Sean is exhausted because he has so many inbound emails from prospective clients he doesn't have time to answer them all. Meanwhile, Andrew is trying to buckle down and get Stripe built into ChartJuice so he can start advertising and collecting payments. Sean and Andrew talk about how the consulting project is going, and Sean has to rain Andrew in as he contemplates repositioning ChartJuice again. As a bonus, find out how fast Andrew can run a mile and why he needs to run faster.
Links:
Andrew
What's up, friend?
Sean
Not so much. How are you?
Andrew
Good, we haven't talked other than Slack in like two weeks.
Sean
Yeah. You've been traveling.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
How have your trips been multiple?
Andrew
um Montana is fucking beautiful. Oh my god. um Glacier in particular is stunning. Was there for a friend's wedding. um And then I think right before that, my sister was in town visiting. Have we talked since then? I can't remember.
Sean
we talked i think i think the last time we talked was the day you i think you went to pick up your sister from the airport or yeah something like that yeah yes
Andrew
Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. So, okay. Great. Time makes no sense, but that was the week before. And then there was a week. I think. I don't know. Anyway, my sister came to visit. That was a blast. It was great to see her. Got to meet her new boyfriend. So that was fun. And then went to Glacier for one of my best friend's weddings. His name is Alex. His now wife's name is also Alex. So that was very entertaining.
Andrew
um We love her. We've known her for a long time. It's kind of the novelty is kind of worn off, to be honest, but but she is taking his name.
Sean
Got it.
Andrew
So they are going to be Alex Drake and Alex Drake, which is like absurd. Um, but we did a lot of hiking, did some white water rafting. Um, I saw, uh, mountain goats and big horn sheep. Um, and yeah, Glacier is just absolutely stunning. I, it reminded me that like, there's so much of this country that I have not seen that I want to see. Um, so I think next year I might. Maddie and I might make it a point to do like some sort of national park road trip or something, but we'll see.
Sean
nice um i've always dreamed of just going and like driving to go cross-country trip in either like an rv or just with multiple motels and just driving around and staying like a like 52 weeks in 50 52 weeks in 52 states something like that and then you're right sorry it's been a long it's been a long since you've been gone it's been a war zone here
Andrew
There are 50 states, but
Andrew
Oh no, what's happening? Why are you so tired?
Sean
um i count california as two states just for the record and porta rico just just before but i'm not yeah i am not smarter than a fifth grader for what it's worth so um anyway uh i don't know just like you
Andrew
Puerto Rico should be a state, but yeah.
Sean
and You know that thing where they're like, you'll know when you have product market fixed or bang on your door. It's like, have feeling like you have service market fit and people are banging on my door and we say yes to things. and We say no to some things, but like whenever, you know, just, we have a lot of clients and I don't have, we have.
Andrew
I understand.
Sean
Barely amount the amount of people to get all of it done with all the things that are going on.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um um
Andrew
So you're in, you're fully in one of the agency peaks where there's just like too much work and you're happy that there's too much work.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
So you're finally not stressed about like paying the bills and making ends meet, but instead that's replaced with doing the work and making sure the work is done to a high standard because, you know, when there's lots of work to go around, it's easy for things to slip through the cracks and yeah.
Sean
Right.
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
Yeah. But there's more money in our bank account than ever.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
So, you know, that's, that's really cool.
Andrew
Yeah, it really is.
Sean
Um, yeah.
Andrew
This is the thing about agencies is it does feel like you're always trading one type of stress for another. It's either you're like, fuck, I need to find clients. Or it's like, fuck, I need to get this work done for clients. um
Sean
Yeah. I do really think like,
Sean
Like I think I think creative agencies also like creative service providers are also an extra level of like because it's objectives right it's not like I have a friend who runs an MSP or an it's MSP sort of shop, but it's very like those that sort of work is very like oh you get the green checkmark because because the scanner no longer detects an issue so you're good, it's good to go.
Andrew
Yeah, the flip side is like people don't usually call us in the middle of the night because they're like design got hacked into.
Sean
you can like
Sean
You're right. You're right. You're right.
Andrew
So that's, that's like, Oh yeah, that's.
Sean
We do manage websites. We do. Weflo did go down the other day, and that was my nice slide blew the fuck up.
Andrew
hu
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, our stance was always like, we're not going to be on call.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Sorry. That's just not how we operate, um which was kind of a bold stance, to be honest, because like a lot of our clients, we were
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
managing their products.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um And mostly, we just got lucky, I think, and there weren't ever any major issues.
Sean
You guys are just that good.
Andrew
um No, it was luck.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
No one is that good. Things go down. Things break. Everyone knows that.
Andrew
Yeah. Well, I am happy that business is going well, and sorry that business is going well.
Sean
Thanks. Thanks. I want that on my Christmas card in the future. Sorry, that business is going well.
Andrew
um Any projects that you can like talk about at all?
