Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.
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 Buddha, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing follow along as we build transistor.fm. .Fm. So down a little little bit of a break last week.
Jon:
Yeah. We had a busy week. We're both kinda busy or just a little bit
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's I think it's okay to take a break every once in a while. Actually, we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. But I thought maybe we'd start the show just doing kind of a general I don't know, an update on Transistor, how things are going.
Justin:
So, I mean, the most interesting thing I think for people listening is probably we had, 2 really high growth months over the, you know, March and sorry, April May. And we've been wondering if that would continue, and June has definitely been slower. So I'm not exactly sure what to think about that. Like, what
Jon:
Yeah. I don't even know what to think about April May. I mean, was it because of COVID 19 and people were at home starting podcast, or was it just it's really it's sort of hard to tell. Mhmm. And now there's the slowdown.
Jon:
Is it because everyone who wanted to start a podcast tried to start 1.
Justin:
Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon:
You you had mentioned maybe it was some sort of because of the unrest in the US, but I don't know if that would necessarily be the case. It it would almost seem like there'd be more of them being started because people would wanna talk about
Justin:
Oh, yeah.
Jon:
I I Ray Ray race issues.
Justin:
Yeah. I had wondered if it was the protests, and that that kind of, you know, just civil unrest that was maybe affecting things.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
My my sense is that it was during the lockdown, people saw it as an opportunity to finally start that podcast that they'd wanted to start. We had reports of podcast microphones selling out at Amazon. Multiple people on Twitter saying they wanted to get one, but they couldn't. So I think that's actually probably what happened. And interesting to see how you know, we always think of human beings as individuals, but they really do move in groups.
Justin:
Like, I had this thought when the lockdown happened, I've always been into these looping machines.
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
And I was like, maybe now's the time to get that looping machine. And I wasn't the only one to have that thought. Like, looping machines also, were sold out in a lot of places. So there was something about being in your house going, okay. You know, this is the time to get that VR headset.
Justin:
This is the time to get that microphone and do that podcast.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, the all that stuff. Nintendo Switching is sold out everywhere. A lot of yeah. Just things that you would, yeah, you would use at home Yeah.
Jon:
To pass the time. Either, you know, new projects or just something fun.
Justin:
Again, I find that stuff fascinating how there can be these conditions in society that lead to market demand. And this is one of the things I would go back to school for is, I think I've gotten fairly good at being able to observe and somewhat determine when there is market demand and respond to it. So over the years, I've been able to, identify oh, wait. This there's increasing market demand here, and maybe we should respond to it. But what I'm still not sure about is how that demand gets created.
Justin:
Like, what causes that rising tide of a bunch of human beings to all kind of in a group, at the same time, decide to get into podcasting, or to, switch to Slack, or to get a chat widget on their website? Like, what are the conditions that leads to that happening? And I think that would be fascinating to do, like, a master's or a PhD on that to figure out. Because there's for sure, there's there I don't even know what is that economics? But it for sure, there's some feedback loops in there.
Justin:
Right? As things become more popular, it reinforces popularity. You know, if your friend has a podcast and then your other friend gets a podcast, part of you wants a podcast. Yeah. So yeah.
Justin:
Anyway, that we we saw these these growth numbers. And now, June, we're still growing, but we're not growing as fast.
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. We have we still have yet to hit a month where we've actually Mhmm. Lost money. Wait.
Jon:
And I don't know if that's coming or like, that'll be that'll be a
Justin:
tremendous thing.
Jon:
If we have a month where it's like, oh, our revenue actually went down.
Justin:
Well and and this, yeah, well and this goes in brings up another issue, which is we haven't faced the plateau, and we haven't also faced, yeah, a a downward trend. And Right. Which, I mean, is, you know, especially in
Jon:
the US, I can't speak to Canada or many other countries, but, the financial situation in this country is not great. Like, it was prop it was propped up by some some, you know, government incentives to to give people money and stuff during coronavirus, but it's that's also not getting better at the moment. So, like, there's still the potential for a massive economic downturn Yeah. In this country, which would probably affect us quite a bit more than we saw, I think.
Justin:
So part of the reason we're exposed is we do have a lot of hobbyists and, you know, people doing this podcast on the side. And so their transistor subscription is on their personal credit card.
