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What are some good strategies for creating, pricing and selling an ebook? In Part 1 of our interview with Sacha we discuss what he learned launching his first book, and what he plans on doing next time. We also take a look at Meteor, “an open-source platform for building web apps” using pure JavaScript.
Show Notes
What are some good strategies for creating, pricing and selling an ebook? In Part 1 of our interview with Sacha we discuss what he learned launching his first book, and what he plans on doing next time. We also take a look at Meteor, “an open-source platform for building web apps” using pure JavaScript.
Highlights
- Sacha kick-started his product career by selling themes on Themeforest. “I was doing products before I knew I was doing products.”
- His first real solo product was his ebook: Step by Step UI Design. He recommends starting small: “I didn’t set out to write a 200 page book. I set out to write a 40 page book.”
- Sacha based the price of his book on what iOS apps were selling for ($2-$5): “It turns out, that’s a bad way to do pricing.” For his next book, he’s going to employ a higher price strategy ( similar to what Nathan Barry did for his ebook).
- People on Hacker News balked at Nathan’s high ebook prices. Sacha thinks: “People don’t understand how segmentation works. If you want to buy a car, you could buy a Ferrari or a Honda. You know those two cars are for different audiences. No one complains about the price of Ferraris; people understand that they are expensive. It’s the same with ebooks; just like you can buy a cheap car or expensive car, you can buy a cheap [ebook] package or expensive package. If you think the expensive package is too expensive, it just means you are not the target audience.”
- Sacha on segmentation: “People think it’s crazy that Nathan Barry is charging $200 for his ebook package; but they’re not the target audience. He doesn’t want you [the individual] to pay that; but rather the office manager at the big company (who isn’t spending his own money) to purchase it.”
- How Sacha plans on promoting his next book: “I’ve started setting up a mailing list on the Telescope site. There’s a small sign-up form for the book’s mailing list on there. I’ll be sending sample chapters to these people and asking them for feedback.”
- “ Meteor is a step above [other frameworks]. I think it’s the future,” says Sacha.
- “I wanted to build a Hacker News for designers; because I think that’s missing right now”, comments Sacha. This project became Sidebar.io.
Show notes
- Telescope
- Sidebar.io
- Sacha’s website and blog
- “You don’t have to be local” (Derek Sivers)
- Themeforest
- Sacha’s ebook: Step by Step UI Design
- More money from fewer ebook sales
- Nathan Barry’s new ebook: Designing Web Apps
- Meteor
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Hey. Today, we're joined by Sasha Graefe. Sasha is a designer, coder, and entrepreneur from Paris, France, but he's now living in Osaka, Japan. He's done UI work for some really cool companies, Le Monde, Hipmunk, and Milewise, but he is best known for launching innovative side projects. His most recent projects include telescope at www.telesc.pe and sidebar, www.sidebar.io.
Speaker 1:Now we are officially a bilingual podcast.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:Undo. That's pretty much the only French I know, I'm sorry. That
Speaker 2:was actually really good French.
Speaker 1:Was it?
Speaker 2:A slight Canadian accent.
Speaker 1:Was there a little bit of Quebecois in there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's get it going for real here. Welcome to Product People, a podcast focused on great products and the people who make them. My name is Justin Jackson, and I'm joined by my co host, Mr. Kyle Fox.
Speaker 3:Hello, ladies and gentlemen and Justin.
Speaker 1:Today we have a great guest. Sasha Graef is joining us from Japan. Welcome to the show, Sasha.
Speaker 2:Hey, everybody.
Speaker 1:So, Sasha, I thought we would start by hearing your story. So where did you grow up? And maybe tell us how you got into the web or and got into computers in the first place.
Speaker 2:Okay. Sure. So just to explain a little bit who I am, I'm a designer focused on user interfaces and web mobile apps. For the last couple last years, have been freelancing for companies, mostly startups. So I've done work for Hipmunk, RubyMotion, Intercom, so a couple of companies.
Speaker 2:And right now, I'm focusing more on launching my own products. So the past year, I've launched the Toolbox, which is a small side project that aggregates all kind of useful links. One year ago, I launched Folio, which is a company that helps connect startups and designers. And right now, I'm working on Sidebar, which is a community for designers and also a newsletter that sends out the five best design links of the day. I'm French.
