Growth

A 12-post collection

Strict evenings, early mornings

After acquiring an old-school alarm clock, this week I’ve been paying close attention to my routine.

I’ve never truly been a morning person.

But lately, due in part to having more on my plate (a dog to walk, a partner to look after, and a lack of hot water) I’ve been finding I desperately need more hours in the day.

What I was forgetting was that my evening hours were not well spent. After a long day I’m often tired and lacking motivation. All I really want to do is chill, put my feet up, and watch Slow Horses (or some sort of TV show that is far more trashy!)

My routine was stacked against me: hope (and fail) to do productive, valuable tasks at the end of the day, end up spending too long watching nonsense (aside from Slow Horses — it’s anything but), and then look at my phone and realise I should be in bed… Then end up getting drawn into my phone and realising I should have been in bed an hour ago.

Strict evenings

So I’ve made my evenings stricter. Earlier dinner, less TV, and then as little screen time as possible.

What’s really helped is deliberately putting my phone in another room to where I sleep. I completely removed my charger from the bedroom to avoid having any excuse for bringing my phone to bed.

Bedtime is now a deliberate cut off from screen time.

It’s just me and my alarm clock. And my partner too, I guess!

Calm mornings

What I’ve started to find, after a few weeks, is nothing short of a miracle: I’m actually starting to wake up earlier!

What I love about my mornings now is the tranquility of being awake when no one else is.

No sounds, no chaos, no tasks, no emails.

Just me and my thoughts.

I’m finding I have an hour or more most mornings where I can think, review, reflect, and ponder. I can wander aimlessly in my mind. I can wonder, too.

I’m realising how desperately my mind needed this space to breathe.

Here’s to a calm week ahead.

Other things

  • Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the south of France discussing their careers.
  • What is Founder Mode? Paul Graham of Y Combinator shared an essay outlining how the founder of AirBnB runs differently to most conventional organisations led by managers.
  • After the elation of achieving a milestone with my running last week, I was in awe of someone else this Saturday. I witnessed a blind runner with a guide, and saw how they sped around 5km at the same time as me. There are no limits but those we set ourselves.
  • Perhaps soon your emails might have an expiry date?

Quote

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up." — Paul Valery (a French poet)

A week in Scotland, climbing mountains, and what it takes to make it as a comedian — Weekly Roundup

I’ve been in Scotland this week and, despite having a few days away from my laptop, it’s been busy.

I climbed a Munro — a Scottish mountain that’s at least 3,000 feet high.

I’d never have dreamt of tackling this just a few years ago — why climb a steep hill just to come back down the other side?

It’s a question I was pondering while stumbling up, plodding one foot after the other, being battered by high winds and chilling rain.

The rationale hit me after we reached the top and made our way back to the base. It feels great to accomplish something difficult.

Knowing I had managed to climb to the top of Ben Lawers, the 10th highest Munro, and knowing I had exerted all my energy to get there… it felt good.

Sometimes, doing something hard, no matter how useful, is a reward in itself.

A few other things from the week:

  • A wonderfully practical article on how to grow a newsletter from zero.
  • I spent some time at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. Here are a few jokes from this year to keep you entertained.
  • Every time I go to the Fringe I’m reminded of how hard it is for anyone to break into the comedy world. You need to be funny, and confident in front of a crowd, you need to be a marketer, a sales person, and you need to invest huge amounts of time and money to have a shot at building an audience.
  • We’re already wrapping up series 5 of the EcoSend Podcast. I loved this episode with Michelle Miles on how to make weddings more sustainable.
  • I’ve posted a bunch more of the back catalogue of episodes of Lost + Founder on YouTube.

A quote for the week ahead

“Often it isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the little pebble in your shoe.” — Muhammad Ali

What sells? Climate or ROI?

Climate vs ROI

What sells? 🌍 Climate, or 💰 ROI?

In the world of sustainability, what *actually* sells?

Is it a friendly, climate-focused tagline?

Or is it cold, hard business return-on-investment?