Jon:
Yep.
Justin:
On the other hand, we don't we're we're somewhat protected because it's very unlikely that, you know, a bunch of those individual plans will all cancel at the same time. If we notice, you know, a an increase in churn that will we we'll notice that, like, we'll be able to see it coming, basically. It I don't wanna be naive and and say we don't need to keep an eye on it. And I think also this is a good time for us to start thinking about the inevitable end of the wave we're on. So Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. We've we've and we've talked about it very briefly as far as, like, what what's next? What what could we add or what could we kind of something new we could come up with to sort of add on a new, like, layer of value or Mhmm. Some some new feature or something that would attract maybe Yeah. Type
Justin:
of feature. I one thing one question that's interesting to ask there is what what is what are we trying to optimize for? What what's our goal? And I think part of our goal is we've built up this asset and we know that it's not going to go forever. And so we're trying to now, derisk ourselves, diversify the risk.
Justin:
And one way to do that is to start another product. Another way to do that is to evolve the product so that you're kind of, like, swimming out to the next wave that's just starting to build. Another way to do that is to take some investment and take money Another way to do that is to, you know, optimize for expansion revenue or go after different types of customers. So there's there's some other options. There's some options ahead of us, and it it feels like it's worth considering those things.
Justin:
I think you and I both kind of will default to how do we make the product better, or maybe our second option would be what other kinds of products could we build. But to know that there are other options that we should probably also consider consider. Right? That what Right. What and, I mean, I haven't even mentioned all of them.
Justin:
Like, there are new channels that we haven't pursued. We could, you know, hire a full time salesperson to just go out and basically speak to people who are hosted with our competitors and ask them if they wanna switch. Like, there are other things we could do to I think it's to protect ourselves because I mean, I can't yeah. It'll be interesting to speak for you to speak for yourself. But, I mean, right now, I, I have definitely, I have I wanna make plans for the future.
Justin:
And as stable as MRR is, you know, like, let's say I buy a new house, which is something I'm considering. There's always these thoughts of, okay. Well, how protected am I right now? And the future is unknown. And so what are some ways we can build some resilience into, you know, into the system here.
Justin:
Do you do you think like that at all? Or how do you think about things?
Jon:
Yeah. Sometimes. But I think I also think a little bit more about, like, how big do you wanna get, which is something we've talked about before.
Justin:
Like, in a stressful way. Like, you don't wanna get too big.
Jon:
Like, I just it's hard it's hard for me to see revenue dropping so fast that we have no control over it. Right? So to sort of think about think about, you know, how to build in resiliency, if I I just feel like we sort of have to keep on top of it as tap as we see it happening. I mean, I don't know. I I guess nothing's certain.
Jon:
Right? I mean, there could be a day where something happens and people just cancel very fast. But but on the other hand, like, you know, if you have a full time job, there's really no guarantee that you're gonna have your full job there either.
Justin:
Yeah. I I I mean, in some ways, just you and I talking about it right now is helpful. This is this is why podcasts are helpful in the therapy sense because, you know, I said something and then you said something. And as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, yeah, like, let's think about our risks.
Jon:
Yeah. And it's we have a we have a good buffer right
Jason:
now Mhmm.
Jon:
As far as money goes. Like, you know, I think we talked about that at the onset of this pandemic. It's like we could take a decent hit and still be okay. Yeah. And that didn't happen, which is great, but I think the same still goes for for whatever's next.
Justin:
And looking I sometimes just looking at the numbers when you get anxiety. I think this is a common thing for founders is you get you you get anxiety and you just let the anxiety jiggle around in your brain. Right? Like, I could read the news and it's like, oh, look at this looming economic, you know, tsunami that's coming. And I could also just look at the numbers and go, okay.
Justin:
Well, I can't predict the future, But, you know, like, our our highest churn was actually before the pandemic in January. And then before that, we had high churn in August as well, August 2019. And so we're down from both of those highs. There's something about that that I think is reassuring to to think, okay, well, you know, there's going to be some churn. But right now, there's nothing in our charts that show, you know, that we should be really, really concerned.
Justin:
And now we've been in business for a couple years. And so I can look at, you know, all the way back from May 2018. And I can see yeah. I mean, actually, if we look at we had some really high churn numbers in September of 2018. I don't know what happened there.
