[65] Rob Walling on Drip, Microconf, and the Future of Bootstrapped Startups
This is Bootstrapped Web episode 65. It is podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we've got Rob Walling back on the show. He was on the show early in in, you know, like episode two or three or something. So I'm fairly sure that most of you listening to this know Rob and and kind of know his story.
Brian Casel:So today, know, we've had a great conversation with him. We're gonna talk about drip. We're gonna talk about email marketing automation, microconf and the bootstrapping community and and a whole lot more. So so we're looking forward to that. As always, I am Brian.
Jordan Gal:And I am Jordan, and I really love the conversation with Rob today. I think we covered a lot of things that, you know, we don't normally talk about and Rob doesn't normally talk about. And it was just it was just an interesting conversation, and he's kinda like the grand poo bob, the bootstrapping community. So to kinda hear him talk about, you know, the past few years, what's happened, what's happening now, and our guesses for what's going to happen over the next few years, was really interesting. I think people, will get a lot out of it, especially everyone coming to MicroConf.
Jordan Gal:I think it'll build up a little bit of excitement for, for a few weeks from
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Absolutely. It was a good conversation, and, man, I cannot wait to get get out to Vegas and not only take a take a break from work, but just, you know, catch up with everyone. And, I mean, MicroConf is so much fun.
Jordan Gal:I'm excited. It's a real sign of how old we are that nowadays when, like, a bachelor party comes up, I'm like, please don't be in Vegas. I have no interest in how exhausting something like that is, but a business conference for software nerds can't wait to
Speaker 3:go.
Brian Casel:I think it also goes to show how how how geeky we all are about our work and and and business and the people in in this in this industry. I mean, anyone else I talk to and they say they're they're going to some conference for for work or for their company, they're dreading it. They don't they don't wanna get on that plane and go do that because that's, you know, they're Right. Their bosses.
Jordan Gal:Hang out with their colleagues. Right. Right. This is this is not that.
Brian Casel:That's that's right. So today, we are actually welcoming our very first sponsor here on Bootstrapped Web. And, you know, I I wanted to make these these sponsorship spots, which you'll you'll hear the first one in in a second. I wanted to make them kinda interesting to listen to. Right?
Brian Casel:A little bit different from what from what, you know, most podcast ads sound like. So, you know, we're actually producing them as like mini conversations with the founders of those companies, you know, about a minute or two each. And so, you know, we're also being highly selective about the companies that we're accepting on as sponsors. Of course, is very early on in today. It's just the first one.
Brian Casel:But, know, basically, we're we're looking for companies that we know, that we respect, perhaps we actually use them ourselves, preferably self funded companies, but that's obviously not a requirement. And companies that and products and whatnot that we would personally recommend to you. So that's really what we're trying to focus on here. So today's first sponsor is Time Doctor. Take a listen.
Brian Casel:Today's episode is sponsored by Time Doctor. So I had a quick chat with Liam Martin, He's the co founder of Time Doctor. So here's that conversation. All right. So I'm here with Liam Martin from timedoctor.com.
Brian Casel:Liam, thanks for joining me here today. In a nutshell, why
Speaker 3:don't you
Brian Casel:tell us what is Time Doctor?
Speaker 4:Time Doctor is really a time analytics tool for distributed teams. So we track how productive employees are all over the world. It's basically like Google Analytics for your team. So you track your website, you might as well just track your team members with the same sort of data minded mindset that you would have for your website.
Brian Casel:Right. And then how how about the entrepreneur, the bootstrapper themselves? They're kind of not hitting their personal goals this month. They're not getting enough done. Does Time Doctor help with that?
Speaker 4:Yeah. It shows you exactly what you're doing with your time. So, like, how much time did you spend on Facebook, Skype, iTunes, whatever it might be, World of Warcraft. And you can compare this data against other team members in your organization to see how productive each person is within that organization.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. I mean, I'm I'm actually a Time Doctor customer, and I I should be using it more for myself. I'm I'm using it for my employees, but I really gotta, you know, get a handle on what I'm doing with my day. So but, you know, speaking of, I mean, how about for teams as well? Like, you know, people with remote employees, how does Time Doctor kinda help with that?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, that's what it's really designed to do. The individual user is definitely something that we focus on from a personal productivity perspective, but the majority of the use case is for large remote and distributed teams. So we have customers that manage one employee to thousands, and it pretty much for any level of organization, particularly organizations that are distributed. Our real mission statement is that we wanna empower people to work anywhere, whenever they want.
Speaker 4:Time Doctor allows them to do that.
Brian Casel:Very cool. So I'm curious. I are are there any customers who are using Time Doctor in a very interesting or or unique way?
Speaker 4:I think the best use case for your listeners is really in founding teams. So me and Rob initially Rob's my cofounder. We had an agreement of a minimum of twenty hours of computer work a week since we weren't paying ourselves, founding teams that have day jobs will, you know, one month be working like a dog and the next month disappearing. Disappearing. So So we really focus on, like, making sure that everyone does those minimum hours and that they are productive hours and that they are quantifiably accountable hours so that everyone can say, yeah.
Speaker 4:We're all focused on the same goal.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I could see how important that is, especially in the in the startup stage. You know, thing I've been using Time Doctor myself for a while. So, I mean, Liam, thank you so much for for doing this.
Speaker 4:Alright. Thanks a lot.
Brian Casel:Alright Liam, take care. Liam and the guys at Time Doctor have been generous enough to offer our listeners this. If you go to timedoctor.com/bootstrappedweb and sign up for a free trial there, they'll actually triple your free trial. It's normally thirty days. You'll get it for ninety days by going to timedoctor.com/bootstrappedweb.
Brian Casel:Alright. We're here with Rob Walling. Rob, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Hey. Thanks for having me on, guys. It's my pleasure. It's nice to be on this side of the earbuds since I listen to your show every week.
Brian Casel:Cool. Very cool. And I think you were actually on the show with me, like, episode two or episode three of this podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I remember when it was still an interview show. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm glad you changed the format, man. I know you've talked about it, but that was a that was a big move. And I really I think that that shows a lot better for that for it.
Brian Casel:I I definitely agree, and I've heard that from a lot of people now. So, so, yeah, Jordan, you're you know, you you can't quit at this point.
