Mario: Hey
guys, how's it going?
Justin: good.
Alan: very well.
Mario: So, Alan, uh, we have a special episode
Alan: we do.
Indeed.
Very exciting.
Mario: we do super excited to have our first guest ever
Justin: First guest ever.
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: Oh,
Mario: ever.
Justin: I hope people aren't disappointed.
Okay.
Mario: Not at all.
Justin: should have saved it for Beyonce or someone more impressive.
Alan: You are the rock star of our little world, so you
Mario: Yeah.
exactly.
Exactly.
You're like, eh, I was telling my wife, yeah, we're going to have
Justin on our podcast and uh, Yeah.
It's, it's, it's awesome.
And
she's
like, oh, okay.
It's you know, you don't understand the
significance of this
Alan: that's That's nice, honey.
Mario: That's very nice
Justin: I listened to your show all the time.
So it's fun to get to talk with you in real time and, uh, and see Fusioncast.
I've you know, this is the first time using it.
It's
great.
It's like really you're way further, along than I thought you
were like,
Alan: He's this little dark horse.
It was kind of like building this it's really good.
It's
Justin: yeah, this is, this is like not, not easy software to build.
Mario: No, it's not, it's not easy at all, but, uh, well, you know,
Alan keeps, uh, giving me a hard time because I haven't launched yet.
Every episode, every, every session that,
uh, we record, he's like,
okay, when, are you
launching?
When are you
launching?
Justin: So
Mario: good.
It's good enough.
Justin: when are you launching.
Alan: Yeah, exactly.
Thank you.
I didn't prep that.
Mario: Now it's, now it's two against one.
No, um, uh, really soon, actually now I am really working on the final.
You know, steps that I need to take, before launching, I'm integrating my
billing system with paddle, and, and just updating the marketing site and,
fine tuning some of the infrastructure, you know, some of the, the server
where it's running and the database and, all the infrastructure stuff, so
that it's, um, robust enough to launch and have more people using the system.
So, you know what, that's, one of my concerns is will it scale?
You know, I haven't had a chance
Alan: to
find out.
Mario: to, to try that.
Exactly.
So it's like a
catch 22 there.
Justin: if you look at the Reddit threads and the Twitter threads about this space,
uh, the, the most common complaint is, you know, uh, Riverside was good, but now.
Buggy or I used to love Zencaster, but now I'm getting audio drift and it seems
like, and this space is very, there's a herd mentality around it, where, you know,
at first everyone was using Zencaster and then they had a few issues and then it was
like, everyone moved over to squad cast.
And then Riverside came out with video recording first.
And so people moved over there and then Riverside had some
bugs and, uh, people complain.
But so it's yeah, the, the finicky- ness of it is I think the challenge.
Um,
Mario: exactly.
Justin: but ironically, I almost think like, I mean, I like the, I like all of
those folks, like Zencaster and squad cast, and Riverside, they're all great.
But the, for whatever reason, Riverside's problems started after
they got, uh, a bunch of funding and hired a bunch of people,
it was kind of better when they were indie and just a few people working on it
Alan: Typical.
Isn't it.
It's the way it goes.
Justin: I don't know why that is, but
Alan: There may be.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe they just got too
excited and yeah, I tried to take on too much.
I mean, the thing is with this kind of software, it's like the, the,
you want it to do one thing and you want it to really not screw that up.
Right.
But I can see the, the urge to, well, we've got income
and money and we want to grow.
And so yeah, this keep on adding stuff to, it must be very strong urge,
right?
Mario: And more people, I guess, more moving parts, more things to manage, more
chances for things to go wrong
Justin: yeah.
Alan: I mean, the interesting thing is quite a small, I mean,
it's a, I guess a reasonably
niche niche ish thing.
There's not that many people in, you know, percentage of the world recording
podcasts, but at the same time, there's only a handful of competitors, right?
There's not like, you know, a hundred people making this kind of tool.
So hopefully to get known about is, you know, possible because it's
the same people are going to the same places and, you know, they're
in the same kind of communities.
So hopefully, you know, that you can find your, your audience reasonably, reasonably
well, which was just what I was about to start to talking to Justin about before.
I think, you know, you're, you're lucky that your audiences, you know,
where they are, right for them.
Justin: Yeah.
And it'd be interesting to see what's happening in this category now, because
back September, 2020, I remember watching squad cast was on Microconf Remote.
And they had just passed a hundred K in MRR.
And I think they were quite a bit behind transistor in terms of MRR for
awhile, and then the pandemic happened and that category just exploded.
Like even more than podcast hosting.
There was just that many more people that wanted to have you know, a
zoom like session like this, but be able to record it and be able to
record all the individual tracks.
And so the market for that seemed bigger.
And so they just like, I can't remember how fast it was.
Like he said something like he
doubled, they doubled in 12 months or something
Alan: Well,
something just kind
of caught yeah.
That there was something about it.
That was like, everybody understood what they needed and boom.
Justin: yeah.
But a lot of us that experienced bumps.
like initial revenue bumps in the, that first lockdown, in the, behind the
scenes, like in the back channels, as we're talking, it was almost like we
pulled ahead revenue, like it accelerated revenue, but it just pulled it ahead.
And then eventually it, got pulled back, meaning like, we're
still ahead, but we were grow.
Like we grew transistor grew quite a bit too, not as much as squad cast,
but we, we had this big bump in revenue and you can see it on a revenue graph.
It goes like bump and then up and then down, and then it's
continued to grow since then.
And the kind of worry in the, you know, in these back channel chats
is that, maybe all that really happened is we just accelerated,
pulled forward revenue that we would
have had any way, but it just got accelerated.
Alan: It's kind of come back to back to almost where it would
have been projected anyway.
Right.
It was just like this temporary little booster, but it
kind of got back to normal.
I mean, I think that's the biggest
kind of disappointment in this.
I thought we'd have, you know, like remote work and hybrid work.
There does seem to have been this massive pulling back, which I guess
it's a, like a rubber band in effect.
Maybe we pulled too far in away, but hopefully there's, there's
going to be some more momentum towards that, but it does,
Justin: yeah, It'd be interesting to look at Zoom's numbers.
I haven't looked at their numbers lately, but, you know, have they gone,
have they really grown that much?
has it slowed down?
That would be a good, I think, indicator of kind of where everything's going.
Mario: right.
right.
And the pandemic Mick, I guess, uh, had a lot to do with that
stretching of the rubber band.
Right.
Like maybe, maybe that went too far because the pandemic
was fueling a lot of that.
And now, and now that it's getting better, we'll see where, where it goes.
Justin: Yeah.
I mean, it was good.
I think, I mean, it'll be good for both of you in the sense that awareness
for like tools like Fusioncast, but also tools like dot plan.
There's much more awareness.
People are looking for those tools.
People got introduced to whole new categories of products that
they'd never seen before and now they know to search for them.
Right.
Uh, and that kind of like search searching with intent is, I think for
indie software is what we all want.
We want people that know that podcast hosting is a category
is a thing you need to look for.
And then you can search for best podcast hosting and hopefully find transistor.
Um, and the same for you, you know, that you'd hope that people would have
enough awareness of the category that they'd be searching for that stuff.
Um, so I think it was good in that sense, but I think for those of us
that benefited from it, there's a natural, like that whole cohort.
Now it's been two years and you know, a lot of them are reevaluating.
Do I still want to run my podcast that I started
in the pandemic?
And so we're seeing some churn
related to that, you know?
Alan: And it's probably feels a little bit worrying for you, but at the same time,
as you said, it was an unnatural event.
Anyway.
