I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
One of the challenges of running this email list (which I started in 2008!) is knowing where everyone's at in their journey and what they're looking for from my emails.
I sense that many people signed up for help with their bootstrapper journey. But I know other folks are here for thoughts about building a good life, starting calm companies, business ethics, remote work, creating a better society, and introspecting the tech industry.
If you could hit reply, I'd love to know your answer to these two questions:
I'm particularly interested in the goals/dreams you have for your life and how you're working towards them.
Cheers,
Justin Jackson
PS: thanks for all the kind notes (about my mountain bike injury). I'm healing up nicely and hoping to get my stitches out soon!
Personal share: I got to go to this magical backyard concert last night. Love these summer vibes!
In 2024, I'm sharing marketing and growth tips for SaaS founders
I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
A lot of people don't know this about me, but in the early 2000s, I owned a snowboard shop in Alberta called the Real Deal. It almost bankrupted me. I just published a video where I tell the whole story: It describes how I emerged from that failure and was (eventually) able to bootstrap a successful SaaS company. It took a few steps to get there! If you're on your own indie SaaS journey and want a sense of what my path looked like, I think you'll dig it this video. (It also has a bunch of my...
The problem with marketing metrics is that most of them are meaningless: How much traffic did we get last month? How many TikTok views? How many clicks did we get from our FB ads? How many YouTube views? What was our email's open rate? Founders spend thousands of dollars on marketing activities that produce clicks, traffic, views, and opens – 99% of which don't matter. In marketing, the only question that matters is, "Which of our efforts are bringing in revenue?" Matt Paulson, founder of...
First, thanks to everyone for the incredible response to my Calm Companies essay. It's my most shared essay of the year, and I saw it appear in multiple email newsletters and briefly on the Hacker News homepage! This week I want to try to distill some advice I've been giving to aspirational founders. View this newsletter online Iterating towards success My friend Nathan Barry is one of the youngest successful entrepreneurs I know: he founded ConvertKit, which now has $40 million in annual...