Jordan Gal:I'll I'll just silently accept the praise and
Speaker 3:You you raised the game, man.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think it's, you know, the dynamic of two people sharing both of their issues and both their perspectives. Yeah. I think it's good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. So, you know, thanks again for for coming on and kinda rescheduling. I know we had a, you know, some of that going on. But, you why don't we start off we've got a couple areas that we want to cover here today.
Brian Casel:But why don't we start off with what's going on right now? Obviously, you're pretty focused on DRIP. And I think most people kind of know you and the backstory at this point. So we're going to try to cover some things that know, maybe you don't you don't talk so much about. We'll we'll see.
Brian Casel:So why don't you so what's going on with DRIP right now? How are things going this year?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, this year has been really, really good. It's finally hitting that point. You know, I I have the the graph that where I have the the building, learning, and scaling. I've done in a couple of microconf talks now, and I'm I feel like I'm past. Although I'm still learning and the team's still learning, we are we're to the point where things have started to scale up, and growth has been healthy.
Speaker 3:Average growth for the last eleven months is 13% month over month every month. So that's probably the best. HitTail did that for a while, and then it topped out, and Drip has surpassed, you know, where HitTail was. And I've had my largest months single months of growth on any app I've ever had, over the last few months. So I'm I'm feeling at the top of my game.
Speaker 3:I'm just hoping that it continues to be every month continues to be the top rather than, you know, a flattening out of it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's exciting. That's awesome. And, you know, I can I can see it too? I mean, obviously, I mean, I'm using DRIP, but I hear more and more people talking about it.
Brian Casel:And as I talk to more people, it's definitely entered the conversation a lot more than before.
Speaker 3:Right.
Brian Casel:For sure.
Speaker 3:I think it's just, you know, we hit a feature set that really resonated. I mean, it's product market fit. I know that term irritates people now or it's almost cliche, but that's really what happened is we hit we hit enough features that our group of people you know, we're all in the same community. We're all the same people. Our group, it really started resonating with folks.
Speaker 3:And then from there, then it's just being around. Right? Because the first month they did that, we got some trials, and then more people talk about it. And then we're now, you know, about seven months into probably hitting that product market fit because it was last July when when we relaunched the marketing automation stuff, and, I just feel momentum building each month with it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's, the product market fit thing, I feel like I'm back around on it. I I thought it was a great concept and then kinda hated it because it just was used too often Mhmm. In too many cases. And now maybe it's just because, you know, everyone views the world from their own selfish perspective.
Jordan Gal:But as I'm struggling to find that, I now start to see it as an actual goal and something that I actually will know when I feel it.
Brian Casel:Yep. Because right, there
Jordan Gal:is so many requests for foreign currency support. Like, all these features and requests all start to gather together, and I you start to think, actually, we can we can once we start to address, not every one of these, but a lot of them, a lot of these incoming questions will actually be incoming trials, and all everything's gonna feel very, very different.
Speaker 3:That's right. It it's a really good feeling. Whether you call it product market fit or you make up your own name for the damn thing, I mean, it just means that you have a feature set that a certain group of people love, and you have a positioning like a headline that a certain group of that same group of people resonates with. That's how I view it. You know?
Speaker 3:And you see it overnight. Like you said, Jordan, like, your your churn suddenly starts going down. Your trial count trial count may or may not going up go up depending on your, how well your marketing's doing, but it is noticeable, and and it is it's a great feeling that instead of saying telling everyone, oh, no. We're working on that. Oh, no.
Speaker 3:That's in our queue. Oh, no. You start saying, yeah. We can totally do that, like, to everything. It's it's a shocking feeling.
Speaker 3:You know? It's so good.
Brian Casel:And it's something that people are actively asking for. It's not something
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Brian Casel:Like, it's not just a tweak in a headline or your marketing, and all a sudden that gets you product market fit. It's much more at a core level of the product that something changed. Think in your case, was clearly the marketing automation stuff. And I remember when you when you launched drip initially, I I definitely looked at it, but I I didn't see I I was looking for that automation stuff as well. And then once you started getting into that, it was like, this is this is now really making a lot of sense.
Brian Casel:So this week, we received an email from you saying prices are raising. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, obviously, you know, existing customers are grandfathered in and all that. But how did that decision come about? I'm I'm guessing it had to do with all the expanded features at this point and and and all that.
Brian Casel:So, yeah, like, how did that decision kind of kind of play out?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It you're right. It has to do with a couple things. One is our feature set is growing. We launch a couple new features a week, typically, some smaller features, and then we'll launch a major feature every month to six weeks.
Speaker 3:A major feature, I mean, like, scoring or, you know, a big chunk of automation or something. So at this point, like, the value the product provides is substantially, and I I I realize I sound biased because I'm the founder, but, like, I use it every day. You know, I'm in DRIP, and it's, like, way more powerful than it was seven months ago. And that's I think the last time I adjusted pricing was, like, seven or eight months ago. And So
Jordan Gal:is that is that what drives it, the the value you feel that you're providing, or is it is it more of a a business decision of maybe our conversion will go down a bit, but overall, the revenue will grow because of it? Or
Speaker 3:It. That's true too. I mean, that's my evaluation that I think will happen. But the reason that I even started entertaining the idea was, a, the product is now more on par with tools that are charging $2.03, $400 a month, and the our costs have actually gone way up. Like, the amount of money that we pay in a month, you know, we send several million emails a month, and we send those through other providers.
Speaker 3:Like, we don't maintain our own servers. Right? We have, like, Mandrel and Mailgun and, you know, those types of guys, and we send spend 4 figures just sending email, and we spend 4 figures on server hosting. And I have a team of five full time. You know, like so so our costs went up as well at but if if that was the only thing that went up, it wouldn't work.
Speaker 3:Right? You can't just raise prices because people wouldn't pay it. So then the value you've provided has gone up. And I think that just in order to keep it viable long term, that that's the way to go. And I don't think it will impact our conversion rates, although I am watching that closely for sure.
Brian Casel:Have you noticed a a change in the customer base too? Like now with this feature set, it attracts a customers with with larger budgets for this sort of thing?
