Moving From Consulting To Products With Andrew Sabetta

[00:03:15] Andrew introduces himself, what he does, and more about the businesses that he started.

[00:09:48] Chris asks Andrew what took him from PHP to Ruby.

[00:12:22] Find out about the project Andrew did with Rails.

[00:14:28] The conversation turns to talking about going from consulting, into wanting to build a product, and the transition being a hard decision.

[00:16:48] Jason tells us about his issue with being idea driven. He’s excited about building, the marketing stuff he’s not good at, and he’s okay with talking to people but he doesn’t want to. He also mentions a great book to read called, The Mom Test.

[00:20:48] Andrew tells us his first experience of chasing an idea of building a product outside of consulting. Chris tells us about an e-book to check out from Rob Walling called, Start Marketing: The Day You Start Coding (and other essays), and what he did to find his product market fit especially doing Go Rails and Ruby on Rails screencasts. Chris talks about investing in “marketing” and interacting on Twitter. He mentions to follow Daniel Vassallo.

[00:30:39] Chris asks Andrew where he feels he’s at in this process.

[00:34:28] One of the things that scares Andrew is support on things and he asks Chris if he ever looked at outsourcing support for his products or if he has any issues keeping up with support requests, and of course Chris has so much to share about this.

[00:40:49] Jason and Andrew chat about their experiences doing products with a partner to help with contributing and marketing and if it worked out or not. Chris mentions selling to print shops as a good place to start.

[00:52:05] Chris talks about an old blog post he did when he was debating on the idea of starting Go Rails and why he posted a survey on his site.

[00:56:17] Chris and Andrew share some great business advice on what’s most important to them which isn’t always the money, but the satisfaction in the end.

[01:00:30] Find out about Chris and Andrew’s thoughts on product ideas.

[01:06:39] Andrew tells us about the different networking groups he was in coming from his last business, and Chris talks about networking local and online.

[01:12:21] Find out where you can follow Andrew on the internet.

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Guest:

Andrew Sabetta

Sponsor:

Honeybadger

Links:

Ruby Radar Newsletter

Ruby Radar Twitter