9 ms·

Bingo Card Creator (and other stuff) Year in Review 2012

278 points by Sujan 14y ago

patio11 14y ago
Hiya guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you've got them. I'm generally happy to answer, to the best of my capabilities.
- ernestipark 14y ago
  Hey patio - awesome post, I really appreciate it. I wanted to congratulate you on getting married and was also curious as to how that has affected the general run of your business (outside of the obvious time off for the wedding and honeymoon). Do you find this independent lifestyle much more conducive to spending time with your wife since you have such a flexible schedule?
  - patio11 14y ago
    I didn't know my wife back when I was a salaryman (9-to-11 PM days are fairly typical for male Japanese professionals). The best thing that happened after quitting that job and going "full-time" on my own stuff was that I suddenly had time to rediscover human life, including going to the BBQ with friends where I happened to meet Ruriko. (You might reasonably ask "How the heck are Japanese men supposed to get married if they're working to 11 PM?" and the answer is "Your boss will consider it his responsibility to arrange for everything you need to live the standard salaryman life, such as a salary, a wife, and an insurance card." Funny story about that, ask me some time.)
    - phreanix 14y ago
      Is it some time yet? :)
      - patio11 14y ago
        Oh alright. Boss: "So are you seeing anyone?" Me: "Ahh, erm, I appreciate your desire to look out for me boss. Us Americans are a little quirky with regards to finding young ladies -- we typically look for ourselves rather than getting formally set up by family or coworkers. I'm not seeing anyone at the moment but plan on finding her myself, so..." Boss: "Oh its not just a cultural thing. If you don't have a wife, you'll go back to America to find one, and then you'll quit the company. We can't have that now can we." Me: "Erm, I appreciate the concern, but maybe we can meet at the midd..." Boss: "Yeah yeah, whatever." 3 weeks pass. Scene is a Welcome To The Company party for myself and two other new employees. Boss: "Patrick, I've got someone to introduce you to. This is K-san, who sits two rows over." K-san is a young lady, about my age. Me: "Pleased to meet you, K-san." K-san: "Please to meet you, Patrick." The following is word-for-word translated from Japanese and is not exaggerated in the slightest. Boss: "Patrick graduated from a good school in America, is a bright engineer, and has a solid future with the company. How about an international marriage?" shocked silence K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." Now in a just world I'd be able to report that this was a little awkward but we can all laugh about it 5 years later, but a just world would have no Japanese megacorps in it. In the world we actually live in, K-san was given grief by many co-workers. (e.g. "K-san, do you want to come out to lunch, or do you have absolutely no interest in that?") My dimestore psychoanalysis is that a) she shot down the boss in "too brusque of a fashion" compared to socially optimal ways to decline things like "giggles Oh he's far too handsome for me." (or any of the 50,000 ways you could say "Yes" and mean "No") and at least in part because b) some people in my company genuinely believe, to some degree, that K-san should not have said no. If you're interested in gender relations in Japan, many scholarly books have been written on the subject.
        recuter 14y ago
        Patrick, I have been reading your stuff for some time now and it is indeed interesting and useful and worth a lot of money to loads of people I'm sure. But goddamn man, for the greater good, forget this silly software racket and put out a comic book. Perhaps a live action television show, maybe a movie. Your anecdotes are always my favorite part. :)
    - packetslave 14y ago
      I think I can guess the answer to this, but I've often wondered: are the ridiculous amounts of hours worked by salarymen genuinely due to the amount of work to be done, or is it a "face" thing, e.g. "if I'm the first one to leave, I'll look like I'm not committed to the company" which results in longer hours for everyone?
      - mc32 14y ago
        AFAICT, it leans more towards face saving, altho not exactly that. If you leave before the little boss who leaves after the big boss, then your coworkers tend to think you're not dedicated (hrs-in = dedication). However, most people 'working' after 6 are not really working, or at least not productively. Lots of the people who are not IMing or chatting or surfing or whatnot are doing things manually (like running reports) which could have easily been automated --but the boss likes people to 'do work'... efficiency is sometimes seen with suspicion. That's anecdotal and not necessarily representative, but it certainly indicates that not all people are busy till 11. There's also having to go out with the boss and colleagues.
- tkahn6 14y ago
  Any plans for another podcast?
  - yex 14y ago
    Please do more of these. There is such a shortfall of SaaS podcasts it almost makes me cry. It's like xmas morning when I see a new Kalzumeus podcast appear in my RSS reader!
  - patio11 14y ago
    We do them every time Keith and I have both mutual availability and something interesting to say. Sadly, as of late we've both been very busy. Hopefully mid-January. (If you have a burning urge to hear my voice, I'm a guest on other folks' podcasts more frequently than on my own. http://productpeople.tv/ http://productpeople.tv/ has a recent interview about my business story and Amy Hoy should be publishing a long interview about infoproducts (like our courses), multi-product businesses, and consulting sometime in the next two weeks or so.)
    - mijustin 14y ago
      Product People has two episodes with Patio11. Part 1 has his complete back-story: everything from how he learned to program with graph paper to how he built his first product business with $60. http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ Part 2 has specific tactics for building your own software business: http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ Both episodes have full text transcripts, so you can listen or read.
- TallboyOne 14y ago
  How did you initially market bingo creator in it's earliest stages? Did you go after SEO, paid marketing, word of mouth, etc?
  - patio11 14y ago
    I tried posting on the ad section of teacher forums (total bust), using AdWords ($1 a day until I figured out how to make it work profitably, which took about a year), and (overwhelmingly the most important channel for me early and still the source of ~50% of sales) long-tail SEO for niche bingo activities. The specific tactic for that is in the Greatest Hits section of my blog and covered at length.
    - johnnutcracker 14y ago
      which article exactly?
      - bmelton 14y ago
        A brief look at the greatest hits section of his blog suggests that this might be the article you're looking for: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
- icelancer 14y ago
  No questions, just wanted to say thanks for writing your book - I found it amazingly clear with highly-actionable ideas. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even write software anymore! http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conversion-optimization-for-software-companies/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conver...
- danielharan 14y ago
  FYI: s/Marquis/Marquee/
- MattRogish 14y ago
  Why "patio11"? Always curious about nicks. edit (to avoid comment spam): Thanks for the info!
  - patio11 14y ago
    In first grade, we were given a pointless busywork assignment to test our handwriting skills. I hated writing (I did not have good physical control of the pencil) so I wrote the shortest possible answer to all of the pointless questions. The first question was "What is your favorite number?" I answered "1" My teacher, looking at answers like "1", "red", "a dog", "No.", etc, said "1 can't be your favorite number. Pick a harder number to write." I spitefully picked "11". (Too bad I couldn't write Japanese at the time -- for the same amount of work I could have picked 10.) In middle school, right when I was first getting involved with online services, my best friend was a Puerto Rican. He hated the hard "k" sound in Patrick and called me "pato" for about a day, but laughed at his oh-so-clever joke, so I asked him to change it. I can't stand "Pat." (There was a movie about a gender-ambiguous character named Pat that year. It was middle school and I was a geek, you can do the math.) He then proposed "Patio." We paled around often enough that it stuck with my family. When I needed a disambiguating number for e.g. AOL email addresses or Warcraft 2 handles, I naturally went with my favorite number, 11. I'm patio11 on just about every service that I use which I don't mind associated with my real name.