Speaker 3:It does. That's a good point. It's more it's a more sophisticated tool, so it tends to draw more sophisticated customers. We do still get the the more price sensitive folks. But to be honest, if you're super price sensitive, then you should go to Mailchimp, you know, because it's free until 2000, and drip starts at $49 a month.
Speaker 3:But our best customers are the people who come in and say, oh, $49. Wow. That's crazy cheap for marketing automation. Right? That I hear that comment as well in addition to the why don't you have a free plan, which are basically two of the opposite sides.
Brian Casel:Right.
Speaker 3:And and, yeah, the bulk of the not the bulk of the growth, but a chunk of our growth has been the customers who are paying us $500 a month because their lists are that big or $750 a month because their lists are that big.
Brian Casel:And did you do any sort of validation in in in the price change, or or was it just kind of like a planned rollout? Or are we currently in, like, a test phase of of the new pricing? Or
Speaker 3:Yeah. I it's not so dramatic that I'm not that worried about it tanking or or conversion rates plummeting or anything. So I did not I didn't test it. I don't know how I would do that. This is probably my test.
Speaker 3:If I see conversion rates plummet, I'll probably I could I would feasibly roll it back. Mhmm. I don't see any reality where that would actually happen because it's not it wasn't such a it's not like a doubled pricing or something.
Jordan Gal:It's it's not a doubling.
Speaker 3:I
Jordan Gal:mean, probably by the time this episode is out or sometime soon, it'll be public on the on on the page. But, yeah, choosing a pricing level, it's it's a very it's a very strange thing. You you kinda at the end of the day, you're kinda pulling it out of thin air.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. In essence, I I was able to look at customer data, which is nice. You know, before you launch and before you start to scale up, you have no data. But now we have you know, we've had a few thousand people try Drip. Not all of them have stuck around, but we have enough data now that I can at least start to get some educated guesses as to where people fall.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, the pricing is, it is on the site. It is live. If you go there, our lowest plan is still $49. That plan did not change because I still want to get people in on the low end. The other plans did not change in amount, but you get less for them than you did last week.
Speaker 3:And you guys are grandfathered in if you're already using it. You know what I'm saying? You'll get more. And even up there, like, enterprise tiers are even more expensive. There's an even greater difference there.
Speaker 3:So the numb the dollar amounts on the pricing page did not change. It's it's how much you get out of how many subscribers and how many sends you get out.
Jordan Gal:And and are you are you concerned with with with things diverging? You know, can you satisfy the $49, customer and the $500 a month customer at the same time? Right? We're we're kind of facing this also. Should we go in one direction or try to straddle both until later on?
Jordan Gal:Or it's kind of a scary thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a good it's a good question. You know, if you look at so if you look at Mailchimp as an example of of a potential competitor of mine, they are they've gone for the low end. Right? Where they I mean, they have large customers, but they start at free and then $15 and then 20, you know, and it really goes up.
Speaker 3:And then if you look at maybe Infusionsoft on the other end, they start at $300 a month. That's our lowest plan. So they've taken the the two paths. Drip is still is straddling those. Right?
Speaker 3:Like you said, I think at some point, Drip might you know, I could see eliminating the $49 plan. But I want Drip to be more have more of a brand name and to be more, have been around longer and just have a little bit more behind it. But, yeah, I could I could see dropping the $49 plan. I could also see adding a free plan at the same time that doesn't send emails for prelaunch people. You know?
Speaker 3:I mean, there there's there's some interesting things you you could do.
Brian Casel:I mean, I I already see that the 49 plan, you know, I mean, this was definitely the case for me. It, like, rapidly shoots you into the higher plan. It it's only a couple months before someone using Drip who's serious about email marketing and growing an audience and whatnot. It, you know, it's not gonna take long for them to to just bump right up into into the $99.01 49 plan.
Speaker 3:And that's what we've seen. You know, the $49 plan allows 2,500 email subscribers. And like you said, if you're cranking on things, you're gonna get that in a few months. And what I found is that $49 is still a no brainer price for most people who are doing something interesting. You know, if you have a real product, if you if you're doing a real podcast that's driving value or info products or whatever it is you're doing, consulting, $49 is a drop in the bucket.
Speaker 3:And so whereas 99 is like, well, this tool better be really good. Like it's just enough of a of an of a not a no brainer price that I don't so much mind having that $49 plan in. You know, we can onboard people and make it worthwhile at 49. And I've debated, you know, should we do a $29 plan? Because people do move up.
Speaker 3:Email marketing software is different than other software because people move up the tiers faster.
Jordan Gal:You know? Mhmm. So Yeah. But email's critical enough that you can justify if it plays a very, very important role in the business.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I was gonna say, like, once again, it's, like, the 3 figure range to to me, it it's gotta be, like, a so core to my business.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's right. So I agree.
Brian Casel:Cool. So let's talk a little bit about customer acquisition. I know I think last year you were kind of doing this medium touch sales idea, which I thought was very interesting. How has that evolved and what are you kind of doing this year and moving forward in terms of customer acquisition? It it sounds like you're at this, like, next phase where you're starting to really crank and scale up.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I am. I haven't done much medium touch sales since the end, maybe three or four months ago. So about, you know, three or four months after launching marketing automation and really hustling to get people in. I stopped getting a lot of well, I still get some requests for it.
Speaker 3:And to be honest, I'm actually right now in the process of hiring someone, basically like a customer success or a customer happiness person to take some of that over. I wanna I would love to have a button that on the site that instead of start a trial, it's actually you have a one on one demo. And I don't have the bandwidth to do that, you know. And so I'm bringing someone on part time to start and then probably full time to continue with that. Because I do think with this product, especially if some people are bringing over lists where it's I'm gonna pay $250 a month to start.
Speaker 3:They don't have a problem with doing that, but you sure would like a little bit of handholding. You know? You sure would like to see the benefits of that from a real person. And I and it's obviously worth the cost at that point, right, to when the when the pricing's that high or not high, but when the pricing is, you know, in the 3 figures. So I hope to resume it, I guess, is the, you know, is the goal.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and that's where I think, I mean, this is really what what I'm gonna end up talking about in that microconf attendee talk that that we've that we've discussed is how can you do that efficiently? How can you still go for a $49 plan? But then if somebody raises their hand and is gonna pay you $2.50, it it's worth your time. It's worth the company's time to put them on a different track and give them provide them the sales process that they expect and want and increases the likelihood of them coming on board.
