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b'Mike McDerment is Co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world\\u2019s number one cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals.\\xa0Mike talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about building and scaling a company, product development, and his free e-book called Breaking the Time Barrier.\\n\\nMike built a simple tool to solve his accounting problem, and now 20 million people have used the tool. He could see the value of the tool, but he hadn\\u2019t built and scaled a company.\\xa0It was the great unknown which excited him.\\xa0Suddenly, Mike saw the value of the tool for everyone.\\xa0He wanted to bring it into the world. After building the first version for himself, he soon added a software designer.\\xa0They worked on the product for nine months to a year, then added another co-founder and hired employees.\\xa0Mike\\u2019s team became very connected to their customers, always showing the product early in development.\\xa0They started to understand the market and the most impactful parts of what to build. \\xa0\\n\\nBootstrapping the Company\\xa0\\n - Raising capital is not success. A better strategy is to find customers and fund yourself\\n - Over ten years, FreshBooks de-risked the market, product, team, and model. \\xa0\\n - The first round of venture money was $30 million. \\xa0\\n\\nObstacles and Things That Almost Killed FreshBooks\\n - Check out Blog post: https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/7-ways-ive-almost-killed-freshbooks\\xa0\\n - Listen to advisors, but trust yourself. \\xa0\\n - Sometimes you move fast, but some areas you need to slow down, especially with product-market fit. Don\\u2019t Rush. \\xa0\\n\\nBreaking The Time Barrier\\n - Breaking the Time Barrier, Mike\\u2019s book for his customers doing client services work explains how to price services. \\xa0\\n - Focus on value-based billing instead of on the number of hours worked. Understand how big the problem is and how expensive it is. \\xa0\\n - Nobody cares about tech. They care about the value they get from tech. \\xa0\\n\\nProduct Development\\xa0\\n - Better to focus on building benefits like time savings, revenue generation, or performance. Brings more value for your customer. \\xa0\\n - Frame pricing on value.\\xa0e.g., $50 a month will save 20 hrs, or for less than a cup a coffee, you can have this service. \\xa0\\n\\nWhat\\u2019s different for a company at scale?\\xa0\\n - Culture - How does a company respond when challenged with something?\\n - Customer-obsessed\\n\\nHow do you maintain the freshness of a company?\\n - Combo of direction and constraints for motivation. \\xa0\\n - Creates a condition for taking chances.\\n\\nFor More Information \\nFor more information on Mike McDerment or FreshBooks check out freshbooks.com.\\xa0\\n\\nIf you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy:\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nFind this episode of\\xa0Inside Outside Innovation at\\xa0insideoutside.io. You can also listen\\xa0on\\xa0Acast,\\xa0iTunes,\\xa0Sticher, Spotify, and\\xa0Google Play.\\n\\xa0\\nFREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER\\nGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy'