Mike McDerment is Co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s number one cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Mike talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about building and scaling a company, product development, and his free e-book called Breaking the Time Barrier.

Mike built a simple tool to solve his accounting problem, and now 20 million people have used the tool. He could see the value of the tool, but he hadn’t built and scaled a company. It was the great unknown which excited him. Suddenly, Mike saw the value of the tool for everyone. He wanted to bring it into the world. After building the first version for himself, he soon added a software designer. They worked on the product for nine months to a year, then added another co-founder and hired employees. Mike’s team became very connected to their customers, always showing the product early in development. They started to understand the market and the most impactful parts of what to build.  

Bootstrapping the Company - Raising capital is not success. A better strategy is to find customers and fund yourself- Over ten years, FreshBooks de-risked the market, product, team, and model.  - The first round of venture money was $30 million.  

Obstacles and Things That Almost Killed FreshBooks- Check out Blog post: https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/7-ways-ive-almost-killed-freshbooks - Listen to advisors, but trust yourself.  - Sometimes you move fast, but some areas you need to slow down, especially with product-market fit. Don’t Rush.  

Breaking The Time Barrier- Breaking the Time Barrier, Mike’s book for his customers doing client services work explains how to price services.  - Focus on value-based billing instead of on the number of hours worked. Understand how big the problem is and how expensive it is.  - Nobody cares about tech. They care about the value they get from tech.  

Product Development - Better to focus on building benefits like time savings, revenue generation, or performance. Brings more value for your customer.  - Frame pricing on value. e.g., $50 a month will save 20 hrs, or for less than a cup a coffee, you can have this service.  

What’s different for a company at scale? - Culture - How does a company respond when challenged with something?- Customer-obsessed

How do you maintain the freshness of a company?- Combo of direction and constraints for motivation.  - Creates a condition for taking chances.

For More Information For more information on Mike McDerment or FreshBooks check out freshbooks.com. 

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