Episode 769 | Key Insights from MicroConf 2025 in New Orleans
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Welcome back to Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode, I welcome Derek Reimer back to the show. And we talk through our takeaways from MicroConf in New Orleans, which happened, well, just last week as we're recording this, but it's a couple weeks ago as this episode is released. Before we dive into our takeaways, applications are open for MicroConf Connect, and they're open until tomorrow, April 9th. MicroConf Connect is our online community of startups

Thank you.

of product-led growth. And you can also join me for another Ask Me Anything that I'm doing, I believe in April. You can learn more and apply at microconfconnect.com. In addition, we have an in-person event coming up in London, May 14th through 16th, 2025. This is our MicroConf Growth Retreat. It's a smaller, more intimate event.

designed to inspire deeper conversations. Between 40 and 60 founders will be in attendance. We will sell this event out. It's going to have morning work sessions and afternoon excursions. Head to microconf.com slash retreat if you're interested in attending that in London. And with that, let's dive into my conversation with Derek.

Derek Reimer, welcome back to Startups for the Rest of Us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about MicroConf in New Orleans. It took place just last week. This is your...

We just lost count. I'm losing count. Every time I check in now, they ask me because there's a little piece of swag you get for being a repeat attender. It's like, how many microcoms? I'm like, I have no idea. It's like 15. I don't know, some number. It's really high. It was great to see you as well as, I guess we had about 230-ish

attendees. And then a lot of those folks brought guests, significant others who attended the evening events. So we're up around 260, 265 total people through the event, which gets us almost back to our peak, which is pre-COVID. 2019 in Vegas, the last year at the Tropicana, I believe was 300 all told. I'm curious, as someone who's attended so many of these, the size of the

the crowd or the audience, you know, however we want to phrase it. What did it feel like to you? Did it feel like a good size? Did it feel smaller than you think? You know, when you're going to a microconf, you have a picture in your head, right? Was it like more people than you thought when you looked around or fewer? It felt like a good size. I had my first microconf Europe experience last year. So now that's kind of fresh in my mind to compare the two.

And MicroConf Europe is a bit smaller, right? It was what, 200? 160, I think, yeah. Okay, so that definitely felt intimate, you know, it felt on the small side. This felt like, okay, we've got that traditional MicroConf energy back in the room, but it didn't feel unmanageable to me. So I think it's a sweet spot.

Yeah, I think it's all right. I'd like to get back up to about 300. North of 300 is where it starts to feel a little big, like I can't really talk to everybody. The trippy part, we went through some stats in the welcome deck, 93% of people in the room had a startup with or a product with revenue, which is the highest it's ever been. We're typically in the 70s or low 80s. 93%, that's such a great room to be in. Everyone has some revenue.

28% of attendees had more than 100K of MRR. And every time this happens, I remember the first time producer Sonia showed it to me, I was like, did they mean ARR? Do you mean ARR? Because that's a lot. I mean, that's almost one in three, right? Just above one in four are basically doing seven figures. And I dug through, she showed me the list of folks who had reported that. And I was like, oh, I know they're, yeah, they're doing that. Oh, they're doing that. And I spot checked it and it's like,

Again, a great room to be in. It's atypical to other startup events. And then the other interesting thing is pre-COVID, we usually had 60% to 70% returning attendees. And every year since COVID, which is now what, four or five of them, it's much closer to a 50-50 split of new versus returning. And at first, that concerned me because I was like, oh, we don't have as many returners.

actually am starting to like it. I like that it's an influx of kind of new energy. You know, there's like the people who are attending for the first time bring a certain positivity and optimism that us jaded f***ers who've been to...

Five, 10, 15 of them are like, ah, microconf, this better be good this year. I say this partially tongue-in-cheek, but there really isn't an energy, I think, to having a room that is not just people who've been there a bunch of times. It's not just the old boys club, so to speak.

Yeah, and I do feel like a lot of the faces I saw there I recognize from our other circles on the internet, but I haven't necessarily met in person before. So it also feels like it's kind of the graduation from just being part of the internet community to making it in real life to the actual event. And so it didn't feel like...

