#155 – Finding the Right Models for Growth with Brian Balfour of Reforge

Indie Hackers

Courtland Allen and Channing Allen

Startups, Entrepreneurship, Makers, Indie, Bootstrapping, Online, Technology, Business, Founders, Bootstrappers, Ideas, Tech, Indiehackers, Hackers

4.9 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2020

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ever since I came across his blog years ago, Brian Balfour (@bbalfour) has been one of the most influential people for how I think about growing online businesses. Not only is Brian a successful blogger, but he's also served as the VP of Growth at HubSpot and founded four companies. His most recent business, Reforge, generates millions in revenue helping tech professionals boost their skills. In this episode, Brian explains why it's crucial to have a visual model for growth, shares his models for growing Reforge, and discusses why sometimes the best thing you can do is the exact opposite of what everyone else is.Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/155-brian-balfour-of-reforge

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What's up, everybody?
0:08.4	This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
0:12.9	On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.
0:18.6	How do they get to where they are today?
0:20.1	How do they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own profitable internet businesses. Today, I'm talking to Brian Balfour, the founder and CEO of Reforge. Brian is a prolific blogger on the topics of growth and user acquisition.
0:40.9	He's had a successful career along the same topic,
0:44.0	culminating in his role as the VP of Growth at HubSpot.
0:47.7	He has grown products to millions of daily active users.
0:51.3	He's also a serial founder himself.
0:53.1	I believe you started four companies,
0:54.7	Brian. Is that right? Yeah, it depends on how you count. But yeah. And you've raised money
0:59.5	from venture capitalists. You've bootstrapped. You've sold companies. You've done it all, really.
1:04.5	And today you're joining me on the Andy Hackers podcast. So welcome to the show.
1:08.0	Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. I first found you online, I think a couple years ago, and I was reading your blog, and you
1:16.9	had a post called Why Product Market Fit is not enough.
1:20.9	And I've never read anyone who said anything like this before.
1:23.6	Product Market Fit is kind of hailed as the, I know, the pinnacle of startup success.
1:28.7	It's what every company needs if it wants to hit a home run and basically become everything
1:32.5	its founders dreamed it could become.
1:33.9	And yet you were saying that's not quite enough.
1:35.7	Can you share with us your opinions there?
1:37.8	Why is product market fit not enough for founders to succeed?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Courtland Allen and Channing Allen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Courtland Allen and Channing Allen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.