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The built hapily podcast is about building apps, companies, and relationships in the HubSpot ecosystem. As HubSpot grows, so does the opportunity - and this podcast puts you in the room with the people making it all happen.
Hosted by Dax and Max, built hapily goes behind the scenes with HubSpot developers, solutions partners, startup founders and community leaders. Each episode delivers tactical insights into launching and scaling businesses around the HubSpot platform.
However, this podcast is about more than just building software. It's about building authentic connections, fulfilling careers, and lives you can be proud of. Guests share their personal journeys, hard-won lessons and philosophies for not just achieving success, but finding purpose and happiness along the way.
After all, this is about more than making apps. It's about building hapily - and you're invited along for the ride. Join Dax, Max and their guests to construct the life you've been dreaming of, one conversation at a time.
[00:00:00]
Teaser
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Jack: the first time I tried it, it was like a mind blown moment.
It's just, Hey, can you give me a script that does this for me? Grabs landing pages, renames them, whatever. It's given me a massive speed boost. 'cause now I, I don't really have to google anything.
I don't have to Google documentation to write my code. I don't have to open HubSpot to check all my stuff on my HubSpot and grab the properties and coordinate with stuff. It's the only thing that's gonna be around in 12 months time.
​
Dax: On today's episode of The Built Happily Podcast, we got another app builder in the building, Jack Talia data apps.
Max: Jack told us his story on how he burst onto the scene building apps right out of the gate for HubSpot. He talks about what it's like to build a solopreneur app business with himself and his [00:01:00] wife. We might add, uh, and kind of how he balances, being able to support his customers take on other services projects.
All the things that they need to do to sustain and innovate A small app shop on the HubSpot app Marketplace. All that and more on this episode of the Build Happily Podcast.
Jack Tolley Introduction
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Dax: look. Live from Chang Ma out here. Doing it big in Thailand. We got Jack Tali Data tech like, man, come
Max: Is it Data?
Dax: Is it data? I'm probably saying it.
Jack: Data. Yeah, is appropriate. Yeah. You can want.
Max: Yep. Data right.
Dax: we see your work. We are in, we are in the workflows tool, looking at who's doing what, right?
Focusing on Core Features
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Dax: I haven't seen in my, in my many, many years of HubSpot, it's a few. Have I seen someone going in on the mission like the gospel of Why doesn't it do this? It should do [00:02:00] this. it, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make it.
I'm gonna put it out there and you have done that Jack. Welcome to the Bill Happily podcast ma'am.
Jack: Oh, you're gonna make me blush. I'm yeah. Happy to be here. Yeah, just following the OGs, just following the OGs.
Max: what, what well, actually, first of all, for anyone tuning in doesn't know who you are, tell us, tell us a little bit about Jack, who you are, where you do it. Yeah. Give, give, give people the, the Jack 1 0 1 here.
Jack: Oh, Jack 1 0 1. Yeah. Okay. So I guess you know, everything started 10 months ago. Quit my job, took my wife out of university. We all moved to Shanghai. We decided. We think this internet thing is here to stay and we are gonna try and make it big, came, I come from a software engineering background, which as means I'm basically no social skills, no idea how the world works, but, you know a lot of confidence.
A lot of confidence. So the first stop was obviously, if I'm gonna figure out how to make [00:03:00] money, I should probably go where the, the salespeople are, where the marketers are, and that is obviously HubSpot, right? So, took a look at the marketplace, saw all of Dax's stuff, the TikTok today, and was kind of like, yeah, that's about what I had in mind.
Let's give this a go and see what happens. First six months, no idea what I'm doing. But, I think I've made a couple of quid now, and I, I kind have an idea, but very much still a baby entrepreneur,
Max: I mean, so you you jumped right into the app building game right off the bat,
Dax: in off jump off jump.
Jack: Yeah, pretty much. I like to
Max: I love it.
Jack: not too bad, not too bad
Max: What kind of software engineering were you doing before? What was life like before HubSpot Land?
Jack: Oh, so I was straight outta university. I was in like a nicer FinTech consultancy around London so kind of more of the startupy side. So it gave good, a good base, but it was
Max: What were you building?
Jack: Oh, just big, real time trading software. [00:04:00] Right.
Dax: Oh really? Trading. Trading. What?
Jack: They were trading oil futures, but they wanted to get everywhere.
But it was like it was like excel on the web is basically what the idea
Dax: Got it
Jack: but it's not my passion, my passion is, is marketing campaigns and rev ops pipelines.
Max: Where does that come from?
Jack: I dunno. I think I just I like systems. Before I started, no idea what rev ops was. Then like get in and you realize that, oh, actually the whole world is a, is as complicated as software engineering, if not more so because they've got those, soft, gooey people in the middle, which are a bit, they're
Max: yeah,
Dax: Some people. That's, well, I mean,
Max: and gooey.
Dax: it's systems is, I don't know if you played video games at all, but I, I always say back in the day when I started, like the video games. It was just systems. It's a system. Here's the rules. Play the game. How fast you do the game, can you figure out the patterns?
It's just all the same kind of thing. And when you jump into, at least when we jumped into HubSpot, we're like, [00:05:00] oh, this is how it works. Oh, there's a bunch of pitfalls. I bet I can build some bridges. See how long the bridges last before HubSpot builds the bridge. Shout out to everything that we do. And boom, you can kind of live off of that and have fun with right?