Justin:
September 2018, like, some big churn numbers. Maybe because
Jon:
That's right after we launched.
Justin:
Yeah. So maybe and because the numbers were so low back then yeah. Like, actually, revenue churn spikes at the same time that growth rate is spiking, which was, like, right right after we launched. Yeah. That's that's probably why.
Justin:
So, yeah, I think that's interesting to kind of take a pulse. But on the other hand, think about what do we want to do. Right? Because we know if we just sit still and don't do anything, if we don't evolve, then we become Kodak or, you know, some of these other companies that just we're too comfortable.
Jon:
But on the other hand, that is still an like, that is an option. We we could literally not add anything new and just do customer support and then take that time to work on something else. And we'd still make revenue every month, which I don't think either of us wanna do right now, but it is Yeah. That is an option.
Justin:
Yeah. There's other ways for us to diversify. And it's interesting, you know, like ConvertKit, they just launched a digital commerce. So they're basically trying to become more like Gumroad or Podia. And that's interesting to me.
Justin:
It's like, okay. Wow. They're they're making moves. Right? They have aspirations of becoming a $1,000,000,000 company.
Justin:
And that's interesting. Basecamp just launched HEY. So, you know, of all the people who would be kind of financially set up, you gotta imagine that's Jason and David. And Yeah. They still felt like they wanted to put something new into the world.
Justin:
You know, that that's interesting as well. And then you have Peldi at Balsamic, and he's kind of you know, he's just building new versions of Balsamiq. And in some ways, I think he's, he's trying to figure out how we can pull himself out of the company. And he's kind of gotten what he wanted out of the company. Let's take a little break.
Justin:
Let's do our bootstrapper shout out. This is another name I recognize. Newsy, nusii.com. It's online proposal software. So it's for creatives like website developers, designers, and marketing agencies.
Justin:
And, this is owned by Michael. I know I've known Michael for a while. But yeah. If you want simple proposals in minutes, nice proposal templates, you're a freelancer and you need to, you know, send out a bid or whatever, this is the software to do it. Nusiiinewsy.com.
Jon:
Not to be confused with Newsies, the Disney film from 1992, starring Christian Bale. I had to look that up.
Justin:
I remember that. That's that's hilarious.
Jon:
That has a 39% score on Rod's Bayless.
Justin:
But it doesn't matter. People that that movie resonated. Weirdly on Google, 83% liked the film. Interesting. Yeah.
Justin:
There's definitely some nostalgia. The box office for Newsies was 2,800,000. Just seems so small. The budget was 15,000,000.
Jon:
Yeah. It does. Speaking of industries that you glad you're not in at the moment.
Justin:
Yeah. Running up to you. Not so much. But, I mean, the I always I mean, I don't know if I love it when things disrupted. But it is interesting that, like, if you asked most people, would you prefer the choice of going to the theater or being able to watch it in your home, but at the same time that it's in the theater?
Justin:
People will say, well, yeah, I would like to have that choice. And more often than not, I probably choose. I just wanna watch it at home.
Jon:
It'd be nice to have a choice. There are certain movies I would definitely wanna watch in movie theaters.
Justin:
But you can see it's like a false choice. And I think whenever there's a false choice, this would actually be another inter interesting question for you and I to ask ourselves. Like, what are the false choices that we present our customers or that the podcast industry presents customers because it's just the way it is, or it protects our interests or whatever? Because those are possible places to be disrupted. And you know that Disney is is running that math right now.
Justin:
And if they feel like it is to their advantage to just start, you know, sending theater releases directly to Disney plus subscribers, but you have to pay, like, an extra $20 or whatever, and people are willing to pay it, they're running that math. And Right. Yeah.
Jon:
It could it could change things forever.
Justin:
Because it is a false choice. Right? Like, in some ways, the theater companies were holding everyone ransom saying, well, no. You've gotta go through us because we've got this big distribution channel. And if you, you know, do go direct to video, then we just won't deal with you anymore.
Justin:
We'll we'll run your your next movie on less screens. And they had some bargaining power, but as the leverage changes
Jon:
Yeah. You might get you might get more, yeah, you might get more people watching it because, you know, to take a you know, if it's a kid's movie, you're taking a family of 4 to a movie. It's like
Justin:
it's crazy. Yes.
