Michele Hansen is the co-founder of Geocodio and cohost of the Software Social Podcast. She has a strong focus on custome resource.
Current Projects
Geocodio
Geocodio offers straightforward and easy-to-use geocoding, reverse geocoding, and data matching for US and Canadian addresses.
Michele co-founded Geocodio in 2014 with her husband Matthias. The business was born out of their own personal frustration. Michele and Matthias needed an affordable geocoding solution for one of their own projects.
Initially, Geocodio was a side project. The main goal was for it to cover server costs for their other projects. She wrote a number of posts about the early days:
- She wrote about the first 6 months of business at 14 things I’ve learned about launching side projects
- She shared her experiences during the first year at How We Bootstrapped: The Nitty Gritty.
- She reflected on this time in her post about Bootstrapping a Business: 5 Years In.
She started working on Geocodio full time in October, 2017. She wrote about that experience at 5 Things I’ve Learned After Going Full Time on My Side Project.
In 2017, they built a map that showed tweets of people wanting to be rescued after Hurrian Harvey hit Texas. She wrote what the lessons learned at Six Things I Learned Building the Harvey.Geocod.io Twitter Rescue Requests Map.
Interesting Facts
The original launch tweet only got one retweet. Despite that, the website was still on the front page of Hacker News for over 5 hours, gained 200+ new users and received thousands of visits.
She shared an image of her household mapping the Geocodio user experience on the living room wall.
Health insurance was the sole reason they put off going full time on Geocodio for so long.
Software Social Podcast
The Software Social Podcast follows two SaaS founders. One is Michele, who runs a more established SaaS. The other is Colleen Schnettler, who is transitioning to SaaS from consulting. Each week, they share what they’ve been working on and workshop their challenges together.
They launched the podcast in August, 2020.
It hit 10k all time downloads in February, 2021.
Deploy Empathy
Michele is currently working on a book about talking to customers for developers and makers. It is titled Deploy Empathy.
She is sharing a rough draft via email as she writes it.
The newsletter hit 100 subscribers on March 8, 2021.
She has previously written about the importance of customer interviews. In 2020, she was on a call with a customer. They said they signed up because of a small, forgotten feature. She spent 30 minutes developing a landing page. Several dozen new customers signed up in the 6 weeks following due to that specific feature.
Curb.run
Curb.run automatically scans for pickup slots across grocery stores in your area and text you when it finds one. It was developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Michele and Mathias announced the app in early April, 2020. By April 11, it had over 350 signups. The service was featured on websites such as Life Hacker and Krazy Coupon Lady. The extra attention led to them reaching 1100+ signups by April 21. By the end of April, it had nearly 2500 signups.
She posted a tweet comparing launching on Hacker News (mostly negative) vs launching via social media and community groups.
Past Projects
Open Nearby
Open nearby was an app which showed coffee shops and grocery stores that were open near you. It was based on a similar app that they had launched in Denmark years early. She wrote more about building and launching the product at How We Bootstrapped: The Nitty Gritty.
Interesting Facts
The app was originally called What’s Open Nearby, but was later changed after getting a cease-and-desist from a company with a trademark on What’s Open.
The app was featured in The Express in 2013. It had 290,000+ daily readers.
It was submitted to the app store after 10 months of work.
Threads
What the heck is this “bootstrapping” thing and how can you get in on it
Personal
She isn’t a ‘real entrepreneur‘ (tongue in cheek post)
She is getting an MBA. She created a Twitter thread about a situation that captured why she returned to study.
Parenting
Michele has written about how being a parent has impacted on her business.
In Parenthood: It’s a Feature, Not a Bug, she wrote about how parenthood forced them example ideas to assess their viability.
Features
Interviews
- Starting a Company While Pregnant: Product, Tech, and Iterating Forward — Episode #057 With Michele Hansen
- Lean The F*ck Out — Mastering Google Search And SEO To Increase Sales Online
- Should you start a startup with your spouse?
- Episode 53: Mastering Google Search and SEO to Increase Sales — An interview with Michele Hansen Co-Founder of Geocodio
- Michele Hansen: Growing GeocodioProduct Discovery and Customer Research with Michele Hansen
Talks
Michele and Mathias gave a talk at Laracon 2017 titled “Launching & Scaling Your Side Project.” She shared more about the experience at Nine Things I Learned From Giving (Surviving) My First Talk at a Tech Conference.