Because the key is having fun, right? It wasn't your
Jack: A hundred
Dax: but when you have fun, like spotting the gaps, making the bridges, making the cheats, making the, the loopholes, like patch 'em up. That's kind of how the world works. At scale. Find everything is gamified here, especially taxes. It's a funny game that they up that you have figure out rules and play the ga, play the game, not just be like, oh, it's.
15%, that's what you play. So when you first came into HubSpot, what was the one kind of trip wire that hit you off first?
Jack: As in like a bad way or a good way?
Dax: As in a bad way? Like you're like, or as a, as a, as a fun solvable, like, oh, ding ding. Where was the first aha moment when you got an idea to build something?
Jack: Oh, I mean, it's the very first one is a. [00:06:00] I was testing the waters, I was doing stuff and I built a chrome extension for exporting snippets. 'cause people were complaining about it on the forums and you can't do it. And I put it up and then I made, yeah, $15. I was like, omg that's insane.
I
Dax: know
Jack: That
Dax: was the sweetest $15. Let me tell you something
Max: Wait, what do you mean exporting snippets?
Dax: new
Jack: you can't export snippets on HubSpot. So this just, it's a Chrome extension. It hooks in and it uses internal API to grab all your snippets and give you a CSV.
Max: Oh, got. Oh, okay. Got it. So if you wanted
Jack: little problem.
Max: the stimulus Yeah, a little time. Yeah. Into like a spreadsheet. I get it. That's it. That's finding a niche for sure.
Dax: Yup
Max: Yeah.
Jack: niche. It is
Max: what you gotta do though, honestly. You know
Dax: Do you made money off of an idea that you built at your house like that is the. Beauty of the internet. Like that's, I remember my first, I remember my first 20, it was a $29 I think it was, or [00:07:00] $36 off affiliate marketing in 2006, seven, or whatever that year was. I was like, I made $30. Are you kidding me? took me like a month and a half, two months to make it, but dude, 30 died.
I died.
Jack: it sets something off. It's a complete like worldview shift, isn't it? And I think, as in this current age, I think we've gone all the way from, if you were an ancient Mesopotamia, you needed about 10,000 people to get anything done. Now you can leverage the entire internet and a little bit of code as a single individual.
And that's it. It's, it's crazy what you can get accomplished just as a just one, one guy.
Dax: And you say, say the AI word and you can get half the stuff built. You can, you, you raise that at 80% and it, that's the biggest
Jack: Don't started on ai. I'm like, the past two weeks have been insane for me.
Dax: You can, there's no excuse for any human on earth to be not 80% done with their [00:08:00] idea. You can just ramble off as long as you can speak and or have someone speak for you, or you have like a digit that you can type something in you're almost done. Like you're, you're almost done.
Max: Yeah.
Dax: You just have to.
Jack: Mm-hmm.
Max: so Jack, a big thing, we try to do as best we can is evangelize the idea of, and encourage the idea of building businesses that are just apps on HubSpot, right? Like, we want the ecosystem to thrive. We want. Competition. We want to see HubSpot to be able to do more stuff. We wanna see people be successful building businesses, doing this whole app thing.
Right. And I think your story is really inspirational, especially for like, people coming into the HubSpot world that maybe don't have a ton of experience in HubSpot land. Right? But [00:09:00] like proving that like you can come in and, and you can build a successful app business.
Advice for app building world
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Max: What sort of advice do you have for people that might be in your exact shoes that you were like 10 months ago?
Right? Just getting into the app building world, like what's the biggest thing you learned and learned and, and like what something that you wish you had done like differently. If you had known better, I guess. Yeah.
Jack: So, like I say, two things. I think one of the, one of biggest things is the HubSpot community is wicked. Right. You can go from a, you can go from some communities like the Star Valley community who is anti AI and got my wife's AI chatbot taken down to help
Dax: Valley.
Jack: Star Valley. Yeah.
They're vicious, vicious community, but you got, you come to HubSpot and everyone wants you to succeed. Everyone's happy to help everyone's lie. Each other a hand up. It's, almost fantastical. [00:10:00] Yeah. And I think the second thing is if you, especially if you're coming from a software engineering background, you're thinking too big, right?
think I'm, I'm getting hit with this lesson again right now, but if you can just take a small problem, like the snippets problem, and you can solve the problem in a nice, cool way, it might only take you a weekend if you're good at building, right? There's value in that. But if you go too big, it slows you down and everything starts getting gunked up, so
Max: by go too big? Go too big? Is it like product does too much or build too many things? Or app has too large of a scope? Like what's sort of like too Are you kind of alluding at
Jack: all of them, right? All them. I think definitely app does too many things. I think one of our the app, the main app at the moment is like data. Right, which is a collection of workflow actions, but really there's only one that people are using, which is the rate limiter. Which, stops API stuff and all other kinds of issues.
But there's a whole bunch of other actions in [00:11:00] there, but people don't really use them.
Max: Mm-hmm.
Jack: So I think if I was gonna do that one again, focus on that one thing that everyone's using and make it perfect.
Max: just make that rate limiter as best as it possibly could be. Maybe like a bunch of different variations of it, but it's still like that one thing you're focusing on.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. And then, you you go through other big projects like the more scopes you add, the more you need people to use all the scopes to get through the verification process, get onto the marketplace. The harder it is to keep people to engaged and I think it kind of, it kind of covers up a bad idea, right.
10 mediocre ideas. They're, they're never as good as one. Good, well executed idea.
Dax - Take Your Swings
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Dax: and that's, but you have to take the swings, man. It was,
Jack: You do?
