Rob Walling

Quotes are word for word from the source.

• Founder Led Support

  “When I acquired HitTail, I personally responded to every email ticket that came in for three months, it might have been a little more. Drip was the same way.”

  Our noteRob shares his experience of handling all customer support personally in the early days.

• Revenue Due Diligence

  “Take the average monthly revenue from the previous 6-12 months to eliminate seasonal or "new version" peaks. If the product is relatively new, assume revenue will drop after the first 2-3 months.”

  Our noteRob explains how to avoid overpaying for a software product by analyzing long-term revenue trends.

• Founder technical skills

  “I think, oftentimes, we get the, do I need to be a developer or not? It's a very binary way, but Haibert, I think, is asking, how much of a developer do I need to be?”

  Our noteRob clarifies a listener's question about the specific level of coding expertise required to build a SaaS.

• Coding for founders

  “I don't think we answer, do you need to be a developer in order to start a SaaS? I think specifically, he's asking how good of a developer do I need to be to code to actually build the SaaS?”

  Our noteRob distinguishes between being a founder and being the person who actually writes the code for the product.

• Strategic product naming

  “I love the naming most of all, Project Support Services and expedited updates. I think it's a mental shift like when I went from calling things betas to calling them early access.”

  Our noteRob reacts to a listener's tip about using specific service names to increase enterprise sales margins.

• Funding new ventures

  “If I can fund that with another project, that's worth it to me.”

  Our noteRob discusses using existing revenue to fund or acquire new software products.

• Chunking the day

  “Probably the best way I found to approach it is to think of the day in three chunks, three four to six hour chunks. There's your morning, there's your afternoon, early evening, and then there is your evening or late night.”

  Our noteRob explains his method for managing a flexible schedule by dividing the day into three distinct blocks.

• Deep work focus

  “if you're really hammering it, you could probably get all that done if you didn't have any distractions and minimal interruptions and you just went full force with the music and the caffeine and just went in the zone for a good solid four hours.”

  Our noteRob discusses how four hours of intense focus can equal a full day of distracted work.

• Movement for epiphanies

  “it was a perfect amount of time for me to think through this issue and it was very much like when you have major epiphanies when you're in the shower, when you're doing dishes.”

  Our noteRob describes how a short bike ride helped him solve a difficult problem through subconscious processing.

• Schedule change fear

  “It always sounds scary to think about changing your work schedule and that you're not going to get as much done or you're competitor is going to catch you or whatever, it's pretty unlikely.”

  Our noteRob encourages founders to overcome the fear that working fewer hours will ruin their business.

• Importance of onboarding

  “It sounds like amazing learning, especially around onboarding and realizing if you had not done that and you had instead just launched on Product Hunt or done a bunch of marketing, you would have just bled a bunch of people out”

  Our noteRob highlights how testing onboarding before a big launch prevents wasting marketing efforts.

• Early content struggles

  “I remember early on, we had a tough time coming up with content every week. Remember we got like 20 something episodes in and we're like, "Alright, that's all we have to say. We're done."”

  Our noteRob recalls the feeling of running out of ideas early in his podcasting journey.

• Equity split considerations

  “You can just say I own 90%, you own 10% or whatever. And again, you have to ask yourself then, what if he only sticks around six months, is it worth the 5% or the 10% or whatever number you're giving him.”

  Our noteRob warns about the long-term implications of giving away equity to early contributors.

• Launch before building

  “if you have zero customers right now and you aren't already dealing with support and adding features and all that stuff, then you need to launch before you start building anything or building anything further.”

  Our noteRob advises founders to launch their product early rather than adding more features without customers.

• Setting conference context

  “We have that introduction that really is this high level context setting, and then at the end, we should wrap it up with context and stuff, and we even have to structure the talks that way.”

  Our noteRob discusses the importance of framing a conference with context at the beginning and end.

• Separating ads and content

  “Advertising versus editorial, we don't link those two up. I don't want that to influence decisions.”

  Our noteRob emphasizes the importance of not letting sponsors influence the editorial direction of his events.

• Identifying good customers

  “you start to learn who your good customers are, your helpful customers are, who request the good features and request them well, meaning they give you an idea of what they need and they ask for it respectively”

  Our noteRob explained how to distinguish between demanding jerks and constructive, helpful customers.

• Prioritizing roadmap

  “when you have this group of customers who's requesting it, it makes it a little easier to figure out what you should build next.”

  Our noteRob discussed how customer feedback helps prioritize the development pipeline.

• Experienced investor benefits

  “Typically, if someone is doing a lot of angel investing, then they know the boundaries and they know what's good for the founder and the company, and they'll give you the leeway to kind of go out and do it on your own”

  Our noteRob explains the value of working with seasoned investors who respect boundaries.

• Funding for speed

  “I think that funding allows you to get somewhere faster. So if you want to get to that 7 figure or low 8 figure revenue mark, funding is definitely going to get you there faster”

  Our noteRob discusses the primary advantage of raising capital for a growing business.

• The stair-step approach

  “They went and they played little league, then they went and played highschool ball, then they played college ball, then they played minor leagues, and then they played major leagues”

  Our noteRob uses a baseball metaphor to describe the disciplined, repeatable way of starting and growing businesses.

• marketing commitment

  “I don't think you should try to launch a product if you're not willing to learn marketing and really take it head on.”

  Our noteRob emphasizes that marketing is essential for any product launch to succeed.

• trade secrets

  “patenting the actual algorithm of HitTail wouldn't have been very smart because you have reveal the formula.”

  Our noteRob explains why he chose not to pursue a patent for his software's algorithm.

• B2B vs B2C

  “We have evaluated like B2C is always on the edge and we kind of never do it because the churn's too high and the price point's too low. We like to see MRR. We like to see growth rate.”

  Our noteRob explains why TinySeed prefers B2B SaaS over B2C models.

• Minimum revenue traction

  “I start to feel uncomfortable when like MRR is below 1,000 I'm not saying we have funded companies below 1,000, but it makes me, it's like that's really early”

  Our noteRob shares his personal comfort level regarding the minimum revenue needed for an accelerator.

• Early stage applications

  “If you're less than 500, I'd say, and you want to apply, apply. The odds of you getting funding through us are a lot lower.”

  Our noteRob discusses the likelihood of funding for startups with very low monthly recurring revenue.

• Solo founder eligibility

  “We like solo founders, but if you were a one-person or a two-person team and you're have the same numbers and the same business, to me, it's all the same.”

  Our noteRob clarifies that team size doesn't necessarily give an edge if the business fundamentals are equal.

• Irrelevance of awards

  “And awards don't care for me at all.”

  Our noteRob explains that industry awards do not influence his investment decisions.

• SaaS Market Maturity

  “I, for one, like the fact that we do have this. As a seller of apps, as a builder, as a maker, I think the fact that we have raised that multiple for SaaS, that this 3X-5X range exists, and then we all know that because it was really helpful.”

  Our noteRob reflects on how the valuation multiples for SaaS businesses have improved over time.

• Successful transaction alignment

  “The closer we can narrow it down to where everybody's on the same page you're coming to a transaction, the more likely it is to go through.”

  Our noteRob explains why having industry-standard rules of thumb for valuations helps make the market more liquid.