
<Image
  publicId="external-references/proximity-acquires-smpl/cover"
  alt="A screenshot from a press release announcing proximity acquiring smpl"
/>

In early 2020, [smpl](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/smpl-llc) was acquired by [Proximity](https://www.proximity.space). I was cofounder and CEO of smpl - we proudly helped independent coworking spaces manage their communities with automated billing, invoicing, and community management. It was a wild ride, and I couldn't have done it without my two amazing cofounders.

We were acquired by our biggest competitor, Proximity, who are continuing the dream by creating a network of amazing, independently owned coworking spaces around the world.

[Read the press release about the acquisition](https://www.proximity.space/news/proximity-acquires-smpl-software/) to find out more.

There is another (paywalled) article on [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-a-coworking-software-deal-proximity-buys-smpl-2020-4) about the acquisition, too!

[More about smpl](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/smpl-llc) on Crunchbase.

Tools we used to build smpl:

- [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/)
- [Stripe](https://stripe.com)
- [React](https://reactjs.org)
- [Intercom](https://www.intercom.com)
- [LogRocket](https://logrocket.com)


Proximity Acquires SMPL Software


<Image
  publicId="external-references/50-most-powerful-startups-in-charlotte/cover"
  alt="Screenshot: 50 Most powerful startups in Charlotte article by Axios Charlotte"
/>

I was cofounder and CEO of [smpl](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/smpl-llc), a SaaS startup helping independent-scale coworking operators automate their business. We were featured in a 2017 Article by Axios Charlotte (then called **The Charlotte Agenda**) as one of the most powerful (lol) startups in town. Pretty cool!


50 Most Powerful startups in Charlotte


Hey there,

I hope you're well.

Autumn has flown by at a crawl this year. I'm doing my best to focus on the little glimmers of light shining through for me right now, and I hope you can do the same.

Speaking of which, here it is - a big change for me! I recently started a new job at Google as a Developer Advocate for Google Assistant. You know the one - “hey google, what's the weather?” - I'm thrilled to be given the opportunity to work on such a wildly cool product. The interview process was intimidating, long, and challenging, but I did it! To say I'm standing on the shoulders of giants is an understatement. (I'll also be adding a disclaimer to my newsletters from here in: the things I discuss here are my own thoughts and opinions, and not those of my employer.)

<Image
  publicId="newsletters/on-seasonal-change-open-source-carbon-offsets/cover"
  alt="Photo of my black cat Jet, curled up in a fall wreath on top of a table"
  caption="This is a picture I took recently of my cat Jet, who has fallen in love with a wreath we pulled out for winter decoration."
/>

## The brain is a strange place

Cognitive Psychology is the study of attention, perception, creativity, and other mental functions. Great software design takes advantage of cognitive biases to anticipate your behavior. For example, the [framing effect](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)>) is when people are able to draw two distinct conclusions from the same set of data, depending on how it's presented. Forex: I have 200 unread emails in my inbox. Should I panic? Nah, they're marked "To Do" -- I'll get to it later.

## Working in Public (OSS!)

If you're interested in Open Source Software, you should check out the book Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, by Nadia Eghbal (link). I just finished reading through it with a book club I was invited to, and I enjoyed the read. I plan on [publishing my book notes to my website soon](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/working-in-public), as well.

## Kicking around in the old domepiece

These are a few of the things I've found on the web lately. I thought you might benefit from them as well:

- 🇪🇸 I've been brushing up on my Spanish. It's a relaxing couple-minute ritual in my day. I enjoy it so much that I've been sprinkling in some Japanese here and there, too! I've been using Duolingo's free plan - my referral link is [here](https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKSRQUQARVC6SFNU) if you want to give it a shot.
- 👨‍🏫 How much do online courses make? Have you ever taken a course online, or thought about making one yourself as a side hustle? [This is a tool](https://revenue.sixfigureinstructor.com/) that lets you peruse the aggregate statistics of various course topics across Udemy. Did you know that on average, courses on Next.js make $40/day? Pretty wild!
- 🌳 Planting trees can make a difference. In the past, I've mentioned my love for [Ecologi](https://ecologi.com/irreverentmike?r=5d386c6667bad5001010ffae) (that's a referral link), which was previously called offset.earth. I'm excited to share that my good friend Phil Sturgeon has embarked on a carbon offsetting project of his own - he's on a mission to plant a forest of trees on farmland near his home in the UK this winter. Check out his work at [protect.earth](https://www.protect.earth/) , and donate if you're able!

