This talk from 2008 was new to me and quickly cuts through much of the fog with respect to successful businesses and startups. There’s a mythology around what a successful business or product actually is which damages many from even attempting to enter the marketplace. This shouldn’t be–and isn’t– groundbreaking, but the fact that there’s a mystique around small businesses in some circles of software in particular make this a really entertaining talk about keeping things small and making $1MM. You don’t have to be the next Google.
He does some quick math as follows:
~2000 customers
x $40/mo
x 12 months
= $1,000.000/year
Then he works from a conversion rate to quickly determine # of signups needed per day to achieve the goal:
5% conversion rate
40,000 signups to keep 2k
(110 signups/day)