Wow, there's a bunch of people here and I have no idea who a lot of these people are. I've at least seen your avatar on ex-Twitter probably, or in the circle or Slack or whatever. It felt familiar, but also a lot of fresh faces. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, hey, this is a cool event, we're going to walk through some sessions and talk about some feedback that we received. But we have a couple microcomps coming up and we've been selling them out now for the past couple years again.

and so the next one is a MicroConf growth retreat in London this May and if you go to microconf.com, go to the top nav events, you'll see that and that's a smaller event, it's between 40 and 60 founders and it's a lot more of a hallway track. There will be some speakers but it's more like tiny fest. Derek, you've attended one or two of those where it's like there are talks but really the focus is on getting us together and doing workshops and excursions and that kind of stuff and then at

at microconf in New Orleans we announced that microconf Europe is in Istanbul, Turkey in late September and that is actually selling pretty briskly right now which is great microconf.com slash Europe if folks are interested you thinking about taking a trip out to Turkey I've never been

You know what? I would love to. My brother-in-law is getting married that week. No, we booked it right over your head. I know. So I'm like, I don't think I can dip out of that. But yeah, if not for that, I would definitely be considering it because what a unique location, you know? Yeah, we're excited.

So I felt like New Orleans is the first time we have hosted a microconf there. It's the second time I've ever been. It's been about 20 years since our last trip. And I mean, to give you an idea, my oldest, who was a sophomore in college, was in a car seat. I think they were like eight months old, 12 months old. So that, yeah, gives you an idea. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought New Orleans was a really interesting balance. So Vegas, like I don't really want to go back to Vegas because of a lot of reasons, but it's just such a grind, right? It's just like this place you go and it's like, I don't know, it kind of sticks to you. And I walk away dehydrated for the next three weeks.

Whereas New Orleans was like, I thought it had a good balance of nightlife, but not so far over the top debauchery like Vegas does. And I felt like our hotel was close to the action, but not in the center of the action. Like if we were staying in the French Quarter, like you just don't sleep, you know, and I need to, I want to be energized for the events, for the talks and such. Did you make it out into New Orleans much?

I thought I maybe would make it out more, but every year Microcomics, I'm being a very immersive experience where I'm trying to see most of the talks and then stand in the hallway for a few hours and then go to the event afterward and then find dinner. And so all said and done, I did end up staying pretty close to...

to the hotel, which I don't think was a terrible thing. And I did do an excursion in the French Quarter, which we can talk about in a bit. So that got me out of the area a little bit. I don't really know if this is a problem that MicroConf necessarily needs to solve because really it's about the people. But when I was leaving, I was like, oh, I didn't really see a whole lot of New Orleans. And so it's on my list to go back someday and check out more of the city, I think.

Yeah, I came in, MicroConf started Sunday night and I flew in Saturday. And so I did have a full day to kind of, mid-conference requirements for me to be places.

And I did wind up walking along the waterfront and checking out some good restaurants. So with that, let's dive into a handful of sessions. So Sherry actually kicked off the event with the opening keynote. And two days prior to her keynote, she said, Hey, would you join me on stage? We can do it together. And which of course, like always works, right? Because there's just like chemistry, you know, it's like you and I getting on the microphone here to record. It's like, we can kind of talk about anything, and it's probably going to wind up being a

So Sherry had this talk idea, five lessons that exits teach us about running our business. And so we wanted to be sure to build on the recent book, Exit Strategy, not to just pull stuff straight out of it, right? And want to make it applicable to folks who are not currently selling. But like you're currently running the business, what we know about exits teach you about running the business differently.

day to day. And so aside from Sherry and my eyes matching green shoes, I don't know if you caught it. Oh, I didn't catch that. That shoes match the cover of the book. Yeah, we specifically, this is, this is where we're going now. Every, every new book I write, I get to buy a pair of shoes to match the cover. But all that said, did you have any takeaways from this, this session?