Speaker 2:I grew up in Paris, France. And I got started about fifteen years ago, I would say. My first ever website was a a walk through site for Fallout, the game.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was a long time ago. And since then, I've done a lot of things and actually mostly not web related. So I went to school. After high school, I did one year of web stuff, I would say. So learning Flash and PHP and the basics of designing and developing for the web.
Speaker 2:But that was a long time ago, and the web was really not there yet, I would say. So after that, I went back to university to study computer science. And that had really nothing to do with the web or even tactical programming. It was lots of math and very theoretical. So anyway, after doing this, I also studied Chinese.
Speaker 2:And I went to China about six times, I think, and lived there for one year. So at that point in my life, I was pretty sure I was going to do something related with Chinese, like, you know, journalist or working in an embassy or something. But it turned out that I got a little bit bored with it, and by chance, I found a job in Beijing working in a Chinese web design agency.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:This is, like, how I got back into the web about five years ago.
Speaker 1:And was there something about that job with the web agency in Beijing that made you, like, want to build more things on the web?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Basically, I realized that the web had changed a lot since I was last last making sites, and it was a lot more fun. You had so to give you an idea, like, when I first started, I was doing table layouts and Flash and really old school stuff. And when I got back into it, I discovered this new thing called CSS. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And, hey, that's pretty cool. It's doing all those stupid table layouts. So discovered WordPress. Like, all those things seem really old now, but, you know, there was a time before that, the dark ages of the web.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And did you discover CSS and WordPress and all of that stuff in Beijing at that first job?
Speaker 2:Pretty much. I was aware of those things, of course, but I haven't been doing any design professionally for a while, so I have never really gone into that too much. So the first thing I did was read up on the state of the art and okay, what are people doing now? And when I was Googling, the articles I was finding were like four years old or three years old. So I realized that, yeah, I had a bit of catching up to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what year would that have been when you started doing web development in China?
Speaker 2:That was 02/2007, I think. Yep.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Now you're have you always been into design? Was that always a part of your life?
Speaker 2:Not really. I was mostly into the technical side, but I've always been more of a generalist, and I like being able to to do everything. So at first, I was basically doing everything, and I realized that the part of that I liked most was design. So I focused on that for a while, and that's the kind of current work I did for a long time. But now that I'm working mostly on my own projects, I actually spend a lot of time coding, too.
Speaker 1:So what happened after you were in Beijing? Did you move back to France and start working as a freelancer there? Or what happened after that stage of your life?
Speaker 2:So I did move back to France and for one year I worked at UNESCO, which had their headquarters in France and I was doing cold fusion work, another language that has disappeared, I hope.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I did that for one year and after that, started freelancing. Basically, saved up for one year to bankroll my freelancing career.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what year was that when you started your freelancing career?
Speaker 2:So that would be let me check. I think that would be 02/2008.
Speaker 1:Right around 02/2008. And, you know, one thing I always wonder about is what the web culture is like in other places in the world. So what's the web culture like in China? And what's the web culture like in France?
Speaker 2:So in China, it's well, when I was there, they were they had a very specific kind of design, I would say. And it's a very heavy site, and a lot of people are using, or worse, using IE and Windows XP, so it was a little bit behind. Mhmm. But I think that's changing. In China, everything changes very fast, so I think they if they haven't called up yet, they will in a matter of years.
Speaker 2:And in France, well, it's also a little bit behind what you have in The States, but not that much. I would say one thing that's apparent in France is that print designers and animators are very good, so a lot of them went into doing flash web websites. Mhmm. So you still have that really Flash heavy mindset, and it's probably, like, disappearing. But for a long time, all the big sites were in Flash, and basically, all the best talent went into doing Flash rather than CSS websites.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Was there like a community that you could tap into when you were in France and learning, you know, all this stuff on the web? Were there other people that you connected with and were able to talk this stuff through?
