Episode 778 | Pricing Pilot Projects, Niching Down, Skipping Stairsteps, and More Listener Questions (A Rob Solo Adventure)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do you price pilot projects and niche down without hedging your bets? In this episode, Rob Walling answers listener questions about pricing pilots, choosing niches, and skipping steps on his Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping. Want to get your question answered? Drop them here. Topics we cover: (3:25) – Feedback on Season 4 of TinySeed Tales (8:55) – How do you price pilot projects? (15:11) – How to niche down and de-risking a new SaaS? (22:40) – What does it really take to build a hit open-source tool? (29:53) – Can you skip straight to SaaS or is that a trap? Links from the Show: MicroConf Connect: Online community of SaaS founders TinySeed Tales Podcast Startup Stories Podcast Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being an entrepreneur is making calculated gambols.
0:04.5	When I hear de-risk, that feels like hedging.
0:07.4	It feels like, I'm going to have a contingency.
0:09.8	The contingency is to pivot.
0:11.9	The contingency is if there's not enough demand
0:14.8	that you either figure out how to generate the demand
0:17.2	or if the niche isn't big enough
0:20.0	or the market isn't big enough or the total
0:22.0	reachable market isn't big enough, then you expand later.
0:42.1	You're listening to Startups for the rest of us. This is the podcast that focuses on helping founders build incredible businesses that don't make a dent in the universe, but might just change your little corner of it.
0:53.7	And while you're building that incredible business, and maybe you bootstrap it, maybe
0:57.3	you raise funding, it kind of doesn't matter.
0:59.8	You're not sacrificing your freedom, your purpose, your relationships, your sanity,
1:06.3	your mental health in order to grow it.
1:08.9	It's not growth at all costs, but it's build incredible businesses
1:12.7	that provide us with an incredible life and also improve the lives of those around you.
1:19.5	I've been recording this podcast for more than 15 years. This is episode 778, and today I'm going
1:26.4	to be answering listener questions. Some great questions in the queue.
1:31.0	And if you have a question you'd like me or me and a guest to answer in a future episode,
1:35.9	you can go to Startup for the Rest of Us.com and click ask a question in the top nav.
1:41.4	Audio and video questions tend to go to the top of the stack,
1:44.4	although this time it looks like I have a question from X, Twitter,
	...

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