Justin Jackson

Initially Jon wanted to build the product completely on his own, but realizing he was a great coder but not a marketer, partnering with Justin would bring a lot of value to the table, and turn his side project into a real business.

A founder needs the right market with the right distribution channels. And, a good product for that market must be developed. These three areas are crucial. Don't invest years and years into something when one of these pieces is missing. Wait as needed. It will feel natural once the fit is right.

In certain markets, having good affiliates can be very helpful. Also, sharing an interesting journey in a transparent and vulnerable way resonates with people. This makes them want to share your story and be a part of it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be first priority for businesses. Word of mouth is also necessary. But, the emotional connection that founders can build with their followers can also be pivotal. Be open to sharing the journey and the struggles.

A business cannot be based on what people might do or what they say that might do. It must be based on what people are doing right now or what they have done in the past.

When learning on your own, there is very limited perspective. When reading a book, listening to a podcast, etc., you learn about different ways to do things. This helps improve one's craft.

The podcast hosting market has momentum. There is an uptick in people wanting to publish shows and the creator/maker movement lends itself naturally to podcasting. Corporations are also taking note of podcasts.

Transistor.fm is a podcast hosting. When someone listens to a podcast through apps such as Apple, Google, etc., the files stream from a central platform, much like websites. Transistor is place to publish these files and to get basic including analytics about their downloads.

On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson tells Jon Buda that leading a company comes down to two jobs: thinking, and making decisions. Execution is the work Jackson likes, but he says co-founders are not graded on it. The example in front of them is Spots, the product they were weighing alongside Transistor.fm. Chasing it would hurt in the short term, because he wanted to ship fast and Spots still had a lot to prove, including whether they even wanted to be in advertising. His instinct was to keep things easy and deal with it later. He says you almost always have to force yourself to do the opposite.

Justin Jackson says that when someone pitches him, especially a product he already has a version of, he asks what makes it better. A new Slack competitor gets that question. He uses the same test on Transistor.fm. One difference he wants on the homepage is unlimited shows for one monthly fee. A well-known person, forwarded to him because of a big audience, asked what made Transistor better than Libsyn. After about five rounds of answers, Jackson decided the sale was not worth the time and walked away. If you are hard-selling every lead, he says, that is a bad sign, often desperation. The useful skill is knowing when to stop and find someone else.

On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson reads a Twitter thread from Stephanie Hurlburt, @sehurlburt, and tells Jon Buda why he follows her. She is an entrepreneur, and she is the founder of Binomial, which makes image and texture compression for VR, games, and similar work. Jackson says she is not really in the SaaS business. She sells annual licenses. What he values is her writing on marketing, on sales, and on being a software person, including a thread on how programmers can improve a wardrobe with a few simple changes, for men and for women. He points listeners to her thread on hard selling.

On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson tells Jon Buda that a bigger audience usually means tapping people who already have a bigger audience than you do. Their method that week was to pick three tweets and use them as the whole conversation, then see if the authors shared the episode. The first tweet was from Justin Kan, after he sold Twitch and started Atrium. Kan wrote that he had thought a lot about how B2B compares with B2C, and that he now preferred B2B. Jackson says Kan has done both, which is why the thread is worth using. Show notes were promised at saas.transistor.fm.