Highlights from the interview with Alex McClafferty
- [5:06] Alex talks about his success as a combination of luck and measured risk.
- [10:00] Early attempts to hack together a WordPress site that led to WPCurve.
- [15:40] The process of deciding, “What’s next?” after a big project is over.
- [18:11] Alex describes productized services as an online business model.
- [23:24] The first question Alex asks his consulting clients.
Back in 2013, Alex McClafferty was searching for an idea — a project he could dive into headfirst and turn into a business.
Then from California, he came across Dan Norris working away in Australia on a newly created service called WP Live Ninja. Alex loved the idea and saw that Dan had $478/month in revenue and was struggling to acquire customers. So he reached out to Dan to see if he wanted to partner up — and from this conversation, WP Curve was born.
Alex and Dan ran with the idea and In 2013 and by 2015, they’d built a remote team around the world and grown to $1MM annual recurring revenue. Then in December 2016, GoDaddy acquired WP Curve and Alex joined GoDaddy as the Director of Product Management, where he stayed until October of 2018.
Today, Alex has joined the ranks of the digitally nomadic as he travels the world with no set schedule or destination. While at the same time, he has started a private consulting company for CEOs looking to scale their productized companies the same way he did with WP Curve.
In this conversation we discuss:
- The problem with tying your identity to your business
- The 3 pillars of success for a productized service
- How to find the right business idea to start
Now, let’s hack…
Alex McClafferty
Resources and links from the interview
- Work with Alex McClafferty: Productize.co
- Interview with David Cancel of Drift
- Interview with Dan from Dynamite Circle
- Example of a successful productized service: Interview with Jake Jorgovan of Lead Cookie
- Another successful productized service example: Podcast Royale
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