the first one
is to qualify and Route demos
automatically qualifying route demo
requests automatically so here's a home
page and this is a Tiny Seed company
that does re-commerce and they added the
book a demo buttons right as a lot of us
do the moment you add book a demo you
start getting a bunch of demo requests
hopefully the moment you get a bunch of
demo requests you find out a bunch of
those demo requests are people that
really aren't qualified and the people
that maybe are only going to pay you 20
a month or 30 a month so we ran into
this at drip specifically
we were we had so much inbound which is
a good problem to have but it's still a
problem when you're getting seven demos
booked per day and you're the only
person doing it so what we did was uh
put a little snippet of JavaScript and
this is the form they have today I'll be
honest ours was much simpler I think
ours was first name and email and
subscriber count basically we have a
value metric right it's more subscribers
more money so you got to figure out what
is your single maybe two qualifying
questions if it seats how many seats are
you going to use if it's contacts how
many contacts do you have if it's
subscribers how many do you have
um and that's what you're really trying
to do and there's a competitor of ours
that has done a similar thing this is
not an uncommon thing to do okay but the
the cool part and the thing that we had
never seen done when we implemented this
is that
then we decided so our base plan was 50
bucks a month and in the early days we
wanted to demo everybody because we were
learning it was customer development by
the time you hit 10 20 30k
only we're demoing to 99 a month and up
right so with a quick snippet of
JavaScript we were able to say
are they qualified our current
definition of qualified is they'll pay
us at least 49 or 99 a month but we can
just change that with line of JavaScript
at any time if they're qualified we
would say great we'd send them straight
to R then it was calendly and now it's a
Savvy Cal link but we send them straight
to our booking link right
and if they were not qualified we sent
them straight to a video demo of me they
still got a demo and it started with hey
everyone balling I'm the founder of drip
co-founder of drip sorry Derek I'm the
co-founder drip and um this is my quick
you know as a quick demo I'm gonna walk
through some features it was like 10 or
12 minutes so they still got a demo I
didn't like oh you free trial like they
didn't think that they got you know
short shrifted so to speak
um and then over time you know you hit
50k a month and it's like well we're
only going to talk to 199 a month and up
and then we hit and then we hired a new
sales person it's like well we have a
bunch of bandwidths so we'd back it off
to 99 right and then it was like before
long it was three four five hundred
dollars a month in order to to do a demo
so this is a nice thing to implement
definitely can do it in under an hour
and uh I hope that one's helpful
number two monitor your sending IPS and
domains
I ran an ESP and so many things go wrong
with email sending
um so many that I vowed to never start a
startup that ever sent email ever again
and I joked that my password resets
would from here on beat Via SMS because
I so hated email but the the trouble is
blacklists happen for reasons that may
or may not be your fault but the problem
is is even if you use third party let's
say you're using mail gun mandrel
postmark send grid any of these you know
API layers that you can send emails some
of those we found didn't monitor their
own IPS so we would be sending through
them we had dedicated IPS and it would
ping this is MX toolbox is a tool we
used MX toolbox would ping us and say
you're on Blacklist and we'd go ask this
provider and they would say yeah it's
not your fault it was someone else and
it's like but why didn't you fix this
like we notified them so
um it's pretty easy for your IPS whether
you're sending to yourself or through a
third party API to get on a blacklist
and once they do your deliverability
goes to shed and your open rates go in
the tank so MX toolbox is a tool we use
there may be a better one now but I
swear it was 10 20 bucks it was almost
not a non-existent cost
the other thing is you have IP addresses
which you can usually if you have a send
grid account or whatever you can just go
see which IPS are being sent through
but you also have a domain sending
domain microgrump.com tinyc.com that you
should also be tracking on an ongoing
basis I think because frankly given how
many emails we all send and how critical
this is if you're not getting you know
the equivalent of a Google alert when
you're when you're a blacklisted it's a
problem and it's really this is 100
doable in like 20 or 30 minutes the
hardest part is going to be which
domains are we using to send uh I'm
sorry not which domains which IPS are we
using to set that's gonna be the hardest
part otherwise setting it up is not a
big deal
third tip encourage annual upgrades at
the right time so a lot of us we like
annual plans as as Founders some some do
some don't but annual plans give us a
lot of cash up front gives us a quick
payback on ad spend and many of us this
is casto's pricing page just as an
example so many of us at sign up say you
can choose self-select pay monthly you
pay annual and you get a discount uh
usually it's like 10 months for the
price at 12. no no it's the other way 12
months for the price of 10. and
that's cool and some certain percentage
will self-select and depending on your
audience 10 20 percent
and then either people never pitch again
or they pitch it at the wrong time and
what we found was the best time and I've
seen a few other uh companies do this as
well the best time
involves churn and tracking churn so I'm
going to show you this image when I
Googled um because I don't really have
like access easy access to a churn graph
anyway any anymore so I Google like uh
churn graph churn image every single one
is like this and at the bottom if you
can't see it it says Revenue turn 10 and
it's just a it's just a smooth graph
that's like 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
right well that's not how churn goes if
you've ever run an app I mean it's much
much more this is a real turn graph
usually
you lose a lot early on 30 60 90 that's
the usual range
um the Sasa SAS apps I've run have had
tremendous had the highest turn between