I mean, I think it's, I feel like this is becoming a mainstay now where there needs to be at least one talk that kind of addresses the psychology piece of running a business. I mean, I think I could feel it resonate in the room for sure. Like,

a lot of kind of light bulb moments for people when, you know, talking about being honest with yourself about what, what you value. Are you the artist? Are you the leader? Are you the entrepreneur? Kind of the, the relationship that you have with your business. You know, do you, do you tend to be like a firefighter or a manager type or, so I think there's, there's just a lot of like helpful nuggets in there to, to help founders kind of

I guess really get honest with themselves about how they relate to their business, what their tendencies are, and how to kind of push back against some of the unhealthier parts of those tendencies. And I think that kind of stuff is just like, we need to hear it over and over again. You know, it's like you can read the books, you can, as much as you can educate yourself on this stuff, it's really helpful to kind of hear it from different angles. So I was thankful for that talk. Yeah, and I liked some of the things Sherry brought in from her talk

psychology background, right? She has a PhD in psychology and there is this whole, there's internal family systems and she kind of reframed that as internal founder system, right? And I think that's the entrepreneur, leader, and what was the third thing? Artist. Artist, yep. And

She started talking about that and we got off stage and I said, that should probably be a chapter in a book. Just that idea should be expanded. Because we mentioned it briefly in Exit Strategy, but I think you could have a whole chapter. Then she talked about attachment styles, which are normally for relationships, but realistically we have relationships to our businesses. And so she started talking about that and I was like, that's another chapter. Each of these things I think are really important for folks to understand about themselves. Yeah.

Yeah, I think you had a follow on or this was one of Sherry's notes, but it's like, don't let your inner child make company decisions. You know, and not everything difficult is an emergency. Because I think especially if you tend to be sort of neurotic and anxious about your business, which I think, you know, heads were nodding in that room for sure. Like people who are in this community just have a tendency, I think, to kind of fall in that bucket. And so, yeah, that was good to hear. Yeah.

Yeah, she said that and I thought to myself, I feel so seen right now. I feel so understood, like you're in my head. There was a really good talk by Anthony Pieri, he's a first time microconf speaker and he runs a consulting agency called Fletch and they help with positioning.

And so the talk was all about not just positioning, but homepage positioning, like what you should have, what should your H1, your H2, have this whole formula is not the right word, but like a process, like a framework for it. And this was one that I was really excited to see and Anthony delivered immediately.

in spades on this idea. And I, in fact, I think it was the number one rated talk at this microconf. And it was one of the best talks I've seen in the past few years at a microconf. So I was, I was really impacted by it. And as I'm watching it, I'm thinking we should do this for, for microconf itself. Like what is, should our homepage positioning potentially not be what we have it today? You know, I want to run it snake chasing its own tail in this way, but did you take anything away from his talk? Yeah.

Yeah, I was also similarly impressed. I mean, we've had excellent talks in the past on positioning from April Dunford is one that stands out. She kind of wrote the book on positioning. So I was kind of like, I wonder if there's going to be anything new here. And it felt like this

This was just so typical MicroConf, like very actionable, like you said, kind of a framework laid out in a way that I just hadn't seen it phrased or distilled this simply before. And I think, yeah, I'm going to definitely be referencing back on some of his slides. And he gave some examples, some really tangible examples like Loom and a couple other startups that are not like

We're not talking about repositioning for a Fortune 500 company. These are startups that a lot of us can relate to and see parallels between our businesses and some of the concrete examples that he gave. So I just felt like it was a really good generalized framework with examples that we could resonate with and get ideas from. Similarly, I want to...

I want to run through a little positioning exercise myself. And I could see spending 10 minutes going through his framework and just sketching something out quick. I could see spending two or three hours and going a little deeper or even like...

a day or two with my whole senior leadership team and figuring out where we go. It depends on how far you want to take it, but I really enjoyed that one. And if you're listening to this and you did not make it to MicroConf and you're like, well, I want to see the videos, we will have the videos for sale here in the next, well, actually by the time this goes live, they might be for sale. So you can go to microconf.com and click the link in the top nav and we'll have videos that you can purchase of all the talks.

So then the afternoon of the first day was excursions and I believe we had four different excursions. There was a swamp boat tour where people saw, is it alligators or crocodiles?

It's alligators. Gators, right? Yeah, yeah, because of Florida gators. All right. So there were alligators. And then there was like a food tour. There was a French Quarter tour, which I think you mentioned you did with Ghost Stories perhaps and alcohol involved. And there was, I forget what the other, Beignet tour or something. I don't even remember the others. But which one did you do again? You did French Quarter? Yeah.

