Build Your SaaS

What happens when your SaaS grows 300% over the quarantine?

Show Notes

This week on the program, Justin and Jon talk about:
  • A friend, whose SaaS has grown 300% since the beginning of the quarantine. They just hit $6k in MRR.
  • At that stage, he's in the "almost but not yet."
  • You're either:
    • Brainstorming how to make money faster
    • Brainstorming how to work less
  • Different stages:
    • Pre-launch stage: you're working on your product on the side. It's fun! There's nothing stealing your time and attention because you don't have customers yet.
    • The beta stage: still pretty fun! You have a few customers who are using your product, and maybe paying you money.
    • The "launched" stage: now, you have way more users. Now you're doing way more customer support, responding to feature requests.
  • How much did we work when we were building Transistor?
    • Jon figures we spent 45 to 60 hours a week (each).
  • Jason Calacanis’ tweet: "It takes 100 hours per week to build a business!"
  • “Good businesses have margin."
  • Josh Wood: "At Honeybadger, we work 30 hours per week."
  • Margin gives you the opportunity, as a founder, to live beyond your keyboard. To engage with the world.
  • Sandy Hudson (Sandra & Nora podcast): "The quarantine gave people the time and space to wrestle with the current moment."
  • The Dept of Veteran Affairs
  • "As your little baby Rails app grows up, you can't just run everything on the same service."
  • "The whole internet is just patchwork of pipes and duct tape." 

You can reply to this podcast here:

★ Bootstrapper shout-out of the week:

  • LessAccounting
  • https://www.lessaccounting.com/
  • Cloud base accounting software and services for non-accountants. This used to be owned by Allan Branch (Paul Kogan owns it now). It’s specifically designed for small businesses with 1-25 employees and contractors

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  • Ward from MemberSpace.com
  • Evandro Sasse
  • Austin Loveless
  • Michael Sitver
  • Dan Buda
  • Colin Gray
  • Dave Giunta

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Speaker 1:

Am I allowed to do that? I don't know. I don't know if we should keep that.

Jon:

Yeah. We could probably redo that.

Justin:

Okay. Okay. Start again. Sorry.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Justin:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build Transistor dot f m. Actually, I had an interesting phone call today. A founder who's just started a SaaS company that's taking off.

Justin:

So due to COVID nineteen, what he's selling is in it's a ecommerce plug in, and it it just started taking off. And he grew from the beginning of the pandemic to now. I think he's grown 3 times.

Jon:

Oh, wow.

Justin:

And but he's he's at about 6 k in MRR. And he's, like he wanted to talk to me because he said, I'm so stressed out. Like, I'm just I'm working all these hours and I'm, like, you know, trying to do the marketing, and I'm trying to do some programming and onboarding. And I just he's like, does this end? And No.

Justin:

Well, it's interesting. What I what I told him because I I went back into our bare metrics and looked at it. And it's very, very interesting. So it it made me go back to that part in time. So they say one of the cardinal rules of podcasting is you should never, talk about numbers in a podcast because it's boring.

Justin:

But here I I just want people to picture this. So you and I get our 1st paying customer in February $2,051 a month. Fast forward to January 2019, and we're at $6,000 a month, which is where Okay. This fellow is. Yep.

Justin:

And if you go back and listen to the podcasts we were recording then, and if you go back and you read the blog posts I was writing then, We are stressed out. I have been dedicating most of my time to Transistor answering support tickets and all these things.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And, not not getting paid for it. And you are at work, working all day, dealing with all of the stress of work and all the drama of work, coming home, and then programming at night and on the weekends, and where you were both burning out in different ways. I was starting to burn out financially. You're starting to burn out in terms of your time. And for this fellow here, it's probably more on the time, and because he is freelancing, he has a a nice freelancing client on the that he's always had.

Justin:

And so he's doing his freelance work, and then he's, you know, rushing over and trying to keep this thing running. It is interesting to put myself back in that place of just remembering where we were, January 2019. Because 6 k felt like it felt significant, but you're very much in the you're very much in the almost, but not yet.

