Gavin Hammar's Linkedin Analytics

I escaped the EC2 nightmares by going 100% serverless 😮‍💨 ‼️ Geeky founder stuff below… At my last company, Sendible, our servers were a constant source of stress. MySQL replication breaking at random. Load balancers failing. The worst? Boarding a flight when everything went down - had to restart EC2 instances FROM MY PHONE with plane about to take off. What I’m doing differently this time with Swarm + StoryPrompt: - Built 100% serverless from day one - Lambda handling all backend processing - Vercel for speedy deployments - NoSQL DB on Firebase - Zero database replication headaches - No more 3am incident alerts Total result: I actually sleep at night now Cost benefit: Predictable scaling Time saved: Countless hours not spent "maintaining infrastructure" Wild part? Was stuck in the “we need servers” mindset for years, paying with both money AND sanity. Lesson for bootstrapped founders: the tech you don’t think about is the best tech. Serverless = peace of mind

Just noticed something wild on our demo forms. Q: "How did you hear about us?" Old answer: "Google" New answer: "ChatGPT" (literally 3 out of 4 form responses now) The search game is changing FAST. It's not just about ranking on Google anymore - it's about making sure AI models know you exist. And I have absolutely no idea how to optimise for that. Zero playbook. No strategy yet. SEO is being replaced by... what? AEO? (AI Engine Optimisation?) Traditional search marketing is getting completely rewritten, and I'm as lost as everyone else. Anyone figured this out? — Follow me for real talk on bootstrapping, SaaS, and the things I'm still figuring out.

Got this message from a customer last week that stopped me in my tracks: "We spent a fortune trying to build our own platform but had to give up. You made all our ideas to come true. I'm your official fan #1" 😭 When you're bootstrapped, customer love is the only metric that truly matters. No investors to impress. No board to justify your existence to. Just real humans telling you that your late nights actually mean something. This is why I build. 🙌

"When should I start getting my company ready to sell?" A founder asked me this over coffee yesterday. My answer surprised them: "The best acquisition strategy? Make yourself completely replaceable." Truth is, I never planned to sell Sendible. When ASG reached out, I wasn't even looking for buyers. But I'd accidentally built something they really wanted. Here's what happened: I got tired of being the bottleneck in my own business. So I read "Traction" by Gino Wickman, fell in love with the EOS framework, and went all-in. We documented everything. Like, literally everything. I built a solid leadership team and slowly moved myself out of daily operations. Eventually, I was just the vision guy. The company ran perfectly fine without me in the weeds. Turns out, that's exactly what buyers want. They're looking for a business that won't collapse the minute you walk out the door. It's like selling a house. Nobody wants to buy your messy place with you still living in it. They want a clean, move-in ready property where they can just bring their furniture and settle in. Want to build a sellable business? Stop being essential to it.

MRR up >20% across both my companies this quarter. The reason? No clue, and frankly, don't care. Sometimes the best strategy is just throwing things at the wall and not obsessing over which one stuck and why.

We're noticing something interesting on Swarm - the "homework model" is crushing it right now. Creators aren't just dropping content. They're requiring action. A salsa teacher in our community has students submit practice videos after each lesson. She gives personalized feedback on technique. Guitar teacher doing the same - students submit recordings as they progress through material. The completion rates and retention are insane compared to passive consumption communities. Makes sense when you think about it. People don't pay for content (that's free everywhere). They pay for transformation. And transformation requires action + feedback, not just watching videos. We're seeing this work across music, dance, fitness, business coaching... basically anything skill-based. The best part? These creators are charging 2-3x more than regular memberships. Turns out people value what they put effort into.

First-time founder asked how I coded Swarm's website. Me: "I didn't. Bought a $79 Framer template and changed the colors." Him: 😳 Lesson learned from my Sendible days: Spent weeks building our first site in Ruby on Rails. Marketing needed dev release for EVERY. SINGLE. CHANGE. Nightmare! Swarm's site? Up in a weekend. The copy? That took weeks to get right. Nobody signs up because your website has custom code. They sign up because your words resonate with their problem. Save your dev resources for the product. Buy a template for your website (Framer or Webflow). Focus on the message, not the medium.

I've been an entrepreneur for 17 years. Want to know the most valuable lesson I've learned? Just start. No really. JUST START. Every business I've ever built evolved dramatically from my initial vision. But none would exist if I'd waited for the perfect Gantt chart, the flawless business plan, or that elusive moment when I finally felt "ready".

