Subscribe
Presented by OakywoodYour desk for life. Up to 30% OFF site-wide

No. 222 · November 27, 2022

Mike Strives

Founder of Upvoty

Mike Strives’s workspace

Mike Strives builds and shares insights about building his startup Upvoty on Twitter.

Besides that, he's highly investing in creating content with weekly vlogs on YouTube and daily shorts, TikToks, and Instagram Reels. Besides building his business, he's also the founder and host of the SaaS Pirates podcast show in which he interviews founders from successful SaaS businesses.

Follow Mike on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and saaspirates.com.

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

The obvious answer would be my Macbook, I mean, couldn't do any work without it. But the geek in me would say my Shure SM7B microphone. Love that thing!

How do you spark creativity?

In the office, you'll find a whiteboard, sticky notes on the wall, and notebooks all over the place. I just love to get some off-screen time and brainstorm ideas. One thing I always do as well is to go and read for 30 mins around 2pm.

How do you manage work-life balance?

Having an office really does the trick for me. I can come to office to work, and leave around 5pm to really go home and be with my family.

What do you enjoy most about podcasting? Least?

Getting to meet new people in the same space is so awesome. Didn't think that it would do this many downloads at all (around 1,000 per episode) and that I was able to actually monetize it (around $250 per episode because of sponsors). What I enjoy the least? Hmm. Nothing really. Being it a side project, I can make time for it whenever I like.

Mike’s gear

16 items.

On the desk16

On the screen11 apps

  • Ilo.so

    for Twitter Analytics

  • Sendgrid

    for transactional emails

  • Slack

    for internal communication

  • EmailOctopus

    for newsletters

  • Ghost

    for my blog

  • Final Cut Pro

    for editing videos

  • Stripe

    for payments

  • Crisp

    for support chat

  • Notion

    for managing my work and life

  • Loom

    for recording customer tutorials

  • Tally.so

    for lead forms

From the census

Checked against every interview we’ve published. The Top 50 ›

No. 1

The Herman Miller Aeron is the most-listed chair in the archive.

No. 1

The Magic Keyboard is the most-listed keyboard in the archive.

The last four Saturdays

All 551 desks ›
Jonathan Reed’s workspace No. 551 Jonathan Reed Graphic Designer and App Developer Simon Pickles’s workspace No. 550 Simon Pickles Engineering Manager and Founder of Analogue Desk Co. Vas Frolik’s workspace No. 549 Vas Frolik Design Engineer Daniela Muntyan’s workspace No. 548 Daniela Muntyan Product Designer at Figma

Similar setups

Browse all ›

More desks like Mike’sStanding DesksFoundersHerman Miller

Liked Mike’s desk? There’s a new one every Saturday.

One creator’s workspace each week: the photos, the gear, and how they work. Free.

Read by 21,000+ people at Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, Figma, Linear and more · Next issue Saturday