Keep Going... with Arrows.to
55 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago -Behind-the-scenes look at two friends building a SaaS startup.
Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
Homepage Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Our first team retreat (Ep. 51)
March 15, 2022 10:00 - 22 minutes - 20.5 MBThings have been busy here at Arrows HQ, but we made time to get the team together for the first time. Most of us had never met each other before. On this episode, we have Kim and Matt on discuss the experience of organizing and attending our team retreat.
It takes a team to create Happy Customers (Ep. 50)
January 18, 2022 15:56 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBArrows is launching its second podcast today, called Happy Customers. So we have Stuart Balcombe on the show, the host of Happy Customers and the head of product marketing at Arrows. We talk about why we're launching a podcast, what the goal of the podcast is, and some tips he learned after creating multiple podcasts now. Please subscribe to Happy Customers! https://happycustomers.transistor.fm/subscribe
Launching our ebook, with Shareil Nariman (Ep. 49)
November 16, 2021 11:00 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MBWe're joined this week by the first Arrows employee, Shareil Nariman. Last week we launched the ebook that was written by Shareil, and it was a smashing success. Much better than we'd expected. Shareil tells us what it was like to write the book, and we talk about the strategy of writing it. You can find the ebook here: http://arrows.to/resources/books/startup-ceo-guide-to-customer-success/ Email [email protected] if you have any thoughts!
Var Talk with Justin Duke (Ep. 48)
November 09, 2021 10:00 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBToday we're joined by our friend (and Arrows angel investor) Justin Duke. We talk about building Arrows, how we try to balance building features vs foundations, and what we get anxious about when prioritizing features. Justin is a super talented developer who runs Buttondown and Spoonbill on the side of being an engineering manager at Stripe. https://twitter.com/jmduke https://buttondown.email https://spoonbill.io
Why we need a product marketer (Ep. 47)
November 02, 2021 10:00 - 15 minutes - 14.7 MBWe've always cared about marketing at Arrows.to, and really think it's critical to our success. But we've never had a full-time marketer who can help us really excel at everything we're doing. In this episode we run through a lot of the things we're doing from a marketing angle and why we think a full-time marketer will help us out.
Letting an employee go for the first time (Ep. 46)
October 20, 2021 14:42 - 15 minutes - 14.3 MBWe recently realized one of our early employees was in the wrong role in the wrong environment for them. Neither of us was happy. So what do we do to fix it? How do we communicate it to them? To the rest of the team? Come hear our thoughts.
Ben Orenstein asks us hard questions (Ep. 45)
September 21, 2021 15:29 - 38 minutes - 35.2 MBToday our internet friend and listener of the podcast, Ben Orenstein (CEO of Tuple.app), asks us questions he wished we talked about on Keep Going. He asks why we chose to take VC funding, what our equity breakdown is, what the biggest thing we need to focus on is, and more. This one is long but good! Ben's company: https://tuple.app Ben's twitter: https://twitter.com/r00k
Everybody's one big thing (Ep. 44)
September 14, 2021 19:21 - 16 minutes - 15 MBAfter a couple of weeks off, we discuss why "working in bets" feels like it's not working for us as well as it used to when we were smaller... and how we're trying to focus everybody on the team around their own One Big Thing.
Everybody's One Big Thing (Ep. 44)
September 14, 2021 19:21 - 16 minutes - 15 MBAfter a couple of weeks off, we discuss why "working in bets" feels like it's not working for us as well as it used to when we were smaller... and how we're trying to focus everybody on the team around their own One Big Thing.
Everything is a funnel (Ep. 43)
August 24, 2021 09:00 - 15 minutes - 13.9 MBThis week we talk about all of the Arrows funnels and the tools we use to organize them... our sales funnel, our marketing funnel, and our product development "funnel".
Impossible for every employee to know everything (Ep. 42)
August 17, 2021 09:00 - 10 minutes - 9.78 MBGrowing the team brings new challenges that we hadn't expected. How do we stay open and allow people to be involved in decision-making while still staying focused?
How do we build the product we want? (Ep. 41)
August 11, 2021 18:26 - 14 minutes - 13.2 MBArrows has two new engineers starting next week. So we discuss how we're preparing for them to join by getting our plans together for the next big iterations of the product.
We spent thousands of dollars on a PR consultant (Ep. 40)
August 05, 2021 09:00 - 15 minutes - 14.6 MBThis episode is an interview with Kathy Osborne, founder of Kamel PR, who we worked with to do PR for our seed funding announcement. We talk about how we got connected, why we decided to spend money to hire a PR consultant, and more. To be honest, when we first took funding we assumed we'd do all the press ourselves. Oh boy, were we wrong... Working with Kathy was fantastic and helped us get great results from our announcement. We'd do it all over again. https://www.kamelpr.com htt...
We finally hired developers 🎉 Plus, our new sales pipeline (Ep. 39)
July 27, 2021 11:00 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBIn a surprisingly fast turn of events, we hired 2 developers since the last episode! We talk about how that happened, how we structured our take-home project, and more.
