SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Ironman Software Hits 1500 Customers, $300k Revenue Selling Powershell Microsoft Tool
22 Aug 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The longevity isn't quite there with that product, and that's one of the reasons I started using PowerShell Universal. But I would say I probably have 1,500 paying customers per year kind of thing.
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There, you'll find a private RSS feed that you can add to your favorite podcast listening tool, along with other subscriber-only content. Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello everyone, my guest today is Adam Driscoll.
He's a solo founder, Microsoft MVP, and longer time open source contributor. His software is used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. When he's not working, he's an outdoor enthusiast, long distance endurance athlete, and beer lover. Adam, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, definitely. You an IPA kind of guy or what? Oh, definitely. Big IPA guy. Nice. Very cool.
And you do that before or after the Ironman run? Definitely after. Fair enough.
I've tried that before. It doesn't work out so well.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Adam Driscoll to create Ironman Software?
What year?
I started fall of 2017. So I actually released the PowerShell Pro Tools first. That was kind of like a freemium model of one of the open source projects that I had been doing for a long time. So I decided that it was really popular and that I needed to kind of monetize it.
So you launched a freemium version in 2017 of that tool? Yeah. Yep. How did you get the first hundred freemium downloads?
Well, actually, the open source project that I had running was PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio. So Visual Studio is Microsoft's development environment. I added the PowerShell language support to that. And prior to me actually making it into a freemium tool, it was a free tool. And that had, I think at its peak, about 750,000 installs.
So I realized that that was like I probably should like try to sell something in there. So, yeah, that's what I did is I added some features that, you know, people could buy. So it was more or less like that. That install base just it automatically updates and then they kind of saw my new features that they could purchase. And then from there.
I kind of set up a website and people could buy, buy a license.
But so Adam, let's go back though. So before you launch the paid features and people see the paid pop up, I get that. And there's a conversion rate from free install to paid. I get that. But take me back to the beginning though. Like where were you actually? So I understand you built, you said you built this for visual basic, uh, visual studio, visual studio. But how did you get 750,000 downloads?
It's not easy. Were you like ranked really high in like the app store or, or on a subreddit form somewhere or sub stack or how'd you get the downloads?
Uh, so it was, uh, internally, uh, I was working at a large, like fortune 100 software company kind of thing. And I built it in my free time. And then we had some guys there that had some, I don't know, uh, uh, friends at Microsoft sort of thing. Um, so when they saw that I built that open source tool, they got ahold of these guys at Microsoft and then eventually Microsoft promoted it.
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Chapter 3: How does PowerShell Universal help IT professionals?
Yeah. So that's pretty cool.
Okay. So that makes sense. All right. So you launched some new paid features. Now, when did you launch that paid that paywall for the first time? Uh, that was like September, 2017. Okay. Got it. September, 2017. And so walk me through, you're an engineer. So I always like asking engineers how you think about pricing. Cause it's like toxic to you.
So how did you think about what price point to put on the new features?
Oh man, I was like way low, you know, I was like, ah, people, you know, I have 750, I did like the math. I was like, I have 750,000 installs or whatever. Right. I'm going to charge 25 bucks a year for, you know, this paid feature kind of thing. And, um, from there it was kind of like, oh yeah. Oh, okay. Easy millionaire sort of thing.
But, uh, you know, like 99.9% of the people didn't buy anything. even at that price point. And how many did buy? Uh, I think my first, like my first year I did probably $15,000 of sales. So it was, it was okay.
So was that like 600, 600, 700 people purchased something like that?
Yeah.
Something like that.
So, uh, I think by the end of 2018, I had at least doubled or tripled the price that I was charging kind of thing. So, um, yeah. So, uh, that continues to be a pretty, uh, pretty good seller for me actually. It's probably about 40% of my business still.
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Chapter 4: What are the pricing models for Ironman Software products?
One of the things is that both of the licenses are perpetual licensed right now. So it's not like a subscription based or anything like that. So if people decide not to upgrade or pay for maintenance, then they don't have to continue to pay me sort of thing. So if they're happy with the version they have, that kind of thing, then there's no need to upgrade. Yeah.
They could technically still be using my software, just they're not paying for a license. So I would still count that.
But they paid once like three years ago, a hundred bucks. Exactly. I see. I see. Interesting. Okay. Any paid marketing spend? Like do you have CAC for these new customers or it's all organic?
I'd say it's 99% organic. I've probably spent like a thousand dollars on some paid marketing here and there, but it really hasn't panned out. I realize I probably need to spend a lot more to actually see that, but...
Well, what, so what is the, I mean, how are people finding you today? Cause it's not via like your website and SEO. There's not a lot of traffic going there. So I'm assuming you're built into some app exchanges or something.
Yeah. So there's the visual studio marketplace, which is one big place that people are finding me. And then there's this PowerShell gallery where people can like download PowerShell extensions, that kind of air modules. And they'll find me through that.
Oh, PowerShell is not your thing. That's another tool that you sort of built on top of.
Yeah. So PowerShell is a scripting and shell language by Microsoft. So they actually, yeah, there's a whole ecosystem there on that. And, you know, I have, you know, I have an MVP, a Microsoft MVP in the PowerShell space. So I kind of have like a voice inside that, I guess, domain. So that's kind of the other way I do that.
When Microsoft hosts a PowerShell user conference, you're like a freaking celebrity.
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