Jon:

Right. And Yeah. It's a different a different mindset than starting out because you're at 0. Mhmm. Anything at that point is great.

Justin:

Yeah. So you're encouraged. But, again, if you go back to those what you know, the conversations we were having at the time, I'm kinda like, John. Like, maybe we should get some funding, and maybe we should, you know, create a a course for podcasters and and and sell that.

Jon:

And I'm just Oh, yeah. We yeah. You're brainstorming all the other ways to get to basically get money fast.

Justin:

I was flailing because the all the already, but not yet. The almost, but not yet. And, you were flailing because you're like, Justin, I I am sick of this. Like, I'm I'm sick of going to work, and then coming I don't wanna look at a screen anymore.

Jon:

Yep.

Justin:

And there's this feeling of pushing yourself beyond what's healthy. And I think this is the hardest part of bootstrapping is when you hit Dude. This part. Because it's actually easier at the beginning. When you're at $55 a month, you only have a couple customers.

Justin:

But at $6,000 a month, you have customers. You've officially we officially had launched already.

Jon:

Right. Yeah. Not only are you building the thing still, you're doing customer support and that's more time consuming than people think.

Justin:

Yes.

Jon:

I think. Yeah.

Justin:

Well and then customers are giving you feedback. They want new features. And so you're you're just stretching yourself so thin. The almost, but not yet feeling like you're onto something, but you can't really you're just under a cloud of it's it's not very fun. It's hasn't proven itself yet.

Justin:

You know, you're you're chugging along, but you just can't and, you know, I was trying to predict how long it would take for us to get out of this. And at the time, my prediction was it would take 5 years, and it was depressing. Yep. And so I wanted to talk about it quick just at the top because I know a lot of folks are in it, and each stage at the beginning is so interesting. You have the prelaunch stage where, really, it's kind of fun.

Justin:

Like, you're just working on it on the side. There's no customers yet. It's all about the potential and the future. And there's nothing stealing your time and attention because, you know, you can just go work on this thing whenever you have time. Right?

Jon:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And then you get a few beta customers like we did. And that's still pretty fun because now you have these people who are super passionate, who are on your side, who are paying you money for this thing that's not really ready yet. And you're getting all this feedback, and, again, it's still kinda fun. But as soon as you launch, like we did in August 2018, then everything changes. Because from August to September, we went from $1700 a month to $23100 a month.

Justin:

All of a sudden, we have way more users. And, I mean, that doesn't sound like much, but that was almost doubling the number of users we had.

Jon:

Yeah. Right.

Justin:

And instantly, once you've launched, you start to feel the pressure. And around this time also, I remember you were you I was like, so how are you doing? And you're like, I just kinda feel, like, all this infrastructure weight, like, the the the weight of holding up all this infrastructure is on my shoulders.

Jon:

Mhmm. Yeah. I don't did you go back and listen to some of the podcast? I don't remember. I I honestly don't remember.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jason:

Yeah. I've I barely remember last week.

Jon:

So

Justin:

Yeah. I you you you're you were just kinda feeling like you've gotta, you know, you've gotta keep all these servers up. And remember, most of your attention during the day is still dedicated to work stuff. Yeah. Except when you and I would interact, it was I don't know anything about your work stuff.

Justin:

You know? I'm just I'm just in transistor world.

Jason:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Okay. So January, we're at 6,000. Now watch how things change here. Now, of course, this was our trajectory. And what I told the this fellow that called me is I said, you know, maybe your growth will flatten out.

Justin:

But if it continues, you're going to notice some things change here. Because we hit 6 k in MRR June January 2019. By June 2019, we were almost at 20k. So 6 months into the year, January Yeah. To June, almost at 20 k.

Jon:

And that's when we went full time. Right?

