laura roeder, transitioning from a consulting to a product business, bos usa 2016

Don’t Let Your Past Limit Your Future

Laura Roeder - @LKR - LauraRoeder.com

MeetEdgar.com

Or how I got from here to here.

From 2009 - 2015, I ran a social media marketing

training company.

There were a few things I didn’t love about the model. I was central to the business.

There were inherent scaling limits.

I was stuck doing work that I didn’t love.

I wanted to do a SaaS company, BUT . . . I didn’t know how to code.

I didn’t know how to design a software product.

I had zero experience working around software in any capacity!

Then I met this guy.

Finding The Idea

We did NOT build a bunch of ideas to see which one would take

off.

We tried our best to invalidate BEFORE code was

written. (And still started code on two projects before abandoning

them early.)

My criteria:

1.Are prospects actively looking to BUY a better solution to this

problem

2. Is our solution better than what’s out there

Building The Product

We did not purely bootstrap MeetEdgar, we self-funded from the LKR

profits.

The Team You Need to Launch Software

1.Dev team to build software (in our case, 6 mo of PT work)

2.Hours from designer to create logo/basic marketing site

3.Hours from writer for initial marketing copy/email sequences

Don’t forget this

one!!

If you don’t know software, listen to the advice of people

who do.

Launching The Product

Our plan was to have a half training, half software company.

(But that didn’t happen.)

The most important mindset:

YOU ARE LAUNCHING A NEW BUSINESS.

You would not open a retail store by throwing a few t-

shirts on the floor and seeing if anyone stops by to buy

them.

If you “wait and see if it gets traction”, you are giving up.

If you treat it as a “side project”, it will remain a side

project.

Make it a core part of your business plan.

Hit 50k MRR within First 6 Months

BUT in 2014, 90% of our income still came from LKR.

The Pivot:

I decided to go all in on software, shutting down LKR once we reached breakeven

from MeetEdgar.

WHY would I do this? We were still making $1m from

LKR.

1.Because I wanted to.

2. Because the potential upside was larger with MeetEdgar than LKR.

3. Because building two businesses takes twice the

time, effort, and cash.

That wasn’t the only pivot going on in my life . . .

Remove yourself as the bottleneck so the business can keep growing right past

you.

During the three months that I was on maternity leave, we

went from $74k to $110k MRR.

We made the hard decision to give up LKR, and let it

become messy so we could stop devoting resources to it.

First MeetEdgar blog: Dec 2014

Last LKR blog: March 2015

Switched newsletter branding May 2015

Set the priorities for each quarter and stick to them.

By the end of 2015 - 2.2m ARR from MeetEdgar

Here’s how we did it.

No growth hacks. No hockey sticks. No viral coefficient.

Stop thinking about one-off tricks or hacks, and start focusing on your funnel.

Stuff we don’t do:- Integrations-Partnerships

-Biz dev-Free trials-Free plans

-One-on-one sales-Sales team

Organic is slow, paid is fast.

2014

2015

2016

In September 2016, we’re at 3.5m ARR.

Make a plan, not an experiment.

Don’t let your past limit your future.