um 0 and 60 or 0 in 90 days and then it
flattens out right and that's
essentially what this does although this
one goes almost out six months before it
hits the four the four percent Mark
which still feels a little high to me
but anyways you can see that if you're
pitching let's say you're in the app
you've converted to paid this is month
one and you
um send them an email an automated email
that says hey you should uh upgrade to
annual well you're still churning out
eight percent of people in month one ish
and then six percent and then five
percent like
everybody's not onboarded yet right are
people mentally committed yet so really
what we saw and again our graph was
different
um last three SAS apps I had they all
were in the 60 90 day window so what we
would find is when did the churn when
did churn really start flattening out
and in fact if you
actually like
like uh all the time so find where it
starts to plateau in this case it would
be about six months I'd say
um and this is when I would be pitching
annual because you know people turn out
at such a tremendously low uh percentage
at this point
and this is like the email text I said
um that we would put it in an automated
email that went out again for us it was
60 days so then it was about within a
month of that point so it was 60 to 90
days at some point they would get an
email and it was this it's like hey
first name I want to let you know about
a way to get two months free if you
upgrade you'll get blah blah blah it
only takes a click you can find out more
and upgrade here warmly Rob founder it
was something like that
um and you can feel free to swipe this
and edit it you know but it's just a
very simple I always find stuff as the
founder and um we had good you know much
better uptake on this than trying to
pitch it at any other any other time
all right number four help yourself by
helping a B2B writer if you're doing any
type of content marketing or link
building you may have used Harrow which
is help a reporter out
that's an interesting service and it
takes a lot of work
um to monitor you get a ton of you get
two or three emails a day each email has
a list of like reporters or press or
even just like bloggers content
marketers who are looking to to get an
answer to a question like hey I'm doing
a Roundup of the best marketing
approaches and you know b2c to B to C
SAS today and you respond and maybe get
a link Harrow is cool and it's very big
and it takes a lot of work
I have
submitted personally probably over the
course of several years and I used to
pay a little agency called bite size PR
to do it for me too
I've probably submitted 50 pitches to
Harrow and I think I've gotten
three or four like links so it you know
there's it's just a high signal to noise
uh type of thing or high noise to signal
I think for them there's a new service
that has just come out in the last year
and it's called help a B2B writer and so
it's a much more of a bunch of folks
Like Us in Microsoft and in fact I
noticed that the domains come through
I'm like there was like a Shopify
article like a month ago there was um
there's some other kind of
again B2B SAS startups that have come
out so I signed up for this just to be
curious I'm not even really looking for
links or anything but I get what you and
you say you know there's SAS there's
marketing um the categories there is
e-commerce there's a few others and you
can tell it's someone kind of in our
sphere more and it's lower traffic
um but I've submitted three and I think
I got two links already and so you know
maybe this gets bigger as big as Harrow
someday and it and then it doesn't work
anymore but for now it's a pretty cool
service
um I get two emails a day and they
usually have one or two pitches and
they're usually good have been a good
fit for me so this is just an example
looking for SAS business stuff for
buyers to share their experience
and purchasing software for their
company they should talk to April she
has a great analogy for that you should
send the toilet analogy to them
alternative.co so anyways yeah that's
just a fun again it's a fun little tip
that subscribing to that takes you less
than 60 Minutes I guarantee it
all right number five is to consider a
Google analytics alternative
so
I when I look ahead three five years I
don't know if Google analytics is still
going to be legal in Europe and who the
heck knows what what else is coming
Google is still gdpr compliant
technically until it's but not by the
Austrian government so they're like nope
Google analytics constitutes a violation
of gdpr and it is possible that more
European authorities will soon follow so
this is an article from I don't know
it's the past few months
tell me if I'm hedging my bets
I'm signing up for a backup platform and
I'm installing tracking code now so I
have history and two platforms
it's less than 60 minutes
the platform there's a couple platforms
I actually asked in tinyseed slack to
find out what it what is everybody using
today for not using Google analytics but
I remember 10 years ago it was clicky
get clicky.com they were the only
alternative but they're a little you
know they're a little longer in the
tooth I would say than than maybe you
want to use but fathom many of you know
the founders of fathom they have a fun
podcast and they're in the bootstrapper
um you know kind of microcomp related
crowd so fathom's a good one and
certainly reasonably priced they also
have uptime monitoring built in which is
another tip that I have later and then
he heap.io is is the other one people
said there's there's several when you
Google for it but these are the kind of
two I think that personally I'd probably
use fathom but I would I would at least
compare the two and again am I saying
uninstall Google analytics today and run
away not not particularly but I do think
having
um redundancy in a lot of these areas I
think can be helpful
tip number six and this is this one is
just so clever and so
simple to do it's to yourdomain.com
meeting
redirect that to your scheduling link
use calendly savvical I got this from a
founder
uh Andy cabasso of postaga you can see
it at the bottom and I needed a slide
with visuals so I went and I
HD access is the top one I was like
breaking out my htaccess Linux stuff
second one is um was that Squarespace
and the third one's WP engine that's how
you do it but if if you have Linux the
top one is how you would redirect your