Thanks for reading Tiny Improvements. If you've got any feedback, my inbox is always open: [hello@mikebifulco.com](mailto:hello@mikebifulco.com). If you've found this useful, I would love it if you shared it with a friend!

Be excellent to each other - talk soon.

- Mike

_Disclaimer: Tiny Improvements are my own thoughts an opinions, and not necessarily those of my employer._


On seasonal change, open source, and carbon offsets


## Right then, that settles it.

I'm building a tiny little business. I've been itching to build something from start to finish that I can complete relatively quickly, and so that's what I'm doing. I'm sitting at my computer right now, browsing the web for inspiration for itty-bitty businesses; ideally, something I can put together in under a month (even better if I can keep it to a couple weeks).

So, it's time for me to build something. Hopefully someone will be happy with whatever I come up with, and fork over some money.

## Why am I qualified to do this?

Let's talk about that.

### I've built a SaaS company in the past

Although I was not alone, I built it with two amazing friends [@helloseann](https://twitter.com/helloseann) and [@garrettTichy](https://twitter.com/GarrettTichy). We built [smpl.io](https://smpl.io) (sold in 2020), a subscription-based SaaS which helped independent-scale coworking spaces run smoothly. It was a fairly complicated, SaaS company built on a complex subscription model with lots of options, and bells and whistles, and an endless list of exciting features to build. It was also a complicated marketplace to build for, which was an awesome experience, but really was all-consuming.

### I work as a Developer Advocate at Stripe

Building smpl is a big part of the reason that I'm working at Stripe today as a Developer Advocate - making that business tick meant that we were wading in the depths of some of the more intricate parts of building with Stripe: subscriptions, Connect, and international taxes. It gave me a massive appreciation for the monetization-side of building a business.

### I can work in the open

I'm going be live streaming as much of this process as I can on my [Twitch](https://twitch.tv/irreverentmike) and [YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeBifulco). I would love it if you subscribe so that you can catch some stream sessions - this is where I'll brainstorm and iterate on ideas, build the damn thing, and put it out into the world.

## What am I going to use to build this?

Well, I've got lots of things I want to try. I've been tapping into the power of lots of no-code tools lately, and writing about [**CRMs**](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/how-do-you-choose-the-right-crm-for-your-product), so it's likely we'll see some of those come into play. I've been enjoying web things with [**Remix**](https://remix.run) and [**Next.js**](https://next.js.org), and I'll use [**Stripe**](https://stripe.com) for taking payments when we're ready for that. There may be an interation of this thing that is completely no-code, too. I know that there are quite a few APIs available for making physical things appear in the world which I might take advantage of. There are **mailing APIs**, like [**Lob.com**](https://lob.com) (who are a sponsor of [APIs You Won't Hate](https://apisyouwonthate.com), by the way). There are also services which can be used for **printing physical goods** like stickers or posters or shirts or mugs which I may use, too.

## What do I want to get out of this?

I'm following a path that may be familiar if you spend time on [Indie Hackers](https://indiehackers.com), or if you've read about [David Vassallo's Portfolio of Small Bets](https://dvassallo.gumroad.com/l/small-bets), or the book [Company of One, by Paul Jarvis](https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/dp/1328972356).
I want to learn from the experience of starting a business today as a creator, pursuing my small ideas to see what gets traction and what doesn't.

I'm going to live stream as much of this process as possible, and take notes along the way - ultimately, I'd like for you, the reader, to be able to benefit from my experimentation as well. As I'm building, I'll do my best to take feedback and iterate quickly. I want to get a sense of how long it takes for one person to build something, and just what it takes to support a product in the wild.