Jordan Gal:And you you can do both. Sure. Yep. Even if it's not you with the bandwidth to to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah. I have a a couple friends I know who are doing this kind of approach where they have low some low, some medium, and some high touch sales. They just do the qualifying question right up front, you know. And for me, it would be, hey.
Speaker 3:You know, happy to do a demo. How many, how many email subscribers would you be moving over? Right? Or how many are you getting each month? It's a really easy thing for us to know.
Speaker 3:Right. And same for you, Jordan. You know, it's like you can say how many products you sell or how about how much revenue do you do each month, whatever it is that you're, you know Mhmm. You you can do your math. So and then if they're lower end, not lower end, but if they're just a lower plan, you can totally send them like a screen cast that you've recorded.
Speaker 3:A customs could be like, you know, that not a custom one for them particularly, but I have some that I've walked through where it seems like I recorded it for you. It starts off and it's like, hey. This is Rob. I'm the founder. Recorded the screen cache to show you some blah you know, I'm I'm a little bit vague about it, but it's me and I'm stumbling.
Speaker 3:It's not edited. You know, it's like an eight minute walk through. And that really is a demo. I mean, it's a demo of sorts and totally worth, you know, maybe using that for a $49 plan and then, you know, angling up with more time if it's if it's more expensive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And then using email mark you know, automation, you can even, like, tailor that, like, based on you know, depends on your product. But, in in restaurant, I've been using drip to so if someone indicates that they're a food truck, we'll send them food truck specific case studies and whatnot. Exactly. So, you know, I am curious about, before we move on, talking about microconf, which is, you know, right around the corner.
Brian Casel:Email market email marketing automation, how how are you guys actually using it in drip to, you know, for
Speaker 3:Using drip for drip?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I use a lot. I use it a lot, and I use a lot of tagging. Frankly, my whole my entire trial sequence, right, which is trying to get people onboarded and using it, that's all inside drip, and it's based on events that you do or or actions you perform in Drip. And if you haven't done part of our onboarding, then you get an email telling you to do that, and you keep getting that email until you do that, you know, and then it moves on to the next one.
Speaker 3:And our emails have if it has liquid tags, so it's got if then statements in the email to say, if this, then, you know, if they're tagged as this, blah blah blah. That's the trial sequence. The the front end marketing stuff, I have tags all over the place. And we actually I don't know if you guys have seen, but we added a retroactive tagging feature. So if you go to the clicks, there's a there's a clicks report.
Speaker 3:And it'll show you you can pick any email, broadcast or campaign, and you can say it'll it'll show you, you know, 300 people clicked this link to your blog post about SEO. If you click the button next to that, you can tag retroactively everyone who clicked that link with whatever you want. I've I've been going through that thing like crazy, and now I have my marketing list and have all these people where I'm like, oh, this guy's SaaS. He's clicked on a bunch of SaaS links where and we have WordPress plugin things, and we have consultants. You know, we have some specific blog posts.
Speaker 3:So now I'm starting to write little one off emails and courses targeting them. I also I could go on for a while, but I'll go
Brian Casel:on one
Speaker 3:more one more thing. I also put a little PS at at the bottom of a lot of my, the marketing list is about I send a lot of blog posts out through it, right, when we when you're posting a blog post. And I'll have, like, a PS at the bottom that it only appears it says, if this person is not a customer or a trial, then and then it says, PS, hey. You haven't checked drip out yet. Click here for a free trial.
Speaker 3:So I don't wanna bother my, you know,
Brian Casel:my customers. I did the exact same thing last month for the productized course. I've been tagged like, in the PS, same same thing. Like, if they're a customer, I was promoting a a webinar, and I didn't want existing customers to be inundated with with this webinar stuff. So Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah, was interesting. Cool. So let's kind of shift gears right now. We're right now, we're kind of heading into the March, couple couple weeks away from MicroConf Vegas. Can't wait.
Brian Casel:Me too. Yeah. Just, you know, really looking forward to this. So this is my second year. Jordan, this is your first year.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:It is. Very excited. I've been meaning to go for the past several years, and one baby or another keeps getting in the way. So this year, finally, you're finally excited to go.
Speaker 3:Yep. And you guys are both doing a Teddy Talks. Is that right?
Jordan Gal:That's right. Yep. Brian, who who got a few more votes than was Oh, they
Speaker 3:were Oh, man. How
Jordan Gal:to Sorry.
Speaker 5:Well, Justin Jackson beat us
Brian Casel:both. So He did. Yeah. You know, I I am looking forward to that. So what is new, different, anything, like, new, like, planned this year?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We're doing a couple things. One is we're doing workshops after the conference. Patrick McKenzie and Heaton Shaw are each doing a four hour workshop, and it's totally a pilot. Right?
Speaker 3:You you know, we would do more if it was if we were full force, but we just wanted to figure out, like, what does this look like? And we capped them at 12 attendees, and it's basically gonna be deep dive. It's not like them sitting there lecturing for four hours. Patrick basically said, bring your data, bring your CRM, bring your outbound, your emails, your whatever your scripts, and we're we're all gonna analyze them and bring you up and say, here here are suggestions, you know, on how to improve that. And Heaton Shaw is doing a similar thing.
Speaker 3:So Patrick's more about the outbound, you know, email and and medium touch, and Heaton's doing growth, which, again, I think will be awesome, right, to bring up to be like, you know, this is how we're growing. What should we do differently? You know?
Brian Casel:Cool. I remember last year, Patrick was doing the the website teardowns.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Was that was very
Speaker 4:cool.
Speaker 3:We'll do teardowns again, and I'll pick I always pick those folks last minute and just grab a speaker and be like, you wanna do a teardown tomorrow? Yeah. So I'll be good. And that's I those are some of the best parts of the conference. Right?
Speaker 3:The attendees love the teardowns. We have 12 attend talks again this year because those were a big hit. They're twelve minutes apiece, and it's nice that we can get a lot of varied content covered. You know, there's there's some things that, like, wouldn't work as a forty minute talk. Right?