As someone who’s been leading with a sustainability focused message for over a year, just asking that question makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

When selling a product in a crowded market, you always need to stand out from the rest of the industry. And it’s hard to dislike a more sustainable alternative.

Standing out from the industry tends to mean leading with a proposition that is different. If everyone else leads with a pitch around ROI, then how do you lead with a pitch on ROI and still maintain differentiation?

I recently had an inspiring conversation with Tim Schumacher who put the question to me: do people buy based on environmental benefits or business benefits?

What gets you in the door might not be what gets you bought.

From what we’ve seen at EcoSend, leading with a pitch around climate is a fantastic way to drive awareness and attention, and it expresses our values in building the most environmentally conscious email marketing platform in the world.

However, leading with an environmental pitch doesn’t always drive business.

In fact it’s a challenge I’ve heard many times from other founders in the climate space — people love the idea of changing the world for the better, but when push comes to shove the business decision almost always wins out.

That business decision might be:

  • Switching will take time, so we’ll stick with our current tool.
  • We will go with the most trusted brand, to avoid unnecessary risk.
  • There’s a specific feature we need that your product doesn’t have.
  • We can get this cheaper elsewhere.

Fortunately with many environmental focused products and propositions the trade-off of climate vs ROI doesn’t necessarily need to exist.

Often what is better for the environment is also the more effective, more impactful decision for the business.

The challenge is finding the right balance between communicating your climate focus while driving awareness of business impact.

It’s something we’re going to experiment with more at EcoSend — by focusing on sustainability, we’re building a highly optimised, efficient platform where your emails are much more likely to get delivered, opened, read, and actioned.

Can we ultimately drive more people to a climate conscious solution by leading with a business focused pitch?

We’ll find out.

An interview on the Misfit Founders podcast

The incredibly generous and supportive Biro Florin recently invited me on his show Misfit Founders.

The show was filmed in his beautiful house in Brighton, UK, and we chatted about building a SaaS business, and a whole lot more.

It's the first time I've spoken at length about our work on EcoSend and how GoSquared fits into a bigger picture more than ever.

It's a very long show (the best part of two hours!) so if you have the time, I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you Biro, for inviting me on, and helping to set my life goals for a podcasting setup like yours!

Consistency is boring

"It looks almost the same as the last one!"
"It's surely not worth upgrading from last year's model!"
"Apple has really lost its ability to innovate lately."

Another year, another iPhone.

But this is how Apple rolls.

People remember the exciting moments. People get excited for the shiniest things.

But often, success comes from the boring: being consistent, executing relentlessly, not letting things slip.

Apple may not be able to hang on to their success forever, but since 2007 they have shipped at least one new, successful model of iPhone every single year. They didn't even let a global pandemic get in their way.

They’ve never once slipped up — no exploding batteries, no massively unpopular designs, no unexpected huge delays.

That’s boring, but that’s a big part of what has turned the iPhone into a business that generates $200 billion per year.

Most of us aren't running a global consumer electronics business, but I think there's something to take away for all of us — whether you're a founder, an employee, or just trying to improve in your personal life.

Often the success comes not from a single moment of genius, but from the compounding effects of showing up consistently and not giving up.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." — Aristotle

Thready or not, here I come

As you’ve probably seen, Meta launched their newest app today, Threads.

It’s like Twitter, only considerably slimmed down.

For day one, it seems it couldn’t have gone better for the makers of Instagram.

As someone who geeks out on tech products all the time, I find the Threads launch fascinating, so I jotted a few notes and observations down about it.

Timing is everything

It’s no coincidence that Threads is launching in the same week that sentiment towards Twitter is at an all-time low.

Elon Musk decided to enforce aggressive rate limiting for all users, made Tweeetdeck redundant for many, and obliterated the value of public URLs by preventing tweet embeds for non-logged-in users.

It’s clear Threads could be better.

It could have more features.

It’s not quite ready when you compare the feature checklist.

But launching this week while Twitter is in the dumps (more than usual) may just give it the strong gust of goodwill that helps this spark of a product turn into a full-blown, roaring fire of a platform.