Dax: you have to take those swings. Everything that we did early on was again, for community, community derived. Hey, I can't clone stuff. [00:12:00] Like really? We should. We should try to fix that. Tyrone, can we fix that? Fix right? Still loving it today because there is a native option, but you need, will need more
Max: Kind of,
Dax: Kind of people need more
Max: there's, there's a basic native option. I'll say that.
Dax: basic. But there's always going to be, if you're building on a platform, you have to check the box. Like eventually the box has to be checked. can you add what's more and having that like, I mean, what's interesting is you're coming into it blind, which is how we came into it. I didn't have the experience right, of a solutions partner or doing HubSpot work to know when you're in the weeds doing stuff like you hit that, that problem where you can't, you're like, why?
Why is it like this? I can't do this really. Man, can't use record ID to match associate. Oh my God, I can't put a record ID in a form. Oh, no thing, like thing, the nuance stuff, right? Where you're like, ah, if HubSpot, you get it right? But you don't know HubSpot. So you [00:13:00] have to kinda see from a surface level.
And you have, you don't have that bias of building and like, oh, well I know that there's this and no, you're just like, Hey, I, I hear HubSpot's cool. I'm gonna go in here and try to build something. Let me find something. And boom. You are like the, the couple apps that I know that I've like messed around with, like the, Hey, wait until, like, it was one, you had one with meetings, right?
Where it's like,
You've got one where it's like the meeting, if the meeting is out of bounds, there's a bunch of things where it's like true nuance workflows so that you don't, you're basically crushing edge cases, like you're an edge case. Edge, I can't even say that with like my Edge
Jack: exactly.
Dax: Crusher is what you are
Max: And, and, oh, actually, go ahead, Jack. I didn't wanna interrupt you. You respond
Jack: No, I think that's completely true. I think my only mistake there is. Because they're all part of this collection of apps, they don't get their time to shine. I
Max: Yeah.
Jack: there's a thought in the back of my head, if I start breaking them out and I call them, meeting pause for [00:14:00] meetings, workflow action, right?
You can look at that on the marketplace page and you can get exactly what it means, right?
Max: Yeah.
Jack: So
Max: Harder when it's like stuffed into the description of something else that doesn't necessarily describe it. Right.
Jack: It's uh. These are all thoughts that software developers have. Marketers would,
Dax: yeah, yeah.
Jack: smack me a backhand be
Dax: I was like, you know what? They all need to have. The dopest name and I'm gonna brand it after video game every, I don't care if it literally just capitalizes letters. I'm making it like a whole thing splash. That was, that was my hold.
I was just like, to have fun. But that's again, all of what you've built could stand alone, I think. I believe it should because it, it solves a problem. I need a bandaid. I don't want like a first aid medical kit. I just need aid.
Jack: Hey, well that's my validation. I'm gonna go for it now. I'll
Dax: for sure.
Jack: that over the next couple of weeks. Yeah.
How do you maintain it all?
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Max: so, so Jack, I mean, tell, talk to us like a little bit like behind the scenes, right? Like, I think very much the, we, we kind of look at you as like the brand and like [00:15:00] the, the brains behind everything. And I think other sort of like solo devs getting into the space, wondering like what it's like to run their own operation building apps on HubSpot.
How do you like maintain it all? Like do you have staff? Is it you doing all the support? Is it, do you, do you got family and friends you're bringing into the situation? Like how are you kind of like, running this ship in the background and like balancing your time between all these different apps and customers that you have and stuff like that?
Jack: I got you. So I think people wise, for the first six months it was just me. While I was floundering around, I wanted to do it solar. And my wife was doing the exact same thing, but on the Shopify kind of marketplace. but after first six months we decided, HubSpot is the place to be and she's come and join me and she's been a massive boom.
Like the website and the marketing, and she just has an eye to this thing and also the the dev. But other than that, it's just me and her. And yeah, I mean the code is, I like coding, I always like doing tricks. [00:16:00] I like programming competitions and all that kind of stuff. The real challenge is kind of like trying to tear myself away from the code and think about, the marketing and the sales that is,
How have you managed to DO the balancing?
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Max: What have, well, yeah, what have you learned about yourself when, like, how have you like managed to do that? Because like you have this whole brand, you've got this beautiful website, you've got this presence you've created for yourself on LinkedIn. All things that are not. Coding apps, right? So like how have you, been able to kind of like assume this other sort of like identity as the, the business manager that needs to kind of run all this stuff and pull yourself out of, vs code or whatever it is that you're using to build your apps.
Right. You know what, I don't, I don't know. I'm not a developer, I just know that that thing exists. But like, how do you pull yourself out to be able to kind of like balance that role you're playing?
Jack: I think it's, I mean, for me it's developed quite naturally. Ever since I got that first hit of someone's bought my thing, they've used it to solve a problem that no one else can [00:17:00] solve. I can't code now for like weeks at a time on something that's not gonna help anyone, or no see, you in the back of my head I'm like, you're doing this to help people just not have a bad day dealing with rubbish software basically.
Or things that just missing. So I always try to keep that in mind. And when you keep that in mind, it's kind of like, people can't solve their problems if they don't know that the solution's out there. And again, it's, it's easy. There is no powering through people swearing at you and, being mean, nasty, people.
Everyone
Max: nice. I, I had plenty of roles at HubSpot where plenty of people were swearing at me. I was swearing back at them though, so it was, it was fine. But yeah, man, that's that's cool. So like, in, in terms of like, so like support, you guys are running all of that, right? And it's
Jack: Pretty much,
Max: time to do that.
