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Your First 60 Days

Your First 60 Days

Many entrepreneurs are lost on how to actually get started. This is a quick opinionated guide for bootstrappers on how to do marketing from a cold start, balance product development against the other parts of the business, and do the minimum viable amount of back office work.

Patrick McKenzie

April 16, 2018
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  1. DECISIONMAKING OVER THE LONG HAUL ▸Make more small bets. ▸Decide

    quickly on reversible things. ▸Do things which still matter in 40 years.
  2. FRIENDCATCHERS ▸ Stick-a-fork-in-it-and-it-is-done guide to one broadly applicable, tightly scoped

    problem. ▸ Calculator which replaces an Excel spreadsheet. ▸ Definitive curated list of resources. ▸ Cheatsheet.
  3. EVERYTHING ABOUT EMAIL COURSES IN ONE SLIDE ▸ Make a

    promise with every subject line. Keep it. ▸ 75% education; 25% sales. You need both. ▸ Frontload delivery. 3x in first week is fine. ▸ After end of course, email 1x every 2~4 weeks
  4. CHECKPOINTS ▸ 10 great conversations (25 for SaaS) ▸ 500

    emails ▸ 10 commits to buy (in SaaS)
  5. ABUSE YOUR ADVANTAGES ▸ “This is what I do.” is

    an amazing sales message. ▸ Be irrationally responsive to customers, especially early. ▸ Move fast and make things.
  6. REASONABLE FLOORS, BUT NOT CEILINGS! ▸ E-book: $49 / $99

    / $249 ▸ Video Course: $99 / $249 / $499 ▸ Online training (half day): $249 / $499 ▸ Online training (2 days): $499 / $999 ▸ B2B SaaS: $49 / $99 / $249 or call us ▸ One-off software: $49 / $99 ▸ Your time: $250 per hour; $10k per week
  7. IMMEDIATELY IF NOT SOONER ▸ Get a new credit card.

    ▸ Business Gmail / Google Apps account. ▸ accounts@ alias ▸ receipts@ alias ▸ Password manager (OnePass, etc)
  8. MEDIUM TERM ▸ Get an accountant. ▸ Find a peer

    group to talk shop with. Meet regularly. ▸ Derisk your family life: ▸ Retirement savings ▸ Insurance (term life & long-term disability) ▸ Go to the gym like it is your job
  9. WE ARE HERE FOR YOU ▸ @patio11 or [email protected] or

    [email protected] ▸ bit.ly/patio11-mc18 <— Don’t tweet it. ▸ See the MicroConf Slack for email addresses of every Stripe attending. We really and sincerely want to hear from you.
  10. FUNDING FOR THIS PROGRAM MADE POSSIBLE BY THE INTERNET PHOTO

    CREDITS ▸ Big Jigsaw: Alan Levine, by CC: https://flic.kr/p/mDYE ▸ Unfinished Jigsaw: a2gemma, by CC: https://flic.kr/p/wTUmk