    - japhyr 14y ago
      That reminds me of a first-grade story. One morning I had a flash of brilliance and realized that if I didn't have an eraser, I would never make another mistake in my life. We had those big fat red first-grade pencils, so I spent all day making really dark circles and then erasing them as completely as I could. I was really proud of myself at the end of the day when my eraser was completely gone. I was really confused for a while when I made my next mistake.
      - meric 14y ago
        "Use the word 'people' in a sentence." -> "'people' is a word." "Do you know what does 'WWF'[name of a panda conservation organization] stands for?" -> "No." It really surprised and frustrated me when I got zero marks for perfectly logical and correct answers.
- charleshaanel 14y ago
  What's your perspective on other customer acquisition channels (via media buys) outside of search (PPC)? I'm curious about your take on mobile, CPI/PPI and display (outside of the google content network).
- j45 14y ago
  Can you delve more into how you develop and close your first few enterprise sales? Especially in a market that you haven't been in for a long time already. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere.
  - theoj 14y ago
    I think Patrick largely answered this question in an email he sent to the mailing list back in October (Selling To The Fortune 500, Government, And Other Lovecraftian Horrors). Will forward you the email.
    - j45 14y ago
      Awesome, thanks. I think I signed up for the mailing list after that one.
    - spoon16 14y ago
      I'd also like that email
    - infinite8s 14y ago
      I wonder if Patrick has an archive of old his emails to that list. I definitely signed up after he sent that one.
- codewright 14y ago
  You started out with product and then started doing consulting after a fairly large amount of time spent on a product. (I've been following your work for awhile, it's been inspiring.) I'm a programmer who has done consulting before with a keen interest in product and marketing. If I want to become self-employed (preferably in the form of working on a bootstrapped product), should I start by bootstrapping a product or by consulting? I believe that consulting would mean becoming self-employed sooner, but my concern is that I'd end up on a "get work, seek work" treadmill harming my ability to work on bootstrapping. Alternately, my concern is that if I focus on bootstrapping a side project while working a full-time job, that will also mean not getting self-employed again for a very long time. Sorry for the rambly comment, do you have any insights or suggestions to offer?
- twinturbo 14y ago
  Hey Patrick. Loved this post. Do you have any blog posts (or perhaps could write one) on handling consulting in remote locations? I know you're out in the middle of nowhere Japan. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also what happened to the podcast? Seems to have got into hibernation. Cheers man.
- QuantumGood 14y ago
  I've noticed your emphasis on doing frequent and appropriate mailings. It's good advice! It works well for us. But what do you recommend for integrating a B2C CRM with email marketing? We do detailed segmentation of our mailing list and I can't find a good B2C CRM that integrates sufficiently with an email mktg platform. I'm currently looking into synching many more fields (needed for segmenting) from Zoho CRM to MailChimp via API with CloudWork/ItDuzzit/Zapier. Their defaults are useless (3-5 main fields), as we need complete contact info in order to segment well.
davidw 14y ago
> partly because I get a lot of leads via voicemail, which I don’t deal with very well. Many of them are poorly qualified, and as a result I find myself dreading listening to voicemail to call back and talk for 10 minutes (at 2 AM in the morning) only to discover that they’re not good fits for AR. Interesting. I find phone communication to be a frustrating bit of LiberWriter for a couple of reasons: * It's very time consuming, and clawing back some of the time/effort is more difficult than with email, where I can keep a catalog of standard answers to mix in with a few personalized lines. People find highly automated phone systems to be somewhat annoying. * It's harder to outsource, since it's difficult to keep tabs on what was said, something that is much easier with email. * Like patio11 says, it doesn't mix as well with "non US" time zones. I don't want to be answering phone calls when sitting down to dinner with my family. On the other hand, when you do take the time to talk to someone, it very often leads to a sale, so it's difficult to blow it off entirely.
- ig1 14y ago
  Why not have the outsourced phone calls go over skype/twillio where you can record them ?
  - davidw 14y ago
    It still means listening in on calls every once in a while, which is far slower than email.
    - ig1 14y ago
      Get them transcribed ?
      - davidw 14y ago
        I'm sure there are ways to handle everything, it's just a lot more time consuming/expensive/complicated, depending on the tradeoffs you make, compared to email.
- rtpg 14y ago
ezl 14y ago
Congrats, Patrick. I wish more entrepreneurs were open about their trials and their successes -- It helps demystify the "overnight success" and makes it feel more accessible to those that are a few years behind.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  I think one of the reasons people are a bit reluctant to come forward with such info is that it can easily be interpreted as bragging. Personal finances are not something that people usually put out for the world to digest.
bryanh 14y ago
Don't forget, BCC A/B test results are usually posted here: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results (though I am not sure if it is up to date). Good for a few little "sparks" to finally get you testing something.
tezza 14y ago
I’m going to try to pass off L1 support to a VA in 2013 Can I ask what a VA is in this context?
- shabda 14y ago
  VA = Virtual Assistant.
- davidw 14y ago
  Virtual Assistant, unless I am very mistaken.
kirinan 14y ago
Patio, Quick question. I have had some trouble getting my first consulting gig. Its not the meeting per se that gets them, I can get meetings with people. They say I lack experience. Should I do pro bono work, or should I lower my prices (I charge a lot because I like to dedicate my time to doing a fantastic job and giving customers (if I had any) exactly what they want (or what they think they want). How do you get the first gig/job?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- patio11 14y ago
  They say I lack experience. This is customerese for "You have failed to convince me you are capable of delivering positive ROI on this engagement" rather than being any commentary on your experience. The easiest way to diffuse the objection is by getting better at sales, not by getting experience. Everybody in the industry got a paying gig when they had, at the time, no history of paying gigs. I'm not generally a fan of pro-bono work for technologists, since the market is hot enough at the moment that you shouldn't need to do it. Also, the client dynamics of pro-bono work are leagues away from the dynamics of paid work. Even offering free work scares the heck out of good clients. Conversely, people who will agree to the arrangement may treat your time as if it is totally valueless, which will frequently compromise your ability to succeed at the engagement. The free engagement doesn't enhance your credibility if it ends up sucking due to lack of "client" cooperation, so that doesn't help you any. You've got some sort of portfolio, right? Side projects you could show off? Blog posts about the development process? You can turn these into something which visibly demonstrates that you're capable of executing on your promises.
