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At SureSwift we're always focused on growth, and I'm sure that's a main focus for many of you who are past the "launch" stage of your business, too. But the end of the year always marks an extra push for us here as we try to hit annual goals on 30+ properties. So with growth on the brain, that's what this month's Founder Squad issue is all about. We're giving away our Cyber Monday playbook, hosting an "AMA" session with our growth team on Twitter, and sharing stories from SureSwift Alum Founders we think really excelled in this area as bootstrappers.

• Survival/Under $5k MRR 
  I'm just working on getting the business to pay for itself
• Stability/$5k-$20k MRR 
  Working on making my biz my full-time gig
• Growth/$20k MRR+ 
  This is my full-time gig, and I'm spending most of my time on growth

ON OUR SCREENS & IN OUR EARBUDS

• Dru Riley has been making a name for himself in the SaaS community with his trends.vc newsletter and was recently interviewed by IndieHackers about the effort. 
• A couple months ago, Dan Martell released this interview I did with him about buying and selling SaaS companies on his Escape Velocity podcast.
• I was privileged to be invited to play a small role in celebrating a BIG milestone for a company and a co-founder couple that I really admire, Natalie and Chris Nagele of Wildbit.

JOB OPENINGS

• Customer Happiness Specialist
• FinTech Product Manager
• Front End Web Developer
• Integrations Engineer
• Principal Site Reliability Engineer 
• Sr. Software Engineer

It's hard to believe it's December - in some ways I thought this day would never come this year, and in others, I can't believe it's already here. While it's been an extremely unusual year, there's always something about ending the calendar year that kicks me into planning mode. 

I know for a lot of bootstrapped founders, you're in the same mode - thinking about how to close out this year and what's in store for next year, whether you're ready to tackle some big growth goals, or an exit in 2021 is something you're starting to consider. (That's another thing that happens like clockwork every December - I have a ton of conversations with founders who are starting to think they might want to shift focus to a new project.)

I''ve got a lot of things to share with you this month to cover both ends of that spectrum. Below, I talk about the planning model and template we use at SureSwift for our 30+ properties. I'll be on Twitter this Thursday at 9:00 a.m. CST for coffee and a chat on planning, selling a SaaS, or whatever else is on your mind, and we're also hosting our last webinar of the year on SaaS valuations on Thursday at 12 p.m. CST. 

Wishing you a great close to the year, and a happy holiday season. 

?? How We Plan Across 30+ Businesses
We adopted EOS or the "Entrepreneurial Operating System" across all of our companies at SureSwift over a year ago, and I highly recommend it for anyone out there working with a team, whether you're a team of two or 10+ (you can hear me talk a bit more about it on this Rogue Startups podcast episode). 

No one pays me to say this - EOS just kicked us into a whole new gear in terms of both growth and accountability. Whether or not you want to adopt the meeting structure and the whole thing (although I recommend that, too!), it's worth taking a look at how they handle planning and checking out their Vision/Traction Organizer Tool. You can grab a free copy here.

I'm a proponent of setting big goals, but also breaking those down into doable steps, and that's what EOS is all about. You set a big vision for where you want your business to be in five years, and then break it down into three-year and one-year pictures, then you break that one-year picture down into quarterly goals. Repeat annually. Pretty simple, right? But there's some magic that happens in actually writing it down and sharing it with everyone you work with. 

?? Have coffee with me this Thursday
One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to talk to lots of bootstrapped founders. This winter has been extremely busy and I haven't gotten to do as much of that as I'd like, so I'm blocking time on my calendar this Thursday at 9 a.m. CST to catch up with more of you. I'd love to hear from you if you have a question, or if you just want to say hey and introduce yourself.

?? A founder's perspective on exiting
We don't usually comment on deals we don't do, but Josh Pigford is hands down one of the best follows on Twitter if you're a bootstrapper. His regular updates on growing Baremetrics, the frustration of an earlier deal that fell through, and now his recent news of a successful sale (congrats to Josh and his team!) have always felt like getting the inside scoop from a close friend. So if you're curious about why founders exit, what it's like, and what to watch out for in a buyer, definitely give these a read. 

1. How do I prepare my SaaS for an exit? 
2. What takes place during the SaaS acquisition process? 
3. What are the different types of SaaS buyers? 
4. What SaaS metrics is a buyer going to want? 
5. How does taking on investors impact a SaaS sale? 