Hiring developers & our new sales pipeline (Ep. 39)
July 27, 2021 11:00 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBIn a surprisingly fast turn of events, we hired 2 developers since the last episode! We talk about how that happened, how we structured our take-home project, and more.
New hires & new challenges (Ep. 38)
July 20, 2021 09:00 - 11 minutes - 10.5 MBAs of today, we now have 5 employees at Arrows, and we still have a few more to come (https://arrows.to/jobs). This week we talk about this process and the new challenges we're experiencing as we scale.
New employees & new challenges (Ep. 38)
July 20, 2021 09:00 - 11 minutes - 10.5 MBAs of today, we now have 5 employees at Arrows, and we still have a few more to come (https://arrows.to/jobs). This week we talk about this process and the new challenges we're experiencing as we scale.
Hiring our first team members (Ep. 37)
July 08, 2021 09:00 - 11 minutes - 10.6 MBNow that we've raised some funding, we can afford to hire a few people to join Arrows sooner than we expected. We dive into how that's going and what that means for the next few months.
Two bootstrappers raise $2.75 million from VCs, record the process, and interview their lead investor (Ep. 36)
July 02, 2021 08:33 - 26 minutes - 23.9 MBThis is an unusual episode for us. We recorded most of it back in April, when we decided to raise venture capital money for Arrows. This episode was recorded on April 12th, the day we first started speaking to investors, and on April 14th, which is the day we signed the term sheet. It all happened very quickly. Special guest at the end: we talk to Darian Shirazi, who is our lead investor at Gradient Ventures.
Why is now the right time for Arrows? (Ep. 35)
May 12, 2021 23:57 - 12 minutes - 11.9 MBWe explore some of the bigger questions around what Arrows actually is, why the timing is right for us now, and how a big new customer is starting to integrate Arrows.
Doing the job for customers (Ep. 34)
April 28, 2021 09:00 - 9 minutes - 9.02 MBWe talk about some feature updates we made, and how we're trying to improve the product to better solve the job customers expect.
Getting people to follow through after demos (Ep. 33)
April 06, 2021 11:00 - 15 minutes - 13.9 MBWe're trying some new things with demos and how we encourage people to take the next steps at the end. We also discuss our new features that we built on the fly for a trial customer.
Gaining momentum again (Ep. 32)
March 30, 2021 11:00 - 13 minutes - 12.4 MBAfter a slow week or two post-launch, we've starting to build up our momentum again.
Feeling the post-launch grind (Ep. 31)
March 23, 2021 10:00 - 11 minutes - 10.3 MBThis week we're really feeling the post-launch grind... website traffic and new trials are settling down to their new baseline and there's just a lot of work ahead of us. We detail how the launch trials went, what content and marketing we're testing and more.
Post-launch report, Friends of Arrows, & what's next (Ep. 30)
March 16, 2021 10:00 - 14 minutes - 13.8 MBWe do a full update on all of our launch numbers (tweet impressions, website pageviews, free trials started, paid conversions). We give some details on our "Friends of Arrows" launch strategy. We discuss why the content series we planned to launch today didn't feel right. And finally, we detail our plans for post-launch.
Today is launch day (Ep. 29)
March 10, 2021 03:00 - 13 minutes - 12.2 MBOur launch went really, really well. This episode is two guys who are tired trying to make sense of it all. And actually... the numbers end up really out-of-date even by the time we edited the episode! We also discuss: launch day is only the start, not the end, so what's next?
Adding a free trial & final week before launch (Ep. 28)
March 02, 2021 18:14 - 13 minutes - 12.6 MBWe've committed to adding a free trial and actually... it's already built! We also cover how we're adding educational videos to our onboarding process. And overall just covering the last few things we need to do before... 🥁 we launch next week!
Church of Bedazzled (Ep. 27)
February 23, 2021 05:36 - 15 minutes - 13.9 MBDaniel delivers some lessons from the 2000 Brendan Fraser movie, Bedazzled. Benedict discusses naming concerns as they relate to the API. And together we discuss free trials as we gear up for a launch.
How are you feeling? (Ep 26)
February 17, 2021 02:54 - 16 minutes - 14.8 MBSince we're planning to launch Arrows soon, we decided to check in with each other to see how we're feeling about everything. Benedict woke up in the middle of the night worried that we hadn't launched and mentions some surprising feelings about it all.
The OMG moment (Ep. 25)
February 09, 2021 05:32 - 13 minutes - 12.4 MBThis week was busy! We had a lot of customer demos, received some great feedback, and work on the API/Zapier launch is super close. And finally..... Daniel is almost finished with the new website. But at least some people have seen it now.
Call me maybe (Ep. 24)
February 02, 2021 05:48 - 13 minutes - 12.8 MBThe new website has a progress update, the API+Zapier integration has a more defined structure, and we both recount the calls we had this week.