Speaker 3:Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Speaker 3:Here's my story of launching WordPress plugins. There's something that's
Brian Casel:I I really enjoyed. Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Those are great. I'll but I love those talks. And so and they and they were really well reviewed, but you probably wouldn't give a full forty minute talk on just that story, you know?
Brian Casel:Totally. I I think, you know, for for anyone listening who's kind of new to MicroConf, honestly, the the attendee talks were probably one of my favorite parts of it. Like, listening to the other attendees and, like, meeting those people for the first time and, like, seeing, like, who's who's out there, who's working on stuff. Yeah. Really cool stuff.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And there is an element to, you know, the bigger name people. You can justify in your head that they're doing things that are different from what you're doing because there's there are kind of a few rungs up the the the ladder. But an attendee talk telling you about what what they're doing is like, there's no reason that you can't be doing the same thing. It feels it feels closer, more reachable, and doable.
Jordan Gal:Sure.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Brian Casel:Totally. So, I'm I'm kinda curious, like, over the years, like, how how has the audience changed at MicroConf?
Speaker 3:Yeah. This is our fifth one in Vegas, and so it's our seventh conference total because we've been two in Europe. And the audience, the fur the very first year, I mean, we didn't sell out. We almost we were talking about shutting it down, like, six weeks before because we were gonna lose a bunch of money. We wound up landing, a last minute sponsor that saved our bacon, but thank you, Microsoft.
Speaker 3:But we, so it was kind of a a crazy mix of just I won't say random people because there's a bunch who've come back, but it wasn't the core group. Like, we're we are much more similar now than than at that point. There really wasn't I mean, if you think of the bootstrapping community in 2010, although I I guess this was 2011, but it was like there weren't many. It was a big micro ISV thing was was kinda going away and there wasn't this, you know, bootstrap SaaS thing really going on. A few people were doing it, but it wasn't until the year after that I felt like we started getting to know everybody.
Speaker 3:Right? So it was 2012 where you you started seeing the same faces, and then it was like, oh, I'm I'm starting to see patterns in the talks and patterns in the messages. And, you know, the first year was more of a random bit, not only with the attendees, but the speakers and some of the topics. We didn't really know what we were going after yet.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It really seems like this community really formed in in just the last couple of years. I mean, as as far as I know it, you know, you know it longer than I do. And I really think that you and Mike, between the podcast and the conference, have been just instrumental in forming this community and growing it to what it's been, which has been amazing. I I am curious, like, what what would you say has changed in the bootstrapping community in general over the last couple of years from, you know, maybe five, six years ago?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a good question. As you know, like I said, the you guys remember the micro ISV kind of push in the 2003 to 02/06/1927?
Brian Casel:Feel like I kind of entered this world just slightly I after
Jordan Gal:came at it from the world. Like most. But
Speaker 3:yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, I think that's what's changed is so micro ISVs were like it was a term for kind of a one person software company.
Speaker 3:So, like, a prototypical example would be like Patrick McKenzie with Bingo card creator. Or what were the other examples? I guess Ian Landsman was a one person shop for a while, and I was at the time, although I was the tail end. But it was pre SaaS. I mean, SaaS existed, but no one was talking about it like that.
Speaker 3:If in fact, if you said SaaS, people didn't know what that like, acronym meant, you know, until the last maybe three, four years. And so that's so five, six years ago, it was just coming off of that. And my first you know, the first podcast episodes, the academy that I launched, my book, if you go back and read that, I talk a lot more about, not a lot more, but I mean, I I I owned an ecommerce site at the time. I owned like a productized consulting service that did themes. I owned ebooks.
Speaker 3:I owned AdSense websites. There was more variety to it, and I think there were bootstrappers doing more of that stuff, or at least it felt like it, but it was definitely a random assortment of kind of Internet marketers. And, you know, there's crossover with the tropical NBA crowd and stuff back back then even though it didn't exist, but it's same type of people. And then I think over the past couple years, it's become like a real there's more people doing what the three of us are doing, where it's like, we're launching SaaS. There's a pretty clear road map, and the community is big enough that it can support itself.
Speaker 3:I think if I we try to throw a SaaS conference five years ago, no one would have come. You know? But now we can do not that MicroConf is SaaS only, but, you know, it's probably 70%, I would guess. Folks are doing SaaS, and then there's some mobile and some some desktop.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And I'm seeing a lot of, like, WordPress plug in businesses.
Speaker 3:That's right. Sorry, guys. I left that one out.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. No. Yeah. And and, like And courses. Right?
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. Yeah. Courses are less. I mean, there are definitely people doing it.
Speaker 3:I mean, I do it and, you know, there's a lot of folks doing it, but I think with the well, my impression of the MicroCon crowd is that the it's more about software and about
Jordan Gal:So what
Brian Casel:I have noticed that as well. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:What do you see happening over the next, like, two, three years? I I know I know in in my head, what I want to see happen is just the ambitions getting bigger. You know? Like, I I don't it makes me a little sad to to see some people, like, shooting for for a, you know, a software company that makes $15 a month.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Like, that's possible, and I can give you freedom, But I don't I don't want that to be the goal of the industry and the kind of, like, area of people that I I wanna be in. Yeah. It's like, it can be a lot bigger than that. And I think that's that's like the ambitions just need to start getting bigger.
Speaker 3:I think so I don't I'm not sure that I agree with you, and here's why. I think it needs to split off into two because there are people who really just want $10 a month to be able to be with their family and work twenty hours a week, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I genuinely don't. And that's what I wanted and did for about three or four years. And then I kinda got bored and I my ambitions increased.
Speaker 3:But there was a time where I worked, you know, when my first kid was born, I took a bunch of time off and I worked two days a week. I don't think that's a bad thing. However, there it is it does seem like there's an in between that you're talking about, Jordan, where it's like, what about the SaaS companies that are doing between 50 and $100 a month? There aren't there aren't very many. I don't know that there's a community of that.
Speaker 3:You know, the community upstream from that is venture capital. Right? The the cut SaaS company is doing 1,000,000 a month, 10,000,000 a month, whatever. Those are all, you know, you go read Jason Lemkin, who's a genius. Right?
