Rob Walling

The TinySeed Millionaire Rate is 43%. Definition: Of @tinyseedfund companies no longer in operation (sold OR shut down), 43% of those founders are now millionaires.💰 This % will obviously change over time. It's still early, and the numbers are still small (~2% of companies have shut down. ~4% have sold). But this is yet another reminder of how resilient and insanely valuable SaaS companies are. Personally, I find this number incredible. Much higher than I would have expected, and it brings me nothing but joy knowing the lives that have been changed through entrepreneurship. (cc @einarvollset)

@noahkagan Fuck dude, sorry to hear it. Glad you were able to figure this out (and surprised no one at Facebook noticed this on your behalf 😕).

Last Saturday night, 2:55 AM started the worst week of the year for me. Facebook restricted our ad account out of nowhere. Fifteen years of running Facebook ads. Over $20M spent cumulatively. I personally helped build Facebook Ads in the early days. And on a random Saturday night, an email landed saying our account was restricted, no reason given. 😞 I figured it would resolve itself. Our ads are straightforward comparison ads for products we promote on AppSumo. I called Facebook (you can actually call them), and the rep said they'd review it and have it cleared in 24 to 48 hours. I looked at the recent ads. Two had been rejected, both AI software ads. Nothing that should take down a whole account. Context: my last startup got permanently banned by Facebook. That ban killed our revenue from $150K a day down to $15K a day overnight. That's a story for another time. But sitting there at 2:55 AM, all of that fear came rushing back. 48 hours later, Monday morning. Still restricted. I called again. They said it looked positive and we'd get an email when it cleared. I started checking email obsessively. Nothing. So I went into Hail Mary mode. I reached out to Naomi, a VP of product. To the COO. To the CTO. To old account managers. To friends who work there. I even found a guy whose entire business is getting people's Facebook accounts unbanned. (Ours wasn't technically banned, just restricted, but yolo.) Every night that week, my family would go to sleep and I'd go upstairs and call Facebook ad support. I was depressed. I was frustrated. The thought running through my head was that 16 years of work was about to get erased because some intern or agency we'd worked with did something stupid I didn't know about. Thursday, 1 AM. I'm in the account again, scrolling through the restriction page, and I notice something I hadn't seen before. A line that says "data sources restricted." I click into it. It says: you're sending traffic from an adult site. WHAT!?! I sat there staring at it. That is not possible. I started digging to figure out wtf. It turns out there's a thing called pixel bombing. Pixels are public. Someone can grab your pixel and intentionally place it on bad sites to get you banned. I didn't know this existed until that moment. Maybe it was this? Then I dug deeper and realized years ago we'd built a product, and someone had taken our AppSumo Facebook tracking pixel and put it on that product. A random user of that product put it on a adult site. Facebook saw traffic from an adult site coming into our pixel and flagged the whole account. I removed the pixel from the product. Blocked the offending sites in Facebook's settings. Submitted a new review request. The next morning, the account was unlocked. Poof. A few lessons for others: - Audit your pixels. Know where they are placed. - Have a separate ad account running as a backup so if something happens you are not dead in the water. - Get an account rep account support set up before you need it. Or find an agency who has direct Facebook contacts. - And if you're a smaller company doing 50% or 75% of your revenue on one channel, build a hedge. The day Facebook decides you don't exist, you don't. One thing that was a quiet positive in the middle of all this: our ads were dark for 48 hours and the revenue impact was smaller than I expected. Facebook ads are 5-10% of our business. Worth knowing what each channel actually contributes when it goes to zero. That was the worst week of my life in the past years! And it came down to a pixel I forgot we had, on a product I forgot we built, on a site I never visited.

@dawsmik @Bencera @marckohlbrugge Same 😕

@robwalling @Bencera @marckohlbrugge I wonder why Gmail can't defeat spam effectively now that they have Gemini.

i'm raising $31M to block Polsia spam emails

@Bencera @marckohlbrugge This is not true. I’ve clicked unsubscribe six or seven times. I’ve had to block the entire domain with a Gmail filter and emails still somehow get through.

@marckohlbrugge you don't need to raise that much money, just literally click on ONE unsubscribe link on ANY polsia.app email and you won't receive ANY from any polsia.app company anymore!

@amandanat @randfish 🙌🏻🙌🏻

@robwalling @randfish Rob, YOURE THE BEST. Saw your order come through and I was so pumped! Thank you.

Heck yes I just pre-ordered the new Zero Click Marketing book from @randfish and @amandanat 🎉 (link below)

@njhern @hustlin_heev @celispj That's not far from the haircut I had in 1998 😑

@robwalling @hustlin_heev @celispj

I wish someone would warn startup founders that lower prices usually (I.e. almost always) lead to higher churn.

@JustinFerriman Yup, not everything is worth that. But personally, unless it was a side project (or “step 1 business” as I call them), I wouldn’t start a business that couldn’t charge at least $49 or 99/mo.

