Top all-time · #542
Rob Walling
Personal blog · softwarebyrob.comstartupsprogramming
Rob Walling's personal blog at softwarebyrob.com covers startups and programming. Since 2007, 110 different Hacker News readers have linked it 205 times, most often “Why Free Plans Don’t Work”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Rob Walling's blog for solo and bootstrapped software business advice: marketing before building, freemium pricing, buying and selling SaaS, and his HitTail acquisition.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- Calls the marketing article excellent and the marketing grid great; says to check out the blog and the book.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Rob Walling is a serial entrepreneur who has started six companies (five of them bootstrapped). He runs MicroConf, the original community for bootstrapped SaaS founders, and TinySeed, a category-leading accelerator for B2B SaaS. He has invested in more than 200 startups.
Most-linked posts?
- /12 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2010-08-02
- Why Free Plans Don’t Work10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2010-08-18
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-10-13
- The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-05-19
- Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-10-14
- The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-25
- The Stairstep approach to bootstrapping3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-03-26
- Your Traffic Sources have a Half-Life3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-02-02
- The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition (Part 3)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-02-28
- How to detect a toxic customer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-12-09
What Hacker News says?
Great point r2dnb. This used to be my mentality as well and it hurt me. I was looking for a "smart" business that was "worthy" of me. How could these people spend so much time on such an indefensible & unscalable process?! Well, the joke was on me. My brother stopped consuming info and started Amazon FBA. And he does really well (full-time job replacement). Instead of waiting for the perfect idea - he executed. Now…
Comment linking /2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/
on “Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products”Submitted Why Free Plans Don’t Work as a story · 318 points
HN discussionI'm not sure he is particularly active on HN but Rob Walling[1] is a solo entrepreneur managing at least a couple of Saas products: Hittail[2] (which he bought and then grow) and Drip[3]. He also conducts a podcast on Saas[4] and also organises a conference for self-funded startups[5]. In the past Patio11 spoke there too [1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ [2] http://www.hittail.com/ [3] https://www.getdrip.com/ [4] h…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?”Submitted How to detect a toxic customer as a story · 293 points
HN discussionUnknown is relative, but here are some of the rss feeds I'm subscribed too: http://nosql.mypopescu.com/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://eli.thegreenplace.net/ http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/ http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/ http://www.cowtowncoder.com/blog/blog.html http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/ http://hunch.net/ http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/ http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ http://www.so…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read?”Submitted Highly Successful Bootstrapped Startups as a story · 226 points
HN discussionAfter poking around his site, I laughed a little after he described Emacs as a "stripped down, no frills text editor". http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2005/09/05/better-developer-don...
Comment linking /2005/09/05/better-developer-dont-use-a-dull-knife/
on “How to detect a toxic customer”Submitted The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition as a story · 207 points
HN discussionThe http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com podcast is quite good. Rob also has a blog: http://www.softwarebyrob.com
Comment linking /
on “Stop Looking for a Cofounder”Submitted How to Detect a Toxic Customer (2010) as a story · 162 points
HN discussionAmy Hoy: http://unicornfree.com/ Rob Walling: http://softwarebyrob.com/ Dane Maxwell: http://thefoundation.io/blog/
Comment linking /
on “What You Really Need Is A Market, Not An Idea”Submitted You Can’t Make Money Charging $1 Per Month as a story · 154 points
HN discussionLots of smart people disagree with this. You should start marketing when you start coding. Find out who is interested, what they want, etc. When you launch, you don't want to do it to crickets. If you have something people will search for, you can start your SEO and start adwords. 6 months down the road you are actually getting some search traffic, and your adwords have over time built up a mailing list. If you have…
Comment linking /2010/10/14/startup-marketing-part-6-why-you-should-start-marketing-the-day-you-start-coding/
on “Why Do Startups Do This?”Submitted Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding as a story · 126 points
HN discussionFrom what I read, Horowitz' book is very much about the typical VC fueled startup. At this point in my life, I'm not interested in that except out of curiosity, I'd rather read books by/for/about boostrapped startups. Where does Thiel's book fall in that range? Reading the comments, it looks like it's way more of an idea book than anything practical, and targetted at people who want to do something new and radical.…
Comment linking /2010/08/05/why-startup-founders-should-stop-reading-business-books/
on “Peter Thiel's Zero to One Might Be the Best Business Book I've Read”Submitted The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself as a story · 114 points
HN discussiondividend stocks seem great if you use dollar-cost averaging, DRIP investing, and you do the research necessary; they also seem like they take a very long time to build up a sizeable portfolio. I really like Rob Walling's description of what he does with software businesses [1] though, and my plan is to do something like that. [1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/06/24/websites-as-investme...
Comment linking /2010/06/24/websites-as-investments/
on “Money and wealth”Submitted The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition (Part 2) as a story · 99 points
HN discussionI wonder if wildbit considered selling the product to someone who could give it some love? Perhaps it could have been similar to this recent story: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2012/01/25/the-inside-story-of-...
Comment linking /2012/01/25/the-inside-story-of-a-small-startup-acquisition-part-1/
on “Why we shut down a product that was $75,000/year profitable”Submitted Why You Haven't Launched as a story · 88 points
HN discussionI think he explains it here: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/11/02/9-ways-to-decrease-y... and here http://blog.asmartbear.com/virtual-assistant-startup.html and here http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2009/07/14/one-of-the-most-comm...
Comment linking /2009/07/14/one-of-the-most-common-startup-roadblocks/
on “The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition”Submitted Lessons Learned from a Software Developer’s First Attempt at Launching a Startup as a story · 74 points
HN discussionTo both you and raphinou and others battling with the same questions, I cannot recommend Rob Walling's work enough. His blog [0], book [1] and podcast [2] address the exact concerns any new software bootstrapper faces. He also runs the Micropreneur Academy, but I don't have any direct experience of that. He also organises Microconf, and I really recommend watching his talk from last year - http://www.microconf.com/v…
Comment linking /
on “Bootstrapping a Software Product”Submitted Your Market is Smaller Than You Think as a story · 67 points
HN discussion" There's a lot of money to be made in freemium " I haven't heard this before. In fact, I've read about just the opposite ( http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-... ) Do you have any links? (Not talking free here, like Facebook, but freemium.)
Comment linking /2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/
on “I am done with the freemium business model”Submitted Lesser Known Traits of Successful Founders as a story · 65 points
HN discussionCheck this blog post about freemium, i've found it quite interesting: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-... I haven't still decided yet about using freemium or not for the project i'm working on
Comment linking /2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/
on “I am done with the freemium business model”Submitted The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition (Part 3) as a story · 63 points
HN discussionCongrats Matt. Well done on testing various revenue options, instead of eating the costs just to be the "nice guy", only to have to shut it down eventually. Ruben Gamez of Bidsketch had a similar story about switching from freemium to paid only - http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-...
Comment linking /2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/
on “Go Read: One Year with Money and App Engine”Submitted Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says as a story · 63 points
HN discussion
