5 Podcasts for Bootstrapped Software Business Owners
Listening to podcasts is probably the main way I consume information nowadays. One of my favorite things to do is actually taking long walks in the late afternoon or evening while listening to podcasts. I find it both entertaining and educational, there's so much content out there.
While I listen to many podcasts about different topics, the ones I regularly listen to are mostly about running bootstrapped software businesses as they're very relevant to my current situation as a co-founder of Highview Apps. I especially like the ones where the hosts are developers themselves as you can really relate to the things they talk about.
Here are my current top 5.
1. Startups For the Rest of Us
This podcast hosted by Rob Walling and Mike Taber has been around for a long time now and I've been listening to it regularly for years. There's a lot of great advice here for bootstrapped/single founders and many of the topics are SaaS-related. They cover all kinds of topics related to running a small software business from building an MVP, to marketing, hiring people, and health.
A new episode is published every week and this is the one podcast both my co-founder and I religiously listen to and often talk about during our weekly calls.
2. The Art of Product
This is a podcast hosted by Ben Orenstein and Derrick Reimer about their journey as they build their new software products: Tuple and Level.
They talk about their thought process, how they deal with the day-to-day stuff, and the highs and the lows of getting a new software product to market.
Since both of them are developers, they sometimes go deep into the technical details as well on how and why they designed things a certain way which I really enjoyed listening to as a developer myself.
3. Founder Quest
This podcast is hosted by the founders of Honeybadger, an error-monitoring SaaS product.
I've actually first heard of them from "The Art of Product" podcast, where one of the founders was interviewed. During the interview, he talked about how they run the company which really resonated with me.
Topics covered include how they work together (all 3 founders are developers), their history and how they came up with the idea, marketing to developers, scaling, dealing with technical debt, pricing, etc.
4. Indie Hackers
As the name implies, this podcast is geared towards independent developers who have bootstrapped their own software businesses. Many started as side projects.
The host, Courtland, gets right to the point as he interviews all these founders, asking them questions from how they got started and strategies they've used to grow their businesses. Great takeaways here and they also have a list of products people have built. Many of them include revenue numbers which are really cool to see.
5. Bootstrapped Web
This is the only podcast on this list where the founders are not software developers themselves. The hosts, Brian and Jordan, are both founders of SaaS businesses.
The format is really more just a conversation between the two of them as they talk about their businesses and the challenges they face. Most of the conversation revolves around management, hiring, and growth. Our business is much smaller than theirs so I find it very helpful listening to the issues they're having and how they worked around them as we'll probably run into some of the same issues in the future.