  - kirinan 14y ago
    I do have a github with a few apps that Ive messed around (Im a mobile and web guy). Thats very insightful, I never thought about the ROI thing. I guess I need to learn how to convince people Im worth the price. Tons of people in my area undercut by a huge margin just to get jobs. I do write essays too. How do you better at sales? Are there particular things that you say? I know being friendly and available seem to work, but is there something better? What would you recommend to get better at selling?
steveplace 14y ago
Love the rundown of how well you're doing! Since HN comments are a haven for unsolicited advice, here's a few things from me: $100 per email seems really high for mailchimp on a list of 5k. Looking at their pricing they have a monthly rate of $75 for list sizes between 5k-10k. That may be an easy expense cut for you. Also, if you're looking at going to conferences to sell the high end membership to A/R, you may want to consider doing sales webinars. These have converted incredibly well for me personally and it seems it would be a great fit for this product as well.
- patio11 14y ago
  $100 per email seems really high for mailchimp on a list of 5k. Looking at their pricing they have a monthly rate of $75 for list sizes between 5k-10k. That may be an easy expense cut for you. One of my consulting clients, who runs an email marketing service, nearly went ballistic when I told them about it. ;) The reason I pay per email rather than paying monthly is I have something like 70k BCC emails in the same account which I mail approximately never. That would eliminate the savings from switching to monthly billing over pay-as-you-go. I suppose I could either re-jigger things, purge dated emails, or open a new account, but "I saved a couple hundred bucks on X" is probably not going to be a line item in next year's annual report, right? I want to focus on things that will be. If I were thinking things through I would have separate accounts for them. (n.b. Sharing SaaS accounts over several lines of businesses seems like a time/money savings when you start doing it but gets crazy later in operations, and God forbid you ever have to de-couple the businesses as e.g. a result of sale. I suggest not starting.) you may want to consider doing sales webinars Thanks for the advice. That is, indeed, on the list of things to try.
larrys 14y ago
"I want to outsource 90% of the customer service load for Bingo Card Creator" How are you going to go about doing this? (I know other people who are interested in a solution to the same problem).
- patio11 14y ago
  a) Figure out a way to split BCC support email from my main inbox. b) Give my VA access to BCC support email, but not my main inbox. c) Write up a Google doc with the five most common support issues and the responses to send, including instructions for e.g. how to use my homebrew CS admin panel to e.g. send a password reset email or re-generate someone's receipt. Tell the VA that if there's anything not covered she's to mark it for me to answer and keep a running tally of how many times a question like that gets asked. d) Add anything which keeps coming up in Step C to the Google doc.
  - jurre 14y ago
    Sounds like you could totally automate that!
  - peterjancelis 14y ago
    I think you should look into www.supportbee.com, it's like a smart shared Gmail account (even has the same shortcuts) and it allows for template responses and if you want you can connect with your other systems using their API. Disclosure: It's run by friends of mine but I use it myself as well.
  - chockablock 14y ago
    From article and context it seems you do not have a VA yet--do you mean to assume they will be female?
    - tome 14y ago
      According to this post he has a VA http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4983008 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4983008
alinajaf 14y ago
Great to hear how you're doing Patrick, thanks for sharing. > Even in weeks that I have blocked off to work on AR, I often find myself just lacking any desire to do it. The business isn’t intrinsically more boring that e.g. Bingo Card Creator, but the sort of things that I need to do to move it forward seem to hit my desire to work with a damp towel. I seem to hit this phase with new product ideas around three months in and end up never finishing anything. I have a web application that gets new (albeit unpaid for) signups daily, but even with a lot of free time[1] I lack the will to develop the product/marketing further. Two things I will probably try: 1. MTFU, schedule some time, set some goals and force myself to do the work I need to. 2. Spec the work out and hire someone else to do it. Speccing the work out will probably make 1 easier to get started with however. [1] Though I did just have a baby, so I might be selling myself a little short.
porter 14y ago
Who do you outsource your bookkeeping to and how do you manage that process?
- patio11 14y ago
  I have the same homegrown bookkeeping software which I've used for forever. (Don't do this folks. Use Quickbooks. The only reason I use the homegrown stuff is because it publishes stats direct to my website.) I have a VA in the Philippines who I hired through Pepper. Every month or two, I take all of my credit card statements, zip them up, and send them to her. We have a standing orders document (terribly out of date -- should fix that) of what expenses count as business expenses and how to categorize them in the bookkeeping software. (Expenses are the only part which requires manual entry -- my sites do their own revenue tracking.) There's a workflow hack or two to ensure that novel transactions get checked by me, eventually. (e.g. I have a personal credit card in the mix, for those rare times when both business cards fail, which means she sees a lot of transactions which aren't business related and should filter them all out. It wasn't obvious from the one-line description that e.g. my wedding venue is probably not appropriate for deduction, but since it was marked as novel (and ginormous relative to my expected expenses for that month), I caught it prior to doing the year in review numbers. I do a more in-deoth review of the big expense categories (AdWords and travel) prior to doing my taxes and spot-check everything else. If e.g. a $60 software purchase ends up getting missed that's unfortunate, but it is only about ~$20 of unfortunate, and a few slip-ups are substantially cheaper in opportunity cost (and sanity) that having me do line-by-line review of all ~500 entries. For general advice on how to work with VAs, I strongly recommend Rob Walling's book and have heard good things about the 4 Hour Work Week (but have never read it).
  - markdown 14y ago
    > I have a VA in the Philippines who I hired through Pepper. Pepper?
    - joshkaufman 14y ago
      http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/ http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/
ruswick 14y ago
This practice just seems absurd. What is the practical purpose of this type of post? Several people have written pieces enumerating their various income sources and listing their enviable accomplishments, and have gotten on the front page. These just seem unbelievably self-congratulatory and conceited. Moreover, why does anyone else have such an interest in the financials of Patrick? I really don't understand this phenomenon. What is the impetus to write or read these things?
- porter 14y ago
  For those of us interested in achieving similar success, it's nice to see transparency and results. If you don't care about this then don't waste your time here.
  - ruswick 14y ago
    This still makes it superfluous. Very few people are ever going to achieve the success that Patrick has. If earning such a huge income off of various lifestyle businesses was within reach of most people, they would be doing it. Stories like Patrick's usually involve a rare amount of luck and certain intangibles that most people don't possess (things like a large network, notoriety, etc.) So reading these things is innately a waste of time. Moreover, the fact that he needs to enumerate his income so thoroughly just makes it makes it insufferable while not contributing to the ostensible point. He does not need to discuss the financials so particularly when educating others on how to run businesses in a general sense. That's why I simply can't believe that he (or anyone for that matter) writes these things for a purpose other than to express their occupational superiority and financial success to everyone else.