Sean
oh We launched the new Halcyon site um and that was really cool and I think like it continues to be probably one of the like best things we've done probably, at least as of late.
Andrew
Cool.
Sean
um
Andrew
What's cool about it?
Sean
just looks different than any any other site. think we i think that we I think we really pushed the limitations of workflow there. Not all the way, but um I don't know. It just looks nice. It looks you know clean. It doesn't look like like a regular, regular enterprise site. um
Andrew
They're halcyon.ai, yeah. Cool.
Sean
Yeah. um
Andrew
Yeah, it's still very on brand. But yeah, it looks looks nice.
Sean
Mm-hmm. There's a lot of um there's a lot of like CMS complexity in the back end um as well, which is really cool.
Andrew
I can see that.
Sean
um There's a lot of like microsites on the site. like It's like a full enterprise site. um um And anyway, so there's that.
Andrew
Cool, man.
Sean
but Yeah. um
Andrew
I know a certain someone at ah a company where we both know who is having to redesign their redesign and rebuild their Webflow site right now, and it's driving him batshit.
Sean
Oh.
Andrew
And he desperately wants to find a contractor to like take it over, or so might have.
Sean
Oh, really?
Sean
I see. I see.
Andrew
i think I think he has to do it.
Sean
We should come our way.
Andrew
I don't know if they have budget, but he's hoping they will have budget at some point so he can hand it off to somebody.
Sean
Right.
Sean
right Right. Right.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
Well. You know, either way, good luck with that person. I kind of feel like I know who it is, but I see, I see, I see, I see.
Andrew
You know who it is. You 100% know who it is. It's who you're thinking it is.
Sean
I see, okay, all right.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
In other news, you've been working with us for a while.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
Thank you for kind of running the entire project just kind of by yourself though, which is cool.
Andrew
It's been fun. Yeah.
Sean
How is getting, yeah, I was just curious, like how is getting back into like, just services and
Andrew
I feel like this project has been kind of cheating because um so I will say it does like it reminds me. of all the times when we were trying to do a product and services at crit and how the services always win because the money is so enticing and you have to have like an insane amount of discipline to really carve out time for your product.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um This was also like the first
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um time I've gotten back into like doing the UX design myself. So I've been a little slower. And so I think that's part of it. And then again, I mentioned I have had a bunch of travel. So if I had a clear schedule, I think I still would have had more time over the past month to make progress on chart juice.
Sean
Are you, are you itching to go back?
Andrew
um
Sean
Are you?
Andrew
Yeah, a little bit.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
um And this week, I have been able to get back, which is cool. um So this week, we're bringing in, you know this, but for the audience, we're bringing in a designer who's going to take over the design work from here. So I was doing some like kind of pinch hitting. um We needed to get some stuff out fast because the client had a tight deadline. um And the designer wasn't available right away. Plus, um you know it was more UX and like working within an existing design system, which is stuff that I'm pretty good at. So um I've been filling in as both the designer and project manager right now.
Andrew
um But my my friend Chinmay is coming on board to do the design work from here. um And I'm really excited to work with him. He's really talented and really chill and fun to work with. So um ah shout out to Chinmay.design, I think, is his site.
Sean
Hell yeah. What a heck of a portfolio, by the way.
Andrew
um
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. his
Sean
It's the best portfolio cover I've ever seen.
Andrew
He's good, man, he's good.
Sean
And yeah.
Andrew
um So I'm excited for us to get to work together, but also because he's coming on board, my life's getting way more chill and I can start to focus more of my time on chart juice while still helping out and and being a point of contact. So um yeah, it's been fun.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
Feel a little spoiled because the the folks that we've been working with, and i I think I've said their name on here before, but I also,
Sean
<unk>re not goingnna Yeah, we're just gonna not say it.
Andrew
ah Yeah, yeah, yeah. ah So they're just so chill and easy to work with. like um The front end developer who's the main person that I've i've been interfacing with, you know something will come up. ah There will be kind of a scope change or something where it's like, oh, we decided we actually want to do this flow a little bit differently. And I'll be like, cool, you want me to update the wireframes? Nah, I got it. Like, like, I can just, I, you've given me the structure and I can then just make this small tweak as I'm implementing your structure and work within your structure and so there are some things where he's like yeah it would be helpful if you
Sean
nice nice
Andrew
change this up. um And then there are some things where he's like, no, don't worry about it. So um in general, they've been super good to work with. um They have a lot of stakeholders, external stakeholders that they're dealing with in this project. And so that's made their life difficult. um But, you know, they've shielded me from a lot of that um and have been very cool with just. And I've tried to just go with the flow with them and, you know, kind of adjust the not be a stickler to be like, we have to stick with this original plan, but.
Andrew
Hey, I'm here to help you guys. you My time is yours.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
Let's figure it out and just let me know how I can be the most helpful. And so it's been very like, um we've just been rolling with the punches, going with the flow, um and they've been a blast to work with. So yeah, I feel you good clients make service work so much more enjoyable.
