The Art of Product: 81: Sane and Sustainable Growth with Ben Curtis from Honeybadger

About this Episode

Derrick is still traveling. So, Ben’s co-host for this episode is Honeybadger Co-founder Ben Curtis. Honeybadger offers an application health monitoring tool featuring an easy-to-use platform with exception, uptime, and check-in monitoring.

Since its creation about seven years ago, Honeybadger’s three founders - Curtis along with Starr Horne and Joshua Wood - cranked out all the work. However, the company added a marketing person a few months ago and recently hired its first developer.

Today’s Topics Include:

Honeybadger has kept headcount low to optimize profit-per-employee; eventually needed help with marketing and other tasks
Downside of contractors is they’re not committed to being around for very long; wanted someone who was dedicated to making Honeybadger more successful
Bringing new people in is risky, but Curtis kind of wishes they would’ve done it sooner
Documenting processes is essential to transfer knowledge to new team members and discover opportunities for improvement and automation
Setting expectations regarding time; Curtis makes conscious choice to only work 20-30 hours per week in Honeybadger’s relaxed and asynchronous office environment
Honeybadger took about three years to achieve a stable infrastructure, where things weren’t regularly blowing up and breaking
Moment Honeybadger Made It: Able to offer health insurance and living the dream by getting paid well to do exactly what they want to do and exactly how they want to do it
What can you afford to pay yourself when starting a business? Establish schedule and roadmap to set goal to pay yourself regularly, even if amount is meager
Honeybadger’s biggest costs are for hosting, health insurance, and salaries; company has grown through word-of-mouth, not paid marketing and advertising
Gorilla Marketing: Free marketing and fantastic response rate for Honeybadger’s T-shirt giveaway to get customers’ credit card numbers; Burger Bus was also a success
Be authentic to create brand recognition; you’re your target audience - what do you like?
Honeybadger’s mission is to give developers the best tools, so they can have a better day; customer service is one of the company’s core guiding principles