Yeah, well, I did French Quarter and it was actually originally going to be a beignet tour. And then it got changed to a full food tour with beignets at the end. Oh, bonus. Yeah, yeah. So it was good. I was glad to do that one because like I mentioned, I didn't explore the city a ton, but this got me kind of into like the iconic, you know, when people think New Orleans, they often think French Quarter first. So it was like good to see, you know, part of the most famous part and get a little bit of history about the city. Yeah.

And yeah, just sit around, move from long table to long table with a bunch of cool founders and you're kind of loosened up from eating some good food and walking around in the sunshine. And it was just another good opportunity to have some of those side conversations that you wouldn't necessarily have sitting around at round tables, you know?

Yep. And that's the point of the excursions, right? We kind of re-architected MicroConf from like eight or nine speakers down to five. We did it in 2020. We then didn't have the event because of COVID. And then by 2021, we realized afternoon of the first day, every time is excursions. And sometimes it's like kayaking in the Adriatic Sea, right? That was one year in

Dubrovnik and then Ben Yatour. And we try to do something that's local and has some flair if possible. And that's generally the consensus is like, yep, much better than watching two or three more talks. I don't know that we've seen a single piece of feedback to the contrary, that this wasn't the right move.

So then some other highly rated talks, Leanna Patch, of course, she emceed the event, which is great. I remember first giving up emcee duties and being like, well, but it's my event, I have to emcee it. Much like the founder thing, it's like, well, but I've always done this. And then the first time I did an emcee, I was like, oh my gosh, actually at one point during lunch I went and ate and I was super tired and I just went and took a nap and I was like,

This is amazing. Like I want to never emcee my event again. You know, I always want there to be someone. But then Leanna did that really good talk about copywriting and it was called Ewe Feelings. Something about copywriting with emotion. You know, how to bring out emotions. And she walked through six or seven different ways to do that. So what did you take away from this one?

Yeah, I feel like anytime there's a copywriting talk from someone talented like Leanna or Joanna Wiebe or whoever, you know, it's, I always immediately want to go and start editing my copy. You know, like, it's kind of thing where like, it's your copies never done, and it's never perfect. So there's always things you can improve. And so I feel like these are always a hit, because it's fun to pick up some extra tidbits from a really talented copywriter, you know, she talked about

utilizing frustration and pain. She talked about utilizing skepticism and how to just kind of tap into some of these emotions in your copywriting, but in a way that's like, I guess that has a refined touch to it. And so I have a whole outline of notes on that and I will be also breezing through that the next time I go and revise my copy.

Yeah, that's what happens. It's interesting because the next talk I want to talk about is Marcus Rivera's talk on pricing. He runs pricingio.com and has written a book. I believe it's called Street Pricing. We bought copies for all the attendees. And I started thumbing through it and I was like, yeah, this is really good stuff. I love his frameworks around pricing. But the interesting thing is if you are impacted by pricing,

and you want to change your pricing, there's a lot to that. You have to think it through, it'll probably take you a few weeks to both think it through and then implement it and then communicate it and this and that. Similarly with positioning, it takes some effort, but with copywriting, you can always just go in and start messing with your H1. And I'm not saying you should do that, but it is an easier thing

to just dig into and make an immediate change on. And so I think that's one of the benefits of having a discussion around copywriting frameworks. So speaking of Marcos' talk, did you take any notes away from his? Because I love some of his frameworks. He had like the five...

basic ways to structure SaaS pricing, you know, and it was like core plus add-ons or it was like all in one or it was like a couple tiers or, you know, he had five different. And when I look at that, I'm like, well, this is obvious, but it's not obvious. Like it's one of those non-obvious things that once he said it, I'm like, gosh, I love this framework. You know, I love just having that they're really, I kind of like to know what the outer edges of things are. Like how many B2B SaaS marketing approaches are there? There's about approximately 20.

