MicroConf

Jacob Wright sells novel-writing software mostly to hobbyists. Dabble runs at 4% churn and has grown to nearly $2M ARR over nine years. At MicroConf Europe 2026, Jacob explained the product principles behind it 🧵

Here’s how Dabble applies it: → Writers create chapters and scenes, not files and folders → Focus mode kicks in as soon as you type → The loading screen greets writers with a writing quote → Confetti fires when a writer hits a goal

Jacob Wright sells novel-writing software mostly to hobbyists. Dabble runs at 4% churn and has grown to nearly $2M ARR over nine years. At MicroConf Europe 2026, Jacob explained the product principles behind it 🧵

Jacob starts with Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think.” Every confusing label or odd error message drains a user’s goodwill. So Jacob leans on conventions people already know, such as putting the profile menu top right and using a gear icon for settings.

MicroConf Europe 2026 in Reykjavík, in 81 seconds. Talks hit YouTube next Monday! First up: Rob Walling and Einar Vollset on SaaS moats, and how to protect what you've built from AI and position your company to come out ahead. Then SEO, Claude skills for marketing, and more.

Most founders treat motivation as a feeling: do I feel like doing this today? Clinical psychologist Dr. Sherry Walling says it runs deeper. It's the drive that keeps you doing the reps regardless of how you feel. Here's how she breaks it down 🧵

The catch: your business needs different motivators as it grows. Ben Chestnut started as a craftsperson, but it would have been hard to stay one all the way to Mailchimp's $12B exit. When your daily work stops matching what drives you, that's where burnout takes seed.

Most founders treat motivation as a feeling: do I feel like doing this today? Clinical psychologist Dr. Sherry Walling says it runs deeper. It's the drive that keeps you doing the reps regardless of how you feel. Here's how she breaks it down 🧵

She splits it in two. Micro motivation is the push to get in the chair and start the day. (Rob Walling's is Eye of the Tiger, loudly, through their shared office wall.) Macro motivation keeps you going for years. When it gets wonky, micro can carry you short term.

Kevin Graham pays about $1,000 a month for 24/7 support and server admin across his web hosting portfolio. First response went from 18 hours to under 15 minutes, and nobody wakes him up for outages anymore. What he outsourced, what it cost, and what broke: 🧵

The outsourcing that failed was development. A contractor with other clients gave him one or two days a week, and an outage once left a provisioning system down for 20 hours because he could not reach the guy. If you outsource engineering, hold your own code and servers.

Kevin Graham pays about $1,000 a month for 24/7 support and server admin across his web hosting portfolio. First response went from 18 hours to under 15 minutes, and nobody wakes him up for outages anymore. What he outsourced, what it cost, and what broke: 🧵

Three things he handed off at Site Arrow: → 24/7 support and server admin, to an agency he found on Google → Sales tax compliance, to Paddle as merchant of record → Physical infrastructure, to four cloud providers, so a hosting company owns no servers

John Ndege spent a year selling Pocket Risk, where ran 46 sales demos and finished that year with 4 customers... and $230 in MRR. Two years later: 384 demos, 137 customers, ~$10K MRR. Same product, same pitch — one changed sales habit that made all the difference. 🧵

As for the sales math: Under $300 average revenue per user: you can't afford a salesperson, so content marketing has to run daily Over $300 → outbound and a sales team start to pay for themselves Pocket Risk was at ~$190, so it was easy to decide from there.

John Ndege spent a year selling Pocket Risk, where ran 46 sales demos and finished that year with 4 customers... and $230 in MRR. Two years later: 384 demos, 137 customers, ~$10K MRR. Same product, same pitch — one changed sales habit that made all the difference. 🧵

The habit is simple. Speak to a customer every single day! Not a research call. Not a survey. An actual conversation. Good things come from speaking to customers, not from research.

MeetEdgar had content, SEO, ads, events. All of it running well. However, new revenue was flat. They changed three pages of their website and free signups rose 89%. Claire Suellentrop on why more traffic is the wrong fix 🧵

Autobooks called itself "all-in-one finance management." Customers came for one thing: getting paid straight into their bank account. They made that the only thing the messaging led with, which led to: → 300% more usage of that feature → 65% more small business signups

MeetEdgar had content, SEO, ads, events. All of it running well. However, new revenue was flat. They changed three pages of their website and free signups rose 89%. Claire Suellentrop on why more traffic is the wrong fix 🧵

Why: → 16x more direct competitors than ten years ago → CAC up nearly 200% in saturated categories like martech More top-of-funnel spend costs more and returns less. If your positioning is off, none of it converts.

Between 60 and 70% of B2B SaaS acquisitions involve private equity. Most founders can't tell those firms apart, and Einar Vollset of Discretion Capital / @tinyseed.com says that's exactly the problem. His breakdown at MicroConf Europe. 🧵

Then value buyers, running three strategies: Turnarounds — buy it broken, fix it, resell Cigar butts — cut hard, milk the cash flow, hold Steals — skip the fixing, just buy it cheap None of them will run your company the way you ran it.

Between 60 and 70% of B2B SaaS acquisitions involve private equity. Most founders can't tell those firms apart, and Einar Vollset of Discretion Capital / @tinyseed.com says that's exactly the problem. His breakdown at MicroConf Europe. 🧵

Every PE website says the same thing: Build trust. Advance your journey. Realize potential. Behind that, three completely different strategies with enormous variance in what they'll pay: → Tuck-in buyers, high → Platform buyers, medium → Value buyers, low to very low

Kevin Riggle did security at Akamai, Stripe, and Lyft before starting his own consultancy. He argues at MicroConf that most cybersecurity advice is written for computers we stopped using twenty years ago. Here's what to do instead. 🧵

Threat 3: credential stuffing. That Minecraft dump gets run against your login form. Fix by rate limiting your auth endpoints — user and API both. Most teams do one and forget the other. Otherwise, you're doing it mid-attack (yikes).

Kevin Riggle did security at Akamai, Stripe, and Lyft before starting his own consultancy. He argues at MicroConf that most cybersecurity advice is written for computers we stopped using twenty years ago. Here's what to do instead. 🧵

Threat 1: password reuse. Your bookkeeper could use the same password on a Minecraft forum that they use for the bank. The fix is a password manager. That's it. Riggle's notes the 1990s advice was wrong, and that writing them down on paper still beats reusing them.

The MicroConf Europe agenda is designed to balance conference room sessions with major networking (and friend-making) opportunities. 🧵

Monday 👉 welcome reception. Tuesday 👉 sessions, then excursions featuring the best of Iceland — choose between the Sky Lagoon, a Brennivin tasting, or a hike to a natural hot spring. Wednesday 👉 sessions, workshops, closing reception.