Jack: an interesting experience, but there's not too much at the moment and it seems like
Max: I can, yeah. I was gonna say, I understand like building, apps that are, a lot of the apps that are, that are workflow actions and stuff like that, it's pretty much just making [00:18:00] sure they're doing their thing and once they become solid enough, there's not like a whole ton of like support, like.
Around them. Right? Unless
Jack: yeah,
Max: get like what's tough about, what's tough about like event happily is that it uses so much of HubSpot and relies so much on HubSpot that there are so many things that our customers ask us about that has nothing to do with our functionality whatsoever, but like in order for them to like, feel like they're getting the most out of it, like sometimes like.
Support for us is kind of like services, you know what I mean? Like, so it's, it, it's a difficult balance for us just because of like how interwoven it is, you know what I mean? But, thank God we got people like Jonathan and, and now Ben and, and Brian and stuff like that, right. Yeah.
Dax: it's big, it's a
How did you support and maintain the app?
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Max: you like when it was like rough at the beginning, how did you like balance that time? Like. Supporting versus building that new and, dive out, maybe climb outta that hole that you may have been put in at the beginning when it first came [00:19:00] out.
Jack: Ooh.
Max: Or is it just built sick apps and they were just working and there wasn't ever that much support?
Like, that's a fine answer too, as well.
Jack: I think, yeah, I mean. The, the problem with my apps is either didn't get used right or people use them and I, I did a decent amount of job making sure they, they kind of work. Though it is interesting because if they stop working immediately get, like everyone complaining that they're not working, which is a very different experience to just being a,
Max: Yeah.
Dax: Oh yeah, that doll win. Especially if you're doing associations like you got the audio auto associations. If that doesn't work, you will know immediately.
Jack: Yeah.
Max: yeah. You find out fast.
Dax: Yeah, you find out fast. And that's just the reaction of like being a solo dev and. Like you get pretty good feedback if you're not doing, if something isn't good.
But just being attuned to that feedback in general is how you grow like software, right? Right now everybody's kind of AI flush on, yeah, I can make stuff. [00:20:00] It's like, okay, cool. Have 30 people use it today? Like it work if it doesn't work? Do you know where it doesn't work? Or are you gonna end up doing like the equivalent of what I call like a redeploy.
Every seconds because you're just like, Hey, lovable. Like this thing like didn't work. Gaslight, gaslight, gaslight, gaslight, gaslight. It's fixed. Great. And you then it's like done up. Like, and they're just broken. Worse and worse and worse. And now you're not a you like, you're not a company, right? And what you've succeeded is from, because you know how to build things, right?
You know how to talk to a computer in its language. You can make things that work and know if it broken, how to fix and how to employ. Lint make everything look cute. That's a big deal, man.
Oh, you've reached the point where there's people, like, it's not just a, a pretty thing on a shelf.
Jack: No, no. Yeah, it's definitely it's helping people out, which is nice. Still small scale, still not enough to support me, but I'm hopeful. I think there's a, surely, there's only so many lessons to learn before [00:21:00] I get this entrepreneurship thing,
Custom Dev Apps
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Max: yeah, and it so, so also like I'm on your website and it's like you. You do the apps, but then you also do like development services, which sounds like, there's custom apps you're building for people, things like that. Right. And it's, it's interesting 'cause like a lot of the times we, we sort of see kind of the opposite in that, where you got HubSpot Solutions partners, they're providing, HubSpot services and then they.
Build the same thing over and over enough for customers, do a little bit of custom dev on this thing, and then they go, oh, we should make that into an app. Right. I mean, it sounds like you came into the scene being like. If this thing, HubSpot needs apps, I'm gonna go listen to people in the forums, hear what they're complaining about, and then go fill that gaps and then try a bunch of different things here.
But then you're also doing custom development services, like on the side too as well. And it almost feels like, as we're figuring out the app thing and building it up and, and finding what, like our big unicorns are gonna be there. Right. You're also kind of supporting the business through this like, development like custom dev [00:22:00] services.
Right. Which is. Something that's absolutely, like, needed really badly in the HubSpot universe. I'm sure you've kind of seen that. How are you balancing like, work I'm doing for like, the services sort of like sustain the business, work with the, r and d and testing and building new stuff and things like that.
Staying alive vs innovating
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Max: How are you finding that, like, 'cause there's like staying alive and then there's like innovating, right?
Jack: percent. Yeah. I mean, they. It is weird because time works very differently for those two sides of my life, right? Same with when I was a software dev, like working for my clients, working for the consultancies I work with. You can always just beast stout tasks, right? Like the only, the only respect you give to time is it's just gonna take this much time to get stuff done.
The weird thing about the apps is you kind of, you set them, you build them, and then you have to leave them and watch them grow over time. Right. You can't just come out with a Wicked app and do one post, and then you wake up tomorrow morning with the exact amount of [00:23:00] views as your app deserves based on the quality.
So a lot of my time at the moment does go into my, my contracting work, but I always try to just set up the experiments, set them up, make them small, set them off, and then just see what happens over time. But yeah, and I mean obviously AI is, is helping a lot with my. Speed boost at the moment
Dax: Is the
Leveraging Claude AI in Development
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Max: What are some of, like, what are some of the, the ways you're kind of like folding it in?
Jack: of a God. I mean, for the past two weeks. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of like Claude Code, right?
Max: I'm tangentially aware of it.
Dax: I'm
Jack: it two
Max: is gonna understand it better than I.
Dax: ly aware of the magic.