Speaker 2:So actually, like, I can only speak for myself, but I've always wanted to, you know, be global and not local. So there was a post by Dennis Severst about that recently, where he basically said that you can, you know, be local and go to local events or choose to to live in the global world, and that means, you know, hanging out on global communities, things like Hacker News, Reddit. So I've always tried to do that more, especially in the beginning of my freelancing career, and as a result, I've never really, you know, had much contact with the local community in France. That
Speaker 1:was an interesting post by Derek Sivers.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, Derek, sorry. Yeah, but like just before leaving for Japan, actually I had started being involved more in the hack and mute community in Paris, so it's actually turned out to be pretty cool. So I now think you need a balance between both aspects and not be just 100% global.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:So one thing that was kind of interesting to me, this is sort of going back a little bit, I guess, you kind of re you sort of kick started here web career back in, you said, February in China with the web agency. And then it wasn't very long until you took the plunge into freelance in 02/2008. Was just over a year, hey?
Speaker 2:Yep. Actually, 02/2009. Sorry, I checked. Okay. Yeah, in 02/2007, I was working in China and then 02/2008, worked at UNESCO.
Speaker 2:02/2009, started freelancing.
Speaker 3:Okay, gotcha. So that's I guess you had some background in it prior to that, but by some accounts, that's a pretty fast move from web agency to freelance. So I'd be curious, what prompted you to kind of pursue freelance so so fast? Was was it kind of something you always wanted to do? Like, did you always wanna be self employed and work on interesting products?
Speaker 3:Or was it just kind of a, at the time, that was the next logical step in your career?
Speaker 2:Well, like, as I said, I didn't have a big network in France, and I had some previous agency work in France, and, you know, people were doing lots of flash, and I didn't have such a good experience. And I thought I might as well try my luck at freelancing and do, you know, whatever I want. And, you know, I was confident I could do it because I started selling themes on ThemeForest, and Right. You know, I thought either it works or it doesn't, but, you know, it's a sink or swim with my own abilities. I don't have I wouldn't have clients.
Speaker 2:I don't have a boss, so it would be a good test of my skills.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And it turned out that it worked out. I had a few successful templates and themes and client started rolling in through ThemeForest at first.
Speaker 3:That's interesting. So so you were almost doing products before you were even doing freelance. It kind of like helped you kick start your way into freelance, is kind of like presumably also helping you circle back around to doing more of the product side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was doing products before I knew I was doing products.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before
Speaker 3:it was cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when I was first doing themes, I had no idea about marketing them or doing any kind of promotion outside of ThemeForest. It never crossed my mind. So if I did it now, I would have a very different approach. But at the time, because ThemeForest is a really good platform, it worked out like this.
Speaker 3:Sure. It's kind of like a gateway product.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 1:When did you make the switch from selling things on ThemeForest to starting to sell your own stuff?
Speaker 2:So I stopped selling things on ThemeForest because it involved too much customer support, and the competition on ThemeForest is really, really good. I mean, people are coming out with WordPress themes that, you know, you have 20 color variations, you have all these settings or short codes, whatever. So unless you're doing it full time, I think it's really hard to compete.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Yeah, agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I stopped doing themes, then I focused on freelance work for a while, and I guess my first product Well, it's not entirely true. I did try to sell some small products on Graphic River, and I kept exploring other options, but I would say my first successful product was my e book about six months ago, last March, I think. But this, it really, like, came out of the blue for me. I never expected I would be that successful or, you know, bring in that much money. Why did you
Speaker 1:to make the eBook in the first place? What was kind of the reason behind that?
Speaker 2:You know, people ask me that, but I don't think there was a reason. Like, it was more, Hey, that would be a cool thing to do, and let's try it out. You know, most of my projects start out like this. Like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if and then I do it. So, yeah, I wanted to try that, see if there was an audience for it, and it turned out that there was.
Speaker 1:So maybe take us through that process a little bit. So at first, you were just thinking, Hey, this would be kind of neat to try this. And then you built it, like, sorry, wrote What the happened next?
Speaker 2:So the first thing is the book is actually pretty short, so, you know, that's because I wanted to give it a try and it's kind of a book MVP, our most minimum viable product.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I set out to write a, you know, 200 page book. I set out to write a 40 page e book and give it a shot. And after that, I built a landing page for it and then posted the link to Hacker News, and I just took off.