Jason:
The experience now.
Justin:
And if you've ever, like I remember we took our kids to a movie when they're really young, The Incredibles. And my son just would not sit for the whole thing. And so, like, 20 minutes in, we just ended up going outside for a walk. It's like, okay. Well, that was fun, you know.
Justin:
Yeah. So those false choices are interesting. There's there are a lot of those, like, you know, software licensing. The way software gets licensed is one of those false choices where, you know, sometimes you you pigeonhole people into a certain license type, but, really, what would be better for them is, you know, giving them more freedom or something. And there's opportunities there.
Justin:
You know, like I mean, in some ways, Netflix is taking advantage of this. Right? They can produce content and then just say, well, we're just gonna skip the theaters, and we're just gonna go directly to Netflix subscribers. And, let's talk about this next one quick. In our calendar, John, there's a big note for July 2nd, and it says
Jon:
It says slow down
Justin:
all caps. Down.
Jon:
Now I noticed it last week. Prepare to slow down was on the 25th of June. So I feel like we're
Justin:
in we're in we're in the episode of, Bill and Ted's excellent adventure where our our our past selves are leaving notes for our future selves.
Jon:
So we did a slowdown over the holidays in which we didn't really we didn't record, and we didn't really build a lot of new things. We kinda took some time off, and we had we planned out these slowdown periods back the middle of last year. I don't remember when we did it. With, you know, obviously not realizing that we'd be in
Jason:
the middle of the pandemic.
Jon:
And things would be a little bit weird and different than we thought they would be.
Justin:
Yeah. Because things kind of naturally slowed down, but in a weird way.
Jon:
Yeah. Right. I mean, are do you still feel like you need to slow down?
Justin:
Well Take
Jon:
a break for this summer?
Justin:
Thoughts about this. One is, my kids are just now out of school. And so part of the reason I've had this feeling in the past is when I was running my own business, I'm just I was always, you know, in the grind and would rarely kinda come up for air and look around. And so, invariably, like, I would get kinda sideswiped by the summer where all of a sudden my kids are home, and I'm still going to the office full time. And it's just, like, there's just conflict because that my kids are home.
Justin:
And not even that, like, I I think even if I didn't have kids, it's like, it's when my family comes and visits. It's like, it's when my friends want to go float down the river or go for a bike ride. And for me, personally, I don't know how you deal with this stuff, but for me, personally, I just I I'm not naturally good at taking time off. Like, here's a good example. Like and I don't know why it frustrates me so much, but, like, my friend, Tony, he had my boys over at his house with his boys.
Justin:
And then when he dropped my boys off, they were all going mountain biking. And I instantly kinda had this pang of, like, like, I I haven't created room for us to all go mountain biking really this year. And and that happens to me all the time. Like, it'll be the middle of the summer and I'll be like, oh, like, I didn't plan anything special. Like, we didn't go camping or and so
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, certainly this summer.
Jason:
Yeah.
Jon:
It's It's it's harder to do it here maybe than Canada. I don't know. But
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, people can camp.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, you can't hear too. Yeah. It's it's a little more difficult. But it yeah.
Jon:
It is. I for me, it is. I don't generally do a great job
Jason:
of planning to take time off. Mhmm. It's, like,
Jon:
it's easy to just think there's unlimited amount of work and
Justin:
Well and, like, routine is good, but
Jon:
So is variety.
Jason:
Yeah. So It's a good
Justin:
way to put it. It's a good way to put it.
Jon:
And, also, I mean, the thing I've you know, the thing that would be night nice to take a break now I mean, Illinois is in a decent place with, you know, COVID 19 Mhmm. As opposed to some of the other areas in the US at the moment, which is going back up pretty severely. But, you know, my concern is that we in the US are gonna be stuck inside again in the winter anyway. Yeah. In the fall, we're gonna be things are gonna be closed down again.
Jason:
Mhmm.
Jon:
And might be beneficial to sort of try to take advantage of some of that now. Get outside while it's nice out. Mhmm.
Justin:
Yeah. So it sounds like we're actually both feeling like now is a good time to slow down. In terms of, like, are we going to start a big new project right now? Like, am I gonna take a break from blogging and tweeting, which is, like, a big part of, like, my brand, but also something that drives a lot of interest to Transistor. But do I wanna, like, do I wanna keep that up over the summer, or do I wanna create space for like, if for example, like, I could tweet all all weekend, and it could just consume my whole weekend.