that would be your meeting link to my
meeting URL you want to do that I'll
suddenly have a bunch of calendar
invites I'll be like hey I can do a demo
of stuff
um that's not my real meeting URL either
that would be dumb so oh and it's a it's
a 302 by the way not a 301 because it is
not permanent right you want to be we
want it to check back you want browsers
to check back so
simple
two slides but that was when I was like
I need to do this that's kind of cool
number seven is to keep a marketing
change log and this is something I don't
remember if we heard about this or if we
came up with this idea honestly but we
all know what a change log is in uh you
know for your code where you can see the
commits and the labels and the branches
and the stuff you've done over the past
X months you can go back through it yeah
we changed this oh this broke well why
did it break well because we have a
change log
so we were
having trials one month and suddenly we
didn't have any more trials and we said
what broke and we said we don't know we
don't have a marketing change law so we
implemented one and it's a Google sheet
and this I literally I went into my
Google Docs account and I searched for
marketing changelog that is the real
marketing changelog from trip before we
got acquired it it ends in April you can
see like real names in here anna right
many of you know her as customer success
and all it is is it's a date it's what
we did and then we categorized stuff in
case we want to look for it and this is
all manual didn't pull from anything but
more than once we referred back and we
were like why did why did this number
change because oh and I just I noticed
this right before look at uh number
three
it's 11 10 November 10th of 2015 added
subscriber count drop down to request a
demo that was we literally got Ah that's
cool maybe this is all ties together so
anyways marketing changelog I recommend
it I mean honestly I think everyone
should do this getting one started is
certainly less than an hour maintaining
it maybe a little more discipline right
you need some type of process and to let
a team know when you do stuff split
tests this would be if I added a removed
credit card this would be if I made
major changes to any type of marketing
campaign rolled out a new one pulled one
back because attribution is hard these
days we know that and this is a way to
at least have some dates and have some
uh you know some info
number eight simple one most people know
Google Alerts you want your probably
your name you want your company name
your product name probably some
competitors that you're monitoring
monitoring Google Alerts are delayed 12
hours 24 hours even if you
they're not instant because it's
crawling the web and stuff
but I still have all that and F5 bot
which is this free tool that is super
fast crawler of Reddit and Hacker News
and this thing called lobsters which
I've never even heard of but red and
Hacker News is what I use it for and so
now I'm getting
um you know I have startups for the rest
of us Minecraft Tiny Seed I have my book
titles I have my name just in case
something gets mentioned in a Hacker
News thread I can pop in and be like hey
thanks for the mention yeah actually and
I can clarify or I can say I'm working
on an updated version of that book for
the 10th year in a row
um but F5 bot is free and I don't know
I've been using it for eight months this
is look at this amazing email they sent
me it's not some great ux but I mean I
can't even read that but you know
there's a blue line that says Reddit
comment I click on that on my phone it
gets me into Reddit and I'm like oh cool
someone just what did they mention here
startups for the rest of us yeah and so
I was like hey thanks you oh it's this
specific episode right they just
mentioned a
the podcast itself and I went and
Googled the episode and brought it into
the thread so it was like just being
helpful on the internet
so that's a cool little tool
number nine is a fun little exercise if
you've never done it we often look at
churn and I you should never look at one
Churn number my churn is seven percent
that don't tell me that okay and number
one it should be Revenue churn customer
churn is secondary but number two date
based because you're churned before 60
90 days is high and then it goes down
low so tell me about those and then the
next fun adventure is to segment your
churn by a price point and you can pick
tier you can do it by tiers
or you could just make an arbitrary call
and be like well all the chairs below 50
we think churn higher so let's let's
just do that so there's this tweet I
sent that unfortunately accidentally
deleted
um since then for more than a decade
I've been saying lower paying customers
churn faster here's another data point
it's from a Tiny Seed Company it's
anonymized but it's used with permission
so segment a which we're about to see
the numbers on segment a is the the less
expensive right 29 bucks a month and
under
segment b 99 a month and up so all right
enormous difference in churn and net
churn and LTV so this is it segment a
who pays less than 29 turned at 11
segment B it pays 99 and up turns it
minus four percent so net negative churn
which is a 15 turn swing which is you
know catastrophic or or the opposite of
catastrophic if if you're on the the
plus side of that
um you know when trying to grow a
company with 11 net churn versus minus
four percent if that was your whole
business is just night and day it can
mean the difference of having a quarter
million dollars versus a million in
error or more
the reason I'm saying to do this is to
you maybe you can do it with a SQL query
maybe you do it you export from stripe
and you literally do it in a Google
sheet just once just to see what it's
like statically it's not going to change
dramatically it's not going to be 100
higher 50 lower next month you have an
idea of it do it every few months it
just gives you insights into who your
best customers are I mean the lifetime
value difference think of this like even
if it wasn't 99 and up if it was 29 and
99 points and then you do the churn the
lifetime values on those things are like
well you can spend so much more money so
it gives you insight into things like
that your lower plans probably aren't
that helpful here's the caveat I'm going
to say because then my next point is to
consider dropping your lowest plan just
because your churn is high on your
