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Monica Lent is a software engineer and entrepreneur. She started coding before the age of ten, and haven’t stopped since. After working for more than 10 years in the tech industry as an engineer, tech lead and manager, she decided to quit her job and bootstrap a SaaS company full-time.Show Notes & Transcription

Brian David Hall is an expert in conversion optimization. He's a software engineer by training, runs his own company, and is the host of the SaaS Experiments Podcast, where he talks to other experts in growth marketing. We talked about the unusual tech jobs he's had that helped him learn other skills beyond coding.You can use your skills in other areas like Marketing and Sales to transition to a tech job instead of throwing away your current expertise. Learning how to code on top of your existing skills will give you superpowers!If you want to transition into a tech job, you can start by solving problems for your current company. By doing this, you'll build a portfolio, get real-world experience, stand out from other candidates that only know how to code but have no experience in other areas. You can also look for a "weird tech job", which is a job that involves coding but is not a developer role at a tech company.You can find the coupon to Brian's new e-book on the Show Notes (link below) plus some highlights and transcripts!Show Notes and Transcript

Meet Michael Lynch, a former software engineer at Google turned solo founder and blogger. He shares insights on his course to hit the front page of Hacker News, the journey to financial independence, and the impact of going solo. Discover the concept of early retirement, managing expenses, and the challenges of starting a bootstrapping business. Learn from his experiences and get inspired to take control of your career and financial future.

Listen to this episode to learn how Preetam Nath and Sankalp Jonna, co-founders of SuperLemon and DelightChat, started and grew a Shopify micro-SaaS to $30,000 monthly recurring revenue and more than 20,000 users.They did all of that by themselves, the team was just Preetam and Sankalp, and Sankalp was the only engineer. As they say on their website, they are "A small team with a big heart".SuperLemon is a WhatsApp plugin for Shopify stores serving over 20k users with 1.5k paying customers. It recently crossed 30k dollars in MRR, and all of this growth happened in about 14 months. They are now building DelightChat, a customer support tool for small and medium-sized direct-to-consumer & e-commerce brands running lean teams, and recently started hiring and growing the team.Highlights:How they did market research before writing any line of code and how being a little "impatient" with growth is a good thing for a founderHow they scaled the app to 20k users with a team of 2 people (1 engineer) by using the Keep It Simple Silly (KISS) principleHow distribution is the most important thing for a micro-SaaS and why they decided to target the Shopify marketplaceHow they prioritize features and make their customers happy while having a very lean teamHow to acquire customers every day for the next yearWhy you should build a business that allows you to have freedom and live a good lifeWe also asked them if they ever received an offer to be acquired or to get VC fundingLinks:DelightChatSuperLemonMicroSaaS GuidePreetam Nath's TwitterSankalp Jonna's TwitterSankalp's engineering blogNotes and Transcript

Learn how to develop a habit of learning in public, writing daily, and helping your audience. Chris Bongers has been sharing software development tips every day for the past 250 days on his blog Daily Dev Tips and on twitter.Here's what we talked about:How Chris got started with writingHow he wrote more than 250 articles during lockdownWhich daily tips were the most popularHow he comes up with ideas for Daily Dev Tips. Spoiler alert: by working in public, he gets lots of suggestions from his followers. Win-win!The benefits of learning in public and writing every day for Daily Dev TipsHow he manages his energy levels and productivity, and avoids burnoutWhat helped him grow his audienceSEO and blogging tips for beginnersWhere should you share your blog posts: on Hashnode or dev.to?How hiking is the best activity for writersThanks to our sponsors:VanHack helps great tech talent get jobs abroad, even during the pandemic!Links:Daily Dev TipsChris Bongers on TwitterBlogging for Devs CommunitySubscribe to our newsletterVisit the hexdevs blog