Justin:
Right. And maybe I just need to take a break and, like, have, you know, have some space to, like, oh, like, I'm not staring at my screen. I'm not looking at customer support. I'm not, you know, uploading this podcast that I forgot to upload after we recorded. I now have space to look at my boys on the couch playing Ipads and go, oh, man.
Justin:
Like, let's get outside.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, you know, schedule a hour a day or half hour to do that stuff for every other day. I don't know.
Justin:
Yeah. I
Jon:
think it's less that that stuff is less of a concern to me because I just don't really do much of it.
Justin:
Yeah. But Yeah. So yeah. What what do you think? Do you think we should stick with our plan?
Justin:
I also like the idea of of having a cadence anyway. Like, we kind of have to this last summer because last summer was the summer where we're like, okay, like, let's, you know, let's try to do this. And Yeah. But getting in the habit of it and going, okay. Yeah.
Justin:
I'm gonna create some space and kind of put myself in that mode of it's summertime. Let's let's answer customer support. Let's, you know, but let's give us ourselves time to go outside. Let's give ourselves time to do a road trip if it's allowed. Like, it it would be nice to have some of that in there.
Jon:
Right. Right. I mean, there's it would be nice whether or not we do it this week or not. I don't know because we're there's a couple things we're trying to finish
Jason:
up.
Justin:
Yeah. We have that. The API v one is kind of
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, it's mostly done. I think we could probably get that out this week in some sort of, like, trial version for certain people that we choose or wanna use it.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
And then maybe actually release it after some sort of break.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And then I'm still trying to finish up this new draft schedule, publish workflow for for episodes for podcasts. So Yeah. Be nice to get that out too. Yeah. The, you know, the the thing is, though, that, like, both of those are gonna generate probably some new support requests.
Jon:
So
Justin:
Mhmm. I mean, support is support is, like, not as much of a concern for me because I've kind of come up with a, you know, we have Helen helping us out. And then I just like I'm getting pretty good at answering stuff on my phone. And so it's not like I'm completely disengaged, but it feels like support is like and maybe even, like, I'll still, in the summer, wanna be able to walk down to my office and get a coffee and, you know, like, go through some tickets and then, you know, go home.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
So I yeah, I mean, support is one of those things that and also, actually, I I've just, started pair programming with a new, just a contractor in in, Texas. And, you know, I think she's available all summer, and I've actually been really enjoying it. And it's I might that might be worth having scheduled, you know, like, okay. Well, this is fun, and it's like, she's learning and I'm learning, and we're, you know, we're and we have a project where we're we're trying to, get it on maybe change the site to Netlify and have it all statically generated. Once we get that project done, then, you know, there's like we could spend time refactoring all this template code that I've written.
Justin:
We could build some new like, she's I think has enough, JavaScript chops that we could build, like, you know, some experiments, like maybe a podcast name generator, you know, like some some marketing kind of engineering is marketing. So I it feels like you and I always find something to kind of chip away at. It's like giving ourselves permission, I think, to, for example, maybe not record the show through the summer.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Giving ourselves permission to not have to build a big a big new cycle, like, we can we can finish the projects we're on and, you know, maybe just have those projects that we just chip away at over the summer that don't even have a defined cycle. They're just like things we we work on as we're in the midst of wakeboarding and hiking. Right.
Jon:
Right. Yeah. I mean, there's there's definitely a number of features that we've thought about that might need just need some research or just, like, playing around with a few things to actually decide whether it's worth it or not. Or
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. And that that's type
Jon:
of stuff. Like, I don't us taking a break doesn't mean we're gonna step away from our computers for a month, Really. I mean,
Justin:
it's I always like the way Paul Jarvis put it. He's he says, you know, I'm taking he emails his newsletter list and says, I'm taking a break over the summer, doesn't mean I'm not going to be working. It's just I'm going to be doing things that require kind of heads down mode and thinking. What I like about it is it acknowledges that so much of that time when you're really on and you're really consuming the fire hose of business. You know, like, for me, it's like, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm sucking up tweets and emails and meetings and podcast interviews and new blog post ideas and new product ideas and partnership requests.