    - patio11 14y ago
      Very few people are ever going to achieve the success that Patrick has. Is that critique equally applicable to the 2006 version of this post, which you can find linked? (It is the first one?) Spoiler: that shows ~$1,000 in profits on ~$2,000 in sales. That does not sound like a towering and insurmountable barrier to me. (Neither do my 2012 results, since I know how I got them and none of it involves being the Dark Lord Of Software Optimization. Plus, they're fairly modest if your reference set includes larger firms in the software industry, from publicly traded titans like Google down to the businesses of many other HNers, which would lose my entire business in the petty cash drawer.)
porter 14y ago
What does your enterprise sales process look like?
- patio11 14y ago
  Imagine a blind and drunken rat placed in a very complicated maze with cheese at the end, then take away his keen sense of smell. It looks sort of like that, except the rat can at least write software. No, seriously speaking: Most inbound leads are through organic SEO. Customers generally have a few questions to ask me about e.g. pricing, features, or compatability with other stuff they're doing. I answer them either over the phone with the decisionmaker (followed by an email), or directly over email. My main competitive advantages are that I'm reasonably priced, that I have an easily accessible online demo (a surprisingly powerful win) and other scalable sales stuff, and that while I suck at "sales" I'm fairly good at talking about the product in the context of the customer's needs because, to quote a nurse directly responsible for the biggest deal going through, "It is his baby. You take care of your baby!", in a way which is difficult for a sales guy angling for a $500 commission at one of the larger competitors to justify. If they sound like they're a good fit, I ask if they want a formal quote. If they do, I ask them what I can do to help them move the purchase along. Some number of steps later, money arrives. There is very little "process" worthy of the name here, hence why I'm hoping to improve on that going forward.
bane 14y ago
Congratulations on a great year and getting married!
larrys 14y ago
"I want to explore flying to an industry conference as a sales channel for AR" Have you ever considered direct mail or advertising in industry trade journals? Or issuing press releases for those trade journals which are always looking for material to fill their pages? Another thought (cheaper than flying) would be to simply write a few articles for those journals speaking about the general problem of appointment reminding and then having the byline be you. It is something that others are doing. The same article could easily be repurposed for different journals. Once you are "published" you can then do reprints of your articles to DM or hand out at shows if that ends up being an attractive route. In looking for an example of "card packs" which I have successfully used (in a different business) I came up with this which illustrates the direct mail route: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Post-Card-Mailer/828394 http://www.behance.net/gallery/Post-Card-Mailer/828394 Cost to spray something like this to 10,000 offices is no big deal. You'd have to repeat a few times to the same people I would imagine to get a desirable response.
caw 14y ago
Patrick - When you were starting your video course, how did you figure out how to go about doing it? Did you seek any advise from Ramit, since you're friends and he has multiple video info products?
vidar 14y ago
So the lightning thing, did this actually happen?
d0m 14y ago
Wouldn't selling BCC to the school as an enterprise software (rather than for an individual teacher) bring more revenue? Schools have all kind of grants for these kind of products while teachers are more limited and are more often than not forced to use their own money. Also, maybe a 5$ / month to get the "best bingo card of the month" would be useful for them. Lastly, why not cut the price a little if the teacher recommends it to a couple colleagues?
- patio11 14y ago
  Wouldn't selling BCC to the school as an enterprise software (rather than for an individual teacher) bring more revenue? Yes. I could sell BCC to a school district for maybe $250. For the same amount of work, I might be able to sell a hospital system AR for $10,000. A month. (Six years ago, when I started selling BCC, enterprise sales wasn't an option -- I could never make a phone call with customers and didn't know how to even get started with it.) Also, maybe a 5$ / month to get the "best bingo card of the month" would be useful for them. If I were starting the business from scratch today, I would certainly build in a recurring revenue component. It doesn't make sense today, as growing BCC revenues is not the path forward for the business, and the development and CS headaches associated with it swamp the marginal revenue. Lastly, why not cut the price a little if the teacher recommends it to a couple colleagues? My experiments with getting teachers to recommend BCC to other teachers have, in general, been crashing failures. For example, I implemented "3 free cards for you and a friend if you refer that friend to BCC", along the lines of the Dropbox two-sided referral incentive model. That was a crashing failure -- it generated very few trials (probably since I didn't work on the UX for the viral spread nearly enough and probably because the market isn't really optimal for it) and of those marginal trials only 2 ever upgraded to the paid version.
  - d0m 14y ago
    Make sense, thanks. Yes.. I admittedly had the question "Why trying to sell bingo cards rather than going after a more lucrative products" but thought you had your own personal reasons for doing so.
xiaoma 14y ago
>"The prototypical “good fit” for me is an established software as a service company with revenues in the eight figure range, a few dozen employees, and a company culture which focuses more on the product/engineering side of things than on the marketing/sales side of things." What is it that makes product/engineering companies a better fit for you than those focused on marketing or sales?
- akavi 14y ago
  My understanding: Mr. McKenzie's ability to add value is weighted heavily to marketing/sales. It's therefore way more likely for him to be able produce large improvements for a company if they haven't already invested a large amount of effort/capital in optimizing that side of things.
kvnn 14y ago
Do you know how many hours were dedicated to your consulting revenues? And, thanks :)
atomical 14y ago
Patrick, Have you ever done anything with direct mail? It's something we don't hear about in the startup world.
- wtracy 14y ago
  I, too, would love to hear on this from Patrick or anyone else. NextDoor.com is using direct mail (I know because I got a postcard from them!) and I'm curious whether or not it's working.
citricsquid 14y ago
You made the front page of reddit today, I look forward to reading about how this converts into clients in next years summary ;-) http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/15n9x3/being_a_bit_optimistic_there_arent_we_guys/ http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/15n9x3/being_a_bit_op...
Egregore 14y ago
Now I did a google serarch for Bingo Card Creator and kalzumeus domain came first in search rezult, you might consider working on it, it's still a few clicks away for customers. By the way, haven't you considered moving to a SaS model, make some yearly price instead of a lifetime one?
- gabemart 14y ago
  >Now I did a google serarch for Bingo Card Creator and kalzumeus domain came first in search rezult, you might consider working on it, it's still a few clicks away for customers. Google customizes results based on a bunch of user variables, so you can't trust that the search results you see are what everyone else sees. There's no one canonical set of rankings, but you can use tools to get an idea of what the generic user sees (e.g. [1]). From my quick assessment, it looks like bingocardcreator.com is #1 for google.com [1] http://www.whatsmyserp.com/serpcheck.php http://www.whatsmyserp.com/serpcheck.php

