#63: Baremetrics Founder Josh Pigford on Side Projects and Growing a $1 Million SaaS Startup

About the Episode:

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Josh Pigford, the founder of Baremetrics – the revenue analytics platform that helps companies better understand their customers, get more accurate forecasting and engage customers with more relevant messaging.

Josh has had his hand in literally dozens of different businesses and side projects over the years from PugSpot, an online community for pug owners that generated thousands of dollars in monthly ad revenue back in 2006 to an online survey creator PopSurvey that was used by companies like Whole Foods, Intuit, FedEx and the Virgin Group – seriously there are tons more.

Now, Josh is focused on growing Baremetrics, and it was in 2013 that he launched the product as just another little side project something he built for himself in just 7 days – to better understand the metrics behind one of his own subscription businesses.

After pushing a very basic, minimum viable product version of his tool and site live, he immediately started sharing with people in his community.

In a matter of days, he’d acquired his first paying customers from Twitter, emailing a few startup founder friends, and word of mouth referrals. Since then, he’s grown the business to over $98,000 in monthly recurring revenue—that’s almost $1.2 Million a year.

In Today’s Episode, We Talk About:

[02:47] What book he’s reading at the moment.
[04:05] Where he’s originally from.
[04:34] His very first actual business.
[06:28] How he generated revenue from the business.
[07:39] Which of all his businesses he enjoys the most.
[09:07] If he and his wife have built multiple businesses together.
[10:21] About Baremetrics and what inspired him to build it.
[12:30] About the MVP of Baremetrics.
[15:54] About their first customers and how they acquired them.
[18:04] The number of customers currently using Baremetrics and how long it took to get to the first 100 customers.
[19:30] How he got more startups to be open about their revenue and other metrics.
[24:01] What the content creation process is like at Baremetrics.
[27:50] His take on how to get a good work/life balance.
[30:23] His best piece of advice for anyone looking to transition from a service-based business to a SaaS model.
[31:30] How to go about getting your first 10 customers when you don’t already have an audience.
[32:09] Sacrifices he’s had to make in growing Baremetrics.
33:09 Strategies he’s tried in the past that have failed.
34:04 The best investment he’s ever made in growing his business.

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Resources mentioned:

Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

Connect with My Guest:

Baremetrics

Josh on LinkedIn and Twitter

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In today’s episode, we’re talking to Josh Pigford, the founder of Baremetrics, the revenue analytics platform that helps companies better understand their customers, get more accurate forecasting and engage customers with more relevant messaging about how he grew the company from side project to $1.2 Million in annual recurring revenue...


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