Growth

Interview with Jack Butcher of Visualize Value on the My First Million podcast.

“Jack Butcher talks about how he’s built up Visualize Value and “Build Once, Sell Twice”, where he’s productized his services. Sam and Jack talk about scaling to $1m in revenue in 18 months, plus other opportunities that Jack sees for content creators”

I love Jack’s brilliant idea of creating simple infographics to explain complex ideas. Check out his Twitter feed to see the images. He now has over 108k Twitter followers. That is up over 15k in just a few weeks. That is the power of a good idea!

“You know the old expression, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps?” It applies to your startup, too. Bootstrapping your startup means growing your business with little or no venture capital or outside investment. It means relying on your own savings and revenue to expland”

A comprehensive overview of how Spotify grew to 1 million users in just under 3 years. 

If you don’t know the story of how AirBnB started, this post is worth a read. It goes to show that a big company can start from very humble beginnings.

“In 2007, designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia could not afford the rent on their San Francisco apartment. To make ends meet, they decided to turn their loft into a lodging space, but, as Gebbia explained, “We didn’t want to post on Craigslist because we felt it was too impersonal. Our entrepreneur instinct said ‘build your own site.’ So we did.”

A design conference was coming to town and hotel space was limited, so they set up a simple website with pictures of their loft-turned-lodging space—complete with three air mattresses on the floor and the promise of a home-cooked breakfast in the morning. This site got them their first three renters, each one paying $80; after that first weekend, they began receiving emails from people around the world asking when the site would be available for destinations like Buenos Aires, London, and Japan.”

“In the summer of 2008, the founders needed a way to raise money. They bought a large amount of cereal and designed special edition election-themed boxes, released that fall—Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s, which were sold at convention parties for $40 a box . They sold 500 boxes of each cereal, helping them to raise around $30,000 for AirBed & Breakfast.”