Is a WordPress Plugin a Startup?

This post was contributed by guest author Peter Suhm. Peter is a web developer from the Land of the Danes. He is the creator of WP Pusher and a huge travel addict, bringing his work along with him as he goes.

About two months ago, I released my first commercial WordPress product, WP Pusher, a plugin that makes deploying themes and plugins really easy. WP Pusher was not meant to be “just a plugin”. It was supposed to be a SaaS product, and throughout it all, when I was building it, I always thought of it as a startup I was creating.

For “just a WordPress plugin”, I think it has been quite successful so far, and to a large extent, I believe that to be a result of my own perception of the whole thing. I think it was more successful because, even after I realized it was just going to be a plugin, I still treated it as a startup.

What Is a Startup?

In the fall of 2014, I was traveling around Southeast Asia, enjoying the digital nomad lifestyle, while making WP Pusher. I spent quite a bit of time in Chiang Mai, the capital of digital nomads, and everyone was talking about a guy named Pieter Levels, who did all kinds of cool things, all related to digital nomadism. One of these things was to take up the challenge of building a new startup every month for 12 months.

Hearing people talk about Pieter’s startup quest got me thinking about the term “startup”. Honestly, when I first heard about it, I did not think of the 12 startups as real startups – which Pieter obviously did. To me, creating a portfolio of 12 startups in such a short time seemed a bit silly. In my head, a real startup required more dedication and commitment than that.

In the meantime, some of Pieter’s startups have been really successful and the whole process has been really inspiring to follow. I now understand that my idea of a startup was missing some pieces. All of the 12 projects that Pieter created qualified as startups. Some of them were more successful than others, but he validated 12 ideas in a short time and the result is really impressive. And one thing, which is very important, is that Pieter treated all of the 12 projects as startups instead of just another side project (which is how many developers talk about their projects). Calling something a side project is an easy way of protecting yourself against your fear of failure.

If you ask Steve Blank about his definition of a startup, he will tell you that “a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model”. If we break that up, “an organization” can mean anything. It can be you alone or it can be a team. “Repeatable” and “scalable” are two sides of the same coin.

Building a WordPress plugin and calling it a day is not enough. That is not a startup. Honestly, to me, “repeatable“ is the main factor. I am in it for the freedom – not the empire building. I want a business to be repeatable in the sense that I can teach someone else how to run it for me – hence, freedom. It does not have to be scalable in order to put food on my table or allow me to travel around the world – it just has to be profitable.

WordPress offers a giant market full of small niches and potential customers. There is no reason why something you are building for WordPress could not be as huge as any other software startup. The market share of the WordPress platform is large enough.

In relation to the Steve Blank quote, what could you do to make your WordPress plugin a startup instead of a side project? First of all, you need to think about the “organization”. Most likely, you are the programmer or the engineer behind your product. But do you know how to design a shiny, high-converting landing page? Do you have any clue about how to approach marketing or customer relations? What about the legal and financial aspects? Maybe you do. If you do not, you need to either be willing to learn or team up with someone who does. At the very minimum, you need to at least consider it.

How can you build a business around a WordPress plugin that is more “repeatable” and “scalable”? Well, you could do most of the things that other startups do. Here are a few questions to consider:

Could you charge more or offer more expensive options?

Could you turn your plugin into a SaaS or find something that you could charge for on a recurring basis?

Could you sell additional add-ons or extensions for your plugin?

Could you offer a service in addition to your plugin?

Given you solve some kind of pain for your customers, could you copy your idea to other niches or customer segments?

Could you come up with ways to attract more customers on a recurring basis? (SEO, content marketing, advertising etc.)

Could you have someone else help you find new customers? (copywriters, affiliate partners etc.)

You get it.

Solving Your Own Problems vs. Solving Other People’s Problems

A very important point I want to make relates to the business idea of your WordPress plugin. In a market like WordPress, programmers tend to be tempted to find solutions to their own problems – not necessarily other people’s problems. Finding a solution for a problem you have yourself is a good place to start and great for motivation, domain knowledge and so on, but it is not enough.

If you want it to be a business, you need to make sure that other people have the same problem and are willing to pay for it. Startups are not made to solve their own problems. The original business idea behind the startup might have been to solve a problem the founder had, but if the only customer in the startup is going to be the founder alone, it is not a very good business model. You need to figure out how you can make your product relevant to more people – not everyone of course, but more people than yourself.

As an example, WP Pusher solves a problem I had with clients. There were already solutions to this problem – both free and paid. Most of them required either Git installed or that I granted them access to my clients’ servers. Given I am actually in control of, or at least have an influence over, most of the server environments of my clients, I could in theory have used one of these existing solutions.

However, I knew that was not the case for a lot of WordPress developers. I saw the possibility of solving my own problem as well as solving a problem I knew a lot of other developers had. Reading about Pieter’s 12 startups inspires me to build more products for WordPress. Solve more problems. Build more startups.

Say It Out Loud

When I thought WP Pusher was going to be a SaaS business, I thought of it as a startup. When I decided to change the business model and rebuild it all as a single plugin, it felt weird calling it a business – or even a startup. For a short time I think I phrased it as “just a project for WordPress”, when telling people about it.

Personally, I still like to think of it as a startup. I kept the landing page I built for the SaaS and I kept the blog I set up. I kept everything that I initially made when it was a “startup” I was working on. Today, I have made a conscious decision that it is in fact a startup – no matter how big or small it is.

WP Pusher has many characteristics of a startup. It solves a very obvious pain point that is easy to communicate. It has a simple business model in a very large market. And finally, it has a logo and it has a nice landing page. That is a startup right there.

What are you missing before you can confidently call your WordPress plugin a startup?