So it's, um, it, it, it's kind of to be expected
what probably, yeah,
Justin: yeah,
yeah.
I mean, the growth was amazing and again, we haven't, we haven't, uh, revenue still
growing, but it's definitely the growth has slowed down since that first lockdown.
Uh, so yeah, it's nice having the growth and, and again, any sort of Zeit Geist
that propels people into your sphere of,
you know, your category is, uh, welcome.
Alan: right.
Yeah, no, I just say, I mean, I think the biggest thing was, you know, it, it
seemed to me, I mean, it was probably more amplified for me here as well in Japan.
Whereas remote work was here.
It's, you know, when I first moved here, um, you know, I started talking
to people and you know, let's talk about remote sessions and it was just like,
no, we don't, we won't even consider it.
It was just completely off the table.
There was no consideration whatsoever.
Whereas now it's a conversation you can have.
Um, you know, if the answer might still not be yes, but at least there's
an acceptance that yeah, it happens.
And we know that within certain circumstances it can work
well, but, um, it's yeah.
It's, as you said, it's helped bring it into a public awareness,
which can only be a good thing.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And a good opportunity for Indies.
I think like, even for people to start thinking about, you know, you had this
great resignation and that's actually one thing, at least in north America
that has been fairly sticky is people are not going back to work at the same
rate that people thought they would.
A lot of people just resigned and then have been working on their own things,
trying to, you know, start their own businesses, uh, looking for better
paying jobs, going back and retraining.
That part has, been actually pretty sticky.
And that's a good thing for, uh, I think the indie maker community,
cause there's more people doing it.
and there's more people looking to collaborate like, I think it's going to
be, become more competitive for remote jobs again, because the big employers
are going back to the office, but, you know, indie software companies that might
want to hire a contractor or their first employee, uh, there's going to be a lot of
people looking because of that, you know?
Uh, so I think there's lots of benefits from it.
Uh, it was, it, it sucked for all sorts of other reasons, but in terms of, you know,
maybe what we care about, which is more indie companies and our indie companies.
having a better chance, an amplifying, you know, those kind of opportunities.
It was good for that, for sure.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah.
For sure.
I I've seen, uh, just, uh, switching gears a little bit here.
I've seen some of the, uh, new features you've been releasing
with transistor, uh, really, really great stuff.
Really good stuff.
Justin: yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah.
It's felt, it's felt
awesome.
We, Jon and I had our, founder
retreat in, uh, when was
that?
Yeah, we went skiing.
I, took Jon to the, the COVID capital of British Columbia.
Um, so yeah, we had that.
I now I can't even remember.
I think that was in January.
And, since then, I mean, things have been kind of bubbling.
We'd been fairly gentle with ourselves.
Through 2020 and then 2021, we hired Helen and then Jason.
So Helen does customer success for us.
Full-time she's in the UK and Jason's in Ohio and he's really senior,
developer, uh, mostly on the backend, but Jon had worked with him before.
And so we, we knew we would have more bandwidth for staff that we
hadn't been able to tackle before.
And I think we were both just kind of ready to start cranking on stuff again.
And, websites was the kind of embarrassing feature for transistor.
It was just like, they weren't that good.
I didn't like promoting it.
you know, it was, I mean, it was cool to see what people did with that initial
version of podcast websites, but, we definitely needed to have something new.
So podcasts websites is the most recent that we just we're working on right now.
and then dynamic audio insertion was before that.
And I was like another project that we thought we're just never gonna be
able to do that, you know, have these basically dynamic ad campaigns where
you can say here's pre-roll audio or mid-roll audio, and then you can have
it apply to all of your episodes.
So there's a, you know, a little campaign and
certain points throughout all your episodes.
And it was just like, we
can't do that.
Alan: It's just way out of the scope of what you,
it,
Justin: It's way out of scope.
Yeah.
But the cool thing, especially for Jon and I, who are kind of hesitant to hire,
it's been having Helen and Jason, like these two people who are enthusiastic
about bringing new stuff into the app.
it kind of gave us this whole new energy
that I don't think we would have had.
Otherwise, so yeah, it's been awesome.
Alan: it's
interesting going from that, like two person where, you know, I assume you and
Jon have a, you know, the, the amount of trust between
you two must be crazy higher.
And you know that, you know, you're doing your thing, he's doing his
thing and it just kind of works out.
You sync up occasionally bring in other people in that mix must always
be, I, I, I know how I'd feel.
It'd be like, but how do I trust you?
And I'd want that kind of same relationship as well.
Whereas it's like, just do whatever you feel is necessary.
And let me know when you need something, right.
It must be difficult finding that person.
Justin: I mean, it was probably most stressful before we hired them because,
you know, I mean, we had, well, the unknowns and even like financially,
like by that point, transistor, by the time we hired Helen transistor
was quite profitable, but it hadn't been profitable for like, you know,
five years We've been like Jon
and I both went full time in 2019.
Alan: still remember that episode when you've
just been crazy.
How is this like an overnight success thing?
Great.
No, no.
You got been there for the long haul, right?
I know that this took a long time to
get going.
Right,
Justin: Yeah.
I mean, at the time it felt like it took forever for us to get to that point.
And, uh, in retrospect it actually happened fairly quickly, but, um, yeah,
I think a lot of our stress before we hired Helen and Jason was just like, we
knew we could afford it, but do we want it does this, what we want to invest in?
Cause it's like, you're investing in this for a long time and
COVID had just happened.
And you know, we had that thought of, you know, like, thank God we don't
have employees during this because maybe we'd have to let people go.
And, yeah.
So I think we had some of that stress and then.
Yeah, there's just always this unknown of like, what's it gonna be like to add more
people to this mix, but Helen had been working with us on a part-time contract
basis already for quite a while, and I'd known her forever through Mega Maker yeah.
Uh, probably as long as Jon
I've known Helen.
And so, you know, that felt
like,
Alan: Just kind of a natural progression, right?
Justin: yeah, not, not a big jump there.
And Jon had worked with Jason before.
I didn't know him, but, honestly, a lot of that was knowing that it would
probably be good for Jon to have someone that could work alongside him.
Um, even for his enjoyment and, you know, mental health and everything
else, like just to feel like.
Someone else can look at his code and it's not all resting on his shoulders.
Um, if it felt like that would be a good move.
So, uh, and in both cases, it's just been unbelievable.
Like both of them are incredible and to see what we've achieved
already is just kind of amazing.
And it doesn't feel like we're like, grinding super hard either.
It feels like we have a nice pace of everything.
Like, you know, it's not like things got, things just are kind of natural.
Rhythm
is pretty similar, but we're just getting way more
done.
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, just, just uncoupling that one person from development
and one person from everything else is like a huge relief.
I can imagine.
It's just like, yeah, I'm not responsible for everything anymore.
It's
just, you know, there's certain stuff, which, and as you said, it keeps, yeah.
Keeps you saying right.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah, It's it's on.
And we have a staff meeting every Thursday and it's just kind of nice
having it's almost like when it was just Jon and I, it was easier and
I, for him and I to not show up for stuff, uh, but now we have these
other people that are depending on us.
And so it's like, well, we got to show up on Thursday or I'll look
like a doofus, you know, if I don't make it to my own staff meeting.
So, uh, that part too, just having, we're now accountable to these other people.
Um, yeah,
Mario: yeah,
Think you have
responsibilities now.
Justin: yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
And it's just nice.
It's nice having other people there, you know, I think this
is probably like four or five
people is like the optimal kind of team size.
Alan: I can imagine if it feels just about right.
