NOTE: These recaps are a bit more for me than you. I’ll skip over stuff, include asides that are more personal notes to me, etc. Your mileage may vary. More detailed/sanctioned recaps will be available at http://microconfrecap.com at some point.

Presenter: Jesse Mecham

  • YouNeedABudget.com
  • Thought he’d be a public accountant. “That life is awful.”
  • Created a budget in Excel while in college.
  • Kid on the way, decided to try to sell the spreadsheet.
  • You don’t need a vision. “I needed $350 a month” (for rent)
  • “You can know nothing.” Just started doing things as they came up.
  • We can get caught up with trying to learn about our problem instead of concentrating on solving it.
  • Be aware of how much you’re consuming and how much you’re creating
  • Spreadsheet was “lowercase minimum valuable”
  • “All these colors were available, so I used them.”
  • Now iterate. You’re allowed to change your mind whenever you want
  • Side note: Your price should be doubled. Until then, you might not sell anything.
  • First version, $9.99 with a PayPal buy button.
  • AdWords was so cheap (2004) that it brought in lots and lots of visitors, but first attempt was flyers at his apartment complex.
  • “That was pretty exciting, but a total waste of time”
  • Upped the price to $20, then first sale happened in a day.
  • Go ahead and waste time. Wasted a lot of time learning. Less consuming, more doing.
  • Make mistakes. You can’t help it, because you don’t know any better.
  • This is like dieting, but for finances
  • Find Your Message. You’ll find it by writing sales copy for your product. Over and over again.
  • Bubbles of solutions. Products cluster around similar problems. The way you compete is with a unique message.
  • Settled on four rules for the system.
  • Once settled on those rules, sales took off.
  • $100 to anyone who can beat “Gain Total Control of Your Money” as a site headline.
  • Lead with unique, that’s why people give you money
  • In his case, the budgeting method is the unique bit.
  • Software is totally second-class in the message.
  • “How are we different from Mint? Mint is like doing postmortem analysis.”
  • YNAB is like precogs. There is no dead body.
  • Keep iterating. Keep charging more.
  • Auto-responders are still magical. 10-day “sales pitch” boosted revenues by ~200% overnight.
  • “Why 10 days? Because that’s how many I ended up with.”
  • There’s no magic number or sequence. Just write it, get it set up and going.
  • Anybody can copy our software, but that’s not what sells.
  • Don’t be dumb like me, go full-time ASAP. Work: 80 hours per week for a $4,000/month salary. Sidegig(YNAB): One hour per week for $20,000/month in profits
  • “I’m a recovering CPA.”
  • That was all in my safe gameplan. But do I want to be “that guy” in 20 years?
  • You’ll hit your stride. Gave a public launch date, off-shored development, raided personal funds, played golf to escape. Then hit stride.
  • There’s no value for you to promise something way off. You’ll be wrong, it’s stressful. Don’t do public launch dates.
  • Sell something soon. Write a crappy headline, put your “Buy Now” button below it. When somebody buys, tell them it’ll be in their inbox in 48 hours. I’m working on something like this right now, Ed.
  • Bookkeeping: Do your books. It’s tax day, that’s why you do your books and that makes me sad. There’s no value in complying with the tax code. http://youneedabudget.com/business teaches you how to use the same method for your business.

Q&A

  • Steam users are crazy and hilarious to have in your web forums. We tried Steam like a year ago. Budgeting in a game. When they do flash sales (wouldn’t normally do), they think it’s a trial. Numbers are unbelievable. Was worried about support, but it was total impulse purchases so no increased load.
  • “We recur with our major upgrades” Every 18 months to two years. The bad thing: you end up holding features for upgrades.
  • Working on moving to a SaaS model.
  • I spent $65k to build a version I could put on the Mac platform (in Java). It was a disaster. It was so bad, had to scrap it. Confidence in the message made it easier to move forward.