Speaker 3:It was faster. There's a whole community around that. There's a whole community around the kind of I wanna quit my job level. And I think that's really valuable because a lot of people need to quit their job first. That's the first step.
Speaker 3:And then level up if they want to, and I don't think it's required thing, but if they want to into the realm you're talking about. And I do think that that becomes more viable as fund strapping becomes more viable. Have you heard that term before? Or
Jordan Gal:No. Please get please expand on
Speaker 3:that a touch. So the first time I heard it was a customer.io. I think it's is Colin the founder? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Just had coffee with him yesterday.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So love customers.io is awesome. I like Colin. He he throughout this term called fund strapping on, the rocket ship podcast, and he I think he coined it. And he basically says, it's it's raising just enough of a of a fund to bootstrap your way to profitability and then not taking any more funding.
Speaker 3:It's And a very different it's like customer.io raised a quarter million and they haven't taken any more and they're profitable. That's a very different model than any angel investor you go to. If you raise $2.50, they expect that within eighteen months, you raise an a round of 2,000,000, you know, 1 to 2,000,000. Right? They expect that.
Speaker 3:Unless you're
Jordan Gal:upset if you don't.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Because they want a $100,000,000 business. Screw them. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I'm seeing I'm already seeing this change. Like, there are folks I I won't mention names yet because they're not publicly, but who are trying to make these kinds of investments where they really just wanna make, you know, a 100,000, $200,000 angel investment, and it has to be paid back a little differently because there's no exit. So it has to be paid out of a a profit. You know?
Jordan Gal:You're talking about Indeed. Vc.
Speaker 3:That's one of them. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Right. So those guys are public. Yep. And yep. So that which is a it's it's like an in between model.
Speaker 6:So It is.
Jordan Gal:So you're right. There's there's this open space between getting out, and it's not a bad thing to make a living and be happy with your family and not work eighty hours a week. That's never a bad thing. Mhmm. But there is space between that and the $100,000 a month, and you start to have a business because then you can raise a big round.
Jordan Gal:And that in between, people are experimenting with indie. Vc and fund strapping, I I like.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, I I think that it it it really comes down to the stages of where you're at. I mean, Rob, what like like you were saying, you know, a minute ago, how you spent quite a bit of time in the ten ks month realm, spending time with the family. I mean, obviously still today you are too. But I think a lot of the attraction to this to this community, whether it's tuning into podcasts like these or or I would say going to a conference like MicroConf, but I feel like this is a it might be the next step is making that switch from full time employment or full time client work into a product business.
Brian Casel:I think that's what most of this community is faced with at this point. So that's why the idea of a 10 to 15 ks a month business is an amazing goal to strive for, because that gives you freedom from the job or from the client work. At least most of the people that I'm speaking to, that's kind of what their mindset is focused on right now. And it's been what my mindset has been focused on these past couple years. So and then I think going like traveling to a microconf is it seems like it's at the point where you're at you're on your way.
Brian Casel:You're kind of doing things. You're working on a product at least part time or full time, kind of not taking time off of a job at this point. Yeah. And then I think, you know, the the next step after that, you're looking at the 50 to 100 k a month.
Jordan Gal:Right. And here's my guess, and here's what I wanna hear on on this from you, Rob. My guess is that the the hardest thing to do is to leave your job or stop consulting and get to a point of profitability with a product. My guess is once you hit that mark, people of our caliber and ambition and intellect and talent don't wanna stop there. And there isn't that much being talked about how to go from 15 to 100 k a month.
Jordan Gal:Yep. I think
Speaker 3:that I would agree with that.
Jordan Gal:That as these businesses mature that started, you know, two, three years ago, that that's where a lot of the conversation will go over the next two, three years to go forward.
Speaker 3:I I would agree with that. I think that the move, the mindset shift to go from zero to quitting your job is huge. The just that just getting over it and figuring things out. And once you get to the point of quitting your job, I think that most people will want to continue. And like you said, there is this vanguard of people who are doing this.
Speaker 3:You know, you look at Patrick McKenzie, or or myself or I don't know. There's a there's a bunch of folks, Brian. You know, it's like three years ago, four years ago, you're either making no money or, you know, like, was making $10 a month or whatever it was. And then by this time, it's like you're at the next milestone, and Patrick's moving on to, like a startup, like a, you know, starfighters. I'm sure you guys have heard about
Brian Casel:it. Yeah. So
Speaker 3:I've I've moved on to Drip, you know, almost two years ago. It would have been a fool's errand for me to try to launch Drip five years ago because I didn't have the skills for it. I didn't have the mindset. I didn't exactly understand what I was doing well enough. You know?
Speaker 3:Whereas, once I hit enough of these successes, you know, once you hit that 10 k a month, you're you're set up to do this well. And so I do think that kind of stair stepping, which is the term I use for it, is it applies both going from one time to recurring, which is typically the thing I say when I'm stair stepping. But now, you know, we're kinda come up with thing here of, like, stair stepping from a 10 a month SaaS app up into a 50 a month SaaS app. And that may be a different app. I did that with HitTail.
Speaker 3:Right? I mean, HitTail brought it up to about $25.28 k, and it it wasn't really gonna go much further than that, like the churn and just the the pricing and all that stuff. So I moved on to the next step. I actually stair step up in an app. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's gonna be uncommon. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It'll be fascinating to to be around the conversations in in Vegas this year. Yep. See what are people talking about, hey. How do I quit my job? Or are they saying, how do I hire a sales team?
Jordan Gal:And how do I do these these these next set of problems Yep. For for this next step.
Speaker 3:There'll definitely be a mix. Yeah. It's always it's cool. Yeah. It's cool to see every year people coming back where it's like, wow.
Speaker 3:You guys have made a lot of progress. You know, that's the fun part.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm this is my second year coming back, and I'm just so excited to, like, catch up with everyone that I met last year. And it's as as great as the speaker at this as all the main speakers in the attendee talks are, it's it's the reception, it's the it's the after party, it's the
Speaker 3:The hallway track.
Brian Casel:The dinners, you know, it it that is it's just so much value in in the whole thing. Yep. Cool. So why don't we get into this, like, last section? This kind of relates to what we've been talking about here is, like, the the whole balance between family and big ambitions.