Doesn't it, it says for this kind of product is, this is what always, um,
again, I think I've, I've been around this world for too long to think, to
imagine like transistor growing into like 20 people, 30 people, you, it,
you can't what, how, what, what they do
Justin: I can't
Alan: no, you just kind of imagined it, right?
I mean, you know that the industry, obviously other
people do it and the industry could probably support it, but it's like,
is that the company you want to run is that the life you want to lead?
Probably
not.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's yeah.
I mean, the, I can't, because I don't actually know, there's not a clear path
to capturing 20 times more market share.
Alan: Right.
Justin: Like I think transistor has maybe, I don't know, two, 3% of the
paid podcast hosting market and.
You know, I'm hoping that we can get back to higher growth percentages
and a lot of unlocking that was like, we need to unlock podcasts websites.
We've got this next thing we're working on is we're going to allow anybody to
use the podcast website feature for free.
You can just insert your existing RSS feed.
And we think that's going to be like, that could be an
unlock, a ton of growth for us.
Cause we'll have this like freemium product that if you already have
a podcast, you just put in your RSS feed and then it, rolls out
a transistor website for you.
That's sponsored by transistor, but then you're in the product.
So people will be able to see like analytics, they'll click on the
analytics tab and it'll say, well, if you were on transistor, you
could see analytics like these.
And there'll be able to click on the episodes tab and they'll say, well, if
you were on transistor, you'd be able to, you know, see episodes like this.
So we're really excited about.
But like 20 times growth so we could grow like to 20, 30 people.
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: I don't think so.
Mario: Yeah.
So is this a free account at all?
They'll be able to do is just
have the website
Justin: yeah,
Mario: Okay.
Even if they're hosting their
podcast elsewhere.
Justin: Like if
they're hosting it on anchor and they just don't want that crappy anchor website,
they can, they can put their anchor RSS feed in this new thing and it'll create
them a transistor website and we're launching some new templates, soon.
So right now we have one new one and then the classic one, but we're going
to have more looks and things they can choose, but then it'll have a banner
at the bottom saying if it's free saying, Hey, you know, this podcast
hosting websites provided by transistor
Mario: Yup.
Yup.
Totally.
Justin: So we'll get some advertising that way, but then
also it's, it's like a way for
us to reach out to all these people hosting on Libsyn and anchor and
everywhere
Alan: I mean, especially if people are sharing on social media or any
way, you know, that they're sharing links to that new episode and things.
That's a perfect way for you to get potential new customers
to
Justin: Yeah.
Alan: It's nice.
Mario: That's really smart.
That's
a
Justin: well, the biggest thing is like, I want to be able
to get people who are using other products to try us out in a non douchey way.
You know, like, uh, one of our competitors, a cast just got, uh, you can
see how people react to things and they, they, they took the email address that is
embedded in the RSS feed of every podcast.
And just spammed everybody saying, Hey, it looks like you're on transistor.
Do you want to switch to a cast?
And the blow back from the.
It was clear, like we do, we don't want to do anything like that.
Like people did not like it.
And, um, I don't even know how effective it was for a cast, but this
feels like the perfect Trojan horse.
It's like, we're giving something people really want, which
is a nice podcast website.
And now all of a sudden they're in the product and we can just say,
Hey, if you want to switch, you
just click this button and then you can switch.
Alan: Exactly.
Look, there you go.
Justin: yeah, all they need to do is forward their old
RSS feed and it's, it's done.
Right.
Alan: Very nice.
Justin: So, yeah, that's coming soon.
And, it's going to be, I mean, you never know, you always
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: are going to be massive and then you launch
them.
Mario: Uh, it's that's, that's awesome.
It's been, it's been a lot of fun to see you, grow and, uh, get
to the point where you are now.
Cause I remember I started.
Uh, I found out about you from a podcast that I listened to
Uh, you did an interview.
I think it was The Changelog.
uh, and it was when you were
doing the a hundred things in a year.
I think it was.
Um,
Justin: What a mistake that was
Mario: I bet it was
super
challenging, but you know, that gave you a lot of exposure though.
And, and that's how I found out about you and I,
and I thought, wow, this is, this is
Alan: I may be the same, actually.
I did that.
that could be, yeah, it rings a bell,
Mario: Yeah,
Justin: Yeah, I mean, Mega Maker.
So the mega
maker community was originally called product people.
And before that it was called JFD
I, and,
Alan: I
remember that as well.
Wow.
Mario: The NSF
name?
Justin: yeah.
And so the, there was an evolution
there.
yeah, I mean, it's always hard to say what, got you here, it's
hard to evaluate what of that was necessary and what was unnecessary.
And, uh, for sure, like, I don't know what, how everything links up,
but the big movements in my journey have all been related to connecting
with people and doing things.
And so, you know, like I connected with Jon.
At this conference, but the reason I connected with Jon at that conference is
that Chase Reeves invited me to go to it.
And the reason Chase Reeves invited me to go to it is he had invited
me to be on a panel in Las Vegas.
And the reason he had done that is because he had read my, this is a webpage article.
And the reason he had read it is because he saw it on hacker news.
It there's like this sequence of events
that without doing things and connecting with people, the
other moves wouldn't be possible.
So yeah, it's, it's one reason I'm still so excited about Mega Maker is that,
I mean, even like we hired Helen because I've known her forever,
just having a network of people that you know, and who know you
and being able to access all sorts of different skillsets and.
you know, other things,
it's just like a super power.
Alan: mean, I think one of the
really nice things about Mega Maker
versus, you know, um, uh, I'm just
looking at my slack.
There's, I'm probably in like 20 different slack say, uh, and,
uh, Mega Maker is kind of unique.
And I think this is because of the type of people that a
it's a paid, community.
So there's like a, a certain bar that you it's like, you've gotta be
willing to make a commitment here.
Um, but also, you know, the fact that everybody in there is trying to do
something and, uh, most of the time on their own or with somebody else,
and there's this desire to, to help others and to, to be part of something.
Whereas, you know, I mean, very large accelerator slack over
that, that I was involved in.
And it's almost like a broadcast mechanism.
It's a very different.
Community they've got going on there.
There's not the same, like, you know, like who can help all, like, I'm
interested in this and people chip in.
It's very much like I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing, it feels more
like a sales channel than, than a natural support network, which, you know, kind of
Mega Maker is definitely unique in that.
Justin: Yeah.
Oh, that's good to hear.
I mean, that's the idea, right?
Is that it, it, uh, and I still think it's a super power.
Like
there's so many times in the transistor slack where I'm like,
we're trying to figure something out and I'm just like, I'm just going
to go over to Mega Maker and ask.
And then what would take us days to figure out somebody.
In the community can just help us out with right away.
It's like it's such a advantage.
It's like a secret weapon.
And, even like, there's some people who aren't super active every month,
but I remember who they are and I can be like, ah, who was that, that,
you know, has expertise in this area?
Or it can
connect us with this person or whatever, and to remember, and
to be able to seek them out and
DM them.
it's
just, Yeah.
there's nothing like it.
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, I think it is difficult also.
I mean, it's something I suffer from a lot is it's difficult to ask for help
just because it's
like, you know, is this a, is this a stupid question?
You know, B you know, like who cares, what I'm doing?
And it is often a very difficult hurdle to jump over and put it.
So it's nice to see other people doing it and thinking, okay,
I should probably try that.
And I know there's a million times I should have, and, you know, I should do.
And just say like, you know, what, what what's other, what's sort of people's
opinions about what I should do here.
You know, like, as I mentioned before, you know, this whole thing
about like, my product is like, whoa, who do I talk to this about?
And it's, um, it's like, what do I do next?
Where do I go?