Justin:
And that's just a big fire hose. And when I'm on, I really like it. And for you, it's like you're sucking up, like, you know, working with a contractor. Here's a bunch of new issues. Here's a big, hairy, project that you need to finish.
Justin:
Here's a whole refactoring. Here's, you know, a bunch of support tickets that only you can deal with. And I think there's something about saying, okay, I'm just gonna turn off the fire hose of all the extra stuff that isn't, like, deep work that I just like, deep thoughtful work that I wanna get done. And, even though I think the fire hose, at least for me, being in marketing and sales is, like, important. I I think I do need to be, like, in the in the the fray, you know?
Justin:
Mhmm. Taking time to not be in the fray, I think is is healthy.
Jon:
I would agree with that.
Justin:
Cool. So let's stick with the plan. And I think what we're doing now is we're announcing that we are going to pause the podcast. So, again, if we feel like recording an episode or maybe I'll feel like, you know, having a call with somebody and publishing it, we'll still do that. But, if you don't see an episode for from us, until the fall, that is why.
Justin:
I think I tried publishing all through the summer last year. And again, maybe I I'll do that, but I I just don't wanna promise anything.
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. We can we could do a, Yeah. A slow down check-in. Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I don't know. Exactly. Why don't we end off? We weren't sure if we were gonna talk about this, but I think it's worth talking about. Yeah.
Justin:
You you you okay. So simple cast. One of our competitors sold to Sirius SiriusXM Radio. And, yeah, what were your thoughts when you heard about it?
Jon:
I think it makes sense. It's sort of another one of those, you know, like, Spotify buying Anchor. It's this consolidation of podcasting related tools under these larger broadcast companies, I guess. Mhmm.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And Sirius also owns Pandora, which is a music and podcasting, you know, listening, platform. Yeah. So I it makes it certainly makes sense, for them. I obviously have some other thoughts on the issue that maybe we'll talk about at some point.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. There's like an there's like an undercurrent. We can't we always kinda dance around.
Jon:
I'm like, maybe I should talk about that. Maybe not.
Justin:
Yeah. No. It's I I wasn't surprised. Yeah.
Jon:
You know, it it they raised money. It seems like any company that raises money is gonna at least, at some point, think about selling
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Because they have investors who need to get a return on their money.
Justin:
Yeah. And, I mean so, yeah, we have we have some, like, personal issues or experience with Simplecast that, yeah, we probably can't talk about right now. I if we if we put those feelings aside, which is actually kinda difficult, but if we put those feelings aside, what's interesting about it is that Simplecast as opposed to Gimlet or Anchor or any of these other companies is more our scale. Like, they're they are they're really one of our closest competitors.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Like, people switch to us from Simplecast all the time. And I looked up their numbers, and they have about 2 times the podcasts in Apple Podcasts than we do. And so they're a much older app, and we it's actually surprising how much ground we've gained on them. I think we have about 5,000 podcasts in Apple Podcasts, that at least this one stats place knows about. We have much more podcasts than that on transistor, but and then they have about 10,000, so about double.
Justin:
And if you look at our overall market share, Simplecast has 0.828%, so under 1%, and we have 0.389%. So we're we're effectively at the same scale. And they had raised 7,000,000 reportedly. And what was interesting is some of the investors were on Twitter, and they seemed pretty happy about the exit.
Jon:
It kinda makes you wonder how much they sold for. I I think I think because Sirius is a publicly traded company, we will actually know that number at some point. Yeah.
Justin:
That's a good point. I didn't think about that.
Jon:
Yeah. It's interesting because it's just that it compared to Transistor, like, it's just the 2 of us, we have not taken investment. I it seems like Simplecast has something like 20 employees. I mean, that's, like, a at least a $2,000,000 payroll every every year. Yeah.
Jon:
Probably.
Justin:
And what else is interesting about that when we talk about scale is that so they have 5,000 podcasts. We have, sorry, they have 10,000. We have 5,000. But we have 2 full time employees. And you say they have 20?