lowest plan does not mean you should
drop your lowest plan because sometimes
your lowest plan you're capturing the
market they don't go to competitors when
you know at the lower price points and
especially if they feed an auto upgrade
into your 99 plans but if there's not a
lot of upgrading happening that's when
you think do I just have two products I
have an expensive product that's 99
bucks with great churn and I have a kind
of a product that everyone turns out of
and it's 29 and no one's upgrading
that's to me the signal to think
maybe I should just hide this plan and
see what happens so it's not a direct
absolute yes you should do it but it is
something that is fun to know and good
to know as you allocate resources to
different types of customers we actually
pumped in when we used help Scout we had
a custom bar on the side a custom widget
and we would pull in what plan people
were on how long like what they paid us
to date how many support requests all
this stuff such that we could I don't
remember doing this but if we could have
like had a priority support tier where
basically if you pay us more we respond
quicker but I don't remember necessarily
doing that
so as I said number 10 is drop your
lowest plan can think about dropping
your lowest plan with the caveat that I
said earlier
um of course we know that the first
order effect dropping your lowest plan
is it should it should increase your
average revenue per user
um and then I have these fancy graphs of
these three companies that I uh advise
that like all they did was increase
their prices and you know the graphs
went up and these are legit like actual
graphs
so
the hard part
the hard part about increasing prices is
there's a lot of hard parts and I did a
50-minute talk on this at microgrump
Europe that Talk's going to be out soon
whenever we get it uh launched and all I
talk about is like how to Think Through
pricing changes how whether to you know
grandfather or not
um and then how to communicate it if
you're going to do it how much to raise
value metrics all this stuff so it's a
whole talk unto itself
and in that talk I have this you know
this tip and I say if you if you're just
scared to do all that
for a week just hide your lowest pricing
plan and see what happens just play with
it
do do your sign ups just go away or do
half your sign ups from 999 plan go away
but the other half go to 49.99 because
suddenly that's a very different
business that you're running right so
it's just this is the easiest simplest
when I you can't raise prices in under
an hour there's too many things you
could hide this on your pricing page in
less than an hour and see You'd then
need to monitor it over the course of a
week or two though
all right that was number 10. number 11
is to make and ask after a successful
support ticket but yeah so uh you can
ask for a testimonial or you can ask for
like a review in captera if you guys are
a G2 crowd or one of these things and
the idea is if someone great support you
know you've done it you respond and
someone's like oh my gosh I can't
believe you implemented that feature so
fast oh my gosh that was an amazing
experience that you just made my day
you're the best and usually we're like
hey thanks archive because I'm in a big
hurry and support so instead of that
could we steal this email that I wrote
for this presentation that says hey
that's great to hear because I'm acting
like they just complimented us right
that's great to hear we work hard to
provide amazing support your email is a
great testimonial for that ooh did
anyone catch what I did there
which has me thinking would you mind if
we took a sentence or two from your
email and used it as a testimonial on
our website we love showing potential
users blah blah blah no pressure If not
that's like the me not being a sales guy
right the no pressure thing you can uh
edit to your own accord thanks Rob
because in customer support this Rob
guys a lot of a lot of roles he's the
founder and customers were anyways steal
that text if you want to
um Auto you know put it in the uh what
are they called Snippets right when
you're responding to support boom it's
just a keyword thing and see what
happens implementing that in your help
desk software will be less than an hour
and then send it out five times next
week and just just see what happens
okay so everyone if you've seen me speak
before you know that I have in two
intermissions in most of my talks
and that's because I talk fast and I get
tired of hearing myself talk versus this
much and so does everyone else so this
is the first one they tend to be the
short little you know kind of hopefully
fun videos
um this is one of my I'm not on Tick
Tock but someone posted this and this is
perhaps my favorite Tick Tock I've ever
seen and it involves Portland Oregon
and Minneapolis and how they are so
hipster and similar but not the same so
here we go do we have volume on my on my
slides awesome
hello
are you a liberal hipster who likes to
collect
tape cassettes or some but you're
not so far gone that Portland is a good
fit for you come join us in softcore
Portland also known as Minneapolis here
in diet Portland we like vinyl records
and ethically sourced coffee
but we're not necessarily full-blown
Communists here in Portland light we
believe in gay rights but we also
believe that heterosexual relationships
are okay too so I like that because we
Portland and Minneapolis are in this
like hipster fight of that we have this
battle every year of like who has the
most bike Lanes right most miles of bike
lane and it's funny everybody from
Portland who sees this just cracks up so
um
all right
group two is product
a couple of these are some suggestions
from from Founders
um which I was doing I asked for
Founders because it's like yo I haven't
installed like I haven't done a lot of
product stuff in six years so my stuff's
a little bit out of date so a few of
these I hope are helpful
um the first one which just caught me
totally out of the blue because I'd
never even heard of this
install microphone microconf Microsoft
Clarity I didn't even know what it was
so I Googled it and it's basically heat
mapping and it is
um like uh screen recording
but here's the thing and I saw the
homepage and I'm like sweet so it's a
SAS product what is what is the hack
here gdpr and CCPA ready no sampling
built on open source and then this is
from Pierre de wolf of scraping B many
of you may have seen him on Twitter