Sean
No, they don't. No, they do. They do. They do.
Andrew
They 100% do.
Sean
Don't let don't let my clients hear that.
Andrew
yeah I'm still going to charge them the same, but I will ah be much less likely to fire them.
Sean
For sure. For sure. Nice. Yeah, I guess I was kind of curious. like Not that I was expecting anything, just that after having a distance away from charge use, if it would, I don't know. I don't know. I just feel like every time I step away from something for for a while, either I lose interest or I rethink the thing when I re-approach it and it kind of opens up new thoughts or or or it just makes me think like this is stupid and I want to go do other things.
Sean
So I was kind of curious so how you would react with charge use after your hiatus.
Andrew
So the the closest thing to that that I felt, um, I don't think I felt like chart juice is stupid or services are stupid. It's like, I, I still want to be able to do build a product because I want maximum time freedom.
Sean
Hmm.
Andrew
Um, and. Yet I also see the value of services as a way to fund myself while I get this product off the ground. um So I don't think my mindset on that has changed a whole lot working with this client. um But I will say, as I started working on the designs, I needed a chart.
Sean
Ah, nice.
Andrew
we were We were building some Data Vis stuff and I needed a a chart. And I tried like a bunch of Figma chart plugins to create a chart and they suck.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
They're so bad.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Like none of them are would give me anything particularly useful. None of them have the flexibility I wanted.
Sean
Right.
Andrew
Most of them had very limited options. um And then like designing a chart by hand, is just very time consuming. And to actually get the percentages right and everything requires a lot of like dumb math that you shouldn't be doing.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um And so I know we've talked about like focusing on charts in email and like that the email report use case. And that's still what a I'm trying to like stay disciplined and continue focusing on that for right now. But like
Andrew
Man, I think there's an opportunity to build a better Figma plugin and like just build a Figma plugin to chart juice and be like, hey, here's an actually good way to design charts in Figma. um I just, yeah, I don't know how the pricing model of that works. um
Sean
Well, figshirts.com is taken just so you know, for sure.
Andrew
No, I would just keep the name, chart juice. I think the name's fine.
Sean
sure
Andrew
Because i if I went that route, I wouldn't just build plugins for Figma.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
I'd build plugins for Webflow.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
I'd build plugins for Canva. I'd build plugins you for as many tools as I could and try to make chart juice. like But it it really, like I created my chart in chart juice. I exported it as an SVG, dropped the SVG into Figma. And then I could continue to edit it in Figma because the SVG is like actually pretty nicely structured.
Sean
Mm hmm.
Andrew
just by default. um And so like I could tweak things and it was a pretty nice experience.
Sean
Listen, I'm with you. and The first time I used charge use charges, I was like, oh, oh, this is like vastly different than any chart tool I've used so far. um Yeah, it is a pain in the ass. It's like. ah you know you use like i don't know I make charts mostly in outside of literally just drawing them and then plotting the points and then connecting them with vectors. The only other the time I make charts is with Google Sheets, and it's not really a design first thing.
Sean
right You put data in, and then it gives you a really ugly thing, and you don't know.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I'm with you. Well, cool.
Andrew
shit
Andrew
So wait, should I? Okay. Am I making the right decision being disciplined or should I be like, I don't know, man.
Sean
i can't
Sean
ah
Andrew
Yeah. and Okay. So coming into this podcast, I was like, I was excited to talk to you about this, but I was also like, I'm going to stay disciplined and I'm going to focus on the like email report use case.
Sean
I
Andrew
And now I, I feel like I'm hearing myself and going like, is that being stubborn?
Sean
can't.
Andrew
But I also like, I haven't, I don't feel like I've really given that use case a solid try yet because I've done zero marketing for it. Um, so like, should I stay the course and just like stick with the one use case and market the heck out, like market that for at least a few weeks and see what happens. Where do you think I should like. go back to the the idea that I had like a few months ago and do like a free tier, $15 tier, $50 tier and like test that and see which one gets the most traction.
Sean
I think you should go back to your market sizing exercise um because because I feel like that that's what made you end up picking the email part, right?
Andrew
Hmm.
Sean
Is because you would have a small handful of enterprise clients. You charge a much higher rate. You don't, ah you solve a very niche problem for a very small set of, I don't know how small, but like for a specific set of people, um,
Sean
Versus like, I think the thing is, um, as cool of a nice mix of an experienced church uses, uh, there's no like technical moat to it at all.
Andrew
No, absolutely not.
Sean
Right.
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
Sean
Um, right.
Andrew
It's literally just it's a design mode, if anything, which are design modes are super weak because it's easy to copy a design.
Sean
Right. Right. Right.
Andrew
um And and like I also don't think I'm not deluded enough to think that the design is like really groundbreaking or revolutionary. It's like an iteration beyond Google Sheets or Canva or something. It's pulling some of the best elements of several of these into one place.