All-in on Zapier, website promises, and funding chat (Ep. 23)
January 26, 2021 05:03 - 14 minutes - 13.7 MBDaniel is finally close to being finished with the new website... sort of. Benedict lays out our newest plans to go all-in on Zapier for the near term. And Daniel wraps up the episode by sharing his latest thinking about what this year has in store for Arrows as a business.
VP churn, API options, and moving week (Ep. 22)
January 19, 2021 21:40 - 14 minutes - 13.9 MBDaniel moved into his new apartment in Los Angeles this week, hopefully ending the long nightmare of living out of a suitcase. Benedict talks to customers about their needs from an API and tries to balance the options. We lost a customer due to a new VP coming in and changing the tools, as we predicted.
Salesforce as the operating system for businesses (Ep. 21)
January 12, 2021 06:16 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBAfter a rocky first week of the year, we try to get back on track with our marketing launch + API development plans. We share a little about what we've learned from customers so far about our early API, and we discuss how we're thinking about the marketing site.
Negative 15 windchill (Ep. 20)
January 05, 2021 05:49 - 12 minutes - 11.9 MBThe boys talk about their new year, the Arrows launch plans, how we're rolling out the API, and more.
Bootstrapping, investors, and API design (Ep. 19)
December 22, 2020 06:28 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBWe've started considering options for how we'll get to our break-even point, which could include client work or possibly taking on investors. We also discuss our early strategy for the Arrows API and rollout.
Planning our marketing launch (Ep. 18)
December 15, 2020 01:42 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBWe dive into our launch + marketing plans as we head into January, when we're planning to roll out Arrows access more broadly.
Self-serve signup lives! (Ep. 17)
December 08, 2020 02:53 - 12 minutes - 11.9 MBA surprisingly exciting week for such an understated episode. We successfully rolled out our self-serve signup process, and had our first customer go through it today! Plus some discussion around our launch plans.
A hypothesis about a self-serve product (Ep. 16)
December 01, 2020 06:37 - 14 minutes - 13.8 MBWe talk about the final steps we need to take before rolling out our self-serve signup process, and what self-serve might mean for Arrows as a product as we move forward.
Say hello to Arrows Software LLC (Ep. 15)
November 24, 2020 01:47 - 14 minutes - 13.7 MBWe formed the LLC for Arrows 🥳 We also started to take note of all the SaaS tools we currently use to run Arrows, which leads to some conversation about how Arrows can be a must-have tool.
The beginning of a new phase (Ep. 14)
November 17, 2020 20:07 - 14 minutes - 13.8 MBThis week Daniel talks through some thoughts that have been swirling around his mind as the guys figure out how they should transition into a new phase of Arrows.
Making a business out of the business (Ep. 13)
November 10, 2020 14:32 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week the boys lay out their plans for incorporating Arrows and enabling self-serve signup for the product.
Where the complexity grows (Ep. 12)
November 03, 2020 17:58 - 11 minutes - 10.8 MBAfter a few weeks of heads-down product development, the boys check-in to talk about the work they've been doing to redesign parts of the UI to accommodate future complexity in the product.
How we decide what to build (Ep. 11)
September 29, 2020 15:29 - 15 minutes - 14.5 MBWe decided it'd be interesting to share how we organize and plan our product development based on the customer research we do. Enjoy!
The optimist & the conservative (Ep. 10)
September 22, 2020 04:30 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBWe reconcile with a tense conversation we had at the end of last week, and discuss the positives and negatives around one of us being more optimistic and the other being more generally conservative.
Spreading ourselves too thin (Ep. 9)
September 15, 2020 14:36 - 11 minutes - 11 MBThe boys talk this week about how we've been spreading ourselves too thin across too many initiatives. And now it's time to refocus on the most important and highest leverage things we can do. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
We reached 10 customers! 🥳 (Ep. 8)
September 01, 2020 14:54 - 12 minutes - 11.6 MBArrows finally reached 10 paid customers! It's an exciting milestone for us. We discuss the new product feedback we received from an early customer, our exciting onboarding calls, hiring a content marketer, and more. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
Hair on fire problem (Ep. 7)
August 25, 2020 21:10 - 12 minutes - 12 MBBoth Daniel and Benedict are back together this week. We talk about how Benedict's blog post performed, how getting more demos doesn't necessarily turn into more sales, and nailing our ideal customer profile. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
A big list of stuff (Ep. 6)
August 14, 2020 00:35 - 8 minutes - 7.57 MBBenedict has a solo episode this week where he runs through the big list of our marketing experiments from last week. Then he breaks down the blog post he wrote for the brand new Arrows blog. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
Cold emails, Google ads, and a bit more (Ep. 5)
August 07, 2020 03:04 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBThis week we do a follow-up on last week's cold email goals, discussing how they've been going and some details about how we've been structuring the emails. We also started testing some small Google Ads, and talk through our thinking there. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to Spoiler for next week's episode: about 45 minutes after we recorded this episode, we had a payment come through from one of the customers we discussed. Then a few hours later we had another one! ...