Justin:

I went full time in April, and what that meant was we decided to start paying me $5,000 a month, you know, for my my for my time. And then we we said we would back pay you once you came on full time. August is when you officially quit your job. In August, we hit 25 k in MRR. So January, 6 k, we're in the the the trough of sorrow, the trough of all we can see are black clouds and drudgery to August 25 k.

Justin:

And you were able to quit your full time job. And now and we're both now paying ourselves better. We're you know?

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And, really, from August on, at least financially, I've felt secure. And that difference is huge for people who are worried about money. And I think from August on I mean, it's still there's been challenges. But from August on well, actually, I should ask you. From August on, how have you felt?

Justin:

Do you remember was it did it feel like a load off your back to not work the day job and just be able to focus on transistor?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.

Justin:

Okay.

Jon:

But I think that wears off. Not that I wanna go back to another job at all, but, like, the initial excitement and energy from leaving a job and working on this full time, I think it fades because you're just dealing with different stuff.

Justin:

Yeah. Like, eventually, it does become a job again.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's great. Could we have the freedom? We can set our own schedule. We can work whenever we want.

Jon:

Whether or not that translates to working less or not, I'm not sure.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, what what what just talking on that part. I mean, before so, like, let's say June, July before you quit full time. How many out like, you're probably working 40 hours a week at your day job?

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And how many additional hours per week do you think you were working?

Jon:

I don't know. Probably 10 to 20.

Justin:

Okay. So that's, 50 to 60 hours a week?

Jon:

But then some weeks, I have some weeks probably not even I don't know. Some weeks is probably 5 hours. Like, it I think it varied, depending depending on, yeah, how much I could dedicate to focusing on the weekend without, like, taking some time off.

Justin:

Yeah. Actually, even that, we should pause there because even that is significant. Jason Calacanis had this dumb tweet where he said, founders, it takes the same amount of time to build a small, medium, or large business. This is this is my

Jon:

I'm surprised he had a dumb tweet.

Justin:

This is my this is my Jason Calacanis impression. He's he's kinda New York. I I can't really do the New York. He said, you will spend a 100 hours a week building a great bed and breakfast. You'll spend a 100 hours a week building a chain of them.

Justin:

You will spend a 100 hours a week building Airbnb. Go big. And there's just so much in this tweet that I just want to burn to the ground. It's just so silly in so many ways. But the the base assumption being, well, it takes a 100 hours to build a business.

Justin:

And like you said, you know, you were working full time, 40 hours, and then it's an additional 5 to 20 hours a week. That's not that's not a 100. That's 45 to 60 hours a week, total.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, maybe if you're 25 and you have an

Jason:

Adderall prescription and, like like, it's what? I don't

Jon:

I don't I don't understand. You're not nobody's superhuman.

Justin:

Yep. Yep.

Jon:

Yep. Building a bread and bed and breakfast versus Airbnb are it's way different. You're doing I feel like if you're building a bed and breakfast, you're doing so many different things. You're not sitting in front of a computer. You're not, like

Justin:

Yeah. You're you're it's just Even equating those things. And, I mean, for some folks, building a bed and breakfast is what they wanna do. And if you wanna do that, that is I mean, I like a good bed and breakfast. I love staying with people

Jon:

who are

Justin:

committed to hospitality. And, you know, when you're you're, you know and for a lot of those folks, that's a great business. By the way, did Jason does he know anybody building a bed and breakfast? Because I'm just trying to think now. Like, these people that I know that run bed and breakfasts, I don't think they spend a 100 hours a week.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

I don't know. There's a there's a chef in Chicago that I ended up reading her book and she is like a very well respected, highly, you know, rated chef. And she and her partner are building a, I guess, what is essentially a bed and breakfast up in Northern Michigan. But it's like, it's like a, you know, a group a little group of cabins and they cook meals and everyone eats together and all this stuff. But I don't I don't know.

