it. Ship it. Ship it. Ship it. Ship it. ¨ Optimize for learning over perfection. ¨ Start accumulating unfair advantages for later businesses. ¨ Cover “minimum viable financial goal.”
you’re anomalously good. ¨ Watch other people around you in the community. Note where you’re doing particularly good on something useful. ¨ Use your growing understanding of your business to project what X would do in another, larger business, or a business with advantages you lack.
the market with an e-book, WordPress plugin, etc. ¨ Start collecting email addresses. ¨ Launch a productized consulting business. ¨ Gradually titrate up the amount of software offered.
to do pricing pages ¨ $500 a month: Savvy pricing pages as a service ¤ 3 A/B tests to run a month ¤ We’ll implement them ¤ Nice PDF report to make you look good to boss ¨ $2.5k to $10k++ a month: Chief Revenue Officer ¤ I’ll own your pricing strategy and physically manage it. ¤ I’ll implement all your upsell/etc lifecycle emails. ¤ I’ll do all the analysis/reporting for management.
programming. ¨ We passively identify skilled engineers. ¨ We contact them and ask about background/goals. ¨ If appropriate, introduce them to hiring managers. ¨ If they take a job, we earn a commission.
a direct consequence of doing things on my own. ¨ Starfighter is tremendously technically ambitious. ¨ We used reputational capital to bootstrap sales cycle. ¨ Self-investment required; would have been painful before.
list) ¨ Software Conversion Optimization course upcoming – send me an email when it launches and it’s yours. ¨ http://starfighters.io ß seeking players and clients, launching early May two weeks!
able to document them all. ¨ Isolate assets to be sold from the rest of your business. ¨ Minimize founder ongoing time commitments. ¨ Block off a few months.
organizational groundwork. ¨ March: Start working with broker in earnest. ¨ Late March: Buyer identified. ¨ April 2nd: Contract executed. ¨ April 8th: Wire transfer hits bank account. ¨ May 3rd: I’m freeeeeeeeeeeee.
questions. ¨ Broker prepares prospectus. ¨ Broker locates, vets buyer. LOI signed. ¨ Due diligence to verify all material facts. Answer ~10 questions. ¨ Contract signed. Buyer escrows. ¨ Transfer domain names & accounts. ¨ Escrow released after inspection period ends. ¨ Aftercare for negotiated period.
¨ Find ongoing technical help for them (huuuuuge). ¤ Retainer agreement a good option. ¨ Process documents for day-to-day and next ~6 months. In particular, marketing plan of attack. ¨ Go overboard on training.