@robwalling While I appreciate that data, not everything warrants a $99/mo price tag anymore. Especially true with how affordable infrastructure is now.

@hustlin_heev @celispj 💇‍♂️

@robwalling @celispj ur from the bay right? next time u slide here ill take u to get a fresh fade in oakland!

@hustlin_heev @celispj That’s great. Glad I’ve been more helpful than otherwise over the years 😉 Feel free to comment on my hair. Everyone else already has 🙄

U, Mr Walling, can roast me all day cuz ur stair step method saved me 3 years of $0 and failures If roasting gets really bad I might clap back and roast ur hair cut tho! (Shots fired 😂) There are differing stats on this btw @celispj from JudgeMe is over $10M ARR from a $15/month plans But I think he’s a 🦄 right place right time right category right execution

@hustlin_heev It’s all good. I wasn’t trying to troll you, I actually like having yet another data point in support of my stance. Glad you ran the experiment, cuz now you know 💪🔥

lol i heard the warning a lot i was "tryna be innovative" jk 😂 the truth is i kept getting messages "i love your product but its too expensive do you have any discoutns" So i lowered to $19 to test for a couple months Had lots of more downloads + conversions but way higher churn So now im going back.

@earthlingworks “I built 12 codebases in 12 months” 😑

100%. People calling these “products” or “startups” really should be using the word “projects” instead.

@abhagsain @terencebuilds @TitanxCoaching @dvassallo That’s MicroConfconnect.com

Yeah. They're only targetting Series A founders so must be costing a fortune. There's Growth Mentor .io and then paid communities like smallbets by @dvassallo. (I actually paid for it but couldn't stay active) @robwalling also has a paid founder group matching service and a community on slack. I think it went to a paid model last year.

alright what's similar to @TitanxCoaching for us bootstrappers?

@hrishio 🔥🔥

Fast and Slow - A marketing tip I picked up from @robwalling (sorry about the 500 ummms.. first time posting a selfie video!)

@crescitaly Now more than 50,000 copies sold.

@robwalling 29K copies on a technical book for indie founders is genuinely impressive. Most business books die after launch week. The fact this keeps selling proves word-of-mouth is the real flywheel — great content creates its own distribution.

Welp, The SaaS Playbook just sold its 29,000th copy.📙 A huge thank you if you’ve purchased a copy, gifted or recommended it to a friend, or given it a shout out online.🔥 That is the #1 reason the book continues to sell, and I really, really appreciate it.🙏🏻 Since we’re a bunch of data nerds, here's the breakdown of copies sold by sales channel: 📚 35% - Amazon (paperback + Kindle) 🎧 26% - Audible ✨ 25% - Kickstarter 🖥️ 11% - Direct from saasplaybook.com 🍏 1% - Apple Books Top line sales are just under $400,000 USD. With the caveat that some of these platforms make it very difficult to tell how much you’ve sold (I’m looking at you, Audible 👀). Reminder that: 📉 Amazon takes 30% 😱 Audible takes 75% 🤝 Kickstarter takes 8% 💳 Stripe takes 3% (for my direct sales) And finally, the breakdown across formats: 🎧 43% - Audiobook
📖 29% - Print (paperback, hardcover)
📱 28% - Ebook (Kindle, PDF, epub) Thanks again for buying, reading, and recommending. Y’all are the best ❤️

"I wish I could take a business vacation with 200 of my closest #SaaS founder friends," you say. "And I wish there could be a thermal lagoon involved." Wish granted: microconf.com/europe

@elvissun @helloitsolly It depends on why you’re plateau’d. There are only 7 reasons SaaS plateaus. Some require a pivot, others don’t. I cover all of them here: youtu.be/Sv1IO5mmTKY?si…

@robwalling @helloitsolly does breaking through the plateau require a major pivot? is it easier to do that or start something new?

My SaaS revenue and sign ups are flat I'm plateau-d at $1,000,000 a year A great achievement but a challenging spot to be in According to @robwalling only 5% of bootstrapped startups escape these types of revenue plateau The more complicated issue is that I am struggling to stay motivated The business is funding my lifestyle and that lifestyle is really good I travel constantly, see friends, train 5x week, give back, connect with other makers, spend time in nature, and fly business class The things that motivated me no longer do, and the idea of pushing through feels almost ridiculous At times, when things are flowing I feel capable and ready to keep going But my desire to move through tougher challenges (hiring, addressing technical debt) is decreasing I'm unable to cultivate urgency in the way I was before Maybe the lifestyle business I've built is enough

@helloitsolly Haven’t seen this yet. Maybe for a few months. But they always get bored. It’s like running a dry cleaning business instead of a startup. No learning. More like clocking a 9-to-5 than being an entrepreneur (except you’re hopefully getting paid better as an entrepreneur).

@robwalling This reply assumes most / all founders want to break through a plateau, right? Do you ever see founders who are accepting of it aka ‘I’m happy maintaining the status quo, and trying to return to growth is more work than I’m willing to undertake now’