Sean
Right. Right.
Andrew
um And also, like, part of the reason the experience was great is because I built the fucking thing. And so I know where everything is, like, really, you know.
Sean
right
Andrew
ah Yeah.
Sean
Yeah, yeah, fair. um Yeah, I don't know. I think um
Sean
I think that I don't know I don't know what it is recently like that mentally I've gone into like unsexy niche tools like that are way more interesting to me than like a cool dev tool like I think when you build a cool dev tool you definitely get like you know more Twitter followers from it and not like or a design tool or something like that. That being said, I have no idea. I don't know i don't know to tell you. kind of Just go where your heart takes you, man.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
like i would like but owning ah Owning a you know top percentile Figma plugin and charging for it, I'm sure, is an incredibly lucrative thing. um And it solves your distribution problem pretty quickly if you just are on a marketplace.
Andrew
Yeah, I think that's the thing is like, you know, I've got these two paths and one is like a,
Sean
um
Andrew
feels like it's a better business, but way harder distribution. And one is like way easier distribution and harder business. Cause the market size is actually much larger for like the, like, um, the general chart builder. Um, but the, the stickiness is much higher. At least this is all theoretical right now, right?
Sean
I also think you're making it sound, I think you're making the distribution of the email marketing part a lot harder than it might actually be.
Andrew
But.
Andrew
Might. True.
Sean
You just haven't like, you honestly just literally have not done it yet because you, yeah.
Andrew
You might be right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So true. Yeah. Okay. All right. Staying the course, staying the course. Yeah. I think my plan remains unchanged. I think it's like give, take the month of August, try hard to do distribution and you know, a month might not be enough, but like for right now, let's just say the month of August. And then like, if I'm really feeling like I'm seeing no traction and like my gut is still telling me explore this other thing, then I can take like a month, build a couple of plugins.
Andrew
tweak the pricing and like, at that point, I think I could kind of just put chart juice out that version of church juice out there and like. almost put it on the back burner a little bit and like, you know, like my friend, Rami has a couple of products that he's done this for where he's like, he's sort of seated things like he, he'll put a version out.
Sean
But.
Andrew
He'll like build a couple of integrations, do a little bit of SEO, and then he'll kind of just leave it be and like work on other stuff for a little while. And then if it starts to get traction, he'll come back and double down on it. And like maybe that's unrealistic. Maybe he's gotten lucky. Who knows? But um but yeah, that's kind of in my head. It's like, OK, let me try to make the email thing work. If I can't make the email thing work, then I can always like go this route. and And going this route might even mean I can kind of like just set it up and and put it on the back burner and start working on some other projects.
Sean
Also, the last time I said it on that client call, they were talking about charts and emails as far as I remember. They were talking we're talking about how do we do this on the go? And they were like, do we build like a mobile app or something? And in my head, I was thinking, I don't understand why the users can't just get an email with two buttons.
Andrew
Hmm. You should have said that out loud because I didn't even think about that.
Sean
And
Sean
Oh, oh, I didn't want to.
Andrew
That's.
Sean
I didn't want to throw more work your way. um um Or like, I don't know, it for what it's worth. That call was incredibly like ADHD. Everyone had a new direction for it was all like really good ideas.
Andrew
Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I just didn't want to be another person doing another idea.
Andrew
I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
Sean
um
Andrew
um
Sean
But yeah.
Andrew
Yeah, i i think I think there's opportunities on the email thing. um And so I need to just stay a little disciplined.
Sean
Also the amount of, okay, just to, just to put you like, I think your market size is actually, oh, I think you're sorry. I think your potential ICP.
Sean
ICPs are growing because of the amount of AI you like because of the popularity of usage based billing because of AI like apps um and and just like all of that sort of growing and and doing its thing you know nice like that seems like a really good use case and fit for them.
Andrew
That's interesting. like Yeah, that's a really good point. AI products are almost always usage-based because like the underlying APIs are usage-based.
Sean
Yeah, and and showing charts might be a great way to actually upsell for more credits, for example, as opposed to like, I don't know, like, I don't like, like, you're not going to send someone an email with a bunch of numbers of like, last month, you use this many credits and this one use this many credits.
Andrew
Interesting.
Sean
But if someone wants to send an uplift email to get them to buy more credits in the future, like if i were in a like an ai app and i want someone to buy more credits i would target a very specific segment that has been increasing their usage more and more every single month and then i would send them a really pretty email with a nice graph that immediately lets them grok look in march you spent you know use 50 credits in
Sean
April, 1860, and show them, like, this is how much it's going. I can give you a discount if you buy X amount of credits. Now, boom, growth strategy right there.
Andrew
It's a cool idea.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah. um I also, i I kind of wonder if like part of the growth strategy is to get in with service providers who are recommending these emails and like building these email campaigns out for people.
