Episode 803 | 8 Key Takeaways from MicroConf Europe 2025

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's it really like to attend MicroConf? In this episode, Rob Walling and Laura Sprinkle, founder of Rootabl, recap MicroConf Europe 2025 in Istanbul. They discuss the MicroConf vibe, standout talks on AI, affiliate marketing, and SaaS growth, as well as the value of networking and connecting while getting outside the conference room. Topics we cover: (5:01) – The friendly, diverse MicroConf crowd (8:06) – Impressions on Istanbul (9:24) – Marc Thomas on lifecycle marketing (11:34) – Michelle Hansen & John Knox on networking (13:04) – MicroConf Excursions (16:45) – Einar Volset on SaaS Buyers (20:27) – Rob’s AI talk (23:27) – Laura’s talk about affiliate programs (24:47) – Jesse Schoberg on ranking in ChatGPT and Google's AI (26:31) – Attendee-Led Workshops (27:58) – Kevin Sahin’s unfiltered lessons scaling to $2M (31:12) – James Mooring’s journey to $2M ARR Links from the Show: Get your Ticket for MicroConf - Portland, Oregon, on April 12 -14, 2026 | Use promo code ROB50 for $50 off your ticket. TinySeed Join MicroConf Connect Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hansen The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz There’s ONLY 5 Ways to Use AI in SaaS (prove me wrong) Rob Walling (@robwalling) | X Rootabl Laura Sprinkle | LinkedIn Laura Sprinkle (@imlaurasprinkle) | X 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	You're listening to Start Up for the rest of us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. In this episode, I talked
0:05.0	through the eight key takeaways from MicroConf Europe 2025, which happened just a couple
0:10.1	weeks ago. And I talked these through with the founder of Rutable, Laura Sprinkle, who attended
0:15.5	the event, and this was her very first microconf. As I said, Laura runs Rutable, which is a tiny seed company, and this was her
0:23.3	first exposure to the broader microcomf community. So it's really nice that we each have, obviously,
0:29.7	different exposure. I've been to 25 flagship microcomps, and this was her first, and we weigh in on the
0:35.2	key takeaways that we pulled away from the talks and the hallway track.
0:40.8	Before we dive in, early bird tickets for MicroConf US 2026 are on sale.
0:46.2	So if you listen to this episode and you're thinking, I want to get in a room with 275 amazing bootstrapped and mostly bootstrap founders,
0:53.6	you should head to microconf.com slash
0:55.6	US. The next event is in Portland, Oregon from April 12th through the 14th of 2026, and we have
1:02.2	sold out our last several events. We've already sold a big chunk of early bird tickets,
1:08.0	and prices on these tickets will go up on October 22nd or when the first
1:12.1	hundred tickets have sold. If you're planning to come, you do want to get your tickets now.
1:16.5	Tickets today are as cheap as they will ever be. That's microconf.com slash US and use
1:22.1	promo code Rob 50 for $50 off. And with that, let's dive into the key takeaways from MicroConf Europe 2025.
1:37.4	Laura Sprinkle, welcome to the show.
1:39.6	Thanks for having me.
1:41.0	It is great to have you on for your first ever appearance on startups for the rest of us.
1:45.6	We're going to be talking through MicroConf Europe 2025 that just happened in Istanbul, Turkey.
1:51.7	And before we get into that, I want to give folks just one or two minutes about who we are and your expertise.
1:57.2	You are the founder of Roodable.
	...

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