278 points by Sujan 14y ago

Hiya guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you've got them. I'm generally happy to answer, to the best of my capabilities.

ernestipark 14y ago
Hey patio - awesome post, I really appreciate it. I wanted to congratulate you on getting married and was also curious as to how that has affected the general run of your business (outside of the obvious time off for the wedding and honeymoon). Do you find this independent lifestyle much more conducive to spending time with your wife since you have such a flexible schedule?
- patio11 14y ago
  I didn't know my wife back when I was a salaryman (9-to-11 PM days are fairly typical for male Japanese professionals). The best thing that happened after quitting that job and going "full-time" on my own stuff was that I suddenly had time to rediscover human life, including going to the BBQ with friends where I happened to meet Ruriko. (You might reasonably ask "How the heck are Japanese men supposed to get married if they're working to 11 PM?" and the answer is "Your boss will consider it his responsibility to arrange for everything you need to live the standard salaryman life, such as a salary, a wife, and an insurance card." Funny story about that, ask me some time.)
  - phreanix 14y ago
    Is it some time yet? :)
    - patio11 14y ago
      Oh alright. Boss: "So are you seeing anyone?" Me: "Ahh, erm, I appreciate your desire to look out for me boss. Us Americans are a little quirky with regards to finding young ladies -- we typically look for ourselves rather than getting formally set up by family or coworkers. I'm not seeing anyone at the moment but plan on finding her myself, so..." Boss: "Oh its not just a cultural thing. If you don't have a wife, you'll go back to America to find one, and then you'll quit the company. We can't have that now can we." Me: "Erm, I appreciate the concern, but maybe we can meet at the midd..." Boss: "Yeah yeah, whatever." 3 weeks pass. Scene is a Welcome To The Company party for myself and two other new employees. Boss: "Patrick, I've got someone to introduce you to. This is K-san, who sits two rows over." K-san is a young lady, about my age. Me: "Pleased to meet you, K-san." K-san: "Please to meet you, Patrick." The following is word-for-word translated from Japanese and is not exaggerated in the slightest. Boss: "Patrick graduated from a good school in America, is a bright engineer, and has a solid future with the company. How about an international marriage?" shocked silence K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." Now in a just world I'd be able to report that this was a little awkward but we can all laugh about it 5 years later, but a just world would have no Japanese megacorps in it. In the world we actually live in, K-san was given grief by many co-workers. (e.g. "K-san, do you want to come out to lunch, or do you have absolutely no interest in that?") My dimestore psychoanalysis is that a) she shot down the boss in "too brusque of a fashion" compared to socially optimal ways to decline things like "giggles Oh he's far too handsome for me." (or any of the 50,000 ways you could say "Yes" and mean "No") and at least in part because b) some people in my company genuinely believe, to some degree, that K-san should not have said no. If you're interested in gender relations in Japan, many scholarly books have been written on the subject.
      - recuter 14y ago
        Patrick, I have been reading your stuff for some time now and it is indeed interesting and useful and worth a lot of money to loads of people I'm sure. But goddamn man, for the greater good, forget this silly software racket and put out a comic book. Perhaps a live action television show, maybe a movie. Your anecdotes are always my favorite part. :)
  - packetslave 14y ago
    I think I can guess the answer to this, but I've often wondered: are the ridiculous amounts of hours worked by salarymen genuinely due to the amount of work to be done, or is it a "face" thing, e.g. "if I'm the first one to leave, I'll look like I'm not committed to the company" which results in longer hours for everyone?
    - mc32 14y ago
      AFAICT, it leans more towards face saving, altho not exactly that. If you leave before the little boss who leaves after the big boss, then your coworkers tend to think you're not dedicated (hrs-in = dedication). However, most people 'working' after 6 are not really working, or at least not productively. Lots of the people who are not IMing or chatting or surfing or whatnot are doing things manually (like running reports) which could have easily been automated --but the boss likes people to 'do work'... efficiency is sometimes seen with suspicion. That's anecdotal and not necessarily representative, but it certainly indicates that not all people are busy till 11. There's also having to go out with the boss and colleagues.
tkahn6 14y ago
Any plans for another podcast?
- yex 14y ago
  Please do more of these. There is such a shortfall of SaaS podcasts it almost makes me cry. It's like xmas morning when I see a new Kalzumeus podcast appear in my RSS reader!
- patio11 14y ago
  We do them every time Keith and I have both mutual availability and something interesting to say. Sadly, as of late we've both been very busy. Hopefully mid-January. (If you have a burning urge to hear my voice, I'm a guest on other folks' podcasts more frequently than on my own. http://productpeople.tv/ http://productpeople.tv/ has a recent interview about my business story and Amy Hoy should be publishing a long interview about infoproducts (like our courses), multi-product businesses, and consulting sometime in the next two weeks or so.)
  - mijustin 14y ago
    Product People has two episodes with Patio11. Part 1 has his complete back-story: everything from how he learned to program with graph paper to how he built his first product business with $60. http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ Part 2 has specific tactics for building your own software business: http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ Both episodes have full text transcripts, so you can listen or read.
TallboyOne 14y ago
How did you initially market bingo creator in it's earliest stages? Did you go after SEO, paid marketing, word of mouth, etc?
- patio11 14y ago
  I tried posting on the ad section of teacher forums (total bust), using AdWords ($1 a day until I figured out how to make it work profitably, which took about a year), and (overwhelmingly the most important channel for me early and still the source of ~50% of sales) long-tail SEO for niche bingo activities. The specific tactic for that is in the Greatest Hits section of my blog and covered at length.
  - johnnutcracker 14y ago
    which article exactly?
    - bmelton 14y ago
      A brief look at the greatest hits section of his blog suggests that this might be the article you're looking for: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
icelancer 14y ago
No questions, just wanted to say thanks for writing your book - I found it amazingly clear with highly-actionable ideas. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even write software anymore! http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conversion-optimization-for-software-companies/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conver...
danielharan 14y ago
FYI: s/Marquis/Marquee/
MattRogish 14y ago
Why "patio11"? Always curious about nicks. edit (to avoid comment spam): Thanks for the info!
- patio11 14y ago
  In first grade, we were given a pointless busywork assignment to test our handwriting skills. I hated writing (I did not have good physical control of the pencil) so I wrote the shortest possible answer to all of the pointless questions. The first question was "What is your favorite number?" I answered "1" My teacher, looking at answers like "1", "red", "a dog", "No.", etc, said "1 can't be your favorite number. Pick a harder number to write." I spitefully picked "11". (Too bad I couldn't write Japanese at the time -- for the same amount of work I could have picked 10.) In middle school, right when I was first getting involved with online services, my best friend was a Puerto Rican. He hated the hard "k" sound in Patrick and called me "pato" for about a day, but laughed at his oh-so-clever joke, so I asked him to change it. I can't stand "Pat." (There was a movie about a gender-ambiguous character named Pat that year. It was middle school and I was a geek, you can do the math.) He then proposed "Patio." We paled around often enough that it stuck with my family. When I needed a disambiguating number for e.g. AOL email addresses or Warcraft 2 handles, I naturally went with my favorite number, 11. I'm patio11 on just about every service that I use which I don't mind associated with my real name.
  - japhyr 14y ago
    That reminds me of a first-grade story. One morning I had a flash of brilliance and realized that if I didn't have an eraser, I would never make another mistake in my life. We had those big fat red first-grade pencils, so I spent all day making really dark circles and then erasing them as completely as I could. I was really proud of myself at the end of the day when my eraser was completely gone. I was really confused for a while when I made my next mistake.
    - meric 14y ago
      "Use the word 'people' in a sentence." -> "'people' is a word." "Do you know what does 'WWF'[name of a panda conservation organization] stands for?" -> "No." It really surprised and frustrated me when I got zero marks for perfectly logical and correct answers.
charleshaanel 14y ago
What's your perspective on other customer acquisition channels (via media buys) outside of search (PPC)? I'm curious about your take on mobile, CPI/PPI and display (outside of the google content network).
j45 14y ago
Can you delve more into how you develop and close your first few enterprise sales? Especially in a market that you haven't been in for a long time already. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere.
- theoj 14y ago
  I think Patrick largely answered this question in an email he sent to the mailing list back in October (Selling To The Fortune 500, Government, And Other Lovecraftian Horrors). Will forward you the email.
  - j45 14y ago
    Awesome, thanks. I think I signed up for the mailing list after that one.
  - spoon16 14y ago
    I'd also like that email
  - infinite8s 14y ago
    I wonder if Patrick has an archive of old his emails to that list. I definitely signed up after he sent that one.
codewright 14y ago
You started out with product and then started doing consulting after a fairly large amount of time spent on a product. (I've been following your work for awhile, it's been inspiring.) I'm a programmer who has done consulting before with a keen interest in product and marketing. If I want to become self-employed (preferably in the form of working on a bootstrapped product), should I start by bootstrapping a product or by consulting? I believe that consulting would mean becoming self-employed sooner, but my concern is that I'd end up on a "get work, seek work" treadmill harming my ability to work on bootstrapping. Alternately, my concern is that if I focus on bootstrapping a side project while working a full-time job, that will also mean not getting self-employed again for a very long time. Sorry for the rambly comment, do you have any insights or suggestions to offer?
twinturbo 14y ago
Hey Patrick. Loved this post. Do you have any blog posts (or perhaps could write one) on handling consulting in remote locations? I know you're out in the middle of nowhere Japan. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also what happened to the podcast? Seems to have got into hibernation. Cheers man.
QuantumGood 14y ago
I've noticed your emphasis on doing frequent and appropriate mailings. It's good advice! It works well for us. But what do you recommend for integrating a B2C CRM with email marketing? We do detailed segmentation of our mailing list and I can't find a good B2C CRM that integrates sufficiently with an email mktg platform. I'm currently looking into synching many more fields (needed for segmenting) from Zoho CRM to MailChimp via API with CloudWork/ItDuzzit/Zapier. Their defaults are useless (3-5 main fields), as we need complete contact info in order to segment well.