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
But I tried, I tried a little bit of that months ago, like I sent
Sean
Yeah, definitely.
Andrew
I don't know. It's eight emails to um like email marketing agencies.
Sean
Mm hmm.
Andrew
um and didn't hear It was crickets. I didn't hear anything back. But yeah cold email is a numbers game. You've got to do more than eight to definitively say it doesn't work.
Sean
100%, 100%.
Andrew
um Quick update on church use, by the way. It didn't make a whole lot of progress over the last month because of travel and and consulting. um But back at it this month, like I've been saying, um working on Stripe this week, so getting Stripe implemented. um Stripe is like, I understand it's drastically easier than the old way, but it's not. And it's easy. like nothing None of the pieces are that hard. It's not like it's a ton of code. It's not like the code is complicated.
Andrew
I think part of it is Stripe has grown so much that there are so many different options that there's just like a lot, it's like kind of overwhelming at first, and there's a lot to dig through to find what you need. um But ah yeah, as someone who hasn't built a Stripe integration in probably eight years, um it's not as easy as I thought it would have become by now.
Sean
I mean that's why lemon squeezy became a thing, right?
Andrew
Yeah, but was lemon squeezy. I thought lemon squeezy was more like they were doing merchant of record. So they were helping with like the tax stuff. And, and then they were also like providing accounts in countries that didn't have. Strike access yet. I thought that was more their growth, not so much like easier developer experience.
Sean
Yeah, yeah, I don't think, well, I think the the part that they made easier for the developer um was, this is my understanding, but like the last mile of delivering the product, lemon squeezy kind of like, like, you like straight with the payment, but you would still have to have some sort of thing you have to build so that let's say you buy a Notion template for me, like there was still something you had to build and lemon squeezy just gave you that last mile through the lemon squeezy app, right?
Andrew
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Sean
You like paid. through it and it also did your taxes which was nice. I'd assume that there's some level of like developer interaction there with countries and stuff though.
Andrew
Yeah. I didn't even look into Lemon Squeezy when I was starting this. I was just like, nope, Stripe, just going to use Stripe. Maybe I should have. Yeah, cause like ah so I'm using Stripe Checkout. and i'm using it in like the most basic way possible, where I've got my products and my prices in Stripe. um And even that took me a little while to figure out like what a product and a price was and how they were related. um And some of that's impossible to fix. like yeah Pricing is complicated. um But yeah, so I've got that stuff in Stripe. I have no backend code to like charge customers. I just kick them out to check out
Andrew
Stripe checkout um with my like with like a price ID, and then they you know pay and everything inside of Stripe checkout, which is amazing. It's magical. um And then it kicks them back to my app. um The thing I've been struggling with the past couple of days is like getting all the web hooks implemented. And again, they're not that hard.
Sean
Hm.
Andrew
It's just a lot of like digging through documentation and figuring out which web hooks do I need to support? What are the data elements of these web hooks? Um, you know, figuring out all of that. And then, and then I think I'll be able to like pretty easily just like kick users who want to like update their pricing or cancel to like the stripe portal thing. And then I think.
Andrew
The webhooks I'm supporting right now will be enough to cover the changes from that, but I might, I don't know if I've actually. I think I'll probably have to add a webhook listener for like a deleted event or something like that, a subscription deleted event. So it's like, it's not that hard, but, but yeah, there is some like, even doing it the simplest way that I am, there is like, there's a lot of like little pieces you got to tie together. And it was also pretty difficult to find in Stripe's docs, how to do a client only
Andrew
um integration integration with checkout. They very much want you to use checkout from an API, which seems silly to me because like check out really you really don't need to have checkout.
Sean
Mm hmm.
Andrew
The session and everything behind an API, the way I'm doing it feels like the most straightforward way to do it. um But it's like kind of buried in their docs how to actually do this. um It took me a while to like find the right API call to make.
Sean
Yeah, wouldn't know, to be honest with you. um it It does sound like more complicated than I feel like. I feel like it was promised, you know, this.
Andrew
Yeah. And again, it's not that complicated, right? Cause it's like a couple of API, it's like a couple of lines of JavaScript to actually like kick out, to check out, and then like a little bit of time setting things up.
Sean
Hmm.
Andrew
And then like, you know, how long are it?
Sean
Yeah, it's kind of like, ah you know, it's not that complicated to make a chart, but it'd be a lot nicer if I had a chart use version of Stripe.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
ah Like, yeah, I don't know. I think like, I think, I think there are like interesting, like, like I think that's why um ah form there are always like new form startups as well. like It's not that hard to make a form. It's not that hard to integrate it with things. But it's like I feel like each new form startup just iterates another layer of ease of use on top of the other one.
Sean
um
Andrew
And there's like, the thing I have to remember is that.
Andrew
form startups and stripe have such a wide user base that wants to do a million different things.