Jon:
I I think they have something like 20. I mean, it's I don't know exactly, but it's it's up Yeah. They have a they have a pretty sizable team. Plus they have, you know, they they do have much bigger, more popular podcasts, right, which definitely increase things like bandwidth cost.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
You know, I don't know what type of custom contracts they have with those podcasts. They may be fairly expensive Mhmm. For those podcasts to, you know, host a simple cast. I don't really know, but it's a weird thing to think. But, like, I'm you know, I if everyone's happy about it, then I'm happy for them.
Jon:
Like, they seem like good people, and they did build a a great product, and they have some definitely some cool technology behind, like, a lot of their analytics and, like, advertising stuff they have built in and Mhmm. Editing tools and dynamic, you know, dynamic insertion of things. But it's just I I don't know. I just I still am just so skeptical of these, like, whatever if you wanna call them liquidity events, right, where these things happen and then just a bunch of people on Twitter just, like, going back and forth congratulating each other about about joining the team or
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And and, you know, saying that nothing's ever gonna change, which
Justin:
It always does. Yeah.
Jon:
Things always does.
Justin:
And Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. You know, I some people made a bunch of money. I don't know who you know, I don't know if maybe the the founders did or
Jason:
Mhmm.
Jon:
You know? It's impossible to say. But
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that's the other part that's interesting is efficiency wise, Transistor is a much more efficient company. By the way, SeriousBot adwiz adswiz.
Justin:
Adswiz. A digital advertising company in 2018 for 66,300,000 in cash plus shares. And it's not out of it out of the out of possibility that it could have spent the same for Simple Chasm. My my guess is it's in the range of 14,000,000 to 35,000,000 is was the actual acquisition price, but I'm completely guessing. I don't know.
Justin:
What's interesting is we go, okay. Transistor has a product that's gained a ton of ground on them. Transistor is a much more efficient company, and Transistor has raised no money. And Right. For us, I think, as founders, there's just gonna that that's going to make you pause no matter what because yeah.
Justin:
I I maybe, like do you wanna bring up that conversation you had with with Mike?
Jon:
Oh, yeah. But, yeah. He had he had mentioned that he had talked to you about sort of what he would be happy to walk away with if something he had built had gotten purchased, and he, you know, he mentioned something like any any number that that sort of is a life changing number
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Which can whatever that may be. It's different for everyone, but, like, what's the amount of money that would change your life
Jason:
Mhmm.
Jon:
In a meaningful way? And if whatever that number is, you should take it if it's offered. Right? Yeah. And and that could be anything.
Jon:
It could be the amount of money that you would never have to work again, which for some people would be boring.
Jason:
It could
Jon:
be the amount of money where you could take 10 years off up to 10 years off and just do anything else and not have to worry about necessarily making money. Although I think anyone who has built something and sold it would probably eventually figure out something else that they wanted to do within those 10 year well, before those 10 years are and and start something else or invest or you know, so I'm sure some people might just completely switch to something else entirely. There's a lot you there's a lot of freedom that comes with having whatever amount of money would would be sort of life changing.
Justin:
Yes. And especially having it in now because I mean, going back to our anxiety piece and I'm sure some people who are starting out are going, wow. Like, it's so iterative. Right? Like, when you're going from 0 to $10,000 a month, you're just trying to get to that point where this thing pays, you know, a month's worth of expenses.
Justin:
Right? It's like, oh, I this month, Transistor paid my you know, you're no longer in just like, I'm just building this thing so that hopefully I can survive. Like, your survival instincts are like, okay, now things are starting to become more stable. And that's where I'd say we are now. Like, things are stable.
Justin:
We have some margin month to month. But what we don't have is assurance that for the future.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And in some ways, maybe we do. Right? Like, we could probably borrow against our SaaS revenue and the likelihood that it will not decrease by a ton month over month. But we also know there are disruptive events. You know, I'm sure the the theater industry was like, you know, things are great, but people still are going to see movies.
Justin:
And we've had all these Marvel blockbusters, and, like, what could possibly happen that will disrupt disrupt this? Uh-huh. And, you know, it's like, wow. We didn't think pandemic would be it. You know?
Justin:
Like, you know, maybe there's so many you never know. So certainly, the the most safe and stable is if someone is willing to give you money now, that is, like you said, or Mike said, life changing enough that you don't have to worry about it anymore. There is something about that. And
Jon:
Yeah. There is. I mean, it is it it's appealing in a way. It's also I don't know. But you I feel like we'd be letting our customers down to a certain extent.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Yeah. And, I mean, we've always said this is, like, an unfair question. Because on one hand, we are fiercely independent. And Yeah. We you know, I I you can look at what I've been saying and podcasting and writing about forever.