so I clicked on pricing to say like well
if it's just recommending a paid tool I
don't is that make this something I want
to do and it says Clarity it's free
forever enjoy all the features of
clarity zero costs will never run into
traffic limits or be forced to upgrade
to a paid version gdpr CCPA ready no
sampling built on open source so I I
haven't personally tried this but Pierre
swears by it and I feel like it would be
something I would be trying in less than
60 minutes
tomorrow
all right this was another tip that just
had never occurred to me it's to if
you're on AWS enable S3 versioning
and what versioning does is all your S3
buckets you start having
versions so if you go in and delete
something you can get it back if you go
in and modify something you can get the
version back we know what versioning is
right
the cost is from what I've heard
absolutely minimal
um Benedict daika of user list gave me
this tip and I said how much cost has it
increased and he said I don't know I
think our total S3 bill is five dollars
per month or maybe euros and I was like
yeah it doesn't matter if a Euro five
dollars so
I like this idea and I have heard now
now that I brought it up I started
talking to a few Founders and I had two
who told me like oh yeah no I deleted a
user like something we store an S3 and I
deleted it and we had the version and I
got it back and I was like that is cheap
insurance man so I would I haven't done
this but I'm gonna have to assume you
could enable this in like 10 minutes
or since it's AWS console like 30
minutes by the time you find it
all right
Council all right number 14
to say 75 of you are already doing so
this is also Benedict and there's a
couple Cool Tools that do this a
Speedway which is uh it's actually a
Tiny Seed Company he doesn't just do
like hit an API endpoint or hit an HTTP
protocol he actually has full-on
protocol Bots and browser Bots that can
see a screen and look for stuff and it's
just a very complicated uh not
complicated for you but a a healthy
implementation of what it does so it can
go deeper than just pinging an end point
and telling you if it's a 200 response
so speedway.app is one and then as I
mentioned before fathom has uptime
fairly simple uptime monitoring built
into that thanks Derek I had asked him
who he used for uptime and he said uh
Speedway or fathom's pretty good
number 15 so we're going we're halfway
there
track your knowledge based searches
track the ones where there are no
results returned
and log them somewhere so if someone
were to come to your knowledge base and
type in shrimp tacos and they get zero
results we used to well it was super
hacky because we had access to the
source code it was WordPress and I went
in with my PHP skills and I hacked thing
that like emailed this address and then
we just had them in a label
and then once a week one of our customer
success people would go through that
label and a bunch of it was junk junk
spam shrimp tacos and then he'd come
upon several that were like oh they're
actually searching for something they
need to find and either we don't have an
article for it or we do have an article
but they're not finding it so he would
take that phrase and add it as like a
tag or you can just add it as a sentence
at the bottom or whatever and then that
would start appearing for the search so
it's just a way to help your users find
stuff if they're gonna let's be honest
most users or a lot of users don't go to
your KB and so if they're gonna do it
like let's at least give them give them
a hand I wouldn't recommend the email
approach it was super hacky but if you
can log it somewhere
um that's what I would be doing and then
reviewing it weekly monthly whatever
number 16 is the one you really didn't
want to hear nobody wants to do this and
it's just another email sending one but
it's enabling SPF and dkim
it's a lot simpler than it sounds I'm
hoping at least half of you maybe three
quarters already have this but if you go
to dmarc analyzer which is this free
thing I found on Google I entered my
domain what is that why would I use
rawballing.com and it basically all my
stuff sat except for I have like some
capital letters in my SPF record so this
will tell you things aren't there the
hardest part of this
is you have to think okay I'm sending
through send grid and then my ESP and
then maybe we're sending some well if we
send them through the app they should be
centered so now you need to go to send
grid on your ESP and you need to find
their spfd chem because you have to pull
some settings from them so that's the
hardest part is just finding it once you
find it you're updating two I believe
it's two DNS records and I had to do
this for a new domain Sherry setup and
it took me
once I had the info it took me like five
minutes but it took me like 20 minutes
to find it so this is one of those it's
like do we want our emails to be
delivered or not if you don't care don't
do this but it's definitely the email
ecosystem is kind of abusive on these
things
number 17 is to rate limit your apis
thanks again to uh Pierre of scraping B
for this one when he sent it I said well
of course we had rate limiting issues
and we implemented it pretty quick I
said you can't do this in an hour right
that's the whole point is that the
constraint of this talk because I had
about 100 things on a list but a bunch
of them are going to take you longer
than an hour and he said aha contraire
mon frere
um he's French that was a really bad
accident he said sorry Pierre I
apologize
um but he's like
all the Frameworks dude if you're using
anything flask has flask limiter Django
has Django rate limit rails has Ruby
limiter laravel has rate limiter and the
best part is he literally just type that
out Boop top and like he knew these by
heart in the slack so
um that's it right limit your apis if
you have any type of API someone's gonna
DDOS you by accident is what happens
um now I will call out zapier and
segment who I still don't know that they
honor rate limits and used to DDOS us
about once a month by accident because
someone would enable it and it would
just poof and like Crush our servers but
frankly especially custom Integrations
they will they should and will honor
this
all right
number 18 we're getting there ask why
people are canceling
we took out our in-app ask why people
are canceling because people just typed
ASDF in our text box
and submitted so what we did
