Ep. 155 – Valuer.ai’s Taylor Ryan on Startup-Corporate Matchmaking through Data & Crowdsourcing
Taylor Ryan, CMO of Valuer.ai, talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about Startup-Corporate Matchmaking. Valuer.ai matches startups with corporates, accelerators, and investors based on AI and crowdsourcing.Key pointsValuer.ai …
Are You Prepared for a Faster Future?
We’re so excited to be bringing you the 3rd Annual IO Summit. You’re not going to want to miss it… Grab your ticket today and save up to $500. Early bird pricing ends July 15th. https://theiosummit.com/tickets
Ep. 154 – Brock Blake, Co-founder and CEO of Lendio on Financing Entrepreneurs at Scale
Brock Blake, Co-founder and CEO of Lendio on Financing Entrepreneurs at Scale Interview with Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside InnovationInside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world…
Ep. 153 – Mike McDerment, FreshBooks Co-founder/CEO and Author of Breaking the Time Barrier on Building and Scaling a Company
Mike McDerment is Co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s number one cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Mike talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about building and scaling a company, product development, and his free e-book called Breaking the Time Barrier.
Mike built a simple tool to solve his accounting problem, and now 20 million people have used it. After building the first version,, Mike soon hired a software designer. They worked on the product for nine months, then added another co-founder and employees. The team valued the connection to their customers, always showing the product early in development. By understanding the market, the team knew what to build first.
Bootstrapping the Company
- Raising capital is not success. A better strategy is to find customers and fund yourself
- Over ten years, FreshBooks de-risked the market, product, team, and model.
- The first round of venture money was $30 million.
Obstacles and Things That Almost Killed FreshBooks
- Check out Blog post: https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/7-ways-ive-almost-killed-freshbooks
- Listen to advisors, but trust yourself.
- Sometimes you move fast, but some areas you need to slow down, especially with product-market fit. Don’t Rush.
Breaking The Time Barrier
- Breaking the Time Barrier, Mike’s book for his customers doing client services work explains how to price services.
- Focus on value-based billing instead of on the number of hours worked. Understand how big the problem is and how expensive it is.
- Nobody cares about tech. They care about the value they get from tech.
Product Development
- Better to focus on building benefits like time savings, revenue generation, or performance. Brings more value for your customer.
- Frame pricing on value. e.g., $50 a month will save 20 hrs, or for less than a cup a coffee, you can have this service.
What’s different for a company at scale?
- Culture – How does a company respond when challenged with something?
- Customer-obsessed
How do you maintain the freshness of a company?
- Combo of direction and constraints for motivation.
- Creates a condition for taking chances.
For More Information
For more information on Mike McDerment or FreshBooks check out freshbooks.com.
If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy:
Ep. 146 – GoSquared’s James Gill on Product Design, Listening to Customers & Making it Easy
Ep. 114 – Canva’s Cameron Adams on Democratization of Design
Ep. 113 – ProfitWell founder Patrick Campbell on Growth, Pricing and SaaS
Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, acast.com/privacy
Inside Outside Innovation Podcast’s Top 10 Episodes of 2019
Inside Outside Innovation Podcast From innovators to entrepreneurs and CEOs to authors, the Inside Outside Innovation Podcasts brings you insight on the latest tools, trends, and tactics for accelerating innovation, launching new ideas, and building better products. Each week Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Founder, interviews corporate and startup innovation leaders from around the world about their […]
Ep. 152 – Acceleprise’s Olivia O’Sullivan on Investing in Corporate/Startup Collaboration
Olivia O’Sullivan is the Head of Corporate Engagement at Acceleprise, a B2B SaaS accelerator. Accelerprise invests in early-tech companies building enterprise technology. Olivia’s focus is on mid-market and enterprise companies interested in colla…
Ep. 151 – Jeff Dyer, Author of Innovation Capital: How to Compete–and Win–Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders
Jeff Dyer is the author of Innovator’s DNA, Innovator’s Method, and Innovation Capital. He talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about innovative leaders and how they generate creative ideas. In Innovator’s DNA, Jeff identi…
Ep. 150 – Sylvain Labs’ Alain Sylvain on New Idea Creation for Business and Consumer Needs
Alain Sylvain is the founder of Sylvain Labs, a strategy and design company helping corporations like Google, Spotify and Nike, think about their future. Alain Sylvain talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about how to create ne…
Inside Outside Innovation Summit 2019
As regular readers and listeners of InsideOutside.io, we wanted to give you the first sneak peek and opportunity to be a part of The Inside Outside Innovation Summit 2019. Inside Outside Innovation Summit The event will run October 20-22 as part of StartupWeek Lincoln with the theme of Talent, Technology, and the Future of Innovation. This year […]
Ep. 149 – Paul Skinner, Author of Collaborative Advantage and Founder of Agency of the Future
Paul Skinner is the author of Collaborative Advantage: How collaboration beats competition as a strategy for success and founder of Agency of the Future. His work has always been about helping people create a collaborative advantage. Brian A…