The fastest customer breakup I’ve ever had: New trialist just asked for a UI label change → we said "we'll review next week" → they asked to delete their account 😳 Honestly? Bullet dodged. If they're demanding before paying, imagine what comes after. Learned this lesson the hard way at Sendible - saying yes to everything creates expectations you can’t maintain. The best customers give feedback but respect your process. The worst ones think their needs trump your entire roadmap. Not every customer is the right customer. And sometimes "no" is the most profitable word in business

What's the secret sauce to bootstrapping a successful SaaS business? Honestly? It's perseverance. That's it. After bootstrapping 3 companies, I've learned it's not about growth hacks or fancy marketing. It's just showing up. Every. Single. Day. What this ACTUALLY looks like: - Talking to customers when you'd rather be coding - Making tiny improvements nobody notices - Continuing when growth feels painfully slow - Learning from failures that make you question everything My first business took 12 YEARS to exit. Not 12 months. Not 12 funding rounds. Here's the truth: competitors can copy your features, messaging, pricing... But they can't copy your willingness to play the long game. While they chase quick wins, you're building something sustainable through consistent, unglamorous work. The hardest part? Having the discipline to keep going when results don't come overnight.

The easiest way to build a $5k/mo side business without quitting your job:

The toughest skill I've learned in 13+ years of bootstrapping businesses is this: Protecting my thinking time Because every "yes" to someone else's calendar invite is a "no" to yourself. Coffee invites. "Quick chats." Partnership meetings. Everyone wants a piece of you. When your calendar is empty, it's tempting to fill it. But those blank spaces aren't "free time" - they're where breakthrough ideas are born. A time to step back. See the big picture. Or go deep on meaningful work. An empty calendar with room to think is more powerful than a packed one with no breathing room. Going slower often moves you faster.

Keep seeing crazy talented people stuck job hunting for months. Here's my 2c (hopefully it helps): After hiring hundreds at Sendible (and now building two new companies), this is what gets my attention as a founder: 👉 Video cover letters EVERY TIME. Text resumes all blur together; seeing someone's personality and communication style moved them to the top of my pile every time. 👉 Candidates who showed up to interviews with a one-page "here's what I'd improve" document - showed they were already thinking like an employee, not an applicant. 👉 People who've clearly researched us and have specific ideas. Generic, dull applications go straight to the bin. What instantly turns me off: - AI generated CVs/cover letters (so obvious) - Applications with zero company research - People who can't explain their actual impact at previous jobs - Generic skills without demonstrating results - Long CVs with excessive lists of skills and tools (doesn't impress me) How to stand out: 1. Market yourself like a product - lead with a clear promise of what you deliver 2. Include testimonials as social proof - get past colleagues to vouch for you (bonus points if it's on video) 3. Focus on how you'll benefit MY company, not just listing YOUR skills 4. Quantify past wins with specific metrics ("Increased conversion 32%") 5. Reach out to directly via DM/email instead of through crowded job boards/recruiters 6. Use LinkedIn strategically - search "hiring + [your job]" to find active opportunities As a founder, I'm not looking for someone who checks boxes. I want someone who thinks differently. The job market is tough and the approach that worked 5 years ago doesn't cut it anymore.

Had dinner with a non-technical founder last night. Great idea, zero coding experience, asking where to begin. Here's what I told him: Building software isn't the hard part anymore. He'd never heard of Claude or Cursor. Didn't know AI can write entire applications from a simple prompt. Had no clue that the "technical barrier" everyone talks about basically doesn't exist anymore. Anyone can build software now. Literally anyone. I blew his mind when I uploaded a simple UI sketch to Claude and had it build a working prototype of his idea in under 60 seconds. But here's the brutal truth: getting someone to stop scrolling long enough to actually care about what you've built? That's where 99% of founders die. Distribution is savage. Marketing is harder than it's ever been. After building Sendible, selling it, and now working on Swarm + StoryPrompt, I'm still figuring this part out. The technical challenges? AI solved them. The human attention problem? That's the real battle. What's working for you in 2025? How are you cutting through the noise? I don't have the answers, so genuinely curious.

