Our B2B SaaS Journey

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin celebrate onboarding more than 1,100 World Police and Fire Games athletes into SixSides, unpack the infrastructure, HubSpot, Intercom and marketing work behind the rollout, and prepare the business for Mitchell’s five-week honeymoon and a short break from the podcast. Links QF1 for you flight nerds: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/qf1/schedules/5863144608 Chapters (00:00) - Intro and a huge week for SixSides (01:39) - 1,100 athletes onboarded and counting (05:21) - Scaling our infrastructure for users around the world (08:21) - HubSpot onboarding, email campaigns and product-led growth (13:24) - Community sales conversations and the Gold Coast Council (16:36) - The new SixSides marketing site is live (20:25) - Intercom, MCPs and fixing our bus factor (23:36) - Planning the dev team for Mitchell’s five-week honeymoon (29:17) - AEO, pricing and turning a product into a business (33:22) - A podcast break and Mitchell’s Europe trip In this episode, we cover:Onboarding more than 1,100 World Police and Fire Games athletes into SixSides Seeing community posts arrive from athletes around the world Preparing SixSides infrastructure for thousands of international users Debugging login timeouts and database transactions during a live rollout Using multi-region infrastructure to improve performance for global users Building HubSpot onboarding campaigns for new SixSides users Fixing DKIM and email deliverability issues after the first campaign emails landed in spam Turning event attendees into community organisers through product-led growth Exploring SixSides as a community platform for associations, councils and not-for-profits Conversations with Volunteering WA and the Gold Coast Council about building stronger communities Launching the new SixSides marketing website Using Claude to extend an existing design system and build new marketing pages faster Adding Intercom to SixSides for customer support Using MCP integrations with HubSpot, Sentry and the SixSides codebase to troubleshoot support issues Reducing the bus factor by documenting tools, logins and operational access Planning larger development projects so the team can work independently while Mitchell is away The roadmap for additional languages, user-generated content translation, speech-to-text and private chat AEO content, citations and SixSides' broader acquisition strategy Working out a future pricing model from free through to enterprise Moving from building a product to building a sustainable SaaS business Taking a short podcast break while Mitchell heads to Europe for his honeymoon Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people! Connect with us SixSides: sixsides.co Book a call with Gavin: call.sixsides.co Mitchell on Bluesky: mitchdav.is Mitchell on LinkedIn: mitchdav Gavin on LinkedIn: gavintye Gavin on YouTube: gavintye1 SixSides on LinkedIn: sixsides SixSides on X: sixsidesevents SixSides on Bluesky: sixsides.co SixSides on Youtube: sixsidesco SixSides on Substack: sixsides SixSides on Skool: Community Builders Network

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin prepare SixSides for its biggest rollout yet, get serious about the business’s bus factor before Mitch heads away, and shift the focus from frantic product development to sales, product-led growth and bringing 6,000 World Police and Fire Games athletes onto the platform. Chapters (00:00) - Intro and a massive release week (02:18) - Bringing 6,000 athletes onto SixSides (07:56) - What if Mitch gets hit by a bus? (11:29) - Gavin learns to drive a dingo and prepares to sell (15:38) - Finding the product-led growth magic number (20:15) - From free users to enterprise pricing (21:04) - Rebuilding the SixSides marketing site with AI (26:05) - Meet Scout, our new AI assistant (32:22) - Replacing AuthKit and adding public events (34:43) - One final push before Mitch goes on holidays In this episode, we cover:Preparing SixSides for 6,000 World Police and Fire Games athletes Shipping an emergency mobile app release ahead of a major customer rollout Apple and Google app review times when you are racing a production deadline Reducing key-person risk and the importance of a SaaS business continuity plan Documenting production systems before a technical founder goes on holidays Moving from product development into a much stronger B2B SaaS sales push Using sporting associations as a potential niche go-to-market strategy Turning event attendees into community organisers through product-led growth Finding the conversion rate or "magic number" behind SixSides' growth loop Building a pricing pathway from free communities through to enterprise customers Redesigning the SixSides marketing website with Figma and Claude Code Using screenshots and AI coding tools to rapidly reproduce web designs Introducing Scout, SixSides' AI assistant for managing communities and events Giving AI assistants page and event context inside a SaaS product Replacing WorkOS AuthKit with a custom login flow for World Police and Fire Games athletes Adding public events and access controls inside the SixSides mobile app Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people! Connect with us SixSides: sixsides.co Book a call with Gavin: call.sixsides.co Mitchell on Bluesky: mitchdav.is Mitchell on LinkedIn: mitchdav Gavin on LinkedIn: gavintye Gavin on YouTube: gavintye1 SixSides on LinkedIn: sixsides SixSides on X: sixsidesevents SixSides on Bluesky: sixsides.co SixSides on Youtube: sixsidesco SixSides on Substack: sixsides SixSides on Skool: Community Builders Network

