WadeF

Thanks for the kind words. Making it simple isn't all that simple so glad that the effort pays off. :-)

We use a bunch of tools at Zapier but some of our favorite are:

- P2 WordPress theme from Automatic: http://p2theme.com/

- Sqwiggle: https://www.sqwiggle.com/

- Trello: https://trello.com/

- GitHub: https://github.com/

- Campfire: https://campfirenow.com/

- Zapier: https://zapier.com/

- GTalk

- Dropbox/Box

- RelateIQ: http://relateiq.com/

- Help Scout: https://www.helpscout.net/

- HelloSign: https://www.hellosign.com/

We wrote a lot more about how we use them here: https://zapier.com/blog/how-manage-remote-team/

Yep!

This comment is actually a great example of a one-line email question. Just do this and you'll likely get good response.

I don't think I mentioned any all-or-nothing bits in the article. I merely suggested that major life events can and likely will happen that will throw you off your goals for a business.

I'll repeat what I said in another comment though:

> Agreed that not all startups need to be a go-for-it-all startup. But any business is going to a lot of work to get running. And then once you have customers it's going to be a lot of work to keep them happy. Even if it is micro business or a bootstrapped company.

> The four hour work week is a bit of a myth. Everything is going to be hard work.

Your quote "Stay focused. Work hard. Life goes on." is a good way to think about it.

Exactly. Steve Jobs and Brian Williams are clearly two people born to do what they do/did.

Some people just aren't cut out for that.

I don't think you caught quite what I meant.

In any seven to ten year period you likely will have a major life event. If you can handle it, then you can probably run a startup. If you can't, then don't.

The people you've worked with clearly can handle it.

This is a good point. There's no sense in thinking yourself out of a startup, but at the same time it's likely something crappy will happen while running a startup.

You may want to go to a cushy job at that point in time, but you need to be able to at least be comfortable enough to say "No, I'm going to do this."

If you're terrified of a crappy situation it's a good gut call for yourself to figure out if you're cut out for being a founder or not.

Agreed that not all startups need to be a go-for-it-all startup. But any business is going to a lot of work to get running. And then once you have customers it's going to be a lot of work to keep them happy. Even if it is micro business or a bootstrapped company.

The four hour work week is a bit of a myth. Everything is going to be hard work.

We actually found people who paid us to be much more helpful and understanding with potential issues. Probably because they knew we were working hard on solving a problem that they paid for. We also offered a money-back guarantee, but barely anyone ask for one (<1%). Customer service isn't bad since the volume for a paid beta isn't what you'd see for a free beta. This has the side affect of keeping your beta group contained so that you really get to know your users.

Free users were the opposite. They would be angry when things didn't work out quite right and complain about the beta price (roughly $5, though we moved it around some). Free also has more issues on the customer service side simply because you have to do more of it.

I can certainly think of scenarios where a free beta makes sense, but if I'm starting another B2B company I would charge from day one all over again.

Excellent point and I'm a bit embarrassed not to have included them! I'm adding it to the post as we speak. :D

Help Scout sounds exactly like what you are looking for.

https://www.helpscout.net/

I'm not sure appearing bigger and more successful would actually lead to a company becoming bigger and more successful though.

A company lying would ultimately just be fooling themselves.

> “well into the tens of thousands” customers.

We don't disclose exact numbers, but there are quite a few users.

LastPass enterprise is pretty janky. I'd love to switch our team over to a better working version of LastPass enterprise.

Sub directories are still considered best for maximal SEO value. [1]

[1]: http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-subdomain-vs-subdirectory-be...

There are a few things that make Tumblr less optimal for SEO out of the box.

1. Headers don't come with h1 or h2 tags out of the box.

2. Title tags default to the title of the blog rather than the title of the blog post.

3. blog.domain.com does divert some SEO juice from the main domain. [1]

I wrote a short post on some of these issues that you can read up on below. [2]

[1]: http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-subdomain-vs-subdirectory-be...

[2]: http://wadefoster.net/post/43633476838/three-quick-wins-for-...

We are three nobodies from a public university in the midwest that were working at a mortgage company.

I doubt our credentials were what impressed the YC partners.

You don't really need to be a master or an expert at all these things. You just need to know enough to make something happen. Once you get to a certain scale you can bring in the experts.

OP here.

I definitely agree with this. Good Marketers can make money ridiculously fast. The curious thing to me is why, IMHO, great developers aren't undervalued by startups, but great marketers are.

OP here. We don't punish customers either. Every support email gets answered. But when I look at the support queue and see a paid tag or a free tag. I choose to help the paid user first.

I've handle roughly six or seven at a time. Don't think I've hit eight. It can definitely get challenging with that many chats running.

Agreed. Designers have dribbble and developers have github. doesn't seem like there's a great place for copywriters to share copy snippets and discuss them.

I'd use a site like that to test early copy iterations pretty frequently.

Unbounce (http://unbounce.com/) is about as good as they come.

This is great for lead scoring. Makes it really easy to see who might be on the verge of buying The Expensive Plan and lets you personally contact them for follow up.

Yeah, we screwed that up.

The old free didn't have a published limit but because the syncing interval was slow it effectively did. The new free is just publicizing that so that there's more transparency for how Zapier works.

That's really our biggest difference (which I forgot to mention). While we do support some more consumery apps our main goal is to help businesses operate more efficiently and less painfully. When we think about new features, new apps, new services it's almost entirely with a business user in mind.

This is because we have to poll each services API. Anymore and we'll reach API limits. The goal is to move towards more webhooks and push notifications so that real time becomes a real possibility.

Check out the dev platform (https://zapier.com/developer). You can build any app into it that you want and create it privately for your use alone.

Just haven't had the time to build it yet. Part of why a 3rd party solution is preferred. But custom needs call for custom solutions.