that I found slightly better results
your mileage may vary easy enough to
test right I think you could test this
in under an hour I'll put it that way
you hide your Bot the the text box and
you put this into an automated email
that goes out is we had an email that
went out I think it was like 12 10
minutes 12 minutes after someone
canceled Rob's back to being a Founder
here hey I noticed you canceled your
product name account as we continue to
improve it'll be super helpful if you
could hit reply let me know why you
decided even if it's just a few words
thanks I'm the founder that was the
appeal and we didn't get 100 replies for
sure but the replies we did get might be
one sentence I decided this I moved to
MailChimp because XYZ
um you know your ux isn't what I want
but it we at least got some helpful
feedback there
moving on to the next one this one is
probably the least
it is it's the least SAS specific it's
more like these are some of my own
personal productivity hacks or things
I'll just throw out I think there's like
five of them but we should go through
them quick number 19 is to use my text
expander so I have three text expanders
that I use
daily and
they are my address my add my ad for my
address mycal which is my Savvy cow link
and my zoom which is my private Zoom
room link
and I put those I use the Apple
ecosystem I'm sure Android has the same
thing but like in apple it's like you go
to settings you go to keyboard and you
just type these things and you copy man
and then you're done and now on any
Apple device because I have two iPads
and a computer and I have my phone it's
all the same and all the time I'm typing
an email on my phone and I'm like Ugh
okay hey yeah let's just connect uh use
this link my Cal and it's like poof and
it expands and it's like magic right I
know some people who are amazing with
this and have like 50 expanders I'm not
smart enough to remember that many so I
really rely on these three and then
you'll see my no pitch which is no
thanks we don't take guest pitches on
our podcast please remove me from your
list that's what that one is but the my
ad my cow and my zoom uh I've come to uh
to really like and enjoy
number 20 is an email processing hack I
have which is have an email label for
lower priority tasks so anything that
comes in that isn't someone on my team
is not waiting on me or I know that I
can wait a week two weeks I mean there's
all kinds of stuff right where it's like
I'm not gonna file that thing with the
IRS in two and a half weeks
um I need to respond to this thing but
it's it's next month or whatever but I
know I don't want to lose it I label it
in Google and Gmail and I have it called
underscore this week because underscore
moves it to the top you can pick
whatever label you want but I go
underscore this week boom it's out of my
inbox and I get to inbox zero that way
and then once a week from 9 to 10 a.m on
one particular day and I'm not going to
say the day because if all the emails
you get from me are on that day then you
know that I'm this week in your email
but from 9 to 10 a.m I sit down and I go
through all of the this weeks and I have
there's one in the business account one
in my personal account and I've never
had a week where I haven't gotten
through all of them there's usually not
that many I will actually emails like
Jason Cohen wrote a cool article last
week and it's like I don't have time to
read this like 3000 words so I threw it
into this week and there was a there was
a YouTube video I wanted to watch
um some Rand fishkin stuff he said like
there are certain things that I want to
consume as well now don't go crazy with
it I do filter because you can throw in
three hours worth of content into this
you don't do that right you throw in
things that need to be responded to or
that you really want to uh to consume
and think about
and then I don't worry about that stuff
at all until I get there
all right number 21 is to upgrade to the
audible annual plan if you're an audible
listener I think we have
close to 680 books in our audible
account between the family and so we buy
a lot of books and frankly the monthly
plan your books are
11.50 a piece and on the annual plan
they're like nine dollars and something
and that will save you money that you
can use to grow your startup you're
welcome
so that was that was maybe the lamest
tip in the whole thing I promise I you
know if you don't use Audible it was
just a whiff but
um number 22 is to consider asynchronous
voice so there are a lot of meetings
that should not be meetings but they
also shouldn't be slack threads and
having
a three minute or a five minute voice
text in essence
can be super helpful
and there are ways to do this we I used
to use a loom or a screencast to just
record my screen of some emptiness and
then send it to someone the beauty of
loom is or an equivalent is you can say
1.7 x this person because 2x right even
I talk fast you can still 2x me and and
hear it and it's so even if I do like an
eight minute review of something you can
do a quick there's this other tool that
I've used and still use actually my team
hates it but you know it's it's my
favorite it's called Voxer and it's
um it's fine it's free and it's only a
tiny bit buggy but you can do it from
your phone or your desktop browser but
basically I can ping up uh like here's a
great example of a great use case for
this is when we're doing interviews
um for some new roles that we're hiring
for I am a second interview a lot right
Xander's a first interview for an event
producer and then I do the second
interview so I interviewed someone and I
have a bunch of thoughts for Xander
he's in the middle of stuff we shouldn't
I don't think we should schedule a
meeting
it's just me saying here's some Nuance
of how I think here's the pros and cons
of this person here's you know uh yellow
flags and some things I think you know
she did really well so Boop I touch the
button it's push to talk on Boxer notify
Xander and it sends an audio and then
anytime later right he gets a
notification like a text but he can pull
it up it can just be like Oh I'm 3xing
Rob on this because this guy talks
forever Bing and then he can listen to
my thoughts and he can respond via voice
most people on my team respond via slack
which is fine too but it's it has
changed it has reduced the number of
meetings and long ass emails I have to
send because if I'm going to send an
email to Xander summarizing all the
