Spencer Fry Blog

Over the past couple of years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that companies like Podia need to rethink what people actually value online now.

Over the past 6-12 months it’s become clear to me that every single SaaS startup — from Podia to Salesforce — is now obsolete.

For months I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to write about Podia’s 10 year anniversary.

I’ve been selling SaaS for 29 years — since 1995 when I was only 11 years old.

I can’t stop thinking about what 37signals CEO Jason Fried said in their most recent podcast episode Dare to Be Basic (September 11th, 2024): Jason (18:01): Yeah, this is a real challenge for something that’s been around for a long time.

Paul Graham beat me to it with his latest essay Founder Mode (September 2024) where every line rings true to me.

I’m in a lot of meetings every week.

As of today, I’ve worked out for 105 days in a row. 💪 And I’m not stopping here.

In November, it’ll be 10 years since I founded Podia.

Having a good website is easy if you don’t fill it with a bunch of bloat.

I’m going back to the time when I blogged for myself.

When I was a young entrepreneur, I always equated success with the team size of the company.

As of today, Podia now powers my website, my blog, and my newsletter.

I know that the idea of having prices raised for a product you’ve been paying for is taboo and that users get really upset when, for example, Netflix raises their prices, but I don’t get it.

When you’re good at your job, and care about what you’re working on, it’s human nature to look for ways to improve.

Podia is a small-but-mighty team, and to be competitive with larger companies in our market, we need to have a sense of urgency with everything we do.

Podia has been around for a long time, especially in startup years.

I grew up with two professors as parents, and I always loved the university policy giving them a semester off of teaching at full pay for every five semesters they taught.

Many things surprise people about how differently we work at Podia, but one that comes up often is that we have absolutely zero product/project managers at our company of more than 30 people.

Back in 2010, in the heyday of new startups springing up on top of the large social platforms, I wrote about why entrepreneurs shouldn’t build their businesses on top of other platforms.

I think we’re in a sad state of innovation on the web right now, and it’s been getting worse for years.

Disclaimer: This doesn’t have anything to do with anyone at my company, but it certainly would if we ever employed anyone who behaved this way.

If you work in tech, you’ve no doubt seen that the current trend is companies cutting headcount across the board, at all sizes and in just about every sector of the industry.

It’s taken me years to change my mindset from thinking about my startup in days and weeks to thinking in months, quarters, and years.

For the last couple of years as Podia has grown larger and more successful — we’re now more than 30 employees, tens of thousands of customers, clearly the biggest innovator in our category, and profitable — the first place market position is within our gr…

It’s not achieving today’s goals that feeds my motivation, it’s the opportunity that reaching them unlocks for the future.

Since starting Podia in late 2014, we've gone through dozens of iterations as a company.

I've been a guest on a few podcasts recently and one of the things that keeps coming up are the changes a company goes through when growing from 10 to 20 people — which is exactly what happened at Podia during 2019 (well, 9 to 19 people to be exact 😉 ).

This article is inspired by a tweet I made back on July 16th.

At Podia, we ended 2018 at 10 people.

As I do every year between Christmas and New Years, I spend quiet time reflecting on the past year of Podia while planning the coming year.

With previous startups of mine, you could rely on a few channels -- maybe even one -- to grow effectively.

There's a lot of advice out there for startups.

I wanted to publicly share my love for Podia and why I think it's so special. ❤️ TLDR: If you don't know what Podia is, it's an all-in-one digital storefront for creating and selling online courses, downloads, and memberships.

Startup competition is hard to ignore.

While I encourage you to read our official announcement over at our company's blog, I wanted to share my personal thoughts on the announcement.

As your team grows (we’re now seven people at Podia), one of the key challenges is figuring out how to spend your resources.

How hard should an entrepreneur work?

I get a lot of emails about how a small remote team of four, full-time people (spanning three time zones) work so well together.

I had a fabulous time at MicroConf last week.

#Humblebrag here, but Podia has the best customer support of any online course platform out there, and quite possibly near the top of any SaaS business.

Over the past two years, I've second guessed my decisions more than any other time in my life.

After people ask me, “what’s Podia?”

I take a lot of pride in my communication with other people, both professionally and with my friends.

As a founder, removing a feature from your product is often one of the hardest things you have to do.

Perseverance is more important today than ever before.

When you first set out to build a new product, you have very little to go on.

Much has been written about the disadvantages of being a solo founder.

I’ve been told by my Coach investors and startup friends that I write great investor updates.

Back in April, 2015, I announced on this blog that I was working on a new startup called Podia.