Mike Slaats and the business he wanted to come back to

Mike Slaats had the sort of business that makes starting another one look unnecessary. Vindy, his home-improvement marketplace, had reached roughly a million dollars in annual recurring revenue. There was a team, an office, a product people paid for. The evidence suggested he should keep going. His own interest in the work suggested a different question: how many more mornings did he want to spend in this particular business?

He sold Vindy in 2018. The next idea came from an irritation inside the old company: customer feedback had outgrown its spreadsheet. Suggestions accumulated, and keeping track of them became a job of its own. Slaats wanted software that fitted the problem and the budget. When the available choices disappointed him, he saw something worth testing.

That became Upvoty. The change brought him closer to people he enjoyed talking to: software founders, product managers, people deciding what to build next. A smaller business could offer a more satisfying working day. For someone who had already spent years learning how to sell things online, that was a fairly persuasive return.

A business can work before it fits

Slaats, who now publishes as Mike Strives, began his entrepreneurial career at 19 after leaving college. An online printing shop provided a practical education in websites, search visibility and finding buyers. Later came a marketing agency. Eventually, selling other people’s products left him wanting a product of his own.

Vindy connected home-improvement customers with contractors. It gave him experience building a subscription business and a financial base from which to explore another idea. Its success also exposed a difficulty that a revenue chart would struggle to show: he cared less about the market than he wanted to.

When he later described that period, the details were ordinary and telling. The drive to the office had become less appealing. The team and the product could both be good without making the work feel right. At Upvoty, he could discuss problems he had experienced himself with people whose businesses interested him.

He has also been frank about the stage of entrepreneurship that suits him. Creating something and getting it established appeal to him. The prospect of a much larger organization, with the demands that come with it, appeals less. “I get bored really quickly,” he said. That admission gives his career a useful consistency: he keeps returning to the beginning.

A signup form before the software

Starting again did not mean spending freely. Slaats had an earlier mistake to remember: committing his savings to a product he believed in before finding out whether other people wanted it. He had wanted to launch something complete. Completeness, unfortunately, offers no guarantee that a customer will arrive.

With Upvoty, he made the first test smaller. A landing page explained the proposed product. An explainer video and a signup form gave visitors something to respond to. He shared the idea through his network and communities where potential customers already gathered. The question was simple enough for people to answer without a sales meeting.

A few hundred people signed up. Only then did development become the next commitment. The private beta arrived in August 2018, followed by the public launch in February 2019. He had borrowed the explainer-first approach from Dropbox’s story, adapting it to a problem he could see in his own working day.

There were several tests inside that sequence. A signup showed interest. Using the beta revealed what people actually did. Paying required a further decision, involving a budget rather than an encouraging comment. Slaats repeatedly returns to that last distinction when discussing validation. An audience can applaud very cheaply.

“Don’t overthink. Go out there and validate.”

Mike Slaats

His advice is direct because the alternative is familiar to him. A founder can spend months improving an idea in private and become increasingly convinced by it. The people who would have to buy it remain outside the room. Upvoty brought them into the process while there was still plenty left to change.

The name survived a whiteboard vote

Upvoty’s name came from a team whiteboard session. They combined words connected with feedback, features and upvoting until everyone agreed on one. The corresponding .com domain was available. A company devoted to collecting opinions had managed to settle its own name unanimously, which feels like an encouraging start.

The product gives suggestions a place to live. Customers can submit requests, vote, and follow a roadmap. Teams can keep people informed as work progresses. Slaats has drawn a distinction within that arrangement: feedback should inform a product decision. The person responsible for the product still has a decision to make.

A board full of requests can expose patterns, but it cannot supply judgment by itself. The attraction for Slaats was helping teams make that work more manageable. He had already seen what happened when the record of customer opinion became difficult to maintain.

He also chose to speak to a narrower audience than the software could theoretically serve. Plenty of businesses receive feedback. Early software founders and product managers gave Upvoty a more definite audience for its articles and explanations. A specific reader makes a paragraph easier to write. A specific problem makes a product easier to explain.

His marketing experience mattered here. By March 2021, he was describing an emphasis on search, guest posts and educational material, after leaning too heavily on paid marketing in an earlier business. Interviews could become useful written material. Conversations with other founders supplied ideas as well as distribution. Learning and marketing sometimes occupied the same calendar slot.

A business with the camera on

In September 2021, Slaats explained why he had begun vlogging his work. He wanted to record progress, share figures and lessons, and combine the business with travel and remote working. The diary was public. Other people could watch the decisions between the milestones, when the outcome was still being worked out.

He also saw a longer life for that audience. A company might eventually be sold; the relationships built through sharing its story could continue. In conversation with Indie Bites, he connected a public presence with future opportunities, including speaking on stage. People have to know something about you before they can invite you.

The same curiosity appeared in SaaS Pirates, his podcast and community. Talking with other founders let him ask practical questions about getting customers. He has pointed to a conversation with ScrapingBee’s Pierre de Wulf as one example of learning from another operator. The subject was useful work: how people found a product and why they tried it.

Even Upvoty’s interface could make an introduction. A small Powered by Upvoty link appeared on customer feedback portals. Someone visiting a customer’s board might need a similar tool and follow it back. The product was visible while doing its job, a pleasantly economical arrangement for a bootstrapped business.

In a 2020 interview, Slaats said an ebook about Upvoty’s growth had passed a thousand downloads. Messages from readers who were starting businesses pleased him. The public work had an audience beyond potential buyers of feedback software: people trying to make their own first attempt.

Now, Next, Not Yet

There is a practical problem with being interested in software, podcasts, videos and new businesses. They all fit comfortably inside an ambition. They fit less comfortably inside Tuesday. Slaats’s answer has been a priority system with three headings: Now, Next, Not Yet.

Now contains what he must do today. Next holds the tasks that can follow. Not Yet gives the remaining work somewhere to wait. He described dividing the day into blocks for email, focused work and reading. Ideas were recorded in his task-management system, where they could remain without interrupting every other idea.

He has said that focus and success can coexist with multiple projects. The qualification is supplied by the schedule: someone still has to choose what happens first. His preference for small initial tests makes sense alongside that habit. A question narrow enough to answer is easier to place on a working day than an entire imagined company.

The question after the first payment

By November 2025, his public conversations included CopyPaste Lab, a product studio using repeatable approaches to building and marketing software. He discussed delegating tasks through recordings of the work, so contractors could turn an example into a process. The founder’s attention remained finite, however many products were possible.

A July 2026 discussion brought another part of the work into focus: making customer acquisition predictable. Building offers visible progress. Marketing can take longer to show whether the effort was worthwhile. Slaats described the value of consistent publishing, clearer numbers, and understanding why customers stay or leave.

Net revenue retention interested him because new sales can obscure problems among existing customers. Keeping people and helping them get continuing value asks a different question from persuading them to try something once. Some of Upvoty’s earliest customers, he said, were still there.

His personal site now places founder coaching and practical products alongside the story of building businesses in public. The recurring interest is getting from an idea to real revenue, then understanding the work required to keep it. For Slaats, the company that began with an overflowing spreadsheet has become a long exercise in paying attention. There is always another answer to listen for.