This past weekend, Jesse told you that one of his 2024 highlights for the Bootstrapped Giants business was figuring out our business model.

The approach I used to find it was taught to me by the founder of Twitch, Emmett Shear. I ran his playbook for over a decade, each time I did I found a product that customers loved buying.

On Jan 9 I’m teaching it. Get a free ticket here thanks to our sponsor, beehiiv.

Emmett’s approach

In 2010 Emmett had a problem every founder can relate to. His business was doing ok, but it was stuck.

At the time, his company was called Justin•TV, and they enabled anyone to stream live. It got some early traction because it was novel, but it wasn’t setting the world on fire.

I used Justin•TV to do my podcast live, but it lacked features, like a way for 2 people to broadcast at once.

To figure out what to build, Emmett decided to talk to his users. What he discovered created a billion dollar opportunity.

The steps

1. Identify the niche

Emmett’s approach: He picked gamers because he believed esports viewership would overtake traditional sports viewership.

BG’s approach: We used beehiiv’s survey feature to survey new subscribers. We realized B2B service businesses were our focus.

2. Have 1-on-1 meetings

Emmett: Skyped gamers who stopped streaming on his platform and gamers who posted on other platforms.

BG: I did Google Meet sessions with buyers of our B2B Sales Blueprint

3. Ask about their goals

Emmett: Learned that gamers were starting to earn real money from their hobbies.

BG: They wanted a systemized way to grow their sales.

4. Find the blockers

Emmett: He learned that basic data was holding his people back. They’d sell sponsorships to companies like Sony, but they couldn’t tell their sponsors the exact number of people who watched live when the sponsorship ran.

BG: I learned that founders of B2B service businesses felt trapped by their own sales talents. Because they were “naturals” at sales, they didn’t have clear systems that would allow their companies to grow beyond their time and talents.

5. Validate

Emmett: He pinged users on Skype before building to ask “Hey, am I thinking right?”

BG: I believe the best validation is a pre-payment. Once I felt I understood what our customers wanted I said, “Would you prepay for this now to show me that it’s really something you want?”

The result

If you know the Twitch story, you know that Emmett and his team sold their company to Amazon for $970 million. None of that would have happened without the customer conversations that led him to pivot from Justin•TV (which offered decent streaming for all) to Twitch•TV (which offered exceptional streaming to gamers).

I used Emmett’s playbook to help me make my podcast, Mixergy, one of the few profitable podcasts, and one that listeners were willing to pay for.

At BG, it’s how we found our business model.

Try it in your business

On January 9, I will walk you through this process in a few days and show you how to use it in your business to find new products/services to launch in 2025.

Everyone who registers will get a recording.

Get your free ticket here.

(Free entry courtesy of our sponsor, beehiiv.)

~ Andrew