things I think about this candidate it's
five minutes of audio you know how many
words is that that I'd be typing out
it's way more efficient for me to to
talk it
and the last one I think in this
category this may be my favorite of the
whole thing people may laugh I cannot
watch online video at 1X anymore I can't
watch almost any video so every browser
I'm in I have a plug-in uh and I this is
the Chrome one it's called video speed
controller it has
two more than two million users and 3
100 4.8 star reviews it's incredible
every video in your browser on Chrome uh
will have now you can see the little um
controls and you can do like I believe
it's like shift d to make it faster
shift s or you can use your mouse
maybe it's command D you know how when
you remember yeah I remember as the
thing but I don't remember what the the
the actual keys are and so you'll see
that like best one of the best
bootstrapping talks of all time by Jason
Cohen here I have this control up there
and so I I rewatch this talk like every
year or two but I watch it at about 2X
and it just lets me zip through
uh ZIP through I will never when I get
on my kids computers I'm like no guys
you have to install this because I can't
sit here I can't even I know YouTube now
YouTube has speed control which is cool
and Netflix does too I think it's only
up to 1.5 x
um but most of the other platforms don't
so this has saved me hundreds of hours
of time since I started using it
okay
intermission two
this is from Fast Company
and it's something about reading between
the lines in meetings
[Music]
allow me to play devil's advocate here
but allow me to be a dick for a second
but with no consequences let's pull back
on that for a second I fell asleep while
you were talking and I have no idea
what's happening huh I've got a stupid
question it's actually like a really
smart question but I was wondering if I
say stupid beforehand does that make me
like kind of modest is that like sort of
charming thing to do right let's pick
that up in the next meeting I need a few
days to figure out what the hell you're
talking about
but will this scale one of the managing
directors once used that phrase in a
meeting so now I use it all the time
sorry this is just
at you
um do you know a four-letter word for
long-winded there's an outside chance
you might be right you're wrong
you're definitely wrong I think what
you're trying to say is so what I'm
gonna do is take that idea and then make
it sound like it was mine
let's try to make this viral okay I just
heard about this site called reddit.com
can we get on there I think we should
make this a cross-platform opportunity I
watch Shark Tank let's take this offline
yeah can we pick this up again
um let me just maybe 15 minutes after uh
never again
all right so thanks Fast Company all
right we're getting there so this is the
last section this is on internal
operations
um number 24 of 31 is to use team
password management
hopefully you're doing this already but
um we didn't uh frankly I had never
really seen the Ambassador management
until we got acquired in 2016 and I was
like oh I totally get this so LastPass
has LastPass teams one password has one
password teams
from day one when we like formed Tiny
Seed I said everything's going into a
business uh team's password management
account and what it does is if people
like let's say you settle on LastPass
teams any of your employees who has a
LastPass personal account can link it so
that in their browser they can see both
but the company can't see their personal
stuff and then when they leave you just
unlink it so you retain your passwords
you can there's also a shared folder we
can just dump a bunch of passwords in
and everybody can access it in their
browser so it's a relatively simple tip
if you're already doing it you know this
is a no-brainer if you're not doing it
it's it's you gotta like it we just you
can't have the password sitting around
in text files and whoever else you have
them this is a super simple one that I
saw at leadpages when we got acquired
use an email Alias for for every SAS
account you sign up for and it was like
there was like Accounts at leadpages.net
or whatever and that's usually what it
is if you haven't done that already it
is not impossible but it is a challenge
to go back and change them all so if you
haven't done that already I'd make a you
make this a group right where it's like
my co-founders plus maybe an Ops person
or whoever you have on your team like
it's two or three people get that email
so if there needs to be a password reset
and you're on vacation which is what
used to happen because all bunch of crap
is set up under Rob get drip.com and I'd
be in Mexico and like on the beach it's
like you have the login dude and we
can't do it this keeps that from
happening from you being a single point
of failure
um it's a relatively simple hack
this one is super fascinating because
I've never heard anyone say this and
it's a suggestion from a Founder use
privacy.com
for spending management
so this is Rahul from nestify and
basically privacy.com you can generate
these credit card numbers and so you
generate a credit card a virtual payment
card is what they call it and you can
say
it's a one-time purchase and only up to
twenty dollars and then you enter that
in a in a store you can say it's a
recurring purchase Max 20 reject
anything generate another one and
um you give it put it in Netflix or you
put it in GitHub maybe it's a better
example and it locks itself to GitHub
and if anyone else got that number no
one else can charge it but GitHub so
it's just it's an abstraction layer of
your actual credit card number I don't
know I mean my personal number is stolen
at least every 18 months I have to redo
all my subscriptions I'm thinking about
doing this for me personally but um
Rahul was swearing by it as something
for the business so I think it's kind of
an interesting one hard to go back and
do but it's again it's one of those
things moving forward is this something
that we think about also it helps you
if you want to put a you can pause you
can unpause you can put limits so that
such that you don't have to track
everything and it can just get rejected
when you don't want that to be charged
anymore
27 is to keep a manual updates list what
I mean by this is there are certain
things on your websites that you just
can't code so an example of this is that
number right there 590.