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin submit the first Police Games app release ahead of a 6,000-person rollout, unpack SixSides’ pivot from event managers to community-led organisations, and share how AI-assisted development, a tough client decision, and a new AEO strategy are shaping the next phase of the business. Chapters (00:00) - Moving out of the office and working from home (08:14) - The Police Games app is submitted (13:39) - Automated testing and the launch timeline (20:45) - New SixSides events and client updates (22:18) - The City of Gold Coast and solving the cold start problem (27:45) - Our ICP pivot and finding a blue ocean (32:53) - Sales-market fit and the 5.8 method (36:24) - Rebuilding DealBuddi with Laravel AI (45:30) - The difficult client decision (49:23) - AEO, HubSpot and getting ready to launch In this episode, we cover:Mitchell leaving his coworking office after five years and adjusting to working from home full-time Submitting the Police Games mobile app to Apple and Google ahead of a rollout to around 6,000 people The final QA push across iOS, Android, API endpoints and app screens How Claude Code and AI-assisted development dramatically accelerated the final stages of the release Using Maestro for automated mobile app testing across real devices Planning the Police Games launch timeline, onboarding and communications Running another SixSides event for Toll Women in Aviation and preparing for the Queensland Volunteering Conference Gavin’s plan to build local network effects by concentrating communities around the Gold Coast Applying ideas from The Cold Start Problem and Blue Ocean Strategy to SixSides Pivoting the SixSides ideal client profile from event managers towards community managers and associations Revisiting sales-market fit and Gavin’s 5-ate sales method Rebuilding DealBuddi onboarding with Laravel AI to make one-to-many workshops commercially viable Making the difficult decision to end a client relationship after a successful pilot stopped feeling collaborative Answer engine optimisation, HubSpot and creating content designed to appear in AI-generated answers Getting the business infrastructure, product and marketing ready for the next phase of SixSides growth Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people! Connect with us SixSides: sixsides.co Book a call with Gavin: call.sixsides.co Mitchell on Bluesky: mitchdav.is Mitchell on LinkedIn: mitchdav Gavin on LinkedIn: gavintye Gavin on YouTube: gavintye1 SixSides on LinkedIn: sixsides SixSides on X: sixsidesevents SixSides on Bluesky: sixsides.co SixSides on Youtube: sixsidesco SixSides on Substack: sixsides SixSides on Skool: Community Builders Network