davidw 14y ago

> partly because I get a lot of leads via voicemail, which I don’t deal with very well. Many of them are poorly qualified, and as a result I find myself dreading listening to voicemail to call back and talk for 10 minutes (at 2 AM in the morning) only to discover that they’re not good fits for AR. Interesting. I find phone communication to be a frustrating bit of LiberWriter for a couple of reasons: * It's very time consuming, and clawing back some of the time/effort is more difficult than with email, where I can keep a catalog of standard answers to mix in with a few personalized lines. People find highly automated phone systems to be somewhat annoying. * It's harder to outsource, since it's difficult to keep tabs on what was said, something that is much easier with email. * Like patio11 says, it doesn't mix as well with "non US" time zones. I don't want to be answering phone calls when sitting down to dinner with my family. On the other hand, when you do take the time to talk to someone, it very often leads to a sale, so it's difficult to blow it off entirely.

ig1 14y ago
Why not have the outsourced phone calls go over skype/twillio where you can record them ?
- davidw 14y ago
  It still means listening in on calls every once in a while, which is far slower than email.
  - ig1 14y ago
    Get them transcribed ?
    - davidw 14y ago
      I'm sure there are ways to handle everything, it's just a lot more time consuming/expensive/complicated, depending on the tradeoffs you make, compared to email.
rtpg 14y ago

ezl 14y ago

Congrats, Patrick. I wish more entrepreneurs were open about their trials and their successes -- It helps demystify the "overnight success" and makes it feel more accessible to those that are a few years behind.

jacquesm 14y ago
I think one of the reasons people are a bit reluctant to come forward with such info is that it can easily be interpreted as bragging. Personal finances are not something that people usually put out for the world to digest.

bryanh 14y ago

Don't forget, BCC A/B test results are usually posted here: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results (though I am not sure if it is up to date). Good for a few little "sparks" to finally get you testing something.

tezza 14y ago

I’m going to try to pass off L1 support to a VA in 2013 Can I ask what a VA is in this context?

shabda 14y ago
VA = Virtual Assistant.
davidw 14y ago
Virtual Assistant, unless I am very mistaken.

kirinan 14y ago

Patio, Quick question. I have had some trouble getting my first consulting gig. Its not the meeting per se that gets them, I can get meetings with people. They say I lack experience. Should I do pro bono work, or should I lower my prices (I charge a lot because I like to dedicate my time to doing a fantastic job and giving customers (if I had any) exactly what they want (or what they think they want). How do you get the first gig/job?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
patio11 14y ago
They say I lack experience. This is customerese for "You have failed to convince me you are capable of delivering positive ROI on this engagement" rather than being any commentary on your experience. The easiest way to diffuse the objection is by getting better at sales, not by getting experience. Everybody in the industry got a paying gig when they had, at the time, no history of paying gigs. I'm not generally a fan of pro-bono work for technologists, since the market is hot enough at the moment that you shouldn't need to do it. Also, the client dynamics of pro-bono work are leagues away from the dynamics of paid work. Even offering free work scares the heck out of good clients. Conversely, people who will agree to the arrangement may treat your time as if it is totally valueless, which will frequently compromise your ability to succeed at the engagement. The free engagement doesn't enhance your credibility if it ends up sucking due to lack of "client" cooperation, so that doesn't help you any. You've got some sort of portfolio, right? Side projects you could show off? Blog posts about the development process? You can turn these into something which visibly demonstrates that you're capable of executing on your promises.
- kirinan 14y ago
  I do have a github with a few apps that Ive messed around (Im a mobile and web guy). Thats very insightful, I never thought about the ROI thing. I guess I need to learn how to convince people Im worth the price. Tons of people in my area undercut by a huge margin just to get jobs. I do write essays too. How do you better at sales? Are there particular things that you say? I know being friendly and available seem to work, but is there something better? What would you recommend to get better at selling?