I can't write code to populate that
number because it's not the number of
posts we have in the startups for the
rest of us site it's hard coded in the
WordPress so I can't just do a count on
the column or whatever because there's a
bunch we exclude and it's not in the
column why we exclude you know that kind
of thing so it's literally we're it's
just a number and it's embedded in there
and it's a tiny seat about page it says
we've backed more than 60 fast growing
SAS companies across four continents
that's just the number and guess what in
a month we'll be at like 84. so are we
going to remember to come back and edit
this no and so it's going to sit there
for 60 for like eight months and then
someone's going to mention it to us
because we never read our own websites
right so what I did like two months ago
was I created another uh Google sheet
and I say I called it things that need
periodic updating and I have a recurring
quarterly calendar reminder all it says
is check things that need updating and I
come in here and I zip through them I
click click click and you can see it's
just a location and uh and a what that I
that should be updated and I actually
just updated start off the rest of us I
think it was at like 560 or something
and I was like yes systems working
28 similar to this is at a quarterly
calendar reminder or maybe a monthly one
to review credit card transactions if
you don't go through your business
transactions at least once a quarter
put an hour on that calendar you can do
it you can do a quarter in less than an
hour and if you don't put on the
calendar you just don't do it or at
least I don't
29 is to push live chat and email
support into slack I had not actually
I've got I bet several of you are doing
this but this is a suggested by Andy
cabasso of postaga and um I thought it
was a pretty cool one he was talking
about like chat Leo you can do live chat
on your website directly in slack
intercom integrates directly in Slack
help Scout has a slack integration even
stripe events he's pumping in like
refunds and trials churn like all kinds
of stuff and I asked him why he does
this and he said because now like stripe
I'm sorry slack is our Hub of our
business
um and I don't want to be switching in
and out of a bunch of apps and I'm
already talking to my co-workers in
slack so why not have it ping up and you
know do a DM ish thing to me if I'm on
call for support that now I just chat
and chatting with a customer they're
just an anonymous you know user
so that's a fun one last two 30 is to
send a monthly advisor email and this
was one I recommend to people anyways
but uh this is one that specifically I
remember Mark Tobias in that original
Talk of his 50 of open cage data that
was in the talk and I just gave you a
sample format again it'll be in a PDF
this is what we give to Tiny Seed
companies
what this does and I there are several
totally bootstrap Founders in this room
who do this already and I'm on some of
their lists um and I get around 100 ish
of these a month both from Tiny Seed and
not Tiny Seed I read everyone I don't
respond to all of them but I read
everyone what this gives you is a lot of
our bootstrapping we don't have the
rigor necessarily you don't want to you
don't want the rigor of a VC back
company you don't want a board you don't
want but seriously to sit down for 20
minutes a month and to write something
that talks about wins
over the last month losses plans
problems
and has just the metrics for the last
two months and you pick some people at
microconf pick people in your Mastermind
pick you know an advisor ask me if I
want to get it just send it and if you
get into that discipline you'll often
find that problems section at the bottom
will uh generate an intro right or it'll
generate some feedback of like oh I
already know how to fix that so you
should think about it so I think it's an
interesting one
the last one is
one that I thought about including I
almost had 30 and uh I really wanted to
include this one because I think this
gets beyond the Tactical nature of a lot
of these and it digs into like team
culture and Company culture and it's
something that I have done I would say
naturally and I'm not sure why but I've
seen a lot of people not do this and so
we have we had some traditions at drip
and we now have Traditions we've just
kind of accidentally done at Tiny Seed
that are actually
they make us feel like we're
they make us know that we belong because
we get we understand these and they have
a lot they start to have a lot of
meaning over time so our tradition back
in the drip days was to troll each other
there's way early pre-acquisition I
think it was like four of us on the team
Derek's England missing so in this one
we are trolling Derek because he's at
home and we're eating drinking wine and
hanging out at bitwise in Fresno
this one we're also trolling Derek with
cupcakes
and it just starts spontaneously
happening and then this one Derek's now
in the picture my kids are there and
Derek's wife and Zach and we're trolling
Ian and Anna who were in the other one
right so this just became a thing and I
just stumbled upon these and then this
is Derek and Ian now I think trolling
Anna uh because we're eating sushi and
she's not so this became kind of a fun
thing that we would do and there's
there's a lot of these photos and then
what I realized is I was like wow what
do we have for for tiny scene I realized
that when we did a headshot this is our
about page that Anar was gone he had to
fly out to see his family and so we
pulled him up pick up on my iPad and we
just kind of pointed to Anar and said ah
isn't it funny he's missing and then a
couple months later we're in California
and Xander's not there and so now it's
Tracy in our and I'm mocking sander so
that that's our I think going to be our
our
tradition but I will say the one that I
think that I still Derek and I still
text about and I honestly get a little
choked up about it because it is has
such deep meaning for me is there's this
stuff called fire cider and it's
um habanero infused
apple cider vinegar Wellness tonic
firesider.com or you can buy it on
Amazon we got in a little snap monthly
snack subscription and some of the
snacks weren't great but there's this
little Fireside thing and I was like I
don't know let's all try it out so we
all took a little sip and we're like oh
my God this is awful it's not alcoholic
but it just it lights you up and so we
were joking a little bit and and the
fire starter just sat there for like a
month and then I said all right Folks at
some point you realize this is launch
juice and anytime we launch a big
feature we're all doing a shot and
instantly everyone's like hell yes this
is a challenge so I bought the firesider
shot glasses and uh on the firesider
shot glass they make it's like there's
different levels and it's like repel
vampires
um you know clean out your innards and
blah blah blah so we'd line it up and
we'd hit ship it boom and we'd all take
a shot it was great and so by the time I
was leaving drip when we had because
that was when we had two Engineers by
the time I was leaving drift no joke I
was buying it by the gallon
and on your first day as an engineer on
the product it was the product and
engineering team we would say hey here
you are here's a shirt here's a sticker
and here's your shot glass and people
are like what is this what is happening
we always had to say is not alcoholic
like it's not but it became a thing that
I believe still happens today because
when I left my my successor said where
do I get the fire starter because I want
you know I want to keep this going
because it became such a cool thing so
anyways that is all for me today
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