The first year of a business can be the most precarious. You don’t know if things work. You don’t know how you’ll pay for them. You don’t know how it will turn out. So it makes sense that there is intense interest on how companies got started. I get questions about this often, so I wanted to break it down — with real numbers and cents — exactly how we
October 19, 2020
Health Insurance Options for Bootstrapped Entrepreneurs in Virginia: A Guide
This post is a companion to the Software Social episode on Health Insurance for Bootstrappers. There’s no getting around it: health insurance is a huge hassle and expense in the US. The number #1 thing that kept us back from going full-time on our then-side project, Geocodio, was the scary part about dealing with health insurance. I had previous experience buying health insurance on behalf of an employer, and I
August 10, 2020
Software Social Podcast
After years of being a guest on other podcasts, I’m finally a podcast host myself! The premise of the podcast is following two SaaS founders: one transitioning to SaaS from consulting, Colleen Schnettler, and myself, with a more established SaaS. Every week, we each share what we’ve been working on and workshop our challenges together. You can listen to our first two episodes below: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
June 22, 2020
Build Better Software Podcast
Integrating customer feedback — whether it’s from interviews, usability sessions, or testing — can be tricky. Not because the methods are hard… but because of people. Many people resist new things and things that challenge their existing ways of doing things. We also talked about Jobs to Be Done and how to validate product ideas — and how to find problems when you don’t have users. I talked about how
March 26, 2020
Guest Post for Girl Scouts: “I Held My First Virtual Meeting and My Daisies Earned a Petal. Here’s How We Did It.”
I wrote a guest post for Girl Scouts on hosting a virtual meeting during the Covid-19 crisis. I think we underestimate how much children pick up and how much they are capable of understanding. My co-leaders and I felt like this was an important thing to discuss with them and dovetailed nicely with the Responsible for What I Say and Do petal. The pandemic is going to be a major
March 19, 2020
Washington Post Highlights Maywood Response
In early March of 2020, I started organizing my neighborhood to help prepare for Covid-19. We ended up building a group of volunteers to get groceries, medications, and other supplies for high-risk neighbors. The effort was highlighted in the Washington Post: The brigadier general in the Virginia operation is Michele Hansen who moved into Maywood two years ago and runs a geocoding software company with her husband. Her sister is a nurse
March 12, 2020
Using Customer Portfolio Analysis as a Bootstrapper
It’s been a hell of a week. I will not mince words: the news is all-consuming right now. And if your brain is like mine, when it takes a break from thinking about our public health emergency it jumps to the next big risk: the economy. And our business. And how things will go. And it’s scary to think about. We all knew the risks of working for ourselves. But
March 3, 2020
Interview: Build Your SaaS Podcast
Talking about the reality of bootstrapping a SaaS while juggling a full-time job, marriage, and family. Listen: Build your SaaS
October 23, 2019
Interview: Bright & Early Podcast
Interview on the Bright & Early podcast about how we started Geocodio and how entrepreneurs can use customer interviews to grow their business.