A marketer in search of a technical co-founder with Corey Haines
Corey Haines joins me to talk all about a marketer in search of a technical co-founder
Corey Haines joins me to talk all about a marketer in search of a technical co-founder
“You need to have usage before revenue because no one's going to pay for something that isn't actually being used that they are not finding utility out of and in making you.” - Corey Haines
Watch this episode on YouTube
In this conversation:
“You need to have usage before revenue because no one's going to pay for something that isn't actually being used that they are not finding utility out of and in making you.” - Corey Haines
Watch this episode on YouTube
In this conversation:
Corey Haines:
Corey's company, Swipe Files
Brian Casel:
Brian’s company, ZipMessage
Brian on Twitter: @casjam
Thanks to ZipMessage
ZipMessage (today’s sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations. Use it for free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.
Quotes from this episode:
Clip 1
Corey:
From my perspective as a marketer, I think that the marketing across each one of the products is relatively the same. It's not really like harder or easier for any one of them. I think the product is kind of the crux there. I love the example of Daniel Vassallo on Twitter. He's a really good thinker. And creator and maker.
He shares openly. He is like all his revenue from the products that he creates. The vast majority of his income comes from info products ebooks and courses and things like that. And then he does some consulting for Gumroad and like I think actually one of his first projects. But the tiniest amount of revenue, I think only does like $1,000 a month is his sass called Userbase.
I think one because it's just inherently harder to find product-market fit with software you can kind of like get lucky and strike gold and like build something that's like very new and needed and just people are clamoring for most of the time. You kind of has to like feel your way around and make a couple of changes and pivots and get up to feature parity in order to start competing with an incumbent or start being attractive for people to you.
Brian:
It's true. It's so hard because it literally has to be solving a problem that people are ready to buy and get their problem solved. Whereas with a course, I found that like, yes, it really, really benefits a lot of people who buy it and watch every lesson and implement it and use it to grow their business. And that's great.
But then there's always other a lot of other buyers, you know, they don't necessarily go through it all. They don't necessarily implement it all, but it's sort of exploratory. Like they'll buy they'll make the purchase just to go down that rabbit hole for a little bit to see what it's like. And maybe they'll learn like, you know what, that's not for me. And in that case, it's still sort of they still got value out of learning that path is not for me. Right.
Clip 2
Corey:
The tension there is that - what am I working on today? Am I working on a product or am I working on marketing? And I have to do both. You know, and it usually involves. But like I'm either answering emails that are marketing-related or I'm in between GitHub issues. Yeah. And it's I mean, one of the.
Brian:
One of the best pieces of advice I've seen a lot of actors give to each other is to do a week on week off for a product or marketing is to spend one week
Corey:
on the product. When I come to like whatever they are you're moving half as fast. That's true. You are moving definitely half as fast. I do a lot of that too, but it's never that clean. It's never like you know, literally Monday to Friday product time and then next Monday to Friday, it's marketing time. I mean, it's never that clean, you know, because opportunities are going to come into your inbox at any time.
And that's when I have to just like flip into marketing mode and go do this podcast, you know.
Quotes from this episode:
Clip 1
Corey:
From my perspective as a marketer, I think that the marketing across each one of the products is relatively the same. It's not really like harder or easier for any one of them. I think the product is kind of the crux there. I love the example of Daniel Vassallo on Twitter. He's a really good thinker. And creator and maker.
He shares openly. He is like all his revenue from the products that he creates. The vast majority of his income comes from info products ebooks and courses and things like that. And then he does some consulting for Gumroad and like I think actually one of his first projects. But the tiniest amount of revenue, I think only does like $1,000 a month is his sass called Userbase.
I think one because it's just inherently harder to find product-market fit with software you can kind of like get lucky and strike gold and like build something that's like very new and needed and just people are clamoring for most of the time. You kind of has to like feel your way around and make a couple of changes and pivots and get up to feature parity in order to start competing with an incumbent or start being attractive for people to you.
Brian:
It's true. It's so hard because it literally has to be solving a problem that people are ready to buy and get their problem solved. Whereas with a course, I found that like, yes, it really, really benefits a lot of people who buy it and watch every lesson and implement it and use it to grow their business. And that's great.
But then there's always other a lot of other buyers, you know, they don't necessarily go through it all. They don't necessarily implement it all, but it's sort of exploratory. Like they'll buy they'll make the purchase just to go down that rabbit hole for a little bit to see what it's like. And maybe they'll learn like, you know what, that's not for me. And in that case, it's still sort of they still got value out of learning that path is not for me. Right.
Clip 2
Corey:
The tension there is that - what am I working on today? Am I working on a product or am I working on marketing? And I have to do both. You know, and it usually involves. But like I'm either answering emails that are marketing-related or I'm in between GitHub issues. Yeah. And it's I mean, one of the.
Brian:
One of the best pieces of advice I've seen a lot of actors give to each other is to do a week on week off for a product or marketing is to spend one week
Corey:
on the product. When I come to like whatever they are you're moving half as fast. That's true. You are moving definitely half as fast. I do a lot of that too, but it's never that clean. It's never like you know, literally Monday to Friday product time and then next Monday to Friday, it's marketing time. I mean, it's never that clean, you know, because opportunities are going to come into your inbox at any time.
And that's when I have to just like flip into marketing mode and go do this podcast, you know.