That's it. I remember thinking, are there hundreds? Are there thousands? When I sat down to really gather them and I went through traction and I was trying to look at tiny seed companies and blah, blah, blah, there's about 20 and I like knowing that. It makes me feel good to know there's only about 20. I don't know that I'd thought about how many

SaaS pricing, high level structures there were. And when I saw his slide, I was like, yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Like maybe there's a sixth, but I don't, I can't think of one. And so given that there's not 50, there's approximately five. I love that, that type of thinking. And he had a few slides like that, that in retrospect, it's like, well, that's obvious, but it's not obvious until you put it in a slide, you know? And I, so I really appreciate some of those insights, but what were your thoughts on his talk? Yeah.

Yeah, it was extremely dense, information-dense talk. And I don't mean that as a negative thing, just like there's a lot there. So I felt like it was a good kind of overview on kind of jumping off points for thinking about how to potentially restructure your pricing if you have an existing pricing model in place or...

or start fresh with one. It had some insights like sometimes your packaging can actually be too complicated. I think a lot of times we assume that as your business matures, it has to inevitably get more complicated, but that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes you're overcomplicating things and I think it depends on price point, depends on how much TAM you're trying to bite off, how narrowly scoped or flexible and widely scoped your product is.

So there's a kind of a lot of heuristics that he gave in there as he talked about that spectrum of simple, just a few tiers all the way up to seat-based pricing, to having add-ons and packages and metered pricing. And so I think there was a lot there, a lot to digest in one sitting, but definitely some good kind of overview of the frameworks. And I liked that it was

It was kind of focused on internal strategy. I don't think he really talked about pricing surveys, for example. We've heard Patrick Campbell in the past talk about the Van Westendorp survey or whatever, and I don't think he mentioned that stuff at all. So it was kind of from a little bit different angle, which is helpful because I feel like pricing is just such a wide topic in general that it helps to hear multiple perspectives and sort of merge them together as you mature in your knowledge of the space. Yeah.

And then Colleen Schnettler, who made...

listeners of this podcast will know as the star of Tiny Seed Tales season, well, it's the one that just ended. I don't remember if that's season four or season five, but it was great. She told me at Micrograph, I said, are people coming up and saying things to you? She's like, oh my gosh, everyone. I was like, do you feel like a celeb? Like you start in this episode of, you know, kind of an audio reality show, although I guess reality show gives it a bad name. It's the real reality, not the manufactured reality that would be in a TV show. But she wound up doing an attendee talk about

about LinkedIn outreach. And you had some thoughts on that, I believe.

Yeah, this one was, I mean, it was just like a 10-minute attendee talk, just kind of briefly introducing the idea of, well, the thesis that LinkedIn is where it's at for B2B SaaS right now. And I think that resonated. I saw that a lot of light bulbs go on in the room when she was talking about this because I think a lot of us like to avoid LinkedIn, like see it as sort of a skeezy place where there's a lot of... It's awful.

self-promotion and that is certainly all there. And she acknowledged that in her talk and also pointed out that like, there is just a lot of engagement happening on that platform right now. And, you know, as all social media platforms are sort of going through their, their growing pains right now and algorithm shifts and ownership changes and all of that, like,

LinkedIn is a place that just happens to be a hotspot for people who are actually doing real business. And so she kind of talked about just a few tactics and strategies for thinking about doing cold outreach on LinkedIn. But I think a lot of people came away from hearing that talk thinking, all right, fine, I will have another look at LinkedIn and I will set my profile up properly and I will manage my inbox properly. Yeah.

I give up. You convinced me. What's interesting is we, and I mentioned on this show before, but we have switched our focus from YouTube. I'm still putting out a video every other week, so it's still a lot of effort and a lot of content, and we're still having success there. But we kind of have tapped out the audience, if I'm being honest, of what we focus on, which is B2B SaaS founders who are...

maybe not on the traditional venture track. And so we've shifted a lot of focus and effort towards LinkedIn. And the more I get in there, the more I'm like, you know what? This isn't the worst. This isn't as bad as I thought it was from the outside. And there is good content. There are people, like Rand Fishkin's putting out great content. Actually, Marco Cervera, who spoke at this micro-conf, has really good content. And

Obviously I'm putting out the best content that I can and we're experimenting with things. But it's really interesting to kind of see a lot of the heads turn towards it, turn towards LinkedIn as it's kind of been just in the background for years. I remember setting it up 20 years ago and then not doing anything with it. But I think especially as Twitter is kind of going through what it's going through, it's like where else are people? So I appreciate the sentiment. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think like, actually I don't know how much, because I don't spend a lot of time today on LinkedIn, I don't know how much like politics there is on there and stuff, but I know just the other social media platforms are just so overrun with that noise. And so maybe it can be a little bit of like a reprieve from like, all right, let's just talk about business stuff over here. You know, maybe that's partially what's driving people to maybe spend a bit more time on there. Yep.