And you know, it's, especially when you're on your own.
And especially when you're, you know, a few thousand miles away from other
people who are doing this, you get caught up in your own like thought patterns.
And that can be dangerous.
Justin: yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I understand that feeling of like, not wanting to ask people.
but over time I've definitely trained myself.
Like my cause Jon is his first instinct.
Isn't always to ask people and I just, for me, it's, it's become such a hack
that I'm just like, let's just ask, uh,
Mario: I think that's a, that's a
general trait.
If you will, of developers
Justin: Yeah.
Mario: we all tend to, you know, just a few more
minutes.
I can figure it out.
I, you know,
Alan: people that, you know, that there's, uh, whatever the,
the, the, the traits, how the tendencies are, what,
whatever reason it is,
people who are doing this kind of thing on their own, we're doing it on our own
because we want to do it on our own.
Right.
It's not like I want to be part of a 20 person team and we can build
the thing and I'll do this, but it's like, no, I can do the whole thing.
How are you going?
Actually, I don't know this cause somebody helped me is like
a, it's a difficult thing to do
Justin: Yeah.
It's it's underrated though.
Alan: Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Justin: also, I mean, I shouldn't, I, I, maybe not everyone can do this and
maybe it would turn out different for other people, but I found, uh, especially
even leaning into that vulnerability.
I just don't know, I need help.
And, I've even been willing to play, uh, the idiot more than I am
in order to seek help, because it's just leaning into that and being
like, yeah, I don't know everything.
And, I just wanna, I want to be curious.
I want to, I want to be open to, other people might have
the answer that I don't have.
And instead of me having to go through a lot of pain to get
there, I can just like reach out.
I think the other thing that really, the other thing, reason
I'm ex I'm passionate about that.
I'm trying to teach this to my kids too, because it feels like I learned
this too late is one thing that really unlocked my potential was.
People like Adam Wathan and Taylor Ottewell kind of like showing me their
bank account how eye opening that was to see how well they were doing.
And that's really what unlocked my, this, kind of maniacal
focus I have on the market.
It's all about the market.
It's about market demand.
It's about how many people are actively searching for this, because I saw
it with Adam and Taylor in this.
Incredibly like their dollars.
I could just see the dollars shooting into their bank account.
And that was them being open and vulnerable with me and me in some ways,
being willing to ask, like, what's going?
on there And how are things going?
And they're like, oh, I'll
show you.
And it's like,
Alan: Oh, I mean, we do get caught up in this again, it's difficult to
translate what you see on Twitter and other networks and especially with the,
the whole, um, investment things being the way it is, you know, there's just
numbers and the meaningless, and you think, you know, and there's a, the
pre fixed preconception of how much you should be earning as a developer.
Right?
I mean, yeah, it's a lot higher now.
It's not great if you're in Japan, but that's what, that's what you should be
earning as a person writing software.
And it's difficult sometimes to, to connect the two it's like,
well, there's all this money.
You need that money to make big companies.
They make the company make some money and you get this much, um, yeah.
To realize, especially when you are interested and you want to do
it all, and you want to build a, a small, sustainable, lifestyle.
It doesn't have to be on a really tight budget.
Right.
Justin: Yeah.
And, and also to be okay with, I mean, so much of what we expect or desire or seek.
I mean, there's a, there's a negative side to this too, which is you
compare yourself to other people and feel shitty when you don't match up.
But for me, I mean, a lot of my friends and peers make
significantly more money than I do.
but there was a point, like there was a point where I
felt shitty being Nathan Barry's friend,
because it was just like this, this kid is just doing so
good.
And I just can't.
Alan: I'm a complete failure.
What am I doing?
Justin: get there.
Um, but there was a threshold like once transistor started
it and started doing well.
And you know, I started doing both Jon and I like, this is the best
money we've ever made in our lives.
it's not Nathan Barry money.
It's not Taylor Outwell money.
It's not even like Marie Pulin, she's got this notion course.
And I think she probably makes more money than I do from transistor.
but there was this threshold I cross where like, it's like, this
is giving me an incredible life.
And these other people just inspire me now as opposed to feeling bad.
And I know that's hard to balance, but overall, I think
it's been inspirational to me.
And what kind of unlocked it?
I felt crappy before, because it was like, Well, I'm never going to do anything like
Nathan, you know, all I'm just garbage.
Uh, but now that, what, what I think what clicked for me was
it's the market, it's the market.
You've got to look for evidence of demand.
People actively waking up every single
day, go into Google.
There's a new person searching for podcast hosting, you know, like that.
and, and when, uh, when you can see it and when you can feel it
and, and it's also like, you can feel it in terms of its magnitude.
Like when Adam Wathan said he was going to do this refactoring
UI thing, I was like, oh my God.
That's like, Jarrod Drysdale is bootstrapping design, but new.
And for this whole new market, that's never heard of Jarrod Drysdale.
And Adam's also got this, a bigger audience, and he's also got the
excitement of the Laravel community.
You can just see how all of those are going to magnify this
thing that people
already want, which
is, you know, I'm a
developer and I want to get
better at
Alan: Yup.
It's interesting.
It's almost like, you know, being part of the original.
The original web developer kind of world, especially with
the post .com bubble burst.
Um, it was, you know, that was when my first product that I
sold that I, you know, was like, hold on, I can do this on my own.
I can build sites, I can build things.
And so, you know, that was early two thousands and it was, I remember then,
you know, like I had a photo sharing, mobile photo sharing application site.
This was before flicker before anything
else that followed.
And the fact then, you know, you almost felt you couldn't do what other
people were doing because the market was saturated.
And I remember, you know, my thing when flicker came out, oh,
flicker sold to Yahoo for what, $35 million, I think at the time,
which is just outrageous obscene.
And that's like, and it was like, well done, but we can't compete with
that, that the photo sharing market is finished because flicker own it.
And it's kind of, I mean, the same thing with friends, um, my space.
We
Justin: yeah,
Mario: Oh, yeah.
Alan: I'm friends though.
And I'll arrest you.
You think the social media market?
Oh, that's it.
No one can compete with
Facebook now.
Right.
And, uh, it, whereas, you know, almost the opposite is true.
You want to be looking, hold on.
That huge people are interested in this industry, this market, and
they're actively searching for it.
And they're probably not entirely happy with the things they're doing or
they're looking for a different take on
it.
So
Justin: yeah.
If anyone's looking for flicker alternative, um, w I mean,
flicker in those early startups are a little bit trickier because.
At the time, it
wasn't like a lot of people were paying for
Alan: Right.
No, there was no money.
That's
all, as I found out.
Justin: So what the challenge back then was like, you literally had
to get this, like shoot a straight arrow, get a tech crunch, article,
meet the right people and hope that one
of the, you know, three or four bigger companies at the time would
acquire you
Alan: exactly.
That, That was.
it.
That was.
Justin: But now it's changed.
I mean,
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: even like the progression of everything's just more mature,
these categories are more mature.
SAS,
as a concept is more mature.
The billing is
easier that like there's so many more advantages for Indies
Alan: Yeah.
There's just so many more people.
I mean, that's the crazy thing as well.
Everyone was just still using dial-up and you know, you're lucky if they check their
email once a
week, you know,
Justin: Yeah.
well, well, do you guys have
kids.
Alan: if your one,
Mario: I don't,
Justin: Okay.
So how old is your kid?
Allen 11.
See, I had this thought with my daughter, my daughter's 19, and I showed
her, I had her doing a little writing project for me and a research project.
And I showed her reform by Peter soon.
And she was like, oh, this is cool.
I've never seen anything like this
before.
