166: Daniel Vassallo — Building a Portfolio of Small Bets
The Bootstrapped Founder
11/23/22
•61m
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Today, I am talking to Daniel Vassallo, writer, founder, and person with very strong opinions. He is building a portfolio of small bets in public, on Twitter. I will talk to him about the importance of making money in diversified ways, how to structure your life around being a founder, and how to figure out which business ideas might actually work.
Here is Daniel Vassallo.
What is the lifetime value of a subscription business? 1:12
Different kinds of software fit different pricing models. 5:04
What is a portfolio of small bets? 9:30
Business is unpredictable. You need to radically reduce the input. 13:48
What common things do you share with other entrepreneurs? 17:46
Don’t try to be too novel. 21:31
What’s a good approach to spreading out your experiments? 26:14
What is the best price for your business? 40:08
How Pieter Levels’ portfolio has changed over time. 45:58
How you can use social media to get new ideas. 51:26
Sometimes it’s something seemingly unrelated that opens your eyes to a new way of doing things. 55:01
Links:
- Daniel's Revenue/Days on Market graph.
This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.
Here's the blog post for this episode.
You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.
Previous Episode
165: Why You Shouldn’t Sell Your Business
November 18, 2022
•14m
I was talking to Damon Chen, who built Testimonial.to to $400.000 in ARR this week, and at one point, he mentioned that he isn’t looking into selling his business just yet. Maybe even never.
That got me thinking.
While we all want to build sellable businesses, is there such a thing as selling too early? How can we determine when that phase ends and when it’s time to get acquired? Should we even do that, ever?
Let’s look into why we might want to hold on to our business even when acquirers come knocking.
And by the way, if you’re just starting out on your founder journey and you think that this would be a nice champagne problem to have, don’t underestimate having these things figured out in advance.
- Why You Shouldn’t Sell Your Business
- Find your Following, my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course
- Zero to Sold & The Embedded Entrepreneur, my books on entrepreneurship
This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.
Next Episode
167: Find Business Ideas on Social Media
November 25, 2022
•17m
In my conversation with Daniel Vassallo this week, I learned that Daniel uses social media —Twitter in particular— to find inspiration for his own work as a teacher and content creator. Intentionally doomscrolling Twitter to come up with writing prompts and business ideas? Why not!
If we consider this a strategic effort, not just wasting our time on social media, let's develop a few frameworks that lead to more tangible results.
Today, I want to talk about finding ideas, problems, and points of tension that hint at practical business opportunities on social media.
- Find Business Ideas on Social Media
- Find your Following, my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course
- Zero to Sold & The Embedded Entrepreneur, my books on entrepreneurship
This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.
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