steveplace 14y ago

Love the rundown of how well you're doing! Since HN comments are a haven for unsolicited advice, here's a few things from me: $100 per email seems really high for mailchimp on a list of 5k. Looking at their pricing they have a monthly rate of $75 for list sizes between 5k-10k. That may be an easy expense cut for you. Also, if you're looking at going to conferences to sell the high end membership to A/R, you may want to consider doing sales webinars. These have converted incredibly well for me personally and it seems it would be a great fit for this product as well.

patio11 14y ago
$100 per email seems really high for mailchimp on a list of 5k. Looking at their pricing they have a monthly rate of $75 for list sizes between 5k-10k. That may be an easy expense cut for you. One of my consulting clients, who runs an email marketing service, nearly went ballistic when I told them about it. ;) The reason I pay per email rather than paying monthly is I have something like 70k BCC emails in the same account which I mail approximately never. That would eliminate the savings from switching to monthly billing over pay-as-you-go. I suppose I could either re-jigger things, purge dated emails, or open a new account, but "I saved a couple hundred bucks on X" is probably not going to be a line item in next year's annual report, right? I want to focus on things that will be. If I were thinking things through I would have separate accounts for them. (n.b. Sharing SaaS accounts over several lines of businesses seems like a time/money savings when you start doing it but gets crazy later in operations, and God forbid you ever have to de-couple the businesses as e.g. a result of sale. I suggest not starting.) you may want to consider doing sales webinars Thanks for the advice. That is, indeed, on the list of things to try.

larrys 14y ago

"I want to outsource 90% of the customer service load for Bingo Card Creator" How are you going to go about doing this? (I know other people who are interested in a solution to the same problem).

patio11 14y ago
a) Figure out a way to split BCC support email from my main inbox. b) Give my VA access to BCC support email, but not my main inbox. c) Write up a Google doc with the five most common support issues and the responses to send, including instructions for e.g. how to use my homebrew CS admin panel to e.g. send a password reset email or re-generate someone's receipt. Tell the VA that if there's anything not covered she's to mark it for me to answer and keep a running tally of how many times a question like that gets asked. d) Add anything which keeps coming up in Step C to the Google doc.
- jurre 14y ago
  Sounds like you could totally automate that!
- peterjancelis 14y ago
  I think you should look into www.supportbee.com, it's like a smart shared Gmail account (even has the same shortcuts) and it allows for template responses and if you want you can connect with your other systems using their API. Disclosure: It's run by friends of mine but I use it myself as well.
- chockablock 14y ago
  From article and context it seems you do not have a VA yet--do you mean to assume they will be female?
  - tome 14y ago
    According to this post he has a VA http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4983008 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4983008

alinajaf 14y ago

Great to hear how you're doing Patrick, thanks for sharing. > Even in weeks that I have blocked off to work on AR, I often find myself just lacking any desire to do it. The business isn’t intrinsically more boring that e.g. Bingo Card Creator, but the sort of things that I need to do to move it forward seem to hit my desire to work with a damp towel. I seem to hit this phase with new product ideas around three months in and end up never finishing anything. I have a web application that gets new (albeit unpaid for) signups daily, but even with a lot of free time[1] I lack the will to develop the product/marketing further. Two things I will probably try: 1. MTFU, schedule some time, set some goals and force myself to do the work I need to. 2. Spec the work out and hire someone else to do it. Speccing the work out will probably make 1 easier to get started with however. [1] Though I did just have a baby, so I might be selling myself a little short.

porter 14y ago

Who do you outsource your bookkeeping to and how do you manage that process?

patio11 14y ago
I have the same homegrown bookkeeping software which I've used for forever. (Don't do this folks. Use Quickbooks. The only reason I use the homegrown stuff is because it publishes stats direct to my website.) I have a VA in the Philippines who I hired through Pepper. Every month or two, I take all of my credit card statements, zip them up, and send them to her. We have a standing orders document (terribly out of date -- should fix that) of what expenses count as business expenses and how to categorize them in the bookkeeping software. (Expenses are the only part which requires manual entry -- my sites do their own revenue tracking.) There's a workflow hack or two to ensure that novel transactions get checked by me, eventually. (e.g. I have a personal credit card in the mix, for those rare times when both business cards fail, which means she sees a lot of transactions which aren't business related and should filter them all out. It wasn't obvious from the one-line description that e.g. my wedding venue is probably not appropriate for deduction, but since it was marked as novel (and ginormous relative to my expected expenses for that month), I caught it prior to doing the year in review numbers. I do a more in-deoth review of the big expense categories (AdWords and travel) prior to doing my taxes and spot-check everything else. If e.g. a $60 software purchase ends up getting missed that's unfortunate, but it is only about ~$20 of unfortunate, and a few slip-ups are substantially cheaper in opportunity cost (and sanity) that having me do line-by-line review of all ~500 entries. For general advice on how to work with VAs, I strongly recommend Rob Walling's book and have heard good things about the 4 Hour Work Week (but have never read it).
- markdown 14y ago
  > I have a VA in the Philippines who I hired through Pepper. Pepper?
  - joshkaufman 14y ago
    http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/ http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/

ruswick 14y ago

This practice just seems absurd. What is the practical purpose of this type of post? Several people have written pieces enumerating their various income sources and listing their enviable accomplishments, and have gotten on the front page. These just seem unbelievably self-congratulatory and conceited. Moreover, why does anyone else have such an interest in the financials of Patrick? I really don't understand this phenomenon. What is the impetus to write or read these things?