Founder chat got spicy when someone asked about platform risk. Hope my response wasn't too brutal... OMG guys, let me tell you about when Twitter suddenly BLOCKED our API access at Sendible. No warning. Zilch 😱 Customers freaking out. Team in panic mode. Me? On hols in Mallorca trying to save the business from hotel wifi. Nightmare! Why? All bc we built on someone else's platform. They didn't like our white label offering. Just like that, access GONE. This is what nobody warns you about with API-dependent businesses. You're literally one policy change away from disaster. After 13+ yrs of that stress, my rule is simple: if your core business depends on someone else's API, your success isn't determined by customers loving you - it's determined by platforms tolerating you. Especially at scale. The bigger you get, the bigger the target on your back. That's why Swarm and StoryPrompt are built differently. No mission-critical integrations. Own your infrastructure. Own your destiny. (Anyone else been burned by platform dependencies? Drop your stories 👇) — Follow me (Gavin Hammar) for weekly tips on scaling a profitable bootstrapped SaaS business.

Just found out the company I built changed their logo after 13 years. I'm sitting here staring at the plastic cutout of the OLD logo that I literally took as a keepsake when I sold Sendible 4 years ago. Plus all my company swag that now looks vintage. Like some weirdo ex-founder hoarder. But seeing the new design hit different than I expected. It's clean, modern, probably better for conversions or whatever. But it's also... not mine anymore. It's like watching your kid get a new stepdad who's objectively better at everything: ✅ Better at branding than me ✅ Probably doesn't argue with the marketing team ✅ Definitely doesn't insist on keeping Comic Sans in the style guide 🤣 The rational part of my brain knows this is good. Companies evolve. Brands refresh. I got paid. But the emotional part? That logo was with me through 13 years of everything: the all-nighters, the product pivots, the 2am emergency bug fixes. Also doesn't help when old customers still slide into my DMs asking me to "have a word with support" as if I'm hiding in the office somewhere. I'm not. I'm building new stuff. But apparently my heart didn't get that memo. Anyone else get weirdly attached to things after selling? Or am I just having a midlife crisis over branding choices?

Stop bragging about burnout. It's not a flex. Been there, done that. 17 years of building companies taught me burnout isn't something to celebrate. Your brain makes better decisions when it's not running on fumes. Simple as that. What's actually worked for me: - No emails after 7pm - Prioritise exercise and sleep - Delegate the small stuff early - Use AI for the boring repetitive tasks - Turn meetings into walks You can build something amazing without the exhaustion badge. The most impressive founders I know protect their energy like it's their most valuable asset. Because it is.

Just slashed our AWS bill by 70% in 2 weeks 🤯 ⚠️ Techie talk ahead! Non-geeks can skip this post Our video platforms (Swarm + StoryPrompt) were bleeding $$$ on cloud costs. Bill was getting scary. Seemed unsustainable. What actually worked: - Set S3 lifecycle rules to move old vids to cheaper storage tiers - Auto-delete unusable raw uploads after 90d - Switched from Elastic Transcoder → Media Convert (50% cheaper) - Started using CloudFront for better caching of S3 files Total time invested: ~14 days Savings: 70% off monthly bill Stress reduction: priceless Most shocking part? AWS has all these cost-saving tools built in. They were just sitting there while I paid premium prices every month 🤦‍♂️ Lesson for bootstrapped founders: sometimes the fastest way to grow profits isn't more customers or higher prices - it's just cutting the costs — Follow me (Gavin Hammar) for weekly tips on scaling a profitable bootstrapped SaaS business.

My most successful founder friends are practically ghosts online. They're too busy making money to post about making money. Literally 0 posts in 12 months. Maybe 500 followers tops. Meanwhile "entrepreneur influencers" w/ 50k followers dropping their 17th success framework this week are making $0 in actual revenue. Man, the internet's wild!

Most freelancers blew their chance with me in the first email. "My hourly rate is $X." Wrong approach. The person who got hired as Swarm's fractional marketer? They did something different: 1. Asked questions about our specific needs 2. Created a menu of 3 custom packages based on those needs 3. Explained the outcome of each package (not the hours) The difference is massive: Hourly rate = selling your time (limited) Packages = selling outcomes (scalable) Clients don't care about buying your hours. They care about buying results. When you package your services, you're no longer competing on price per hour. You're competing on value delivered. This is why subscription models work for freelancers too - package your expertise, not your availability. Stop selling time. Start selling solutions.