Brian Casel:You and and and your wife, Sherry, have started this new podcast, Zen Founder, which is great, kind of, you know, speaking to a lot of these a lot of these topics. What are your thoughts around that? Around kind of keeping a clear head, but just balancing those big ambitions, growing DRIP, growing a big company like this, but still having a a goal of only working a certain number of hours a week and and being home with with the family.
Speaker 3:I I think it's cool that, you know, we're on the podcast where you can say a big ambition in a big company is what I'm doing with DRIP. Because in any other like, if you go to San Francisco, they laugh me off the face. Right? Because
Speaker 5:I'm Right.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. Because it's like four dudes in a in a closet, you know, simply building, you know, a bootstrapper thing. So that's kinda cool. I think the the way I've started thinking about it is I would never have tried I I would have been foolish to try to do this from a standing stop.
Speaker 3:If if, again, five years ago with my family, I'm trying to balance this whole thing, build confidence in my wife that I can actually make money. It was more than five years ago. I keep saying five years ago. It was probably, like, eight years ago, nine years ago when that stuff really started going. If I had said, alright.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna quit my job and to hire five people and try to build some, you know, thing that's gonna go to, you know, a million dollar app, should have been like, what? What are you smoking? And I probably would have failed at it. And and I would have probably potentially wrecked our marriage because I probably would have been worried and worked sixty, seventy hour weeks, etcetera, etcetera. I would have gone down the typical path.
Speaker 3:Instead, I took a much slower tact. I stair stepped up through these one time sale apps, made $2 a month from one, put a couple more, then made $10 a month, then parlay that into the next, into the next. Now I'm at the place where I have, a, the mindset, but, b, I have the time because I don't have a boss anymore. I'm not working on the side anymore. You know?
Speaker 3:And so that's where I think my ambition I was able to kind of call it or hold on to it and and not need to jump on it eight years ago and just say, my ambition is to eventually run a software company. I need to do that tomorrow. I know some people need to do it tomorrow, and they quit their job, and that's okay. But I think your odds of succeeding are probably less. And since I'm more risk averse, that's how I balanced it.
Speaker 3:And so I do have ambition now, but I'm free to go pursue them because I have all these apps making money. Like, I have a profitable business already, so my ambition can be balanced with family. That makes sense? I didn't have to sacrifice family along the way, but it took me way longer than if you had just said, I'm gonna work sixty hour weeks and do it. I mean, maybe if you'd figured it out, you could have done it in two years and it took me, you know, six or something.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you have to kind of go into this whole journey just expecting to have, just bump after bump and make all these mistakes. Like, I think putting in a sheer number of hours a week is not the alternative to skipping mistakes. Like, still have to make all these mistakes. Like, there's no way around them.
Brian Casel:So I think that's where the the long game comes in. Not only the long ramp of death of of one SaaS app, but just going from one thing to the next. I mean, I I'm definitely learning that every year now. It's like, what went wrong last year? What are we gonna do better this year?
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm very happy to hear it personally, and I assume other people are listening also that that it it's a matter of patience and and and context. Right? It's not just, hey, Rob. How have you decided to spend so much time with your family and still run drip?
Jordan Gal:That's that's not really it's not that black and white. And so it it doesn't relate to my situation or someone else listening where they feel guilty, I feel guilty all the time. I have two young kids, a three year old and a one year old, and I work not a you know, crazy a lot, but I do work sixty hours a week and sometimes at night and whatever else. It's not that I'm deciding to do that and I'm a bad father for it. It's that I don't have the same situation built up over time
Speaker 3:That's right.
Jordan Gal:That you have and and that's a good goal to have, and it's difficult to convince myself now that I will not work sixty, seventy hours a week in the future Sure. Because it you kinda don't believe yourself when you say that, but you do have to acknowledge, hey, it would be a different situation, and and I'll know then. If I have $15.20 k a month coming in, the family's all good. Mhmm. If I'm still working seventy hours a week, then it's genuinely my choice.
Speaker 3:The problem. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. I have chosen that, and I gotta re rethink that. That's right. But if it's not like that I shouldn't feel terrible about myself, it's
Speaker 3:That's right.
Jordan Gal:It's not so simple. I did that
Speaker 3:too when I was starting out. I've consulted forty hours a week or worked forty hour a week jobs and, then came home and worked at night. I mean, we're we there's no way around that unless you have, I don't know, spouse who can support you or something, but I sure worked my share of sixty, seventy hour weeks. I didn't have to do it for two years though, and I was betting on things that were what I considered were kind of sure things. You know?
Speaker 3:Like dot net invoice, it was gonna make some money. Like, it's a b to b app. I wasn't trying to go after some big thing, if that makes sense. I I really wanted to make progress. But, yeah, we y'all have to put in the time.
Speaker 3:There's no like you guys have both said, there's no substitute for having to invest it at some point.
Brian Casel:You know, that's a good point here. I'm I'm curious to hear both of your takes on this. The fact that it it is a kind of a gamble to a certain point. I mean, I think we all know what we're doing, and we're learning a lot as we go, of course. But how how do you guys go about communicating this to to your to your spouse or to your family?
Brian Casel:And you know, because we we can talk the ins and outs like in our mastermind groups of like how we're projecting the six to twelve months and where we expect this to go. But other people who are not in this business don't understand it and and might not necessarily understand it in that terms. I mean, obviously, we all have supportive families, but how do we kind of talk about this stuff?
Jordan Gal:Complicated. It's complicated. You wanna go, Rob?
Speaker 3:Sure. Sure. I I go for two things. One is, especially early on, I went for small wins so that I could convince my wife that this was worth it. Because if you spend two years of nights and weekends and you have nothing to show for it, you're screwed.
Speaker 3:You've made a bad choice. I went for a win where I said, I had some well, here's the first thing. I was consulting. So I had $10.99 income that was in a business account. So I didn't have to get permission to spend several thousand dollars to buy an app.
Speaker 3:Okay. So I bought an app without my wife's permission, but it was a business decision. Right. And then within a few months, it was doing a thousand bucks a month or something. And then it grew to 2,000.
Speaker 3:And then I could say, hey. Look. I I have an app. This thing is selling $2 a month. She was shocked.
Speaker 3:Like, what? Like, you built that? And I was like, well, I bought it. Whatever. Details.