Jack: It's like it, so it's something I tried two weeks ago, right? It's an app that sits on my computer. You can roll in your cps, right? So you can roll in your HubSpot MCP, which allows your, your chat bot to grab your HubSpot stuff. And it's a gentech so it kind of, it, it works out a plan and then it executes the plan and then it does stuff [00:24:00] and
the first time I tried it, it was like a mind blown moment. Right. And now the process that I'm in at the moment is you can use the Claude code to hook into your entire tech stack, right? So hook into your database and your task management system and HubSpot, and even the parts of HubSpot that are like, open to the API, but not open to the MCP.
It's just, Hey, can you give me a script that does this for me? Grabs landing pages, renames them, whatever. And once you've enabled it with that kind of stuff. Now it can just run tasks for you that were completely manual before, so, so it's given me a massive speed boost. 'cause now I, I don't really have to google anything.
I don't have to Google documentation to write my code. I don't have to open HubSpot to check all my stuff on my HubSpot and grab the properties and coordinate with stuff. I just have to build a system. Right. It's like we were saying earlier, it's, a few thought systems were important last year.
It's the only thing that's gonna be [00:25:00] around in 12 months time.
Dax: Yep.
Max: wait, so wait. So I understand that correctly. So is Claude using. The MCP, just to better understand the APIs. So when it's going and writing code for an integration that you have, it knows
Jack: Yeah, kind. So the MCP is basically just like an API with a little bit of explainer text so Claude figure out what to use it for, right. you can start mix and matching it. I have the linear one for my tasks. So I can say, grab my linear task and then grab, go to HubSpot and grab all the properties on my thing and make sure that you're using the right schema.
And then write this test script, right? And it will do it in a wanna. And then if there's something you don't want, you just ask it to, to build it. So it's kind of like, it reminds me of like, like markets, right? Like they just get everywhere. Like start, it's like a. Like the gold market, right?
Some people came up with the idea to trade gold. The people who didn't care about gold very quickly started caring about gold when they [00:26:00] realized these people were coming over and giving them, stuff for all their food and elephants or whatever. So it's just like it's taken over my entire setup and now I can orchestrate it through Claude.
It's insane,
Non-Sidebar Couch Developeres
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Dax: yeah, it's one of those things where. If I, I, I call myself not a developer 'cause I'm not, but I know how to type some python up and I can postman myself to victory. But when you enable yourself with Claude, it allows people max, you, you are, I think, forget what I was saying. I think Max, you are probably the dopest, non sidebar couch coder that I've ever seen you have production code.
That you came out with some for some reason and it works. AKA the happily Trigger. That is a, a web app that gives you formatted data based upon some inputs. That is an application you did that you have no [00:27:00] business doing that.
Max: I know, I just forget. So, Jack, to give you the the explain the context on this. So. We have this an event, happily. Our event app, the way we like register someone for an event is that there's a contact property called Event Trigger.
And when you put an ID of an event record in there, it hits a web hook. It goes, oh, that's the event I go to register room for. And it creates a registration for it, right? We are trying to build. A more complex like version of that that like doesn't just like create a registration, but also can do like a walkup registration, which in our world is like you create a registration and you mark em as attended or a wait list, right?
Just mark up as wait listed or pending. Right? Which is for like delayed stuff. And so what we ended up building required, oh, instead of dropping like an ID in there, it's A-J-S-O-N string, right? And so what got really annoying about that is like, it's really easy for us to like. Drop an idea and it does its thing not easy for us to like remember how to type the schema of like A-J-S-O-N thing, [00:28:00] right?
And I was like, I know this is gonna be a pain in the ass. And so I ended up going like just randomly, I was like, oh, like I could just ask chat GPT to like build this thing I want, right? And so like literally told it like, hey like I explained the whole thing to it and I'm like, at the end of the day, this is what I needed JSON string.
Formatted like this, right? And I need a tool that's just gonna generate it. Let me copy it. This, that, and the other thing. And, and then we ran into this weird thing where like, when you try to use query parameters to like throw a js ON like string into like a hidden field on a form, it wasn't working.
And so, like I explained what was happening and it's like, oh, you've gotta encode it. Or what, what was it, Dax, you gotta, encrypt. Not encrypt
Jack: Yeah.
Max: encode the,
Dax: Yeah, you to encode the url. This
Max: Right here. Right. So like, dude, I built this whole thing on chat GPT. Right? Including like the copy buttons and everything.
Like
Dax: you put in like your
Max: super [00:29:00] cool.
Dax: and I want to put him on pending generate the js ON, like Max had no business building this useful thing, but AI allowed him to do so. And if you guys are been on the internet for a while. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tools that do stuff like this that just get ad revenue.
That, because that was what you needed back in the day. Like a delimiter, A-J-S-O-N pretty fire. I need to count word count, like all the like paragraph count. I need to add all of those like ridiculous web app things that existed in like the early, I guess I would say the late two thousands, like just all of those could be built by anybody.
Max: Yeah.
Dax: And you can just have them and just populate the, the web. Now you don't need those things pretty much
Max: I should put an ad on that page and then every you guys go and
Dax: There is an ad, actually I pointed out it was an ad for a webinar box webinar with event, happily like that. Like that concept though empowered, it, empowered [00:30:00] Maxwell to build a production ready application on the internet in
Max: like, remember all the modules in the early days, right? Like we did a whole bunch of CMS modules.
AI is Supercharging Coders
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Dax: Yeah, you keep talking. I'm like, you don't know. But Jack is, if you like, if you're at Max's level, able to put things together and go, if you're at Jack's level, you're able to go ridiculously fast and like revolutionize the access to all of your things. And I think that, bringing it back to what HubSpot. That the HubSpot's AI isn't doing that. So everyone still has the opportunity to build these things that do what you want them to do
Jack: Yeah, there is like a little what What's it called? Arbitration period when everyone else is just catching up and you are doing it like 10 times faster. Hmm.