And in my mind, I'm like Typeform, Woofu
Alan: a
50.
Justin: But, But, it just reminded me that every day there's thousands of new
customers coming online in gen Z who have never heard of any of these other things.
And they're going to just be like, their boss is going to give them an assignment.
Like, Hey, do a research project.
You're probably going to need a survey tool.
And they go, okay, well, best survey tool.
Or they talked to their friends, what survey tools do you recommend?
Or they, you know, so people are, you know, there's brand
new customers born every day.
And then the other thing is, there's people like us who are
re-evaluating purchases, like how
many project management apps have the three of us used
in the context of our whole
career,
you know, as
Mario: Exactly.
Alan: And that's a crazy thing.
And you see someone like
Monday spending literally bazillions on like advertise me, like
put project management is done, right?
No,
probably not.
Justin: But it's not now every market and every category has its own dynamics.
It has, there's a shape of demand there.
Like I think project management in particular is probably pretty
challenging, but there's sometimes an angle for an indie to get in there.
Some categories I think are easier for Indies to get into than others.
But the other thing is like
somebody might've tried it five years ago and everybody was
like, well, that didn't work.
But the truth is that now it might be the right time.
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: Um, to try it again and, you know, like form software, maybe that
wouldn't have worked five years ago,
but now it's like, Typeform is actually old.
Now
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Justin: we think of Typeform as the new kid on the block,
but it's, it's, it's old.
And so
that that's the other thing is, and transistor benefited from this.
honestly it was actually, it was nice that transistor came out when it did, because
then, you know, a few months later, a bunch of other podcast hosting platforms
came out, but it was nice being the first of the new kid on the block, like that
whole batch, because there was just a lot of people who are waiting for the space to
get kind of freshened up.
And, you know, they'd been
using Libsyn for 10 years and they're like, man, I just, what I like
something different than this.
Alan: Especially since, yeah.
It's not going anywhere.
It's
not progressing.
It's become like the established it's VC.
IBM.
Right.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just like older or whatever.
yeah.
So Typeform is 2012.
It's
10 years old.
Mario: it is.
Yeah.
Alan: That's crazy.
Mario: been around for awhile.
Alan: I just said, this still feels like, oh
my God,
that's new right now.
Justin: know,
I think of it as new as well, but it's it's, I think there's a lot of,
this is like, like Calendly is 2010
and so 12 years later, not a bad time to start savvy Cal because Calendly
spent all this money and time carving out the category, but now there are
people searching, Calendly alternatives.
And, um, there's just your, your, your pathway to money
and customers like for Derek.
I think, you know, he could have asked himself.
How many people do.
I know that use Calendly.
I mean, he personally, might've known 40 people and you just like to make a
spreadsheet of all 40 people, and then you just like contact each one, one by one.
That's what I did with transistor.
So like everybody, I knew I had a podcast, I was like, emailed them and said,
Hey, we're about to launch this thing.
Would you be interested in switching for an early access price?
And that got us our first, you know, a hundred customers
probably.
Alan: And that's
what you should be doing Mario.
Right.
Because you've got a launch soon, right?
Mario: I'm taking notes.
I'm taking
notes.
Justin: Well, and you too, Alan, like I think like,
that's, that's the way you could
really test out,
like really push dot
plan is go make a list of everybody, you know, that's using something.
And just go, okay, well, I'm going to reach out to these people and see if
there's any chance that they would switch.
And that will give you your answer.
People would be able to tell you like, ah, like it's different than asking
people if it's a good idea, because if you ask people to switch, they're like
honest, you know, I ask people to switch.
So maybe I asked 200 people if they'd switched to transistor.
And a hundred said, yes, um, you know, a hundred people were like, no,
it's just, I don't want to go through the hassle or I like where I'm at
or your website socks or whatever.
Like you, you heard it right away.
And, uh, getting those answers I think is helpful.
And you might also be able to, um, I always like pick
up on these little anecdotes.
So when I was talking to Taylor Ottewell, he was saying that
they use base camp for one reason
only.
So they pay for base camp for one reason only.
And that's to do these end of the day.
Check-ins like,
what did you work on?
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, that's exactly dot right there.
That's the whole point is end of
the day check-ins of
what you've done and that's it.
Justin: Yeah, so, well, that's what made me think of it is that if I don't know
how widespread that use is, but if, if those are the kind of, uh, anecdotes and
things I'd be pursuing, like, uh, you know, if there's people out there that are
doing this then maybe I should, you know,
be trying to connect with people like
Alan: Right, right.
As
opposed to trying to convince new people to,
to sign up.
I mean, this is the thing is like, if you
don't
already do this suddenly asking, uh, a company of 10 people right today, we're
going to start doing end of the day.
Check-ins everyone's like, you want me to do what?
I already use five pieces of software, you know?
And it's kind of like this, this, this hard sell of like getting
them to change their behavior.
But if people are already doing this, then getting them to try
something new is probably easier.
You would
hope, right?
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and even like, um, I would, if I was you Allen, I would go to that tweet
that I made where I think I shared,
oh, I do those check-ins.
And in Mega Maker like yellow, green, red, like, how are you feeling
Mario: Yes.
Justin: it tweeted that, like I just tweeted, how are you feeling?
But it would be interesting to see how people who responded
to that and how they responded.
And I don't know what the in is there.
Those are the kinds of things I would be doing as I I'd just
be like fishing around, seeing like who's already in motion.
And is there a way I can connect with them?
and you really want to invalidate your idea as quickly as possible.
Like if it's not going to work, you want to know fairly quickly.
I know that's hard like Joshua, Andrew tin, and I are working on
this other product Meeps and we just haven't found the fit yet.
And, I'm, I mean, for me, I, I can take more time on this one because
transistors going well, but you know, eventually if we can't find it, we got
to cut it loose because you know, you can keep trying to maneuver something
and add new stuff and whatever.
And if you, if you're just not finding that, that rushing river of customer.
Interest it's it's best to just
Alan: Hmm.
Mario: the line outside of the coffee shop, right?
Like
you, you, like, you usually say, yeah,
Justin: Yeah.
Where can you see
it?
And I'm hoping it's
there.
I mean, I had some instincts
that maybe there was something
there.
so I
still hope it's there, but
Alan: Again, in a
similar way.
Yeah.
You've
got to find that that's something
about it that, that people that
resonates with people, right.
It's like
building an online
community.
Well, how's that different from this, this and this and this?
If it's something I think I remember you saying something can a.
Uh, it clicking for me what you're trying to do with regards to like, you
know, memberships with newsletter pay, paid newsletters, I think which okay.
Is there is a segment everybody knows already, but when you say, oh yeah, okay.
It's that plus because as a community, whether it, okay, I get it now and
it's almost like I need to find the same kind of hook is something
that people go, oh, I get it.
It's it's like, it's, it's this thing.
Right.
Um, and as you said, it got already understand that and already be
either doing it or willing to do it.
Not somebody who you've got to convince that.
Cause that's
not
Justin: Yeah, I think they already have to be doing it.
They already have to be doing something about it.
That's the challenge.
Like what, what I thought.
Okay.
Like online community building is like super hyped right now, especially during
COVID like circle had raised all this money and just seemed like every, and I
had personally experienced the power of community with Mega Maker and then with
this coworking place that we started, and then this meetup that I run locally
and I thought, well, this is perfect.
Like I have these three use cases and I'd paid for member fall forever.
Right.
I was one of their first users.
So building an alternative to that felt like, okay, this will work.
But what we're learning is the dynamics in that particular space is that there's
just not that many people like me.
Alan: I mean, I joined a couple of circle, um, groups, um,
It then not sticky.