Jon:

I kinda doubt they spend a 100 hours a week. I mean, they're

Justin:

Yeah. I mean and, again, I'm not saying that some, folks don't work that much. A 100 hours a week is 14 hours a day. I mean, that's a pretty long day. My brother is working up in Fort McMurray right now, and he does 12 hour days, but I think they work, what is it?

Justin:

4 days on, 3 days off, or something? Like, it Yeah. A 14 hour day every single day it's just that that's a lot of hours. And now, again, I know some people who are working that much, but, you know, we we can't lose ourselves here.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

I and even, you know, for myself, when I was at the beginning with Transistor, I mean, I was dedicating some significant hours. And sometimes you can do that for a time.

Jon:

Yeah. It's not it's not, you know, it's not the only way to do it. It's not a bad way to do it if you can do it in a healthy way, but people probably overestimate how much they're working. Mhmm. Anyway Yes.

Justin:

Yes. Oh, yeah. And what is work and what does not work?

Jon:

Yeah. Right. There might be a 100 hour weeks here and there. Mhmm. But I doubt they're working a 100 hours a week for a sustained period of years.

Justin:

Yeah. And also, I mean, again, if you wanna work a 100 hours a week, that's fine. I'm I'm not going to hold you back from working a 100 hours a week. I think people are surprised when they hear how how many hours a week do you think you work now, honestly?

Jon:

Probably between 30, 35. I don't know. It's hard to say.

Justin:

Yeah. I think

Jon:

I mean, now is a little bit hard to say because of everything that's going on. Like, it's

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

A weird time. Mhmm. My focus is not is not been great

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

During all this. So Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And

Justin:

and just by the way, if you were at work right now, you would be sitting at your desk working, but you would be just as preoccupied. Yeah.

Jon:

Do you

Justin:

know what I mean? Like, our definition of work the definition of work if you're in an office is your boss looks at you and you're looking at, Excel. Right? As long as you're staring at Excel, you're working. Or as long in your case, as long as you're staring at a code editor, they could go by and go

Jon:

Yeah. I think yeah. I think the yeah. The measure of work is, are you at your desk or in a meeting then you're working?

Justin:

That's right.

Jon:

But I don't think that's true.

Justin:

Exactly. And and so and for me, I think, yeah, I think most weeks, it's 25 to 40 hours. Like, there's there are days where I I message you in Slack, and I go, I'm gonna go snowboarding. And that's 3 hours out of my day. And the the the thing we need to to remind ourselves on is that these habits actually happen early.

Justin:

So, sure, from the 0 to 10 k a month stage, you might be working a lot because you're probably also working a day job. But from 10 k on depending on where you live and your life circumstance and all that, but from 10 k on, you can start to implement some good habits when it comes to work. The folks at Honey Badger that they have for themselves and their employees, I believe, they have written into their I was gonna say their constitution. They have written into their policies 30 hour work weeks. That's that's what they expect.

Justin:

If you can put in 30 hours a week, that's good enough for them. And Yeah. Normalizing that in our culture, which I I mean, who who told us that 40 hours was the the thing? And who told us that a 100 hours is the thing if you're building business? Who makes up these rules?

Jon:

Right. They're just, yeah, they're just made up numbers at the end of the day.

Justin:

I can tell you I've had previous businesses. When I was running my snowboard shop, we were working really long hours. The results aren't always, you know, hours in does not always equal great output out. Yeah.

Jon:

I some I sometimes think about before I left my job and was working on this on the side. So there's there's definitely days where I think, how did we get to this point? Like, how how did we manage to do that much work Mhmm. And build this thing? I was more focused or I'm not sure.

Jon:

There was just more there's there was more to do. Mhmm. I think maybe it was more obvious what we needed to do. Mhmm. And then there's certain days where I think, currently, like, I'm not doing enough, or I'm kind of flailing.

Jon:

So that's most of the stress there is, like, there's so much to do that we wanna do, and it's hard to focus, and I'm not getting enough done, which just leads me to not getting enough done.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

So it it's, yeah, it's weird. I in in some way, like, the the lack I don't know why I wanna say structure, but, like, the just the sheer amount of time we have available to work on this thing leads to less being done, I think or it can. Right? So if you have all day Yeah. Your focus can wander because you think you have unlimited time.