Dax: yeah. Right now, if you, I want to create, I still can't create a list by talking to some. get like the, the AI inside doesn't get it right.
Future of HubSpot Development
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Dax: But there's still an opportunity to do those [00:31:00] things, whether it be from a MCP, whether you have like an installable that you like sell or like, or just give out like 10 bucks. Gimme buy me a coffee. Here's the installable that will put Claude, put the MCP, put all the things, and then you can now talk to your, you can interact with technology via voice, which is the whole LLM like thing.
And I still think there's an opportunity for someone to make that. And sell it for like 20 bucks and just that's, damn, it's 20 bucks one time and you gotta figure out the rest. But it's an installable XE that you can put on your computer that does the thing and puts HubSpot at not your fingertips, at your, I don't wanna say tongue tip, but it puts it right here.
You can interact with your HubSpot. We had talking. There's still all these opportunities for people to be able to do this. And if you know how to use ai, you're already halfway done.
Most Impactful HubSpot Feature, or on your Wish List
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Max: Jack, what do you, you've been, you've been watching obviously the HubSpot developer world very closely since you've been. Just, full bore into it. What's the what do you think is like the most recent, thing we got access to, or API that came out, or, or tool that, [00:32:00] like developers that were given that's been like, the most impactful and like, what's the biggest one that you haven't been given yet?
Like, what, what does HubSpot need to make available to developers for you guys to do some really, really cool shit that you wanna do?
Jack: I mean, I know they've got stuff crook in the background of, which I don't think we could say here, which I'm excited for, but I think the most recent one, and the one I wish they would keep plowing ahead on is the UI cards, right. I think they are. I think they're super powerful. I think they're really easy to use and I've seen rev ops people with AI making their own, things to customize their user interface.
I think that's gonna be massive over the next couple of years. I just wish you could get them in more places. Right? I want a dashboard that I can like pop 'em on because like, you have 'em on contacts or companies or whatever, but what about, I want my app to have its own dashboard that you could just put on your own little dashboard.
I want tools that you can hit button set. Do reports of your entire HubSpot fee. [00:33:00] So yeah, they're good,
Max: that's, dude, that's what I'm saying. Like imagine if UI extensions came to the marketing tools, right? It like, it really feels like.
Jack: Exactly.
Max: They've really let developers go crazy on the CRM side of things, like records and all that. But it's like, yo who's, who's making the, the, the overlay or like the extra tools that like affect the email tool or the landing pages tool or like little plugins for the CMS and stuff like that.
Right. Building apps that deal with CMS stuff is like honestly kind of a nightmare. Like me do it a lot with with, with event, happily, it's, it's real tough. Right. But, and it's, it's tough to get things in the, in the. Well, I guess it's not that hard to get things in the, in the app marketplace, and I guess that's kind of unfair because they do have like the template and like module marketplace and stuff like that.
Right. But you know, I'd love to see, UI extensions, like get built into more pieces of the tool that isn't just a [00:34:00] record. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Jack: a hundred percent. Again, it's the way we're heading in it. When you can have. AI create you simple user things on the fly. like you need to open everything up, right? Like,
Dax: We, I always wanted like, like list views, right. List view. You should be able to throw some stuff on the top of the list view, like literally like a little three section up top, be sick and then when composing it
Max: the contacts in different ways
Dax: Yeah. Or something like that. Or then having, having the, when you do the marketing emails or when you're building an email, they should be able to boop, a little sidebar that pops out that has something instant translate or whatever you could do, right?
It allows you to add more stuff, pull from, pull from something, pull from other objects, anything like that, right? That real estate, the CRM card is the, the initial real estate that we're able to do. Then we got custom or custom object, CRM cards too. It's, it's coming. I'm assuming it's coming, right?
There's a lot of stuff that they're doing
Jack: I hope so.
Dax: but that'll [00:35:00] really open it up. Like I know a lot of people just are like, I just want the navigation to,
Max: Hmm.
Dax: I just wanna make my own
Max: Please,
Dax: Yeah. That, let me just do that. Let me hide everything I don't want and call it a day.
Max: Dude, imagine like
Dax: That Chrome That Chrome extension would be hot. People would
Max: Imagine they start opening up like full page, surfaces for developers to use, where like you've got like a little, a new little thing that shows up in the nav that's just says apps, right? You click it, you see your apps kind of listed that have like a, sort of like a full page.
Whatever. And then like you're able to build full scale apps within HubSpot that live inside a HubSpot. Use data. Yeah, dude, that's gonna be crazy.
Dax: Yeah.
Jack: It'll head that way. I think. I don't think the web's gonna be around forever. Right? Like maybe five years. Either it's on the fly UI or it's no UI at all. And
Max: yeah. Oh true.
Jack: if that's the world, it's like what does [00:36:00] HubSpot end up being? And I ends up being just the repository for all your
Max: A computer chip in your brain is when it up?
Jack: one day,
Max: Yeah. If, if 10 years, we're gonna be like, did you guys get like the new HubSpot chip installed? Did you, did you get
Dax: I'm still working on the old update, man. I didn't get the updated one. I'm cool with the regular one.
Max: Yeah. Yeah, that'll be really interesting.
Personal Vision and Goals
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Dax: question. I got a big question for you, man. I know people will probably wanna understand, like you came in, you found problems, you made solutions, you put 'em out there, and people came the.