I mean, as in the slack is open all day, it's there.
It's okay.
I mean, you know, I don't know.
It's about 15 slacks.
I'll see a dot and if I've got time, I'll go and read it.
Especially if it's one of the channels, which I'm interested in one of the I'm
interested, where Circle it's, it's this idea of like, there's a thing over that
and you got to log in and there's, there's different accounts and it's just, you just
never do it and you'll get the email and you go, okay, you're ready to close it.
I mean, at the, at that, that difference between the, a community that feels alive
and one that feels like people check in on
once a week, it's
Justin: Yeah.
Well, I mean, that was our other thought was let's not build another circle.
Let's just make it easy for people to get people, to register and pay
for slack telegram discord groups.
Alan: right?
Justin: And maybe that's what we need to get back to.
But again, there's just the number of people on earth that, are like me
that are doing that kind of thing.
It's just smaller than the number of people who want to start a podcast, but
starting a podcast, the threshold to cross is just less because all you really
need to
do to feel successful is to record an episode, upload it and publish it.
And then you kind of feel like you're a success
Alan: Yeah.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: if you've gone and got not many listeners, right.
It's
still
Justin: yeah, totally.
I
mean, this is the MailChimp ConvertKit advantage too is just really, I mean,
if you put out a form and your mom's subscribes and you put out one newsletter,
you already kind of feel like you're in the game, but the, the threshold for.
Building the kind of momentum it would take to, to start a
community is just, or even a local meetup group is
just it's a higher
Alan: I mean, I I've seen the same thing here.
You know, we started like, uh, a local how can use group and there's,
there was a peak when it was like, everybody's going, this is the thing.
And it can so quickly just disappear.
It's just something that there's like a time and a place for it.
And then it worked
and it's really difficult to keep that going.
It's just so easy for it to just fall apart and just disappear overnight.
And it's like a very fine balance.
And I think the same thing applies to online communities as well.
Um, but probably even harder because there's not a time and a date
where, you know, everybody goes and
that's it.
So.
Justin: But we know that there might be adjacent, for example,
there is, the market for.
Online membership directory software is a thing it's much more corporate, much
more, um, a lot of non-profits as
well.
And we could go after
that if we wanted to.
And,
but,
Alan: you mentioned that I was always wondered how does cause transistor
supports private podcasts as well.
Right.
You know, how do you
find like companies using that for internal stuff quite often?
Or is it still quite niche?
Is it, is it quite a strong part of your
customer base?
Justin: I mean, there's quite a few, there's a lot of interest in it.
Um, and we have, I mean, there's a fair number of people who do it.
It's a lot in practice.
It's a lot more challenging than I think people think it's like
to do it well to do it in a way that actually gets engaged.
Uh, to do it once the champion has left the organization.
Um, and even like apple, so Apple's paid private podcasting feature.
I have to check the numbers on this, but as far as I know, they're pretty abysmal.
I still think there's opportunity in it, like linking up payments to pay a private
podcast is something we'd like to do,
but it's still not like the rushing water of people wanting a podcast
that's in Spotify and apple podcasts.
Like that is just a big, fast moving river and private podcasts.
there's significant momentum there.
but, you know, if
I was to quantify it, I would say at most it's 20% of our business,
but that's probably
Even that's high.
Alan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe there's the
whole
merger of Meeps and transistor there.
The fact that, you know, I mean, when you, especially when you see podcasts, like,
you know, atp.fm that have this huge, very active member base, that are listener
base that, uh, just as invested in, you know, the back channel as they, I mean,
there's the, there's the bulk listeners.
And then this is a really active, um, you know, back channel as well, you
know, merchandise and things like that.
And it's, it's really interesting to see how that can,
um,
happen as well.
Right.
Justin: The hard thing is, and maybe I'm forming a, a framework right
now as we talk, but the hard thing is you can't optimize a product
for the top 1% of that audience.
And so ATP is like an outlier, but, but it's so tempting to want to do that.
And especially in the pro-sumer space.
So like.
You know, Fusioncast is in this, Transistor is in this, ConvertKit in
this Blogstatic is in this, you know, a lot of the Mega Maker type products
are in that category of prosumer.
Alan: Hmm.
Justin: So much of your customer base is just getting
started
and they're going to be able to do steps one through
three, and some of them will progress
into the 99th percentile
Alan: Very few of them will, right?
Justin: But very few will.
And this is like what we're seeing with, you know,
for years, people have been asking us for dynamic audio insertion and say, like
switching away from us to competitors
even.
But we saw some trends just by waiting that, you know, people would switch to
mega, to megaphone to get, we have to have
dynamic ad insertion, and then six months later
they'd come back to transistor going,
wow, we just didn't use it that much.
Alan: Yeah.
Hey Mario, are we going to start selling mattresses?
What'd he say?
Mario: Yeah.
I'm trying to think here.
What, What plan B,
Alan: Um,
Mario: is going to
be?
Justin: it's, it's super cool.
I, I, I,
think it's a great feature, but
it's for a smaller percentage of users and in our space, I mean, if you look
at ConvertKits, open MRR graph, and you look at, you know, how much new
MRR they're bringing in every month and how much churn they're getting.
It's a substantial amount of turn and it works for them because
they just have thousands of people lining up to their coffee shop
every day that want to sign up.
But they're dependent on that.
And Transistor's similar, tailwind UI is similar.
You just have all of these kinds of pro-sumer apps where you
really need a volume of people.
Creating accounts every day.
Um, and you're going to get a substantial, not, I mean, it's obviously your growth is
higher than your turn, but comparatively churn is higher in those kinds of products
than
not.
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, any product that requires you to spend time and effort.
I mean, this is the fascinating thing about both, you know, Fusioncast
and Transistor, and the things like this is it, isn't a passive thing.
You actually have to make a serious effort to make something happen.
Right.
And the, the, the result of that is, yeah, I've got five people
listening to me waffle on for an hour.
there isn't an immediate payback.
There is a, there's an internal like, feel good thing, but it's um,
so as you said, you know, the market for those people, even creating a
newsletter, it doesn't happen by itself.
Right.
It takes effort and long term thinking to make something happen.
And it's, it's, it's a huge barrier to entry for most people.
Right.
Because they just don't have that kind of, um,
Justin: totally.
I mean, if, if I could have built forge, I would have
like, that's the perfect business.
It's like, it has an incredible amount of utility, like provision my servers
for me, but once I set it up, it just like every time I commit to get it,
you know, I don't need to log in for
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
it's just provides a lot of, benefit, a lot of value without you having
to commit a lot of time to use it.
Cause you just, it's just running in the background and whenever you need it, you
just log in and do what you need to do.
And that's it.
I be
using it for years and it's
Alan: those products that, that I see the thing on my
credit card every month, and I think haven't looked into
six months, but I can't get rid of it because I need it
That was a great product.
It's like, I just pay it because I have to that's it.
Justin: Yeah.
I mean, those are great products.
And especially once you become an SMB or a medium sized business or a large
business, you just need those products.
Like those are the oil, those are the grease that grease the
wheels of your, of your company.
And so, you know, it's a little bit of a harder ask for the marketing person to go
to the CEO and say, can we start a podcast than it is for a developer to go to the
CEO and say, I need the software to save
me hours
of time provisioning servers.
And it's like that's
a no brainer, you
Alan: Which again comes back to light dot plan.
That's like asking everybody in the company to do a
thing is like, oh God, it's like, a really hard
ask.
Justin: Yeah.
That,
Mario: yeah.
Alan: I think is why you're right.
Like looking for people who already are doing this or something.