Justin:

Yes. I the but we're also struggling with some strong cultural narratives there. Like, the more we build, the better it is. You know? I mean, I mean, clearly,

Jon:

we need

Justin:

to get things done. Clearly, we need to keep iterating. Clearly, we need to keep making things better for our customers. You know, I think sometimes people might hear us and go, oh, these guys are too relaxed. You know?

Justin:

They they they don't care enough. Listen. We care. Like, I'm before I go to bed, I'm answering customer support tickets. You know, we're we we care.

Justin:

When when when transistor went down the other day for 30 minutes or whatever it was, you cared. Right? Yeah. We do care. We care about this thing, and we definitely care about our customers.

Justin:

We don't wanna let them down. We wanna make this better. We want to have more customers. We wanna serve more people. But this business, from the beginning, has been designed with intention.

Justin:

We had intention, which was we want our lives to be better. And some of what we've struggled with in the last 6 months, let's say, is now struggling against some of these cultural narratives, which is like, well, are we really doing the right thing if we're not working 40, 50 hours a week? Are we really doing the right thing if we're not hiring, you know, if we don't have a 100 employees? Are we really doing the right thing if, you know, sometimes we want to focus on what's happening in society right now and and wrestle, with, you know, wrestle with what's going on in the world. Whether that be the environment, which we've talked about, whether that be racial equality, whether that be really sitting in this moment that we're having right now with, you know, Black Lives Matter and these protests.

Justin:

You know, this, for me at least, is part of it is I I don't want to be completely defined by what I type into my keyboard every day. Yeah. You know what? I don't wanna be completely defined by the number of mouse clicks and most movements I do every day. Those Right.

Justin:

Those that that kind of output or the number of bits I produce every day.

Jon:

I I'm keeping track of that, by the way.

Justin:

Oh, man. Let's take a quick break. I wanna give a shout out. This is the bootstrapper shout out of the week to Less Accounting. Haven't heard that name in a while.

Justin:

Lessaccounting.com. This is cloud based accounting software and services for non accountants. This used to be owned by my buddy, Alan Branch. And now it looks like Paul Kogan owns it. It's great.

Justin:

It's specifically designed for small businesses with 1 to 25 employees and contractors. That's most of us listening. Go check it out. Less accounting dotcom. Yeah.

Justin:

So, I guess the moral of that whole story is, you know, to my friend that called me and to other folks, if your SaaS is growing regularly every month and, you know, some are up and down. But if you have regular growth every month, January 2019, 6000, and then by the end of the year, we were at 46,000. Yeah. And that is just and if you look at the line, it's not a hockey stick. It's just slow slow growth, but it's compounding growth.

Jon:

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We never had some massive spike.

Jon:

It was just, like, constant growth.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, like, month over month just and, you know, one customer adding themselves at a at a time. And we've

Jon:

I'm glad we I'm glad it happened that way as opposed to a huge spike in customers

Justin:

it to happen fast at the beginning. But, really, what you do want is just, manageable growth where it's growing at a good pace every month because those compounding effects will continue to occur. And, again, once you hit certain milestones, you'll notice a a big difference. In the same way I I used to say, like, in a parent's life, when you change that last diaper, it is such a huge weight off your shoulders. Like, I can remember, like, taking out that last bag of diapers to the, you know, to the bin or whatever.

Justin:

And it was just like, we don't have to do that anymore. This, you know, this kid can now do that for themselves. You're gonna feel that same kind of relief as you hit some of these benchmarks. And and it will open up margin in your life. That's our hope anyway that other folks who could experience that.

Justin:

I have a a blog post, where I say good businesses have margin. Profit margin? Yes. But also margin for your time, your emotional and physical health, your relationships, your sanity, and your integrity. You're a human, and humans need breathing room.