The playbook to me is, especially in the, in the internet world for the past 10, 15 years, is do services because they're high margin. You're selling your time, learn the knowledge from the services to make a product so you could sell it while you sleep, and then profit, right? Where are you looking to go seeing that you've got the services?
You had made some product, and you'll probably [00:37:00] do a couple circles around that every so often. Where are you looking to go? Is it in the HubSpot world? Are you looking to do a big major app? Are you just trying to have fun and, and move around and go to KL and then go to Indonesia and Jakarta and go to Bali, and what are you, what are you looking to do with this ability that you have to create things?
Jack: Yeah, I mean, I have a vision for my future, right? It's a, it's a chrome-plated VR headset on. It's couple HubSpot apps, working in the background, funding my lifestyle, funding all these new gadgets like brain chips, that oil will be coming out soon, I'm sure. And there may be a whispered about in legend when someone has a really hardcore problem.
It's so, yeah, it's probably Jack to, but, but I think the apps is where I'd like to go. It's the highest leverage you can solve, the most problems. And it's just the most fun, it's like a game and. I enjoy the client work. I enjoy working with the people that I work with. But you know, when someone else has given you a task, there's always something in the back of your head [00:38:00] like, Ooh, could I do this better?
Especially now, now I know there's so many bad ways to set yourself a task a lie. Are they doing the best they can, the market research, and are they talking to people and all that kind of stuff. So the apps is where I would like to be.
Max: yeah. I will say like it's, with this community the way it is it's very easy to grow like attached to it. Invest in it, feel very fondly of it. Feel like part of something bigger, right? And when you can build an app that makes all of those people very happy, that feels good, dude. Like, I remember Dax, remember like when we launched TikTok today, right? dumbest, the dumbest little stupid app of all time is we take, we take a field and we put today's date in it and like it was the dumbest, simplest thing ever. Right? And we gave it away for free. Right? And, and, and [00:39:00] we only charge you what, nine bucks a month if you wanted to put it on a different object, right?
And it was sort of like a love letter to the HubSpot community, right? Because. It was this stupid little thing that 99% of people got for free. But the whole, the whole like community kind of like rejoiced over it, right? And it
Dax: oh man. Finally it's here.
Max: it played its part. It was always supposed to have a minimal lifespan and it our way of kicking HubSpot in the ass to be like, yo, go build the feature the right way so we don't have to do something silly like this.
Right, but it's like we got to play the hero for a moment. And like that felt really, really, really good that we were able to like, help the community in that way and like, get 'em over the hump until HubSpot kind of, finally did something like that. So, I'm with you, man. Like, it feel like when you build something really cool that just like unblocks a lot of people and, and, and really helps solve a collective headache [00:40:00] that so many people have. It's a great feeling regardless how much money it makes. Right.
Jack: Percent. It's it's a purpose, isn't it?
Dealing with Platform Competition
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Max: Yeah, yeah. And you're serving a community you actually care about too. That's the thing. HubSpot community's very easy to love. 'cause it, it's easy for it to love you,
Dax: Man, those are, those are wise words right there.
Max: The, the thing is, so recently there was that post that you made, right?
Um, where I think you kind of went through the rite of passage of a lot of like HubSpot developers in that you you built something and then HubSpot kind of also built it. Right? I want to know, dude, what was going through your head the moment you found out about that? Right. Like. Tell us your gut reaction.
How'd you climb out of the hole? Were you calm the whole time? Like, walk us through that moment
Jack: Yeah. I mean, it came at a weird time, right?
Max: Let's give everyone listening context here. You have an [00:41:00] app that that delays stuff in. Workflows, right? It's part of your essentials, right? And the big reason a lot of people would use it is to like rate limit like API usage and, and stuff like that, right. Yeah. So it was like a what's the word?
It's not like a delay, like a regular delay. It's a, what was it? Like, how do you explain it again?
Jack: It it spaces out your workflow executions, right? Because HubSpot sends all through at once. It throttles it.
Max: Yeah. Throttles the way to do it. Right? So it's like holding back other stuff, going through it, and like letting it through in a,
Jack: Pace it out.
Thoughts on Custom Coded Action Throttling
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Max: it's not, it's not like an out of the box delay. It's very different than that. Right. And then, so, so HubSpot came out with a sort of like rate limit or a similar tool, but only within the context of custom coded actions.
Right. So yeah, walk us through it. You see that happen? What's going through your head? How are you processing it? What do you do?
Jack: Yeah. So yeah, so I get the message from my friend Ryan Ginsburg. He's always keeping me up, [00:42:00] up to date on these kind of things. I think the first thought that went through my head is that's the game. Like HubSpot has built this massive platform, which is a massive leverage point for me, right?
I could never reach as many people as I could do on my own without becoming a TikTok star obviously. That's the game hub. There's nothing wrong with HubSpot taking stuff that everyone needs and adding it for free and just making the platform better. 'cause that's what, feeds me.
That's the platform that I work on. And then there was the like, oh, this is not good. It's my number one product, right? Is this gonna impact it? I dunno. So then I've, I've fought back and. Have, have you heard about the, the Chinese horse story? I dunno. Have you heard it? It's a philosophical one, right?
It's like this there, there's this Chinese farmer and he has a horse, right? And the horse runs away and people come to him and say, that's, that's, you're not having a good day, are you? And he's like, ah, maybe. And then the horse comes back and it brings along with him seven extra wild horses. Right.[00:43:00]
So they go, ah, it's a great day. Isn't it great that that happened? And he goes, ah, maybe. And then his son tries to break in one of the horses and falls off and breaks his leg. So they come to him and they say, that's a bit naff. And then the conscription officers come around to his village and they don't take his son 'cause he is got broken leg.