Speaker 3:Details. But then it but then it was like, oh, we can do this. Yeah. Exactly. And then I did it, you know, again with a small website and then with an e book or whatever.
Speaker 3:And so I went for those wins where by the end of that first year of me working, maybe not first year, but the end of a certain period of time, eighteen months or something, already had, there was revenue coming in, you know. So that was the first thing is I think you need to make your partner needs to trust that you're actually gonna be able to do this, and you probably need it yourself too. You need the confidence and ego boost.
Brian Casel:Yeah, there's definitely the validation in the business sense of validating customers and business models and all that. But I think there's also the personal validation and the family validation, you know, that plays into it as well.
Speaker 3:And I think the second part is I will go I've learned to be pretty honest and try to communicate upfront and only work hard in seasons. And what I mean by that is I will come to Sherry, and I'll say, look. I'm gonna I'm gonna launch drip. I told her that last year. And we talked about it, and she said 2014 is your year of growth, and there's gonna be several six week periods where you are working like crazy.
Speaker 3:Right? So I did work some sixty hour week class well, last year, but I didn't do it the whole year. I did it in these short seasons, these bursts, and then I would back way off, and then I would help with the kids and do the other stuff. I'm right trying to write a second edition of my book this year, and I've told her, I'm probably gonna take an entire week. I'm gonna go to the coast and take two weekends plus the five in the middle.
Speaker 3:So about nine days, and I'm gonna be off the grid. And I I'll be gone. And then I may even work some six hour weeks beyond that to get that done because I really like to binge on things and get them done while they're in my head, but then I'm gonna back way off. So I think those are my kinda my two piece of thing is, like, build confidence with small wins and then try not to work all the time seventy hour weeks. Try to have seasons of doing it and communicate those upfront if you can.
Speaker 3:That'd be my advice.
Brian Casel:That's all. You know, I I I personally spend a lot of time figuring out my daily and weekly routine. Like, when I'm putting together a plan for how I'm gonna attack some new project or whatever, it's like, okay, how how are we gonna map this out over the next over the calendar? But then I think it is important to say, okay, you know, April and May, we're we're just banging on this. And then in the summer, we're taking a break and just, like, really factor that into the into the plan for
Speaker 3:sure. And even if you're especially if you're able to plan at night, you know, if you can say, hey. We're gonna go to Scotland or even just Carmel or, you know, just something for a four or five day weekend in two months, and I'm gonna work hard until then. Like, that's something for both of you to look forward to. You know?
Speaker 3:I think there's assuming you can swing that, it's it's a good thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I agree. I mean, it's complicated because everyone's personal situation is different.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But I think those are those are good tactics and tips, and it it's just good to have some discipline around it and to acknowledge that, you know, marriage isn't made of concrete. It doesn't just, like it's not just gonna stay exactly the way it is regardless of what you do. Like, what you do has an effect on it, you need to respect that and kinda be aware of it and careful of it, acknowledge that it's more important than than business. You know, I I go back and forth. My my my problem is the the extremes.
Jordan Gal:On one hand, I remember, you know, having conversations saying, if I stayed in investment banking where I started off, I would, you know, pretty safely be making between 500 k and a million dollars a year right now if I just stayed on the exact same path without any risk, which that's like the upper extreme. That's like, okay. But I hated that, and so that wouldn't make sense. I wouldn't have done it. You wouldn't want me to do it.
Jordan Gal:Right? The other extreme is, look, what if I was really, really passionate about being an elementary school teacher and I was making 40 k a year, you wouldn't not marry me. You wouldn't divorce me because of that if that's what I wanted to do. So that's, like, the other extreme. And then somewhere in the middle where we end up is, like, as long as the life that you have is is is satisfying and good and you can maintain that, and as long as the kids aren't affected, that's the big thing for my my wife.
Jordan Gal:As long as we we don't need ever need to say, no, you can't go to camp because we can't afford it. No, you can't do these other things. As long as that stuff is, like, shielded and untouched, then you can keep playing ball. So it's kind of this mix of, like, look, one extreme is unreasonable. The other extreme is unrealistic.
Jordan Gal:So it shouldn't be It's much more I I assume you guys put much more pressure on yourselves than your your spouses do.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Definitely. And and I think it's I I think it's just thinking about that long game or, you know, like, I'm personally constantly thinking about the long game. What does this look like a few years from now? What do the moves that I'm making today?
Brian Casel:How do they where are they going to place me three years down the road? And I know that it's much more difficult for other people who don't do this for a living to think in those terms. Think between my wife and I, I tell her everything and I try to be as upfront and clear about everything. But then other people I'm talking to, my parents, my brother, my friends, and I I just don't even talk about work. Like, they're they're just not gonna get
Speaker 3:it. Like It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. There I've had some fun conversations with relatives where they'll ask about revenue or something.
Speaker 3:They're like, oh, you have a little app. How much is that doing? Yeah. Like, $25 a month. And they're like, Oh, a year?
Speaker 3:Like they don't they've never, you know, thought outside of like building a business. Like it's a very interesting thing. Cool.
Brian Casel:So, you know, I think this was great. We definitely covered a lot of ground here, Rob. And thank you so much for coming on, and we will look forward to seeing you in just a couple weeks in Vegas.
Speaker 3:Sounds good. Yeah. Cool. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Jordan Gal:Thanks for coming on. We'll we'll see you soon. Well, that just about wraps it up for us here. Thanks very much to Rob Walling from GetTrip for coming on. I thought it was a great episode.
Jordan Gal:I hope everyone out in the audience did as well. As always, you can head over to bootstrapweb.com to check out past episodes and subscribe. And, of course, if you're enjoying the show, you're getting value out of it, please head on over to iTunes. Be a smart person. Leave us a five star review, and we will most likely read it on the show.
Jordan Gal:Again, today's episode was sponsored by Time Doctor. So head on over to timedoctor.com/bootstrapweb to get a ninety day free trial. That's ninety days, ninety day free trial for you and your team to be more productive. Thanks again to Time Doctor for being our first sponsor. Thanks everyone.
Jordan Gal:Over and out.
![[65] Rob Walling on Drip, Microconf, and the Future of Bootstrapped Startups](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)