Justin:

And, you know, as hard as this year has been for you, and, you know, I mean, I yeah. As for you, I think that the the nice thing about running this business I I don't wanna speak for you, but you you you've got you you've had space to be a human being, I think.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

Do you feel that way? Right? I

Jon:

I do. I do. Yeah. I I do, but, also, some I think I can dive into work as a way of avoiding that stuff. And that's probably something that, you know, I can work on and maybe everyone can work on.

Jon:

But, yeah, it's hard it's hard to walk away because it's, it's something achievable. Mhmm. Right? And you've kinda know what needs to be done to achieve something in the business. So yes.

Helen:

Yes.

Jon:

But yeah. But yeah. Yes. I have I have the time and flexibility to step away if I if I need to and want to.

Justin:

And and and just think about how your life would be different if you had to drive 5 hours north to Fort McMurray and, live in a work camp and get every get up every day at 5 AM and then work a 12 hour day in the oil sands. Yeah. And then so Sandy Hudson, on her podcast, Sandra Nora, said, that all of the energy and time people can dedicate to these protests right now, all of that's possible because they were home because of COVID 19. People were home and had time and energy to wrestle with the moment and then to go out and do something about it. But most of the time, we are completely all of our energy and focus is taken up by our jobs.

Justin:

And I think that there is something significant about that of, you know, like, for most people listening who are still working full time, they get up in the morning. They and everything is about work. They get in their car. They drive to work. They're there all day.

Justin:

They fight traffic on the way home, they're exhausted, they walk in the door, and they do everything they can to just focus on dinner and then, you know, try to love their kids and try to love their spouse and then fall asleep. Like, that is a, an all consuming day. And, it's interesting to see this case study unfolding right now where masses of people are able to engage and, you know, really, really engage with the process, whether whether you agree with the politics or not. And these aren't politics, by the way. We we did get one angry email from our last episode.

Justin:

This has nothing to do with political ideology where we have a society that is wrestling with human rights issues that have been in motion for 100 of years. And, it's one thing to be unwilling to wrestle with those issues to especially as a white person to say, well, I'm just not going to think about the 100 100 of years of white colonization. Like, I'm just going to ignore that part of history. That's one thing. It's another thing to just not have the time or energy.

Justin:

And right now, we're seeing folks with the time and energy. I think one of the the best effects of people creating businesses with margin is then you have the time to wrestle with these things. Both societal things and also personal issues. And you still have to do the work. You still have to decide to do it.

Justin:

But I can tell you for myself personally, having some margin to wrestle with my own personal issues, having some time and energy and space, and, enough money in the bank, that is, that's been huge for me. I would way rather have this than to be preoccupied with working all day and coming home and and just not having any energy or time to even think about, you know, whether it's world issues, community issues, or personal issues. And, yeah. I yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. That makes that makes a big difference. I hadn't really thought about it like that as far as what what's different this time around for all of these, you know, the protests and everyone's kind of grappling with what's going on. And, yeah, it's not all of it, but certainly part of it is probably that they have more time to really think about it.

Justin:

Do do you wanna just briefly describe how what why we had a little bit of downtime and how we resolved it?

Jon:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had some downtime around Memorial day in the US. Happened 2 mornings in a row at around the same time. And it was a little baffling at first.

Jon:

Our servers were sort of just overwhelmed. Processors were spiking to a 100%, which just, you know, blocked any web requests for a while or a lot of web requests. Turns out what happened was we have a client, who is the, the Department of Veterans Affairs in the US. They have a podcast with us. They had our embeddable player on their website, on the sidebar, which appears on every page.

Jon:

And this is during Memorial Day, which deals, you know, what they deal with veterans all the time. And they sent out a newsletter to, I think it was 4,000,000 members.

Justin:

I had I had no idea that they were that they they had that big of an audience.