Justin: yeah.
You want to see who's in motion and then how hard it is to get those people
like, that was the other kind of.
light bulb I had, when I was working for a project management software
company, I'm doing all this marketing and to learn I'm doing all these phone
calls, customer development, phone calls, and it's like, people are like,
you know, I demo the software and then they're like, okay, well, this is great.
I got to talk to my dev manager.
And then I got to talk to the CTO and then I got, I'm like,
we're,
we're, not gonna, this isn't gonna work.
And then meanwhile, you know, I recorded a podcast with Nathan Barry
and he's like, yeah, people just keep signing up for ConvertKit.
And it was like, oh yeah, like you just have to convince the person
with the credit card who just, you know, it's like a blogger who's at
home and wants to reach more people.
And they just have their credit card at most.
The only person they have to talk to is their spouse.
Right.
Mario: Right.
Justin: Um, and there's pros and cons to both of these, but, the
certainly at a certain price point.
If you want people to just, finding you on the internet and signing up, for
19 29, $49 a month, you want a certain amount of just volume that comes to
you and just does it automatically.
And
if they need to talk
to even, you know, more than one other person then,
uh,
Alan: It's a
significantly big ask, right.
As much as much from
a
Justin: well, and you realize it even like now that I have a
partner, like Jon does not like paying for a bunch of stuff.
And so I have to be very selective, you know, I'm using some
of my social capital every time I have to say, Hey, can we pay for H refs?
And he's like, well, what's that?
I'm like, well, he's like, how much is
it?
And I'm like, whatever it is 150 bucks a month, 150 bucks a month,
you know?
Like,
Alan: just do this right.
Justin: he's like, well, can't you just do it another way.
And.
You know, it costs me something every time
I want to bring a new tool on.
Alan: mean, I guess, I guess this explains that the whole, as you said, prosumer
market, is that people that a wanting to
make their life better, um, through some form of entrepreneurship, even if that's
just starting a, you know, a mailing list, um, and are willing to commit it,
something to do that, not just like, you know, well, I'm bored one Thursday
afternoon or Thursday evening, and I did the thing and I forget about it.
No, it's, you're, you're willing to make an
effort.
Right.
So that, by making that effort, they're willing to pay
something for that.
So
Justin: Yeah.
I think it's underrated because people love having a project, like a project
it's you know, um, My wife's taking, uh, a yoga instructors course right now.
It's just like a fun project for her to go and do it.
And you know, some people start gardening really seriously,
and that's like their project.
I have a garden, but I don't take it seriously, but somebody who takes
it seriously, they'll spend a lot of money and time doing that thing.
And there's levels of this, which go from, this is just a hobby I take
seriously, and I have the money to spend.
But up to like, this is aspirationally something I want to be either a
side business or, a little side hustle or a professional activity.
I do like maybe blogging or podcasting that will benefit my career.
But won't immediately give me money to like, I hope this
makes me a full-time living.
Like there's a whole threshold there.
A prosumer type products and I think
in the bootstrapping space.
It's kind of under, It's massively underrated.
It's like people
don't talk about it enough.
We talk about B2B as if it's like this like model it's like, so B2B is everything
from the person who's, selling a little course on the side all the way up to IBM.
Like that's B2B.
Yeah.
It's just, I don't
know that it,
and, and,
like B to
SMB, like what is
that?
Alan: I mean, this is kind of like goal of like, you know, I'm selling
B2B.
That was where the big money
is.
And the pains
that come with that is crazy.
Right.
Or there's, there's, shiny consumer level stuff, which is fun to play with
it from a UI side, but you've got to get massive scale and just to have any
form of revenue from it whatsoever, but
yeah, this kind of, prosumer market.
Yeah.
that's
Justin: And also to realize like the way we, the way we cut up these
categories just requires way more nuance.
Like it's not, it's not enough to just say, well, like every indie
hacker needs to go after B2B don't ever go to B to C and it's, and it's
like, well, we there's a spectrum of
opportunities.
And the other thing is
Mario: levels.
Justin: all
the different levels and the shape of those markets and the
dynamics within those markets is what you should really be looking at.
Don't look for these broad generalizations, look for the specifics,
the specific shape of that market.
And if it's a good wave, you should go ride it.
But don't just like discount things because.
There B to C or, or look like B to C, uh, in the same way that you
shouldn't feel like you've got a nice check mark, just because you're
in B2B, B2B is a spectrum and you know, there's lots of bad
B2B opportunities.
Alan: Again, like the the difference for me selling to, you
know, a, like a local
eight person company here is like, even that has a significant amount
of back and forth and pain versus, um, you know, selling any form of
enterprise sales, which is like, well, I've got six months to a year and
I've got to pass all these ISO things.
And it's like, it's never going to happen.
Right.
That both a B2B, right.
There's one
type of a business that is acceptable as others, which are just off the table
completely I'd have no
Justin: Well, and I'm in,
I would love to know for Taylor and forge, how many of those users are hobby users.
Developers using it on their own servers at home.
And they're just doing it because it makes their lives better.
It makes them better developers.
They want to support Taylor.
Like there's all these other jobs and how much of his revenue comes from actual
businesses like Titan who need it to
perform, you know, I'm sure there's lots,
but what's the
breakdown
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Alan: but the
interesting thing is those, those, those people who are maybe hobbyist
right now probably have other jobs,
they will go on to, they have
a career.
Right.
So they will definitely take that good experiences
with them though, as well.
Right.
Mario: yeah,
Justin: And that's the dynamic.
Mario: Yeah, it's a spectrum.
for example, I've been using forge for years and, it's a hobby, I guess, in,
in some ways, As I've been working on all these side projects and I've been
running servers maintained through forge, Fusioncast is one of them.
And, uh, you know, I haven't made any significant revenue or no revenue at all
from, from any of this, but I've been a
customer for years, you know?
So, So,
yeah, that's an interesting question.
Like how, how, what, what are the levels that there's
Justin: And, and, and how do you quantify all of that?
So if, if Mario, all of a sudden launches, Fusioncast, and then Spotify comes and
buys it for a billion dollars, how would we quantify that investment in Forge when
you weren't making any money for years, but then it became a significant part
of your journey that led to that thing.
You know what I mean?
This is why I think we got the, especially the bootstrap community.
We need way more nuance when we discuss these things.
It actually does matter.
The way we talk about things, the way we describe things, the way we justify
things, even in our own mind, these things matter because, um, if you're
just going to follow broad cliches, then you know, you're, you're missing
all of the actual stuff that real life has made out of, which is sure.
at one point I signed up for Memberful and I was not making any profit, but at
some point I crossed the threshold with Mega Maker where Mega Maker was making,
I dunno, $25,000 a year or something.
And now I think it averages something like 30, $40,000 a year.
So
previously was I just like a consumer that Memberful shouldn't care about or.
Did those years or months I was using
it and not really, you know, just as a hobbyist actually
lead to something significant.
and I think there's a lot of stuff like
Alan: But again, those people that actually started on that path and
made the effort to join Memberful and
invested time in it.
Oh, likely even if not that one didn't
work, they're likely to have a path to success
more likely than someone who just didn't even try it.
Right.
Justin: yeah, exactly, exactly.
And at the end of the day, like the real thing, the only real thing that matters
is volume.
this is a volume business and you need this constant flow of
interest, demand and customers.
And so whatever you can build that you like building that attracts a customer
that you like serving as long as there's enough of those customers coming in the
door every day, that's all that matters.
Mario: Yeah.
That's the wave, right?
The wave in
your analogy.
Justin: Yeah.
