Templates by Melissa Kwan

I've been interviewed over 100x in the last year. Here's what NOT to do if you want to be a great interviewer:

📒 On preparation:

• Block off over 60mins when recording time is under that.

• Troubleshoot audio/video during our time together.

• Chit chat about irrelevant things before starting.

• Show up with airpods, audio is priority.

⏰ On timing:

• Be late without ample notification.

• Go overtime without time check.

• Go significantly overtime.

• Reschedule last minute.

• Forget to show up.

🎙️ On interviewing:

• Interrupt, especially with something unrelated.

• Be ill prepared, use a script if need be.

• Ask questions that are too broad.

• Ask too many questions at once.

Being a great interviewer is easier than you think. It only requires the 3Rs.

Research your guest.

Respect their time.

Relax & have fun. 😎

Our conversion rate dropped from 40% to 12% over the last 3 weeks 😳

We hadn't made any major changes so that sharp of a drop didn't make sense, but it was worrying. We were scratching our heads and couldn't figure it out.

When I decided to manually counted the number of trial to paid conversions, I realized that number was much higher than what our Stripe data showed.

Last month, in efforts to try and prevent people from signing up with credit cards that bounce, we charged cards $1 at sign up and refunded it right away. Turns out when we did that, Stripe counted them as a customer instead of a trial, and therefore no longer started counting those sign ups as "conversions".

Luckily, this was a false alarm. But goes to show how a small test can throw things off.

PS. This experiment didn't end up making a huge difference in delinquents.

I love bootstrapping, but it comes with tremendous difficulties. These are the 11 biggest challenges we face at eWebinar: 😰

1. We're forced to make tradeoffs.

Every dollar going to the wrong thing is a dollar not going to the right thing. We're constantly choosing between what we need to do now versus what we can push off until later.

2. Growth feels too slow.

Profitability can’t come fast enough when there’s a zero-cash date looming. When you’re spending more than you’re making, even 30% growth from the previous month seems miniscule.

3. We’re too small to matter.

We can’t offer enough reciprocal value to ignite meaningful partnerships. We don’t have the mailing list or brand recognition for bigger companies to get excited about.

4. Media coverage is non-existent.

You can be building a better product than your funded competitor who’s on the cover of Techcrunch but nobody will cover you because you’re not clickbait worthy. And we can’t spend money on sponsorships and a PR firm.

5. We’re always fighting.

Without the stamp of approval and credibility that comes with VC funding and media write-ups, we have to fight for attention, trust, and validation from everyone: prospects, customers, and partners.

6. Customer support is perceived as less reliable.

Some companies have turned away from working with us because we don’t offer enterprise level support. Truth is, we bend over backwards for our customers because every dollar we lose hurts. We’re more responsive, provide quicker resolutions, and implement customer feedback more than most big companies. And yet…

7. Big companies can’t work with us.

These companies are bound by compliance requirements. They want custom contracts, GDPR, SOC 2, security reviews...things that are too expensive for us to invest in now.

8. We’re never doing enough.

Everything we read tells us we should be doing all these things that we’re not doing. It always feels like we're screwing up and going off-track. But we are already doing the best we can.

9. I’m the last to get paid.

I’m at the bottom of the salary totem pole. Every time I’m about to pay myself, another expense comes up and I get bumped. After working so hard for years to pay the company’s bills but never my own, it can be pretty demoralizing some days.

10. The struggle was much harder at first.

Compared to our VC-funded counterparts, we struggle more in the first years because we need to be scrappy in both our professional and personal life. Good news is, our struggle ends the day we hit profitability.

11. It's hard to sleep well at night.

All these things compound to subconscious anxiety that comes out in my dreams almost every night. I can’t remember the last time I had a great night's sleep in the last decade.

Bootstrapping is a slog.

But you know what else is?

✅ Building a VC-backed startup.

✅ Waking up to a job you hate everyday.

✅ Regretting never chasing your dream.

Everything is a slog.

Choose the slog that excites you the most.

9 things I wish someone had told me about being an entrepreneur: 🤯

1. Money goes FAST. 💸

When I quit my last job, I had saved up $100K and thought it would last for 2 years. After trying a few ideas with various contractors, it was gone in 9 months. I hugely underestimated what it would take to get to revenue.

2. There's no free money.

I applied to every loan and government grant I could which was great until I had to start paying them back. The grants came with reporting requirements which were a huge pain. Luckily, I didn’t raise capital, which would have golden-handcuffed me to the venture train.

3. Deadlines are moving targets for most.

The fact that people will tell you they’ll deliver something on Friday and then not do it without saying anything was a shocking revelation. Knowing this would have helped me set more realistic timelines and budgets.

4. Not everyone has to get what I'm doing.

I used to pitch my idea to everyone I met. This often came off as desperate and annoying, making people less likely to engage with me.

5. Comparison is truly the thief of joy.

When I didn’t have money, all I wished for was a normal life like other people my age. Like eating out at a restaurant or taking time off without feeling guilty. When I got there, I wanted my own apartment. When I got there, I wanted to buy a home. When I got there, I wanted more money, more glory. It never ends until you stop trying to keep up with the Joneses.

6. Energy vampires are everywhere.

People used to tell me that my idea was never going to work and that I should come work for them when I was “done trying”. When I started seeing success, people called me lucky and then would humblebrag about their own achievements. Turns out, so few people genuinely root for you to win.

7. Success comes in all shapes and sizes

I thought I needed that unicorn exit to be successful but it became obvious that I didn’t have the stamina to get there. I saw founders who built multiple SaaS companies, each yielding $20k/month, with more freedom and less work. That showed me that success is self-defined.

8. It doesn't have to be that hard.

Running my third startup made me realize my first two were particularly hard because they were not great businesses. Building a company is difficult, but how difficult lies in the idea.

9. The most important relationship to success is your life partner.

Your life partner can be your greatest source of joy or misery, success or failure. I've seen companies rise or fall because of the support (or lack of) from life partners. Having a supportive life partner is what kept me sane during my darkest days.

I’m not from a family of entrepreneurs so I had to learn everything from scratch.

A lot of these things, while obvious now, took me by surprise in the first few years.

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I'm a 3x bootstrapper & share lessons from my founder journey here weekly.

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