Phil Freo
@philfreo
VP Product/Engineering at @Close. Side project: TeamHome.app. Into SaaS & remote work. Previously at @Quizlet, @UF.
Cold Sales
Everyone loves to hate on cold sales calls & emails.
Normally I do too. Annoyed by volume of junk email. Annoyed by people finding my cell phone # to try to sell SaaS or recruiting services to @Close
But just now I got a cold call on my cell. Just when I was about to hang up...
I realized they were providing a solution to a problem that I have a burning need to solve right now – one of our top product priorities!
Similar happened last week – a cold email from another SaaS company that meets the same burning need.
Started reading through "Remote Works" – good stuff for any manager or leader in a remote team. Also was cool to get a few of my quotes in print in this one.
Async Weeks
About to kick off an "Async Week" next week at @Close within Eng/Product/Design.
We work pretty asynchronously normally and don't have a ton of meetings, but we use Async Weeks to flex our async muscles further with 0 prescheduled meetings during the week.
Product Engineers
Good thread on Product Engineers.
Over time I’ve learned engineers can be motivated by different things:
- Hard problems
- Performance/scalability
- Elegant code or system design
- Deeply understanding their craft
All are valuable but very different than Product Engineers. twitter.com/philfreo/status/1631700836609818635
When a startup is tiny they need everyone to wear multiple hats and the “product engineer” role is most crucial IMO.
Over time specialization is necessary and the hard/important thing is good collaboration cross-functionally.
TreasuryDirect password field
In case I'm not the only person for whom TreasuryDirect's login form virtual keyboard is infuriating...
I wrote a little browser extension to make the password field editable:
github.com/philfreo/password-enabler-extension
Simplest way to have good SaaS technical support is to not ask a customer for any additional info without trying to reproduce the problem or get that info yourself first.
LEGO Boost
Got my 5yo LEGO Boost for Christmas – really impressed, fun way to get kids into programming/robotics.
@LEGO_Group twitter.com/i/web/status/1611160877977190407
Mini-Retreat
Recently at @Close, we had been going in circles for several weeks on a tough Product/Engineering problem. After weeks of Zoom calls and async docs, it felt like we were going nowhere.
We tried something different...
The worst part about "Contact us" enterprise SaaS pricing actually isn't having to talk on the phone, nor is it the pricing.
The worst part is even if you're a decision maker ready to buy, you still can't move fast. If someone can't trial and buy a SaaS within 1 day, too slow!