Hi, I'm Barry Welch from Daring Labs

Introductions
#1

I’m Barry. I’ve spent the last 7 years or so building bootstrapped businesses online, but for some odd reason I was really REALLY, consistently bad at it early on.

My timeline (aka. product graveyard):
CalendarHub.com- 2005
Rezzible.com - 2007
WoodenCube.com - 2007
BibleApps.com - 2008
Opensocial apps - 2008
Blogger gadgets - 2009
Chrome extensions out the wazoo - 2009
Appointron.com - 2010 (Hey, profit!)
Impulsv.com - 2011
CrashTasks - 2013
Ambassador - 2013
Helllo - 2013

In 2010, I founded Appointron, my first actually profitable startup with my current co-founder Matt Tharp, and since then I have been getting much better at building SaaS products that earn a profit, though sometimes I’m given to build things that sound really really cool but have little chance of making bank. I need to get over that Artix Phase.

I’ve been an avid follower/fan of Rob Walling and Patrick McKenzie and recently attended BaconBizConf (twas great), where I met Ian Landsman and gushed over his presentation on Dribbble (I’m still convinced it will change everything for me).

If time/money permits, I’m going to try to attend MicroConf 2014, though it sounds less and less likely that tickets will even be attainable.

Lets see, I live in rural Kansas with my family, which suits me just fine. There was a time when I hated living in a small community, but now that the internet is my home-country, its not so bad now.

It would be my pleasure to meet any of you if you’re ever near the Wichita, KS area.

Cheers,
Barry Welch @ Daring Labs

#2

Hi Barry. Welcome to the forums!

I’m curious if this last venture, the one that turned out to be successful, is the first one in which you have a partner, and, if so, do you think that had a significant impact on the success of the business?

#3

I had partners for several of these previous attempts as well. In the early days of floundering, we were always building free things to try to grow to an escape velocity we could never achieve. If I wasn’t giving things away for free, I was chasing risky bets in low-end markets. Rezzible and Woodencube were SecondLife ventures, for example. Its funny, SL seemed promising back then! {ahem}

With my current business partner, Matt, I found more courage to try to charge for products in more promising markets. Up until then, I was very tentative about charging anything, both due to the risk of messing up the billing system (you used to have to roll your own) and because I felt like my work was unworthy. Matt came out of a rapid-growth company and had the skills to detect potential and value in things that I couldn’t see at first. I can see them better now, thanks to that partnership.

P.S. I’ve tried partnering with just about every type of role: engineer, designer, biz dev, marketer, academic, and salesman. I find that the un-phased, optimistic, future-looking business-guy pairs well with my type. I think a heads-up designer is also a good fit.

1 Like