Justin:
And from the beginning of this podcast, you and I said we wanna be independent. We don't wanna take venture capital money. We want we want to build a great tool that serves customers. We're gonna wake up in the morning and answer customer support requests all the way until we go to bed. We are going to do our best to give people a great experience, and we are going to be unencumbered by, you know, anyone breathing down our neck saying we have to grow at a certain pace or whatever.
Justin:
On the other hand, we've also always said, it's an unfair question because some comes over to your ear and goes, hey, what if I gave you $3,000,000 right now? And you're like, 3,000,000. And you're like, nah. That's probably not well, what if I made it 10, Justin? And I'm like, oh, 10?
Justin:
Wow. Okay. And but, oh, no. Our customers and okay. How about I make it 15?
Justin:
And you get to have Howard Stern's old office. So, you know, it gets to be harder. Right? Like, it's like, Hey, John, I I could give you enough money that you could just bake bread for the rest of your life. I I I'm gonna build you the the most impressive bakery you've ever seen.
Justin:
Like, you you know that there there there's a tension between these two things, even though self righteously, I wanna keep serving our customers. In fact, I think if I had absolute assurance that I could do this forever without the risk of losing it all Right. I would I would choose to do this forever because it I I really do enjoy what I do. And it really shows you how incredible that Bezos deal was that 37 signals got. Because if someone came along now, I think there's been guesses at how much they got.
Justin:
I don't know if it was 10,000,000 or if someone wanted to buy a percentage of our shares and give us each a couple million, that would dramatically change things for me to know that
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Like, like, for 2,000,000, I could buy a really nice house and be mortgage free. And also still have some money for emergencies. You know, it seems like a silly thing to be talking about, especially if you're in the phase where you're just kind of building things up. But eventually, this is you'll get here. Eventually, people get here.
Jon:
Yeah. Where Yeah. Eventually. And, you know, I only either of us knows what necessarily happened with Simplecast, whether or not they were they were approached by Sirius or if they were sort of at the point where they were like, we should sell this because things aren't going as well as we wanted. Or or the investors were getting anxious.
Jon:
Who knows? But but there is, you know, eventually that option to say, alright. We can we can work with someone to shop this around and say maybe someone's interested that wouldn't have necessarily known about us. But I think that's not necessarily anytime soon, although I think we've talked about, like, maybe there's this window of there's this window for podcasting where stuff like that could happen. And after that window, it may not we may have missed it.
Jon:
And who knows what that is?
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. That's the the that is the actual big concern.
Jon:
But then again, you know, places like Libsyn and Buzzsprout have been around for 10 plus years, I think. So
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, our industry definitely grew has grown slowly. And it's very likely that that podcast will continue to be a thing. Although, like, I think there's also ways we could hedge against that too. Like, we we could expand the product in ways that where we're not just relying on podcasting.
Justin:
So yeah, it's an interesting, interesting stuff to think about. And, yeah, I thought maybe the listeners would find that that intriguing maybe just to hear what we're thinking. Let's let's end it here. Let's, give a shout out to the folks who support us on Patreon. And by the way, just so they know, for the past couple months, we've donated, I think, almost all of our Patreon, money.
Justin:
We found some great causes that we've been contributing to. So just so Patreons know, like, we really appreciate their support and we've been trying to pass that, goodwill along. But, yeah, let's thank these folks.
Jon:
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks to everyone, for supporting us, in the past and and currently. We have Colt Borg, Mark Binder, Anton Zoran, Bill Kondo, Sofia Cantero, Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Warhorse Solaire, Ward Sandler, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Avendra Sasse, Prady Yumna Schenbecker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitfer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother, Darby Frey, Samori Acousto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.
Jason:
Junta.
Jon:
Pause. Just waiting for it.
Justin:
I I wanna give some space for the listeners. You know?
Jon:
Well, build up some anticipation. And finally, Kyle Fox from get rewards.com.
Justin:
Thanks, everyone. And we hope you have a great summer. Stay tuned. You never know. We might publish some episodes, and we'll talk to you next time we talk to you.