Speaker 3:And so
Speaker 1:when you posted it to Hacker News, did you have a price? Like, were you linked to a landing page with a price where people could buy it? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I linked to the current landing page, which is still online. At that time, it was half priced, so that was, like, really cheap. So the lowest edition was $3 And actually, I think a lot of people bought it just because it was so cheap.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I didn't do a lot of market research or anything on ebooks, so I actually priced it based on iPhone apps, because I figured, hey, people are spending all these months on those iPhone apps, like Angry Birds, whatever, and selling them for only $1 so I'm gonna do something a similar price, which, like, it turns out is a really bad way to price things. I've learned since then, but, you
Speaker 1:know, Yeah, like I noticed, because you released your book right around the time that Bootstrapping Design came out, and there was a little bit of a back and forth between you guys on what pricing model was best. So how do you feel about that now? Now that you're at this stage, do you think you should have priced it higher or do you think that your price was kind of right on the mark?
Speaker 2:I think I should have probably priced it a little bit higher. But, you know, it's easy to say now because the book was successful, so it seems more valuable. Like, if the book hadn't sold anything, I would probably be like, Hey, I should have pressed it lower.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So basically, what I took from all this is that, you know, you can price high or low. What matters most is, you know, why you're doing and, like, your overall strategy. It's not so much the specific price points. So yeah, just read up on pricing strategy and why different pricing points work and then do your best. But it's not like you have to price high or you have to price low.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Do you think you're Are you going to do another book?
Speaker 2:Actually, yeah. I'm in the process of doing one right now, but on a very different subject, so it's gonna be about here, JavaScript framework, and it's gonna be about, you know, an introduction of how to build an app with MeetMe here from scratch, basically.
Speaker 1:Interesting. And do you think you'll what's going to be your pricing strategy for that book?
Speaker 2:So there's two of us on the project. So I'm writing it with Tom Coleman, which is one of the best meter devs in the community right now, I think. So yeah, the pricing is going to be higher to support both of us and also because it's going to be a much more in-depth product with more material.
Speaker 1:And so you guys are thinking it's going be a higher price point and with a lot more material. You're thinking videos, examples, interesting?
Speaker 2:Basically, if you look at what Nathan Barry is doing, I think it's gonna be something like this.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Kyle and I were just talking about the Nathan Barry book today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think he launched yesterday.
Speaker 3:It's super well done. Like it's one of those landing pages that makes you just need to have it right this instant. That He's got a pretty aggressive pricing strategy too and it like the price tag doesn't really feel like it deters me a whole lot. Maybe it prevented me from buying like right now type thing, but I mean, it's still rattling around in my head right now. It's something I want to get as soon as I can even though it's about $200 Well,
Speaker 2:he has three price points actually.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So you can get the budget option for what, 30?
Speaker 1:Yep. Yeah. You can you can buy the book for $30 It's on sale right now. You can buy the book plus videos for $80 You can buy the whole package, which includes video tutorials, video interviews, resources, and the book for $200 and then you can buy a team version for like a team license for $800
Speaker 2:And you can buy a gold plated version for $2,000
Speaker 1:Well, you know, what's interesting though is on communities like Hacker News, this kind of pricing is getting kind of torn apart. Like a lot of people were kind of taken aback by the pricing.
Speaker 2:What
Speaker 1:do you think about that, Sasha?
Speaker 2:They don't know what they're talking about. That's what I think about it. Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like so Justin and I were talking a little bit about this earlier as well because we both kinda manage teams. And, for a business that's got a team of designers and sort of like if you have new people, new designers joining the team, wanna bring them up to speed and have a common frame of reference for everyone on the team. You know, spending $800 on a whole bunch of well designed, like just high quality collateral like that is almost a no brainer. Like dollars 800, 1,000 for something that your whole team can refer back to and use to train up new hires, like, that's incredible value.
Speaker 2:And I think people don't understand how, like, segmentation works, really. Because if you wanna buy a car, and you know you can buy a Ferrari, or I don't know, like, what's a cheap brand, a Honda? And you know that those two cars are for different audiences, so you're not going Nobody's complaining about the price of Ferraris because you know they're expensive. That's what they are. And it's the same thing here.
Speaker 2:It's the same product, but it also has different price points. So just like you can buy a cheap car or an expensive car, you can buy a cheap package or an expensive package. So if you think the expensive package is too expensive, that just means you're not the target audience, so it's not for you. That's all there is to it.