ON OUR SCREENS & IN OUR EARBUDS

• Shout out to a friend of SureSwift, Adii Pienaar, who recently announced his newest venture cogsy, which he'll be building in public. Adii previously co-founded WooCommerce (acquired by Automattic) and Conversio (acquired by Campaign Monitor), so we''re pretty excited about anything he has to share about building a business. 
• I thought this episode of Invest Like the Best with guest restauranteur and CEO of Tock, Nick Kokonas, was fascinating. If you want a perspective on the restaurant industry and the impacts of COVID, give it a listen. 

JOB OPENINGS

• Human Resources Manager
• PHP Software Engineer

Let me be one of the first to wish you a Happy New Year!

When I'm passionate about something I tend to repeat it, so I've probably said in one of these newsletters before that "you can't manage what you don't measure." The former math teacher in me loves data and numbers, and that didn't change when I made the switch to business and entrepreneurship. 

Right now we review between 100-150 bootstrapped SaaS products every month. While we'd never share individual product-level info, a byproduct of reviewing so many businesses is that we notice general patterns in areas where bootstrappers tend to excel and areas where we tend to see gaps. 

Two of the gaps we've noticed at this flyover level are SaaS metrics and Google Analytics.

Most Founders track metrics, but it's hard to hit a happy medium. We see a lot of folks who could benefit from tracking a bit more, and others who may track too early (tracking too much in your MVP stage can actually lead to bad decisions). We see Founders who set their sights on magic MRR numbers that may actually be damaging value if they're thinking about selling. And we see other Founders who set customer response time benchmarks that won't serve them well long term. 

On the analytics front, at least 50% of the products we review (and buy) don't have Google Analytics set up in an optimal way. That's no knock on those products or Founders - as a bootstrapper, you wear most or all of the hats in your business and no one person can be an expert on code, growth, customer happiness, analytics, etc.

But metrics and analytics are hugely important to a bootstrapped business. They're the tools you should be using to guide every "what next?" business decision you make this year and every year.  

So we've put together a mega guide for you on these topics by our VP of Product (aka master of metrics for our entire portfolio), Tom Kincheloe, and we're running a webinar on Google Analytics set up with our Head of Growth, Marvin Russell, on Jan. 21 at 12 CST. 

While I like to think we know quite a bit about these topics, I also know this is a smart and thoughtful community. If there's a metric you think we missed, you have a question about why we didn't include something or you''re just curious about our opinion on it, shoot me a reply or find me on Twitter - I love hearing from all of you. 

Beyond definitions, what should you track, how should you think about data, and how does a buyer think about your data? Our new guide dives deep into metrics, specifically from the bootstrapper's perspective.

Half or more of the products we look at don't have analytics set up in a way that will help their Founders make meaningful business and content decisions. Our Head of Growth, Marvin Russell, will walk through how we set things up for every property we acquire on Jan. 21 at 12 pm CST. Save your seat now!

In 2020 I got serious about our communications. We didn't have them on a set schedule in previous years, and that meant that if things got busy (which, let's face it, was always), I went longer than I wanted to without saying anything to my most important peeps (you, my team, and my investors).

You might have noticed that I email on the first of the month, every month now. I made that a rule, and a non-negotiable in mid-2020. It doesn't matter if it falls on a holiday or a weekend. Setting things up that way means:

1. It happens, period. My team knows we'll send this email, and an update to our investors, on the first of every month, and then an update to the SureSwift team the first Friday after that.
2. It gives me a tangible way of showing people they're my priority instead of just saying it.
3. People grow to expect and (hopefully) enjoy hearing from me on the first.
4. For investors and my team, it keeps the "can I get an update on." questions at bay, and then when people do ask questions, we have better conversations.

Your non-negotiable may not be around communicating, but it's worth taking some time at the beginning of this new year to think about any of those things that are always in the back of your mind that you want to do a better job on. 

ON OUR SCREENS & IN OUR EARBUDS

• SureSwift Alumni Founder, Arvid Kahl was a guest on the Intentional Growth podcast, hosted by Ryan Tansom. I also just did an interview with Ryan in late December that will drop sometime early this year. Ryan's got a ton of great insights on both running and growing a business, so definitely put him in your listening queue.
• I''ve been digging Jason Calacanis''s podcast, This Week in Startups lately. Another one to add to your listening queue!
• Our mission at SureSwift has always been to improve the lives of the founders we buy from, our investors, and our team. Now I'm thrilled to say that we're adding another group of people to our mission.

JOB OPENINGS

• Senior Financial Analyst 
• Senior Software Engineer, Ruby on Rails

ABOUT SURESWIFT

• SaaS founders open to complete acquisition
• $20k-$200k+ in monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
• Profitable
• Growing