porter 14y ago
For those of us interested in achieving similar success, it's nice to see transparency and results. If you don't care about this then don't waste your time here.
- ruswick 14y ago
  This still makes it superfluous. Very few people are ever going to achieve the success that Patrick has. If earning such a huge income off of various lifestyle businesses was within reach of most people, they would be doing it. Stories like Patrick's usually involve a rare amount of luck and certain intangibles that most people don't possess (things like a large network, notoriety, etc.) So reading these things is innately a waste of time. Moreover, the fact that he needs to enumerate his income so thoroughly just makes it makes it insufferable while not contributing to the ostensible point. He does not need to discuss the financials so particularly when educating others on how to run businesses in a general sense. That's why I simply can't believe that he (or anyone for that matter) writes these things for a purpose other than to express their occupational superiority and financial success to everyone else.
  - patio11 14y ago
    Very few people are ever going to achieve the success that Patrick has. Is that critique equally applicable to the 2006 version of this post, which you can find linked? (It is the first one?) Spoiler: that shows ~$1,000 in profits on ~$2,000 in sales. That does not sound like a towering and insurmountable barrier to me. (Neither do my 2012 results, since I know how I got them and none of it involves being the Dark Lord Of Software Optimization. Plus, they're fairly modest if your reference set includes larger firms in the software industry, from publicly traded titans like Google down to the businesses of many other HNers, which would lose my entire business in the petty cash drawer.)

porter 14y ago

What does your enterprise sales process look like?

patio11 14y ago
Imagine a blind and drunken rat placed in a very complicated maze with cheese at the end, then take away his keen sense of smell. It looks sort of like that, except the rat can at least write software. No, seriously speaking: Most inbound leads are through organic SEO. Customers generally have a few questions to ask me about e.g. pricing, features, or compatability with other stuff they're doing. I answer them either over the phone with the decisionmaker (followed by an email), or directly over email. My main competitive advantages are that I'm reasonably priced, that I have an easily accessible online demo (a surprisingly powerful win) and other scalable sales stuff, and that while I suck at "sales" I'm fairly good at talking about the product in the context of the customer's needs because, to quote a nurse directly responsible for the biggest deal going through, "It is his baby. You take care of your baby!", in a way which is difficult for a sales guy angling for a $500 commission at one of the larger competitors to justify. If they sound like they're a good fit, I ask if they want a formal quote. If they do, I ask them what I can do to help them move the purchase along. Some number of steps later, money arrives. There is very little "process" worthy of the name here, hence why I'm hoping to improve on that going forward.

bane 14y ago

Congratulations on a great year and getting married!

larrys 14y ago

"I want to explore flying to an industry conference as a sales channel for AR" Have you ever considered direct mail or advertising in industry trade journals? Or issuing press releases for those trade journals which are always looking for material to fill their pages? Another thought (cheaper than flying) would be to simply write a few articles for those journals speaking about the general problem of appointment reminding and then having the byline be you. It is something that others are doing. The same article could easily be repurposed for different journals. Once you are "published" you can then do reprints of your articles to DM or hand out at shows if that ends up being an attractive route. In looking for an example of "card packs" which I have successfully used (in a different business) I came up with this which illustrates the direct mail route: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Post-Card-Mailer/828394 http://www.behance.net/gallery/Post-Card-Mailer/828394 Cost to spray something like this to 10,000 offices is no big deal. You'd have to repeat a few times to the same people I would imagine to get a desirable response.

caw 14y ago

Patrick - When you were starting your video course, how did you figure out how to go about doing it? Did you seek any advise from Ramit, since you're friends and he has multiple video info products?

vidar 14y ago

So the lightning thing, did this actually happen?

d0m 14y ago

Wouldn't selling BCC to the school as an enterprise software (rather than for an individual teacher) bring more revenue? Schools have all kind of grants for these kind of products while teachers are more limited and are more often than not forced to use their own money. Also, maybe a 5$ / month to get the "best bingo card of the month" would be useful for them. Lastly, why not cut the price a little if the teacher recommends it to a couple colleagues?

patio11 14y ago
Wouldn't selling BCC to the school as an enterprise software (rather than for an individual teacher) bring more revenue? Yes. I could sell BCC to a school district for maybe $250. For the same amount of work, I might be able to sell a hospital system AR for $10,000. A month. (Six years ago, when I started selling BCC, enterprise sales wasn't an option -- I could never make a phone call with customers and didn't know how to even get started with it.) Also, maybe a 5$ / month to get the "best bingo card of the month" would be useful for them. If I were starting the business from scratch today, I would certainly build in a recurring revenue component. It doesn't make sense today, as growing BCC revenues is not the path forward for the business, and the development and CS headaches associated with it swamp the marginal revenue. Lastly, why not cut the price a little if the teacher recommends it to a couple colleagues? My experiments with getting teachers to recommend BCC to other teachers have, in general, been crashing failures. For example, I implemented "3 free cards for you and a friend if you refer that friend to BCC", along the lines of the Dropbox two-sided referral incentive model. That was a crashing failure -- it generated very few trials (probably since I didn't work on the UX for the viral spread nearly enough and probably because the market isn't really optimal for it) and of those marginal trials only 2 ever upgraded to the paid version.
- d0m 14y ago
  Make sense, thanks. Yes.. I admittedly had the question "Why trying to sell bingo cards rather than going after a more lucrative products" but thought you had your own personal reasons for doing so.

xiaoma 14y ago

>"The prototypical “good fit” for me is an established software as a service company with revenues in the eight figure range, a few dozen employees, and a company culture which focuses more on the product/engineering side of things than on the marketing/sales side of things." What is it that makes product/engineering companies a better fit for you than those focused on marketing or sales?

akavi 14y ago
My understanding: Mr. McKenzie's ability to add value is weighted heavily to marketing/sales. It's therefore way more likely for him to be able produce large improvements for a company if they haven't already invested a large amount of effort/capital in optimizing that side of things.

kvnn 14y ago

Do you know how many hours were dedicated to your consulting revenues? And, thanks :)

atomical 14y ago

Patrick, Have you ever done anything with direct mail? It's something we don't hear about in the startup world.

wtracy 14y ago
I, too, would love to hear on this from Patrick or anyone else. NextDoor.com is using direct mail (I know because I got a postcard from them!) and I'm curious whether or not it's working.

citricsquid 14y ago

You made the front page of reddit today, I look forward to reading about how this converts into clients in next years summary ;-) http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/15n9x3/being_a_bit_optimistic_there_arent_we_guys/ http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/15n9x3/being_a_bit_op...

Egregore 14y ago

Now I did a google serarch for Bingo Card Creator and kalzumeus domain came first in search rezult, you might consider working on it, it's still a few clicks away for customers. By the way, haven't you considered moving to a SaS model, make some yearly price instead of a lifetime one?

gabemart 14y ago
>Now I did a google serarch for Bingo Card Creator and kalzumeus domain came first in search rezult, you might consider working on it, it's still a few clicks away for customers. Google customizes results based on a bunch of user variables, so you can't trust that the search results you see are what everyone else sees. There's no one canonical set of rankings, but you can use tools to get an idea of what the generic user sees (e.g. [1]). From my quick assessment, it looks like bingocardcreator.com is #1 for google.com [1] http://www.whatsmyserp.com/serpcheck.php http://www.whatsmyserp.com/serpcheck.php