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The Bootstrapped Founder - [Bonus] Sahil Lavingia — Gumroad’s Pricing Disaster
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[Bonus] Sahil Lavingia — Gumroad’s Pricing Disaster

The Bootstrapped Founder

12/20/22

66m

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Yesterday, the creator economy learned that Gumroad, a platform where creators have been building their businesses by selling their services and products, increased their prices significantly. That caused a lot of backlash in the community, with people threatening to switch to other platforms and criticizing how the price hike was communicated. It’s been an intense topic of community discussion.

Today, I am talking to Sahil, the CEO of Gumroad, about what prompted this change, what happened to cause such a stir, and where Gumroad is heading in the future. Here’s Sahil.

You can find this conversation on YouTube.

Previous Episode

When it comes to selling a small indie business, defensibility is a key factor that potential buyers will consider. A unique moat, or competitive advantage, lets your business stands out from the competition and is seen as a valuable acquisition.

Many small founders sell their businesses because they want to get rid of them, and that attracts bargain hunters. It’s easy to negotiate a founder down when they feel pressure to sell a business that’s not very stable or profitable in the first place.

Being able to show that potential competitors have to climb a rather sizeable barrier to entry into your market will net you a significant premium when it’s valuation time. The absence of such a moat around your entrepreneurial castle will push down the price you can ask for. While buyers will still acquire profitable businesses without an oversized advantage, it’s a good idea to consider how you can set up a moat around your business. It will make things much easier.

- Build a Defensible Indie 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.

You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Next Episode

Today, I’m talking to Ana Bibikova, a defender and cheerleader for introverts in entrepreneurship. Ana knows what it means to be skeptical of loud and salesy marketing tactics. They might work great for extroverts, but not so much for the quiet types. Today, we’ll talk about how you can build a public-facing brand without resorting to all the obnoxious and much-too in-your-face tactics. We’ll talk about being introverted, working with introverts, and serving introverts. Here’s Ana.

00:00:00 Entrepreneurship and Introversion
00:10:13 Growing up being introverted without knowing what it is
00:16:57 A History of Introversion
00:22:49 The loud and shouty approach to social media
00:27:33 How do you stay quiet when you’re selling?
00:34:07 You’re the magnet for signals from the people around you
00:42:45 How to do self-promotion as an introvert vs. an extrovert
00:49:03 You attract what you put out, not what you say

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.

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