Mario: I love that analogy by the way.
it's perfect.
It's so spot on, uh, mark market is like surfing and, uh,
that constant flow it's
those waves that you
you've gotta have a good enough wave to be able to do it.
Justin: yeah.
And,
encouraging.
people to that was the other thing about
looking at Adam and Taylor is
just getting to see someone riding a bigger wave, inspired
me to want to ride bigger waves.
It was like, you know, why am I wasting time trying to make this
happen when I could have something that maybe isn't that, but is at
least something like that, you know?
Uh, and there's certain.
Again, it's not easy.
If it was easy, then I would be a billionaire,
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: but
Mario: about
Justin: it,
Mario: this is easy.
Justin: but
I do think there's ways we can
observe, like with Meeps, I'm observing.
Are we there yet?
No, we don't have that natural pull yet.
And if we can't find it, we got to let it go.
And that's what we're searching for.
We're trying things that it's like, if we are just walking around in the woods and
we trip over a, uh, slow moving stream, we gotta be willing to move on from the
stream and look for the rushing river.
Like that's another metaphor, like when you just want that flow of water
and, getting to see it demonstrated for me, like seeing what that looks like.
Mario: Yeah.
Justin: Is the key.
It's just like
thousands of people,
and let's just say for most indie SaaS apps, I think it's going to
be, you're going to need hundreds of trials and thousands of trials.
If you're not, if you don't have credit card upfront.
And I think, you know, transistor probably gets,
I don't know, we get hundreds
of new trials every month and
75% of those people who
start a trial convert to a paid
Alan: Right because you got credit card up front.
So there's, there's a there's inertia
that already, right?
Justin: That's right.
That's right?
They,
Mario: More serious about
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: they want it bad enough that they're willing to,
you know, put a credit card in and, and, and there's just some products
like this, like watch yourself and your friends sign up for things.
You know, at one point I was like, I'm not going to pay for
a Twitter thread writing tool.
And then enough people in my life were doing it.
And then I just found myself signing up for Typefully.
And it was there's like a momentum there.
That is interesting.
And what's frustrating is it's like, it's not equivalent to the amount of time you
put in or how complex the product is or, you know, the rules of, why people buy
and why people buy quickly and easily.
It's just kinda like, do they want it?
Mario: Yeah.
There's all different reasons that there's, the, the
whole, uh, people like us do
things like this , effect, right.
To, consider in
that as well.
Justin: yeah,
yeah.
Alan: And I think that's what, you know, you, you, you mentioned,
you know, just kind of like trying
to
catch the zeitgeists, you know, but basically, I mean, this is why I find
Twitter, so fascinating addictive
it's this real-time, you know, flow of the world of a, okay.
Not everybody, but a good,
significant chunk of, trends you can spot they're very early.
Um,
Justin: Yeah.
And on podcasts too.
Like, that's why I
love listening to podcasts as people,
you know, Taylor, just like kind of offhand saying, this is how we use base
camp.
what was the other thing?
I, I hear people all the time, like, especially in these bootstrap
podcasts people all the time will mention, oh, I just tried out
this tool or I'm paying for this.
Those are to me are so interesting to hear people explain why they
just made a purchasing decision.
And that's what we need to pay attention to is, what kinds of things
create that movement?
Like all of a sudden it's like everybody's
buying The Mom Test.
Like, why is that part of it is because
yeah.
And part of it is
because it gets recommended and it gets recommended because it has a certain
utility, but it also has a certain thing about it that makes it easy to buy,
easy to read and then easy to recommend.
And I think there are like Typefully has that thing.
Like right now, reading Twitter threads is hot and the wave might not last
forever, but you there's, there's people actively searching for how do
I write better Twitter threads and, when there's that existing momentum,
like people are Googling that already, then you can kind of tap into
that, you know?
Mario: Yeah, Yeah, For sure.
Justin, we've been going for a while
and, uh, want to be respectful of
your time.
Um,
it's
it's great.
We can go.
Yeah, this is great.
We can
go, we can go on for hours, but
Alan: I am
on
track with time zones as
well.
So I'm just getting going.
I'm just
still waking up.
So it's easy to, it's easy to forget that everybody else
light at the end of the day.
Justin: well, well, that was good.
That was a good part.
One you'll you'll have to see if anybody listens
to this and then can have you back
Alan: So Mario, we should definitely put this out as like
a special exception, rather than catching up with all the others.
Let's get this
out.
Mario: yeah.
Oh
Justin: Yeah.
Sorry.
We didn't do any updates that I,
you guys,
put a microphone in my face and I
just talked.
Alan: That was the
Mario: no, it's been great.
That that's, that's what
Alan: It makes
change from everybody hearing my voice all the
time.
Mario: or mine.
Justin: no,
this was fun.
I, I like, I like getting together like this with people.
I haven't really connected with that much, but just like connecting with new people
and, to talk like, this is really fun for
me.
it
Mario: yeah.
Justin: pumps me up.
Alan: Same.
Mario: yeah, And I thought about.
I thought about, um, you know, Hey, what did we talk about?
She would have like a, like a particular subject or, questions to
ask, but that's like the typical stuff.
And I
thought maybe it's just better to just jump in and let's just
have a casual conversation and talk about whatever, you know,
talk shop and
Alan: Oh, yeah.
Cause cause all of us are
really
stuck for things to
talk about you know?
Justin: Well, this is what's so great.
Is this like, Whenever people like us meet up in real life, you know,
uh, like there's those Mega Maker real life meetups that we've had,
at a conference or whatever is like,
it's not like we have stuff to talk about because these are our people,
you know, this is what we it's like, just give me the avenue and
Alan: Yeah.
Justin: enough, you know?
Mario: Yeah.
I mean, it's the only chance that we get to talk to other like-minded people.
Um, you know, with a direct connection, right, because we do it online, all
the time, but, uh, opportunities like this where we can actually see
each other and talk to each other in real time, it's just awesome.
Uh,
otherwise, you know, I don't really have anybody around other than my
wife, but it's that same, cause she's not in the same kind of circle.
Um, but, other than that, like, I don't really have
anyone else that I can talk to him that would
understand what's going on in, in this, uh,
aspect of my life.
You
know?
Justin: totally.
Mario: this is amazing.
Justin: Yeah.
Mario: So we really appreciate your time and, uh,
joining us today with, uh, our 20th episode of indie maker journey.
Justin: Nice.
Nice.
Now you just got to make sure you get it
edited
and published.
That's
Alan: let's get this
Mario: I know it's, it's, it's it's been a struggle, but we're, we're going
to do this one and then, um, jump
Alan: Yeah, we can get those.
So, uh, and now, you know how great Fusioncast is.
You'll be at recommended to everybody,
right?
Justin: yeah,
Alan: it's just going to release the thing.
I've got to end on that, Mario
Mario: Right.
I know every episode.
No, that's good.
Thank you.
That's what I need.
I need, I need to be pushed.
Um, but Yeah.
hopefully, uh, we'll get there, um, working towards that.
Yeah.
I've frozen any work on the product itself.
I'm not doing any development at all.
Uh, and hopefully there are no bugs that come up, you
know, that, I need to jump on.
but Yeah.
otherwise I'm not doing any work at all on, on any features.
I'm just focusing on
the other aspects Of the work that needs to be done so that I can launch
eventually so
Justin: Nice.
Mario: Yup.
Justin: us know how we can help when you're ready.
Mario: Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Alan: Awesome.
Thanks so
much for your time, just in a really appreciate it.
And that has been super interesting.
Justin: Yeah.
Mario: All right.
Thanks Justin.
Justin: Yeah.
Thanks guys.