Jon:

Yeah. And so, you know, not everyone is is clicking links every day, which I think what happened is that the newsletter was sent out Monday. Some people read it on Monday. Some people read it on Tuesday. But the issue was is that our embeddable players, which are basically just a bunch of HTML, were they're cached in our system, but not cached well enough.

Jon:

So basically any request to an embeddable player was hitting our servers to check a few things, and it just sort of piled up. So the fix there was to offload all that to an external CDN. So now all those embeds are running on their own subdomain, their own CDN Mhmm. Completely independent from our main web app. So and then dealing with that is just, you know, dealing with when you need to expire those things.

Jon:

If someone updates an episode or some details about the show, you have to expire the actual embed so they get refreshed and recached in the on the CDM. So, yeah, it was like it ended up being about a week of work and frustration, but just to get it working, like, as well as it should. It wasn't it was not really a matter of just, like, pointing a CDN to a subdomain.

Justin:

Yeah. It's a

Jon:

little bit little bit more than doing some research on some other CDNs that allow for, you know, a little bit better, expiration of of items that are cashed.

Justin:

Yeah. It So yeah. That was fun. Fun. You know?

Justin:

And it's it's the thing, like, as as your little baby Rails app grows up, it it you know, at the beginning, it's like, well, we'll just have everything on, you know, AWS server somewhere. And then it's like, oh, wait. Now we need a CDN. Okay. Yeah.

Justin:

But now we need a media CDN. Okay. Now we need, something to run this thing. And eventually, you know, that you you have to yeah. You you have to evolve beyond this this nice little little baby app that you made Yep.

Justin:

Way long ago. Yeah. And now that it's done, it's kinda cool. It's like we've got, you know, we've got all so so

Jon:

We shouldn't have a problem with that anymore. Now something else will probably pop up.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's I mean, I I kinda like this idea that there's all these, like, concurrent things happening and services running at the same time.

Justin:

You know? I I love that idea that even even the idea that our marketing site is separate from our app. And so if the marketing site goes down while the app's still up, you know, and and, I don't know why I like that so much, but it just feels fun. There's all these little things running at the same time. All these machines

Jon:

running at

Justin:

the same time.

Jon:

Yeah. There's there's definitely other areas we can improve, but that'll be a little bit more difficult. Yeah. So if if the main Rails app goes down, certain things should still work. Right?

Jon:

Like, RSS feeds will currently work because they're also on their external CDN, but, other things will not. So it's, yeah, it's hard. It's, I mean, it's hard to ensure that you have a 100% uptime. It's really not possible because anything can happen.

Justin:

I used to have this vision of programmers as, like, these, like, super, like, you know, dignified, almost professorial people, you know, determining algorithms. You know? But it turns out you're just like people walking around the boiler room with some duct tape. Oh, man.

Jon:

That's it.

Justin:

You're just, like, walking around. It's like, oh, this pipe's leaking. Well, let's see if we can connect it to this one over here and, tape that up, and there we go.

Jon:

Yeah. That's pretty much pretty much what it is. Oh, this one is a lead pipe. Can I get rid of that one? Can't drink out of that.

Justin:

And how much of the Internet is just built this way?

Jon:

I think it's the entire Internet. You're I mean, I think everyone has these ideas that, like, the apps they depend on and, like, these big services, like, I don't know, let's say Facebook or Google or whatever. They're all built the same way. It's just a patchwork of pipes and duct tape.

Justin:

Oh, man. Love it. Love it. Well, that was good. We we recorded about 42 minutes, and we didn't know if we were even gonna have, 15 or 20.

Justin:

So good to hear from everybody. Thanks for listening. And, John, why don't you say thanks to our patrons?

Jon:

Thanks. Yeah. Thanks as always to everyone, for supporting us on Patreon. We have Colt Borg, Mark Binder, Anton Zoran, Bill Condo, Sofia Contero, Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Prada Yumneschen Becker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Jane Smith, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitmer, Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Justin:

Junta.

Jon:

And Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.

Justin:

Thanks everybody. And we'll see you next week.