Sean
yeah
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
And so like, like, people are always calling for a better SAS metrics dashboard inside of stripe, and then you realize that SAS is like a very small fraction of stripes overall customer base.
Sean
and
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew
and that e-commerce and all these things are much larger. um And so you're like, oh, yeah, I'm also just a small part of Stripe.
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
So yeah, maybe maybe a SaaS-focused Stripe is like there's opportunity or something.
Sean
and then Stripe can buy you because that's yeah yeah i can't believe it's only in four years i can't believe it it feels
Andrew
like and Yeah, sounds great. Amazing, by the way, that Limon Squeezy went from nothing to big name competing with Stripe in the space to sold to Stripe in like four years.
Andrew
Yeah, I just assumed they were one of those companies that had been around for a long time and I'd never heard of and they like got big in the last four years. I didn't realize they didn't exist four years ago.
Sean
yeah yeah it did feel like i wonder i wonder what the story is you know i wonder like i hope i hope he goes on some podcast and talks about it it does feel like four years ago um like like it feels like that the time of launching to them being everywhere was incredibly short like but
Andrew
Yeah. How do you, did they just raise a shitload of money and how do you even build up a team and build out that much infrastructure that fast?
Sean
Did he, did he raise money?
Andrew
Oh, had to have.
Sean
I thought the guy, dude, I thought the guy like launched an indie hackers and then all of a sudden it was online everywhere.
Andrew
Maybe a lemon squeezy is just smaller than we realized it was.
Sean
I thought it was like a bootstrap guy, to be honest with you.
Andrew
Oh my God. There's also a lemon squeeze squeezy. That's a Swedish vocal group consisting of four gentlemen.
Sean
Hell yeah.
Andrew
It's been around since 2010.
Sean
I don't see a funding round on Crunchbase.
Andrew
What is lemon squeezy entirely bootstrapped?
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
I know. and't think That'd be crazy, huh?
Andrew
How big?
Sean
I mean, it might be like they might have like a friends and family around that they don't report, but still like.
Andrew
The founder must be a repeat founder, right? So they might've, it might've been one of those things where they were just like, yeah.
Sean
Yeah, I really enjoy the copium we're both going through at the moment. What the hell did this guy do?
Andrew
Wait, no, they're a pretty small team, I think.
Sean
um
Andrew
It looks like they have their whole team listed on their website.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Hold on, I gotta to go to LinkedIn.
Andrew
Maybe they just like got big in our space.
Sean
Okay, yeah, he's a repeat founder. He sold his first startup, College Connecting, in 2008 and then started Mojo Marketplace, which was then acquired by Endurance in 2012.
Andrew
Had to be.
Andrew
LinkedIn says there are 10 people who work at Lemon Squeezy.
Sean
I believe it.
Andrew
How did they build this much and execute this well with 10 people?
Sean
I know.
Sean
Is there a new?
Andrew
Holy shit. OK, I got to I got to dig more into the lemon squeezy story and understand this.
Sean
Yeah, dude, I don't know.
Andrew
I'm not going to do it live on the podcast, but like next podcast, I will come with research.
Sean
Oh, me too.
Andrew
Yeah, this is this story is but so much more fascinating than I realized.
Sean
Me too, me too, me too.
Sean
Yeah, me too. Anyway, yeah, I feel like the guy, like I could have sworn that I saw Lemon Squeezy pop up either on Twitter or on indie hackers or something. And then I felt like I woke up a month later and everyone on Twitter was talking about them. So, I don't know.
Andrew
Fascinating. Huh.
Sean
I got no idea. And then I started seeing it more and more like as I bought SaaS subscriptions. Every time I saw it, I was always a little bit annoyed because I was like, damn, what like, like, what a weird thing to do to compete with Stripe. Yeah. um
Andrew
They haven't, they haven't announced the price, right? That they sold for.
Sean
Right. Right. Right.
Andrew
Bummer. I wanna know, oh I always wanna know. um So what's going on in your world?
Sean
Um, I mean, speaking of apps and things, um, I don't have a name for stack wise, halted, completely halted.
Andrew
Other than we talked about miscreants, but like what's going on on the on the other projects?
Sean
We're blocked on like, like, we're not blocked. Uh,
Andrew
Yeah, your developers dealing with some stuff.
Sean
I havent yeah i i also just haven't paid attention to it. um There's also a lot of like monks work in terms of just having to get that data. It's a whole thing. um Like, to me, to me, use the usability of it requires a much more a higher level of of data in there for it to be
Andrew
Are you thinking you're going to halt it permanently or okay.
Sean
where I think, no, no, I'm gonna pick it up in like a month or two months.
Andrew
Okay, cool.
Sean
Yeah, yeah. um ah My focus has been switched to launching this decision journal. I've learned so much about, um I've learned a fraction of what there is to learn, but I've learned a lot more than I even knew existed about the Apple developer ecosystem.