Dmitrii Pashtuskii is a digital nomad living in Bali, and recently quit his job so he could travel and build a business.This episode will be a little different: Dimitrii will be asking us questions about moving to Canada because he wants to apply for a visa very soon. In a future episode we will talk more about his projects and the life of a digital nomad.If you ever wanted to move to Canada, this is the time. Canada is planning on bringing more than 1 million immigrants in the next 3 years!We thought it would be the great opportunity for us to share our story and help others. We are also thinking of writing a short guide with more information, documents and resources we used in our visa process. In case you are interested, you can sign up for the wait list.Here's what we discussed:Why we moved to Vancouver, CanadaHow VanHack helped Thiago get a job in CanadaWhy Dmitrii is planning to get a visa and settle down in Canada after living the nomad lifeHow long did it take us to get our Permanent Residency through the BCPNP programHow Express Entry worksThe tech community in VancouverLife in Vancouver: Are people friendly? Is it easy to make new friends?Getting a Canadian CitizenshipFollow our podcast and sign up for our newsletter to get updates when we launch new episodes. Thanks to our sponsors:VanHack helps great tech talent get jobs abroad, even during the pandemic!Links from this episode:Moving to Canada -  A guide for developers to move to Canada - join the wait list if you're interested :)Dmitrii's Twitter12xstartup.comLearning Story - The community for people who learn in publicGlobal Skills Strategy VisaSubscribe to our newsletterVisit the hexdevs blog

We are all competent in the team, but why do the projects always get delayed, why did we run into problems? We do sprints, we do sprint planning, something is not working. Shape Up helped me get the right balance between long-term and short-term planning.Does that ring a bell?Our guest, Raymond Huang, told us how Shape Up helped his team get the right balance between long term and short-term planning and deliver better software.As a developer, you know that estimates are hard, and you can't know everything ahead of time while planning. You also know that some of the 'agile' tools are not really helping. You've tried Scrum, but you are doing Kanban instead. The team struggles to ship and misses the deadline and we see all the failed goals on the sprint chart. Shape Up was written to help with that problem.Shape Up is the latest book from Basecamp. It's a guide on how they do Product Strategy.In this episode, we learned how Raymond applied the ideas from Shape Up at Unbounce.We asked questions such as:Would Shape Up work in my company?How do I convince my team to try it?How to start adopting Shape Up?Do I need to follow all the steps described in the book?If I had to choose only one takeaway from Shape Up, which one would it be?How do I shape a cycle?Will I finally get rid of my team's Tech Debt Backlog?If you enjoyed this episode, let Raymond now. Don't forget to follow our podcast and sign up for our newsletter to get updates when we launch new episodes.Thanks to our sponsors:VanHack helps great tech talent get jobs abroad, even during the pandemic!Links from this episode:Raymond Huang LinkedinShape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that MattersCheck out our new website. We have a blog now!Visit our Podcast page and subscribe to our newsletter!

Kenny MacKenzie, an expert in product-market fit, discusses the importance of understanding the target market's goals, obstacles, and negative emotions. He emphasizes the need to act like a scientist/private investigator, finding the right problems, experimenting, and learning from customers. The podcast also explores the evolution of marketing channels and the role of experts in validating ideas. It debunks the misconception that startup founders need to be genius engineers and emphasizes the focus on market need.

This is the second part of our interview with Fabiano where we talk about his new job in Munich - Germany, and also about the visa process, working in Europe, and the challenges he's facing now, like learning the German language.Fabiano decided to move abroad after being the CTO of Magnetis for many years. He now works as a Senior Fullstack Engineer for Shore -  the leading provider of cloud-based business solutions for small and medium-sized companies.He gave some tips for people who want to find a job and move to Germany, and talked about his new life in Munich.If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to tell Fabiano about it. We are sure he would love to hear from our listeners. And if you want to move to Germany to work with Fabiano, Shore is hiring, so check out this episode to learn more about their relocation package and their engineering culture.Thanks to our sponsors:VanHack helps great tech talent get jobs abroad. Links from this episodeVisit our Podcast page and subscribe to our newsletter!Fabiano's Twitter