So it was great seeing old friends. There were a lot of past MicroConf speakers who, you know, they buy a ticket and attend. Folks like Arvid Kahl and Josh Kaufman, Patrick McKenzie, Asia Arangio, and there were a few others. So I was able to hang out and chat with all those folks. And I think you said this before we hit record, but you were like, yeah, it's kind of like a family reunion. I think of it as a family reunion except with people that I like. I mean, wait.

That's usually what it is. But we did receive some good feedback from the attendees. I actually realized the first night's reception, while it was outdoors there, whenever there's a roof above us, it just gets loud because we're all excited. So that's one thing. It's not always possible to have an outdoor venue. And that's why in Dubrovnik...

It was so nice to not have a ceiling. And so you can just talk and it's not super loud. But I felt like the first night reception was hard for me, especially as I get older to just like concentrate, you know, and hear it's the loud, the loud bar problem. Some folks asked for more breakout sessions, which I thought was interesting because I feel like we had a lot, you know, we had some workshops led from the stage. We had breakout sessions where people could choose different options. And then we had the excursions. And so we only have five,

main stage speakers there are obviously some attendees talks as well that are given but that was a suggestion I'm curious how you felt about the balance of say content being spoken to versus more like breakout-y workshop-y you know non-talk content

Yeah, I feel like as I now reflect back to multiple years ago, MicroConf, where it would just be two days of talks without the excursions built in, you know, that was a lot. And I think this feels just energy-wise, I'm able to take in the information better if there's a little bit more variety, I guess. I actually...

used the breakout session time for getting a little bit of work done because I needed to check on support and things, and then ended up kind of in the lobby and a few other people were doing similar things and we had a little bit of conversation there. And that was nice, that was a nice way to break up the day. I do wonder, especially with more mature businesses

they're represented that does maybe present a problem of like people are dealing with different, a wider spectrum of different problems. So maybe that

Maybe that speaks to a desire for, okay, this is a session that's really catered to people who are over 100K MRR and then this is one for people at lower stage. I know this is something you guys have played around with in different forms over the years on how to make the content relevant for people at a wide spectrum of stages in their business. I don't know, there could be something there, but overall just the amount of talking from the stage feels like it's in a good spot for me.

I think for me as well, we went down to four speakers in Malta, so MicroConf Europe a couple years ago. And it was like an opener on the first day, a closer on the first day. An opener on the second day, a closer on the second day. And then two attendee talks or three and then everything else was like founder by founder and excursions and this and that. And it felt like MicroConf Lite to me. And actually that was the feedback we got. So I think four speakers is probably one too few.

So if you're listening to this and you are intrigued, if you're interested in attending a potential MicroConf event, there are two in-person events on the schedule and one remote event. So MicroConf Growth Retreat is in London, May 14th through the 16th. You can just head to microconf.com slash events to see all of these listed. MicroConf Europe is going to be in Istanbul, Turkey, September 28th through the 30th.

And then MicroConf Remote, our sales-focused edition, will be online May 21st. And we try to keep those tickets pretty inexpensive, really in the $50 range, such that anyone can attend.

So thanks again for joining us this year, Derek, at another MicroConf US. And thanks for coming back on the show and sharing your thoughts with the crowd. For sure, happy to do it. Folks want to keep up with you. You're on Twitter and Blue Sky. Let's see, Twitter, you're Derek Reimer. And Blue Sky, are you DerekReimer.com? I am. All right. And then if folks want to use the best scheduling link on the internet, they can head to SavvyCal.com.

Thanks again, man. Thank you. Thanks again to Derek Reimer for coming on the show. And thanks to you for listening this week and every week. This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 769.