Right. So that's the the first thing that hit me. 'cause it's kinda like you don't know if these decisions are gonna be good or bad, right? It could. Trash my app, which would be naf, but I'll get back up, right? But it could just introduce way more people to the concept of throttling or rate limiting. And now suddenly they have all these extra little problems and I just move up the stack.
'cause I'm the guy that solves the extra problems that got my reviews. I'm already into the thing. Maybe it's gonna be a boom. Right. It's hard to, it's hard to puzzle those things out. So, that's when I, I put the post together, I put it out and I said, there's some things I'm doing wrong. I need to focus, I need to.
To reorg, but once this comes out, I'm just gonna move up the stack and I'm gonna solve all the extra problems that [00:44:00] the solution to this problem create creates. that's how I've gone with it.
Dax: that's the mindset because when, I mean we've experienced, I person experienced it a bunch of times. And the idea though is when there is a feature that is either matching or
Jack: Hmm.
Dax: similar to what you have, it's going to bring more people into that circle of like use product use. And they not be satisfied with what is outta the box.
They don't have to be, because there's options and you need to be one of those options. And that's just how, you work it.
Max: The other thing too is like, it's not like the HubSpot app marketplace is saturated with competitors. Right? And it's like sometimes you need HubSpot to be that competitor. 'cause if you don't have any competitors, you have no incentives to innovate or get better. Right? Like that's the thing.
I think like when, when, when they came out with like their association stuff, I think we were all freaked out. 'cause we're just like, oh man, associates' gonna go away. Associate lives on, like, it lives on clone attack. I [00:45:00] think the clone attack sales went up as soon as basic cloning came out. 'cause people were like, oh, it ain't that good.
Right. And you can always be the better version of what HubSpot has, right. Just 'cause they come out with something that you do doesn't mean you're dead in the water. It just means that you now have an opportunity to do it better. Right. And I, and I, I get that question a lot from people where they go like, oh. Why do you what, like, why do you develop on HubSpot if HubSpot could just like steal your idea and like do it on their own? It's like if, if that was a thing that everyone was afraid of, then you would've never seen an app built on the iPhone, right? Because Apple could just build that app. So does that mean don't ever do it?
It's like, no, just do it better. That's why they're better calendar apps than the calendar app. That's why there's better mail apps in the mail app, right? You can always do something better or in a more specific and niche way, right? Than the HubSpot app does it out of the box. That's the whole point of it being a platform, right?
So. There's always still a lot of [00:46:00] opportunity out there. I don't think anyone out there should be scared of HubSpot. Kind of like doing, rebuilding what your app does. Like, if anything, it's a blessing because then you, you, you, you've got that incentive to innovate and make it better, which you should always have.
Right? But it's hard to like have that fire sparked all the time when there's no, there's no need for it, right.
Dax: Ecosystem, like there's 900 different order bump app, there's like 50 review app. There's everything is is a lot of choice. There's a true economy in there HubSpot has definitely not that there's a lot of ops, man.
Jack: that's a, that's just a game, isn't it? Even if you go to the very top, cutting edge, you got the AI tech companies, isn't it? I'm sure Sam Altman wakes up in a sweat every night. 'cause he's competing against 15 different teams with billions of dollars to like just throw at this problem.
I HubSpot's quite chill in comparison.
Max: Oh yeah.
Closing Questions and Wrap-up
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Dax: It is not. Well, Jack, man, I appreciate the love and appreciate you coming on, bill. Happily. We always like to ask people three questions out of the [00:47:00] blue. You're in Thailand, man. What is your favorite? Street food in
Jack: Oh, what's my favorite street food? Oh. Maybe not street food, but I love the ram in here, right? Like get everything here. Super high quality. The ram in is you just can't get it back in the uk. Fantastic. Katsu. Beautiful.
Dax: So we got that. Now, airline of choice, since you're out here flying around.
Jack: Ah, no preference, right? As long as you go direct to the website, they're all the same though it's the Boeing planes you have to watch out for in it and try go for Airbus.
Max: Yeah. Yeah.
Dax: Want them things disappearing. So, last one. Yeah, I they, these plane path disappeared. Like don't have no idea. There's like two guys stole a plane, never found again, like
Max: Hmm.
Jack: Crazy.
Dax: So what's the one thing that you bring with you when you travel that you can't not have with you?
Jack: Oh, oh, my wife, right? [00:48:00] get rid of everything else. I would still get back but
Dax: We'll that answer, but we are looking for something that fits in the suitcase.
Jack: Something that fits a suitcase. I mean, I recently purchased new
Max: My wife
Jack: four. It probably does be fair the, the new M four MacBook, right? I used to be a Linux guy, but you know, I got sick of
Dax: tu, he used to get it.
Jack: I was Arch, I was like on Arch Linux, I hardcore. But the MacBook, it just works. It just works for everything, right? And I think when you go from dev to entrepreneur, you just need things that work. You can't
Max: love it.
Jack: Writing it.
Dax: accept that answer
Max: As a former, a former Apple employee, I endorsed that answer. Yeah.
Dax: That's what's up. Well, Jack, keep building. We see you, you are doing, you are doing the gospel of kind of what our origin story is and appreciate you having us, man. Safe travels to your next beautiful place and keep coding dude.
Jack: Yeah. It's been fantastic. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, for you, for you. I'll keep on it.
Max: Did it do it for us? Jack [00:49:00] did.
Jack: Gonna print out poster now it on the wall, you know.
Max: yep.