So, let's do this thing! Head over to [my YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeBifulco) and [my Twitch](https://twitch.tv/irreverentmike), hit subscribe, and you'll get a notification when I'm streaming.


I'm building a tiny product


## You’re building relationships with all of your customers…

…whether you know it or not. Winning your prospects’ hard-earned money is hard. Founders spend hundreds and thousands of hours building products to solve a problem, pouring blood, sweat, tears, and money into product development. Building a product is only part of the equation: you have to earn the trust of your customers by creating a brand and voice that they trust. Landing sales, and keeping happy customers takes time and compassion. Thankfully, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software exists to help you and your team do a great job of maintaining great relationships with your customers.

**CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”,** and CRM software helps you do just that: it provides tooling to track of your interactions and commitments to prospects, customers, and visitors to your app, service, or site. Often this comes in the form of integrations that automate part of the process - keeping track of contact information, logging important events and milestones in the customer journey, and reminding you to follow-up on leads before they go cold.

## What Types of CRMs are there?

Like most things, no CRM is a perfect solution for everyone. They vary in complexity, price, and usability - and perhaps most importantly, each CRM you encounter will have its own ethos, or underlying strategy. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which type of CRM fits your product best. As I see it, most CRMs fall into a few basic categories.

### Sales-based CRMs

**Examples: [Close.io](https://close.io), [Salesforce](https://salesforce.com), [Hubspot](https://hubspot.com)**

These are generally best for products whose success is based on a traditional sales process. If you have salespeople who contact prospective customers and manage relationships with them throughout the sales process, these CRMs may be a good fit. They tend to center around closing a sale, guiding you to craft messaging and contact strategies (via email, SMS, or phone call) that rely on high-touch salespeople doing their thing.

### Conversational Marketing CRMs

**Examples: [Intercom](https://intercom.com), [Drift](https://drift.com), [Front](https://front.com)**

You’ve probably bumped into some flavor of conversational Marketing CRM, as they have been wildly popular for the last several years. These usually look like a chat widget living in the bottom corner of a web page or mobile app. They’re highly configurable, and allow you to automate conversational messages to users as they browse your site or app. They can be used to highlight functionality, press visitors to sign up for trials, and complete sales. They rely on your team building conversational messaging that fits your brand, and guiding customers to make decisions. Many also offer real-time chat functionality, where members of your team can message and reply to website visitors through the embedded chat widget.

### Inbox based CRMs

**Examples: [Streak](https://www.streak.com/), [Copper](https://copper.com)**

If your customer support or sales process relies heavily on communication through email, these may be the CRM for you. They use the contents of your inbox to catalog customer relationships, allow your team to keep track of these relationships across inboxes. This typically means that email threads with customers get back-channeled notes and chat functionality. An important caveat with these tools is that they tend to be strongly-tied to the email service your team uses - your options for inbox CRMs will be limited based on whether you use G Suite or Microsoft 365

### Self-maintained CRMs

**Examples: [Monday](https://monday.com), [Airtable CRM templates](https://www.streak.com/), Notion CRM templates ([personal](https://www.notion.so/templates/personal-crm), [sales](https://www.notion.so/templates/sales-crm)), [Roam Research](https://roambrain.com/personal-crm/)**

These tools rely on you doing some of the work. They usually look like miniature table-based databases, and are used to leave notes on customer conversations, track potential and realized revenue, and other relevant metadata about your customer conversations. Some options offer simple automation out of the box, allowing you to plug in to tools like n8n and Zapier to add or update records.

### …something else?

No doubt there are other types of CRMs I’ve missed. **What’s your tool of choice for managing customer relationships? Do you have any tips or tricks to share with other founders and product teams? Did I miss something important, or get something wrong?** Share your thoughts with me on twitter [@irreverentmike](https://twitter.com/irreverentmike).

<small>

_Note: cover photo by [Andrew Neel](https://unsplash.com/@andrewtneel?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com)_

</small>


#entrepreneurship: 5 posts tagged

I'm building a tiny product

How do you choose the right CRM for your product?

On seasonal change, open source, and carbon offsets

Proximity Acquires SMPL Software

50 Most Powerful startups in Charlotte