Ship early, iterate

Many “critical” features aren’t in at launch, but is the app and experience solid? Is it easy for new users to onboard? Is the experience reaching a threshold that the majority of users will enjoy and trust? Yes.

You want the ability to filter your feed, you want better search, you want to have more clarity on who’s following you. You want an API. You want the app if you’re in the EU!

But all of those are trade-offs between shipping now or shipping later.

Someone had to make that call. The easy option is always to wait. Waiting always feels safer.

Shipping this week looks like it was the right call. The rest can come later.

Aside: If you’re interested, a while ago I wrote about the importance of shipping early, and often.

Nothing to lose

What I’ve enjoyed most so far as an observer of the Threads launch today has been seeing Meta operate like they have nothing to lose.

Launch today. Move fast. Share the numbers. Integrate with the open standards (eventually).

It seems unlike many of Meta’s most significant big launches: Instagram Stories was a bolt-on to not lose out to Snapchat, Reels is another tab to avoid losing out to TikTok, and Instagram itself was an acquisition.

Threads, though, is a joy to see: Zuck and the team building something that doesn’t just compete, but that could genuinely be better than Twitter. Making something people want. With a beautiful blank slate.

Maybe I am just relieved to not have another tab, view, or swipe in the Instagram app. Or perhaps it’s that my trust in Twitter has dwindled.

Whatever the reason, I’m rooting for Threads. If you’re on it, join me!

Sign up for your own product

"You don't get a second chance to make a first impression."

If you work at a gym, you know where the changing rooms are.

If you’re joining a gym for the first time, and you’re heading in for your first session, everything is alien.

You don’t know where the changing rooms are, and if the signs don’t point you in the right direction, you’re lost.

When I signed up for a gym session recently, I felt totally lost and a little foolish, wandering around trying to find somewhere to get changed into my kit. I almost left out of sheer embarrassment before I plucked up the courage to return to the reception desk and ask.

Whether you build software, build physical products, own a restaurant, or run a gym, nothing beats using your service as a first-time user to find out how you can improve it.

It’s always great to get feedback from customers but sometimes they don’t tell you everything. Sometimes they may not even care as much as you do about the experience.

It’s easy to even get frustrated that customers don’t “get” the thing you’ve built. You’re so proud of certain elements you can easily get blinded from the areas you’ve overlooked.

A while ago, I gave a talk on user onboarding, and one of the recommendations was to sign up for your own product every week. I even paused to encourage the audience to put a recurring event in their calendars!

Several years on, I feel that suggestion is as relevant as ever, and it’s advice that’s easy for me to give and seemingly hard to follow.

When did you last sign up for your own product?

16 lessons from 16 years of GoSquared

Today marks the 16th (yes, you read that right — sixteenth) birthday of GoSquared.

We were just kids when we started building this thing.

We were meant to be doing homework and getting into trouble, but we were obviously far too cool for that.

To celebrate this milestone, we put together a timeline of our journey from February 2006 to today.

We also took the opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons we've learnt along the way. 16 lessons to be precise. Maybe you've come across many of these before, but it never hurts to reflect...

1. Build something people want.
2. Share early, share often.
3. Constraints breed creativity — embrace them.
4. The details are not the details, they make the product.
5. Use your own product. Be your own customer.
6. Charge the trust battery.
7. Your customers are smart — treat them accordingly.
8. Treat each customer as unique, but scale your process.
9. Never underestimate what a small group of focused, aligned, motivated people can do.
10. Celebrate the small wins. Have fun along the way.
11. Most meetings don’t need to happen.
12. Knowing yourself is a superpower.
13. Simplicity is a war.
14. If you think you’re repeating yourself too much, repeat some more.
15. Focus is impossibly hard, but without it you’re doomed.
16. Just do it.

If you want to dive into any of these lessons further (and have a cup of tea in hand), then please take a look at the complete post over on the GoSquared Blog.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey so far. Friends, family, colleagues, customers, investors, and all the amazing people we've met along the way.