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin navigate an App Store rejection as the World Police Games launch gets very real, unpack a new Claude-powered development workflow that is dramatically increasing output, explore how MCP could connect the different sides of SixSides, and celebrate Gavin surviving his 100km bike ride. Chapters (00:00) - Gavin’s 100km ride (07:27) - Testing week and Apple rejects our app (13:35) - Racing towards the World Police Games launch (16:25) - The new SixSides marketing site (19:21) - HubSpot, Snitcher and our ICP workflow (22:37) - Why Mitch is moving from Cursor to Claude (29:19) - Connecting SixSides to Claude with MCP (33:16) - The real-world ROI of AI development (36:00) - Mitch is moving out of his office (38:31) - Wrapping up In this episode, we cover:Gavin completing his 100km bike ride from the Gold Coast to Brisbane Testing week for the World Police Games app ahead of launch Why Apple rejected the app while Google approved it Preparing an iOS and Android app for App Store review Adding account deletion and removing unused NFC and background audio permissions Preparing SixSides for thousands of World Police Games attendees The remaining work around athlete CSV imports, HubSpot and welcome email automation Progress on the new SixSides marketing website and design workflow in Figma and Slack Early signs that SixSides blog content is being indexed and found through Google Using Snitcher and HubSpot to identify and follow up with ideal customer profiles Why Mitchell is moving from Cursor towards Claude Code and Solo Using MCP to connect AI agents with Cloudflare, AWS, Sentry and other business systems Cutting infrastructure costs from roughly $2,000 per month towards $300 with the help of AI Building an MCP integration so SixSides data can be accessed through Claude and ChatGPT Using AI to connect product development, marketing, sales and operations How AI is changing the role and workflow of experienced software developers Mitchell's decision to give up his office and return to working from home Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people! Connect with us SixSides: sixsides.co Book a call with Gavin: call.sixsides.co Mitchell on Bluesky: mitchdav.is Mitchell on LinkedIn: mitchdav Gavin on LinkedIn: gavintye Gavin on YouTube: gavintye1 SixSides on LinkedIn: sixsides SixSides on X: sixsidesevents SixSides on Bluesky: sixsides.co SixSides on Youtube: sixsidesco SixSides on Substack: sixsides SixSides on Skool: Community Builders Network

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin celebrate a hugely positive WPFG demo, race to get the new app through Apple and Google review, unpack why SixSides’ customer-first culture is getting noticed, and wrestle with HubSpot pricing, a non-paying client, release automation, translations, and a new way of giving developers more ownership. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (02:29) - WPFG demo feedback (04:17) - The final stretch for WPFG phase one (11:31) - App Store assets and a new SixSides look (12:59) - Our culture is shining through (14:36) - Automating the release process (17:14) - The HubSpot pricing surprise (20:34) - A hard client decision (22:59) - Chat, translations and giving developers more ownership (30:44) - Landing page progress and Gavin’s massive ride In this episode, we cover:The overwhelmingly positive feedback from the latest WPFG app demo Replacing the need to manage 64 individual Facebook groups for sporting communities Getting the WPFG app through Apple App Store and Google Play review Managing TestFlight, external testers and beta feedback before launch The final polish required before rolling the app out to thousands of athletes Creating better App Store and Play Store assets for WPFG and SixSides Why SixSides’ customer-first culture is becoming a competitive advantage Using Claude to improve and automate the mobile app release process Managing multiple branded mobile apps from a single codebase The unexpected cost of HubSpot marketing contacts and whether the deal still makes sense What to do when a client keeps using your SaaS but stops communicating or paying Prototyping real-time chat and translation features for events Using AWS translation APIs and exploring on-device language models Giving developers outcome-based projects instead of tightly scoped tickets Preparing the development team to work independently while Mitchell is away Early progress on the redesigned SixSides landing page Gavin’s underprepared 70 km training ride ahead of a 100 km event Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people! Connect with us SixSides: sixsides.co Book a call with Gavin: call.sixsides.co Mitchell on Bluesky: mitchdav.is Mitchell on LinkedIn: mitchdav Gavin on LinkedIn: gavintye Gavin on YouTube: gavintye1 SixSides on LinkedIn: sixsides SixSides on X: sixsidesevents SixSides on Bluesky: sixsides.co SixSides on Youtube: sixsidesco SixSides on Substack: sixsides SixSides on Skool: Community Builders Network