Andrew
Yeah. yeah
Sean
I did not realize there were so many things like ah my developer ah last month or or sorry last week was like hey I need you to register the Apple developer program so that and I can I can like get it live and all this sort of stuff and I was like oh yeah easy easy
Andrew
Pain in the ass, such a pain in the ass. I haven't had to do it in a long time, but like we've done it we did it a bunch on behalf of clients and like I got my start in the Apple ecosystem and it's gotten a lot better.
Sean
two
Andrew
It used to be so much worse. ah
Sean
Dude, I quote myself, sure thing, I'll get it to you within 24 hours, thinking I could go sign up, pay 99 bucks a year, and it would be done.
Andrew
On Android you can.
Sean
That's what I figured.
Andrew
Google Play Store you can.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Apple, no.
Sean
Yeah, yeah. I registered on like a Friday night.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I waited through the entire weekend. The first time I registered, by the way, i I didn't realize that I couldn't just like, I couldn't use my business thing without getting a DUNS number. And I'm not going to wait like eight weeks to get a DUNS number. So I was like, okay, let me just use my own like Apple thing. But then I was trying to see like, okay, can I can i like not put my name on the app? I really don't want it to say Sean's son in the app store. so ah so So anyway, i go I go and try to like make ah like an Apple, like a new Apple thing, um and I didn't realize, I just gotta say, I should have realized that an Apple account regardless needs a phone number attached to it. I don't have an extra phone number. and i wasn't Anyway, it ended up becoming more hoops and things to manage, so I went back to my ah own iCloud account.
Sean
ah and then paid for the Apple developer thing. And then it billed my other email because it was halfway in the account creation and something got fucked up in the session.
Andrew
Oh, weird. Oh, weird.
Sean
So that charge is pending. I think it's gonna get canceled anyway, but it didn't get resolved. I haven't checked if it's resolved or not. and then i had to go rebuy it and i thought i would be you know i thought it'd be fine i thought i would purchase the thing it would get resolved on monday morning i finally or monday midday it finally gets approved and there are so many things to do to get someone access
Andrew
Sick.
Sean
um But it's done, you know, the MVP is done. I don't think it like it.
Andrew
sick
Sean
ah it it's Oh, also, I landed on a name for the thing.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um It's gonna be called fig tree.
Andrew
Do you want me to pretend that I haven't heard that name, or do you want me to just roll with it?
Sean
yeah Yeah, you just roll with it.
Andrew
OK.
Sean
It's fine.
Andrew
All right, cool.
Sean
Yeah, so fig tree.
Andrew
Cool. Dope.
Sean
Yeah, ah it's based on the Sylvia Plath thing without like figs and and choices in life and all that sort sort of stuff.
Andrew
Cool.
Sean
um Interestingly enough, on Ahrefs, the keyword difficulty around that poem is actually not super high given how popular
Andrew
Hmm.
Sean
the silvio path on the bell jar is. which is a great you know It's going to be my content strategy, my AI content strategy. um um you know i i have I know of three users that will use it at least. So that's a win for me. um um I think it looks not great because I kind of wireframed it on the on a whiteboard sort of thing. I do want to improve it. I'll probably mess around with it and style it myself. We'll see. I don't know.
Andrew
Did the, did your dev build it in, um, swift or, okay, cool.
Sean
Swift. Yeah. And Swift. He built in Swift.
Andrew
Cool.
Sean
But yeah, I mean, I'm excited to... ah mean i was I was really hoping that I'd be able to figure it out by today so i he can put the test flight code up and then he could sign up for it.
Andrew
That'd be fun.
Sean
But i might have to wait till next week with the amount of... There are... So many different things. like you I didn't even know there was like a whole different like portal to log into called App Store Connect.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um But it's cool.
Andrew
Yep.
Sean
ah you know i'm I'm getting what I wanted out of it, which was kind of to learn what this process was. I just didn't expect it to be this much of a process and all the things I have to fill out.
Andrew
Yeah, with with his. The web and like building things for the web has gotten so easy and. apps in a lot of ways feel like a step backwards, but they're also so ubiquitous.
Sean
Hmm.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
And um yeah, it's it's an interesting world. ah Yeah, for a while, I thought I like.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
You know, my first job in tech was as an iOS developer um back when it was still object writing Objective C before Swift existed.
Sean
Hmm.
Andrew
um You know, we built several ah several apps for, um you know, I've built a couple myself and have built several on behalf of clients and had to walk them through the whole process. um Yeah, we'd have to start the process like two months in advance of when we wanted to launch the app because it can take so much time, especially if you're having to go back and forth with somebody um to get them to do things.
Sean
Hmm.
Andrew
um Yeah, it's it's a challenge. um But ah yeah, it'll be a cool experience. And then like App Store SEO is a whole thing too.
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew
So.