Building a long lasting startup – interview with Biro Florin and yours truly

Building a Long Lasting Startup

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by prolific podcaster, entrepreneur, and all-round lovely guy Biro Florin this week on the The Startup Corner.

We spoke about how GoSquared got started, why a healthy dose of naivety can be an asset, and how raising money ideally needs to start with asking yourself a big, deep question. Plus a whole lot more.

If you have a spare moment in your day I'd encourage you to check out the show – Biro is a fantastic host and presenter, and a real pro when it comes to producing a quality podcast in record time.

View the show on YouTube

Episode 7 of Lost and Founder – Ask Me Anything (AMA) Special

In this special episode of the Lost and Founder podcast I share my answers to three questions I received when doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Software as a Service community on Reddit this week.

It's hard to scale down an hour long conversation, followed by an evening of written Q&A on Reddit into a 20 minute show, but I tried.

In this episode I have experimented with a different format – with three questions from the AMA, and a summary of my answers. I hope you enjoy the episode!

I share my answers to these three questions:

  • How has working with the team changed over the years?
  • How have we managed to get publicity for GoSquared over the years?
  • What advice would I give to my 20 year old self?

Actions / take aways

As I have been doing for a few weeks, I want this podcast to be increasingly valuable for listeners, so I tried to boil down the show into a few actionable takeaways:

  • As a CEO, a lot of your job is to: give direction, unblock, and communicate with your team.
  • Don't purely focus on the marketing that is measurable – take risks, experiment, be bold. Do things that are impossible to measure.
  • With your marketing – make time for responding and reacting to news-worthy events in your industry. Newsjacking is a thing!
  • Be clear with what you want from life, from your business, from your team. It will make a lot of things easier.
  • Find a coach to help you make time for yourself and clarify your thoughts. You'll be glad you did.

A few links to what I mentioned in this episode of Lost and Founder:

Thanks, and see you next time!

Introducing the Lost and Founder Podcast

I co-founded GoSquared all the way back in 2006(!) with two of my best friends from school – Geoff and JT, and have been building, learning, failing, and winning in the world of software ever since.

Monday of this week was a rubbish day for me. I woke up frustrated, anxious, feeling deflated and not sure what to do. I almost felt like calling in sick. But instead I put my running kit on and got out for a run in the rain.

When I came back, I said "screw it" and hit record on my Mac, and spoke about what was on my mind.

Later in the evening, through the wonders of SaaS – tools like Transistor, Descript, and Epidemic Sound enabled me to take my ramblings and make them into a podcast in a few hours.

I didn't overthink this, and I know I can do better, but I started, and I hope I can continue.

Here's the show: Lost and Founder podcast

This whole thing is a bit scary – I haven't been this open or put myself personally out there much like this before. I hope you’ll like the show and join me as the journey continues.

Should you use Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse for live audio?

Clubhouse has been all the rage for months, but is it already starting to fade into irrelevance?

At GoSquared, we have been looking at how we can speak with our audience directly – we want to share more of what we’ve learnt with others out there, particularly with other people starting and growing SaaS businesses.

We have run a podcast in the past, and we’ve put together video content, and we’ve done a fair bit of blogging over the years, but live audio is something we’ve never experimented with at all.

So we wanted to give live audio a shot. But what is the best tool for the job?

Clubhouse is now a household name and synonymous for live audio streaming – it pretty much created the category. But Twitter has just released Spaces to more users – a product with extremely similar functionality to Clubhouse, but integrated into the main Twitter app.

I asked my audience (on Twitter, ironically) and the votes flooded in with a clear winner: Twitter Spaces is where to start a live audio stream.

Should I use this simple, mildly biased (users on Twitter will surely prefer audio on Twitter?!) poll, as gospel? I suspect not, but for the next week I will be trying Twitter Spaces out and seeing what happens.

Can I build an audience of engaged listeners on Twitter Spaces? Is my voice ready for the airwaves? Do people even want to hear what I have to say? All will be revealed once I try this out…

If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter!