Startup to Last Looking back at 2019 and forward to 2020
Dec 26, 2019
59:03
This week, we wanted to take some time to reflect on what happened in 2019 and set goals for 2020. We created a series of questions that Rick and Tyler both had to answer. Here are the answers...
- What happened in 2019?
- In our personal lives
- Rick: Took 7-8 months of to figure out who he is and what his goals are, especially with his new marriage.
- Tyler: Figured out a sustainable diet
- In our professional lives
- Rick
- Figured out what he wants to do after leaving his previous job of 11+ years
- Started LegUp Ventures which is a holding company for his various ventures:
- GroupCurrent - Outsourced member management
- Startup to Last - This podcast
- RickLinquist.com - Rick's personal writing
- LegUp Health - Reducing healthcare-related anxiety for people without job-based insurance
- Tyler
- Started the year working on a new project called Sparse which was abandoned in February
- The rest of the year was spent on a major redesign of Less Annoying CRM which included two major new features: Custom fields and Outlook Calendar Sync
- This was the best year for the LACRM product team
- Rick
- Biggest accomplishment
- Tyler: Finally built a real product team at LACRM
- Rick: GroupCurrent turned around the business model of their first client and got it to sustainability
- Biggest disappointment
- Tyler: Sales in the second half of the year were below expectations
- Rick: Wasn't thoughtful enough about getting his wife's buy-in when starting his new ventures
- In our personal lives
- Looking forward to 2020
- Personal goals
- Rick: Get to a point where he and his wife feel comfortable having kids
- Tyler: Get a dog
- High-level professional goals / the theme of 2020
- Tyler: Continue the product teams momentum and establish a rhythm of regularly shipping updates to LACRM
- Rick: Calm growth. His life is calm right now, and as his ventures pick up, he doesn't want that to change.
- Biggest worries / what's keeping you up at night?
- Rick: Making enough personal income to be able to sustain his ventures
- Tyler: Growth at LACRM needs to pick up eventually
- Three specific goals for 2020
- Tyler
- Exercise moderately three times per week
- Write code once per week
- By the end of the year, average 50 paying users per month joining LACRM through the referral channel
- Rick
- Play more sports. He has an exercise routine, but it's boring and doesn't involve games or play
- Be ready to start trying to having kids
- Get distribution revenue from LegUp Ventures to $10k/month
- Shared goal: Get this podcast to 250 subscribers
- Tyler
- Make a prediction for 2020
- Tyler: Starting a software business without venture capital will become much more mainstream over the next year
- Rick: An all-in-one leader will emerge in the no-code industry
- What do you want to read in 2020?
- Rick: Too many to name, but wants to read a lot about emotions.
- Tyler: The unicorn project and Obviously Awesome
- Personal goals