Sean
um Yeah, I mean, but it was part of why it took so long to figure out a name for it, like going with something even catchier than like Fig Tree, like Fig EU or something like that. There's just like, there are just so many random apps in the world. um um Yeah, I have learned, I have learned a lot, which is cool. I did also realize like, There's so much, there's so it's such an interesting like or or different frame of thinking, too.
Andrew
Mm hmm
Sean
When I wanna go design a website, I go and look for website inspiration, right? And I get websites that tell, give, show me ah website inspiration, and like websites to be inspired by. If I look up iOS app inspiration, for example, or iOS app examples, there's there's not like, but ah There's not like a library there might be but like there's no immediate library of like different app icons but you can do basically start seeing ah a lot of people's like their variants on apps that you already use like the iOS apps because you know you see icon packs basically and that's not what I want I want like
Sean
And then having to like describe or figure out how to like figure out what makes a good app icon has been also just been mental. I don't know. It's a whole other thing. It's cool.
Andrew
there's a There's a designer I used to follow. um One of the earliest people I followed on Twitter, I don't remember their name off the top of my head, but like For a while, like their entire career was designing app icons.
Sean
I think I know who you're talking to. Was he the guy who made two dues, like T-W-O-D-O-S?
Andrew
Not sure. But I think he designed a lot of the original Apple like Mac icons.
Sean
and
Andrew
like I think he might have designed like Finder and like yeah several several of those.
Sean
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Andrew
I'm spacing on his name right now. But yeah, and now you can also like Icons are more dynamic, so I'm sure there's a lot of stuff there too.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
Well, cool. Excited to hear how it goes. Hopefully by next week, you have an app in the App Store, and I have um Stripe deployed, and I'm running some ads, and we'll be able to start reporting back on like marketing initiatives.
Sean
Yeah, that'd be cool, that'd be cool.
Andrew
Sweet. Cool. Um, I got a few other things that i I had written down to talk about, but we're, we're coming up on 45 minutes. So you want to just call it there and then chat more, save them for next time.
Sean
uh yeah i mean just as a cliffhanger for next time um andrew is signing up for a half marathon or haves has signed up for a half marathon so by next time you will have been able to he'll be ripped and like it'll be what do you mean it only takes like a week you're talking about cool
Andrew
Yep.
Andrew
ah Don't think that's how that works. I did run. Yeah, man, I am so much slower than I used to be. i
Sean
Okay, let's do this. Let's do this. What is your ah what is your mile time as of today?
Andrew
Oh, that's fun. Um, so this is for three miles, not for 13.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
Um, but I, I did three miles at, you know, a faster pace than I've run yet. Um, and I think my average pace was like 924 per mile.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
And, um, in order to get under two hours for a half marathon, I need to be able to run 13 miles at 909.
Sean
Okay. Okay. We'll check back in.
Andrew
I will say the first three miles I ran and most of the three miles I've been running have been in an 11 mile pace.
Sean
Uh-huh.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
So I am making progress, but I am still way slower than I used to be and pretty slow.
Sean
Gotcha. All right. Well, mine is like 13 minutes though. If even. But check back in next time. We'll figure out how much you've improved.
Andrew
I imagine like week to week, it'll be pretty small improvements, but then like, hopefully by, you know, October, it'll be like, Hey, I'm running under a nine minute mile. That would be dope.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
The other thing is just like, I've never run anywhere near a half marathon. So it'll be like, I imagine that time is going to tank when I start getting up to like five, six, seven, eight miles.
Sean
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.
Sean
Good luck.
Andrew
Both.
Sean
Have fun.
Andrew
Thanks.
Sean
That sounds cool.
Andrew
Yeah, it's been fun running again. I've, I've actually enjoyed it. I'm trying not to buy a smartwatch, but also really want to buy a smartwatch now because that's what running does to you. It's so aggravating that like. Running should be the cheapest hobby in the world. It's literally going out and moving.
Sean
Right.
Andrew
That's it. There's no like fancy gym equipment.
Sean
correct Yep.
Andrew
There's no, you know, you're not in like crazy conditions. You're not, you know, there's no, you're not making anything. And yet they have found a way, you know, running shoes are crazy expensive. I got a pretty good deal on mine, but like they can get crazy expensive.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
You know, they want you to get a vest. They want you to get goose. They want you to like get a watch. They want you to get like hats and sunglasses and all this crazy shit. And it's like, how do you make a running expensive? It's just moving your fucking feet.
Sean
is there any Is there any niche? This might be a good research project. I wonder what niches are under-commercialized. I would say running is over-commercialized, especially now with running cults and all that sort of stuff.
Andrew
Don't.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
um Yeah.
Andrew
I swear if you like, if you like find some adorable little niche and then you ruin it by commercializing it, I'm gonna.
Sean
be jealous. That's what you're going to be. You're going to be like, damn, shit. All right.
Andrew
All right,
Sean
I will see you next week.
Andrew
man. Peace.
Sean
All right. Bye.