Speaker 3:Yep, exactly. I guess the real proof A
Speaker 2:lot of people feel insulted somehow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So maybe explain a little bit about that because you had a very low price and sounds like there wasn't that much friction. Like people have said, Oh, two, I'll pay for that. No problem. Why do you think some people are offended when the price goes up?
Speaker 2:Well, because they think, Hey, you want me to pay $200 for this? I can't afford it. Are you crazy? So what they don't understand is that, no, Nathan Barry doesn't want you to pay that. He wants, you know, the guy at the big company who is not spending his money to pay that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean, in this case, the people complaining You know, it would be one thing if somebody at the big company was complaining about the pricing point, saying that, you know, they can't afford it or whatever, but usually the people complaining are not the targets. So in my case, people I guess the price point had a very good reception on Hacker News because those people were the target of that price point, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what do you think you're going to do to promote your next book? Hacker News is an interesting community because you can get a lot of traffic. If it hits a chord, can get a lot of traffic. Do you have some ideas on how you might promote something with a higher price point?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've already started setting up a mailing list on the Telescope site, so Telescope is an open source meet your app that we're building to let anybody basically create their own hacker news or Reddit style website. So it's an open source social news app. So if you go check out the landing page for that app, so that is free, but there's a small sign up form for the books mailing list. So that's step one, just collect some email address, and then you can use that to you can send sample chapters to people, you can ask them feedback on what they'd like to see in the book.
Speaker 2:So there's lots of things you can do, and after that, we'll see. I mean, this So book is like a yeah.
Speaker 3:One thing I'm kind of curious about because, Justin, I'm not sure how, like, into the, the hardcore tech scene you are, but Meteor is a pretty new framework to build apps in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't heard much about it. I only heard about it because I saw Telescope on Hacker News. So could you just describe to me what Meteor is?
Speaker 2:Okay. So you know about Node. Js?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is JavaScript on the server? Meteor is based on that, but it takes it one step further so that, you know, you share code between the server and the client. So not only is your whole app JavaScript, but you can even reuse the same methods and the exact same code on both sides. That's one thing. Other thing is it's all real time.
Speaker 2:So basically, if you're displaying whatever data from the database you're displaying on your site, if it gets updated, it will be updated on the site in real time without you needing to do anything about it. So it's almost magical how it works, and it's really powerful. And on top of this, it does lots of smart things, like it includes all your apps file by default, so, you know, you don't even need to do the script tags or CSS tags. Everything gets included and compiled, minified, all that. So, yeah, I've tried.
Speaker 2:I've built App with PHP, WordPress, Rails, but Meter is really like a step above, and I think it's the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's kind of what I wanted to ask you about because it's pretty new. I think it's really interesting that you guys decided to build such a polished, marketable app with Meteor. So I'm kind of wondering what made you decide to use Meteor or if you were approached by the Meteor team to use this as a marketing tool to promote Meteor. Because especially with the book, I think it's interesting because right now, there might not be like, today, there might not be a huge, huge market of people looking to to learn Surely, there's some. But it seems like this could be, you know, very well timed where as Meteor kind of gains popularity, and I agree with you, I think this is kind of the future of of web apps.
Speaker 3:So you're positioning yourself quite nicely to be one of the first really polished, thorough kind of Meteor books. So I'm wondering
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 3:Sort of how you got into Meteor. What made you decide to write this book? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Well, for starters, the thing about the market, I think the Meter market might be small, but Meter also has a very low barrier to entry, and there are a ton of people who already know JavaScript, front end developers, designers, and they could get started with in one day. They don't have to learn a new language, they can install Meteor in five minutes. So I don't look at the market as people who are using Meteor. For me, the market is people who know JavaScript, basically, and that market
Speaker 3:And is
Speaker 2:to answer your question, so first, I actually came up with the idea for Telescope First, because even before that, I wanted to build what is now Sidebar. So Sidebar, if you check it out now, it doesn't really look anything like Telescope or Hacker News or all those sites, but it's actually based on Telescope, so Telescope powers it. And the reason why is because my initial goal was, and still is actually, to build something like a Hacker News for designers, because I think that's really missing right now. So I had this idea, okay, I want to build a Hacker News for designers, how do I do that? So the first step was choosing the technology and choosing who I was going to build it with.
