go to market anxiety: from craft beer to SaaS

Four years ago today, the doors to our horror-themed nanobrewery were finally open to the public.

Old books, houseplants, and art adorned the walls. Grandma-style furniture and vintage light fixtures filled the space. Upbeat indie music and chatter drifted through the air.

We had curated everything down to the depth of the bar and the user experience of the bathroom. The taproom was everything we hoped it would be with our bootstrapped budget.

Opening a nanobrewery was hard. We negotiated a 62 page lease with a giant corporation. We were the first brewery in our small New England town and we had to convince the zoning board and then the sewer commission that everything was going to be okay. We pieced together a brew house based on online research. We spent months debugging, optimizing, and experimenting until the beers met our standards. We learned everything from hospitality to accounting.

We constantly felt like we were pretending to be businesspeople...imposter syndrome isn't just for programmers.

Recently, I've been panicking about my go to market strategy for my SaaS startup, Goblin. I've been worried about every worryable thing I could imagine.

This weekend when I was spending time with family, I remembered something: I've done this before and I survived. Craft beer is a completely different beast than SaaS, but I've also worked at 9 tech startups of different sizes in a variety of industries. I'm as prepared as I'll ever be.

It's time to focus on my vision and bring it to life.