Starting & Sustaining

Candid discussions with folks involved in and around the SaaS industry.

About the show

Starting & Sustaining originally began as a book and spreadsheet created to help people start software businesses. That evolved into candid discussions with people involved in software businesses in one way or another.

Focused primarily on the trials and tribulations of launching and running a software business, Starting & Sustaining attempts to break down the hurdles to help you build and launch your own software business with less pain and fewer mistakes.

Starting & Sustaining on social media

Episodes

  • Brennan Dunn, Co-founder of RightMessage

    August 14th, 2018  |  46 mins 36 secs
    business, saas

    Brennan is a co-founder of Right Message. In this episode, we talk about the path he's taken that led him to create Right Message and what he's learned about building and launching SaaS applications based on his experiences with his various products.

  • Mathias Meyer, Co-founder and Former CEO of Travis CI

    July 31st, 2018  |  49 mins 28 secs
    continuous integration, saas, software development

    Mathias is one of the original founders of Travis CI. In this episode, we talk about the difficulty of leaving the company he helped start, and the challenges of moving on.

  • Jaimee Newberry, Co-founder of Picture This Clothing

    July 17th, 2018  |  41 mins 52 secs
    clothing, operations, saas, viral growth

    Jaimee Newberry is the founder of Picture This Clothing where you can print a coloring sheet and design a one-of-a-kind ready-to-wear creation that they send to you. In this epsode we talk about making hard decisions and creating space in your life for ideas to take hold and give you time to work on them.

  • Steve McLeod, Founder of Feature Upvote

    July 10th, 2018  |  38 mins 18 secs
    b2b, b2c, saas

    Steve McLeod is the founder of Feature Upvote, a SaaS tool to enable your customers to suggest and upvote improvements. In this episode, we talk about and compare his experiences running both a B2C app and B2B app and the value of having a part-time system administrator on retainer.

  • Ben Curtis, Co-founder of Honeybadger

    October 9th, 2017  |  37 mins 18 secs
    bootstrapped, business, saas

    Ben Curtis is the co-founder of Honeybadger, a SaaS-based exception tracking application. Honeybadger is bootstrapped and profitable with three co-founders and is a great example of a team scratching their own itch.

  • Scott Nixon - Co-founder of Happy Herbivore/Meal Mentor

    August 12th, 2017  |  52 mins 46 secs
    business, consumer, saas

    Scott Nixon is the co-founder of Meal Mentor, a subscription-based vegeterian meal planning service. Scott handles the technology side of the business and works to keep the operational side of things humming with software.

  • Matt Goldman, CEO of Churn Buster

    June 15th, 2017  |  45 mins 57 secs

    Matt is the CEO of Churn Buster, a SaaS app to help recurring revenue businesses handle failed payments better.

  • Rachel Andrew, Cofounder of Perch

    June 9th, 2017  |  41 mins 39 secs

    Rachel is the co-founder of Perch, a small self-hosted CMS. She has some incredible wisdom to share about running a software company that's not based on recurring revenue subscriptions.

  • Tracy Osborn, Founder of Wedding Lovely

    June 2nd, 2017  |  46 mins 24 secs
    business, weddinglovely, weddings

    Tracy Osborn taught herself how to code and built Wedding Lovely through which she acquired some hard-earned knowledge about selling to consumers and the cost of managing support.

  • Josh Williams, Founder of Gowalla

    May 25th, 2017  |  54 mins 44 secs
    bootstrapping, business, gowalla, saas

    Josh Williams has done a little bit of everything as far as building software businesses go. He started out bootstrapping some applications which eventually led to raising money and building Gowalla.

  • Thomas Smale, Founder of FE International

    May 18th, 2017  |  35 mins 1 sec
    broker, business, saas

    Thomas Smale is the founder of FE International, a professional web site broker. FE International helped me sell Sifter in 2016, and they were a fantastic partner. Having sold over 425 business, they definitely know what they're doing, and Thomas has an incredible amount of wisdom to share around buying and selling online businesses.

  • Nathan Barry, Founder of ConvertKit

    April 25th, 2017  |  47 mins 51 secs
    business, marketing, saas

    The journey Nathan has gone through with ConvertKit is amazing. From significantly missing his original goals, he continued to work and make adjustments to ConvertKit and his approach until he found the sweet spot. Since then, ConvertKit has grown incredibly fast, and Nathan's been openly sharing everything he's learned throughout the journey.

  • Courtland Allen, Founder of Indie Hackers

    March 30th, 2017  |  32 mins 22 secs
    business, marketing, saas

    Courtland is earlier on in the cycle of building a business, but he's on the right track. He's gained a ton of insight from past experiences, and now he's building Indie Hackers and talking to a plethora of other small businesses about what has and hasn't worked for them.

  • Ruben Gamez, Founder of Bidsketch

    February 26th, 2017  |  41 mins 57 secs
    bidsketch, business, proposals, saas

    Ruben set out to help a friend find some software for proposals and, when he couldn't find anything, just built it himself in 2009. Eight short years later, and he's built a 5-person remote team working on it.

  • Allan Branch, Cofounder of Less Accounting

    February 2nd, 2017  |  33 mins 31 secs
    business, marketing, saas

    Allan is the cofounder of LessEverying, makers of LessAccounting. They recently sold LessAccounting and are moving back into traditional consulting and having a blast with it.

  • Drew Wilson, Founder of Plasso

    January 28th, 2017  |  39 mins 10 secs
    bootstrapping, fundraising, plasso

    Drew Wilson is a maker at heart. He's created many products with varying degrees of success, but they've all ultimately led him to where he is now, working on Plasso.