Speaker 2:And my initial idea was to exchange my design time on somebody else's project for their coding time on my project. And I found someone to do that, and we started he was a Node. Js coder. And yeah, so I narrowed down the technology's choice to either Rails or Node. Js because I had experience with Rails, and I also knew JavaScript, so I figured those two stacks would be the easiest for me to learn.
Speaker 2:So anyway, we picked Node. Js, and at the same time, I have a friend who is in Y Combinator who's doing a ZenBox who said he was friends with the Meteor guys, and they were cool people, and Meteor was interesting. So we decided to check it out. And what happened is the guy that was helping me out, so he started building this in Meteor, but after a while, he got busy and we kind of lost touch, so I ended up doing the app by myself. And it turned out that MeetJear, like, was easy enough for me to, yeah, just build it out and do a big part of it by myself.
Speaker 2:And after a while, I was joined by Tom Coleman, which is now my partner on the project. By that time, I had the confidence that I could actually build non trivial stuff with Meteor.
Speaker 1:So you found it pretty empowering as a designer that you could use Meteor to build this app yourself, that you didn't need to find someone that was Interesting. Maybe more
Speaker 2:To be fair, I'm not a pure designer because I have a computer science background and I have a couple apps, but, you know, MeetJare like, I can compare MeetJare to Rails because I'm also maintaining Folio, which is a Rails app, and MeetJare is hands down a lot more fun to use and yeah, just just more intuitive for me than Rails.
Speaker 3:Well, you've actually just in this conversation kind of convinced me that this is probably what I'm gonna spend my weekend doing, taking a closer look at it. Because I remember being impressed by like, the screencast and things like that, and then I saw that you'd built Telescope and it suddenly, I don't know. I'm maybe a little bit superficial, but I was like, oh, hey, there's a pretty site about Meteor. Suddenly I can take it seriously.
Speaker 2:Well, would say if you're building a real time app in any way, Meteor is definitely the way to go. And even if your app is not real time or like doesn't need to be, I think it's still a pretty good candidate just because it's so quick and simple.
Speaker 3:Right. Like you said, based on JavaScript is a huge outcome. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Based on JavaScript. To be fair, there are some quirks like, you know, because of the real time aspects, some some things are harder to do than with the traditional framework. But I think those things are gonna go away pretty fast. Mean, would Yeah. Still will still recommend it even with those things.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Remember I think one of the first things that everyone sort of yelled about on Hacker News was that it was not great for SEO and then eventually like an SEO package or fix So came it seems like it's one of those things where, you know, any any new tool is gonna have gaps and things like that, but they get smoothed over in time. So it's not Yep. It doesn't mean the project is inherently doomed. So they seem to be doing it doing a pretty good job there.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And how
Speaker 2:I mean
Speaker 1:Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, sure, it doesn't have, like, the libraries of Ruby or Node, but it's a young product. That's true. But I still think it's worth it, you know, getting ahead of the curve and getting familiarized with it now.
Speaker 3:Right. And the best way to do that is your upcoming e book.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you do you have a landing page up for that yet?
Speaker 2:There's the Telescope landing page. There's no landing page for the e book itself yet.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But just to know that Telescope is open source, so anybody can download it and look at the code. It's pretty simple code and with lots of comments, so it should be understandable for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And has anyone else I noticed you have three examples of people who are using it. Have you heard from other people that are already using it for real communities that they're building?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of people. Some people are using it for yeah, communities or their own link blog. Some people are also using it more as a collaboration tool. Yeah. Like an internal attacker news.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a cool idea.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought it would be good for, is running product teams internally. You could have your whole backlog in Telescope and allow people to vote it up, vote up ideas, comment on ideas, and you could kind of see what was hot. And that would be really neat to have something like Telescope just running internally just for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you can run it for free on Meteor or Heroku. You can customize it yourself. It's just JavaScript. So I think it's a perfect idea.
Speaker 1:Well, that rounds up part one of our interview with Sasha Graefe. We have an amazing part two coming for you next week. Sasha talks about choosing a partner and the importance of side projects. But even more, he gets really personal about the challenges of bootstrapping your own product. You will not want to miss it.
Speaker 1:We will see you then.