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Justin:
Should we do the intro? It feels weird doing it in this time.
Jon:
Yeah. I don't think we need
Justin:
Maybe we should do it just so to give people a sense of order in their lives.
Jon:
Yeah. Sure. Alright. Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your Oh, damn it.
Jon:
Hit the mic. Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app during a pandemic. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. You can check us out online at transistor.fm. Wow. It is
Jon:
What what a difference of week makes? I don't know.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
2 weeks?
Justin:
2 weeks. Yeah. Yeah. And it felt weird publishing last week's episode. I know a lot of people enjoyed it with, Marie Poulin.
Justin:
But we needed kind of a buffer because, you know, things had really just become real here in North America. And it's March 23rd today. And, yeah, feels like a good time for us to check-in, see how things are going. How how are things in Chicago? Are things locked down there yet?
Justin:
They are
Jon:
well, it depends on what you mean by lockdown.
Justin:
Yeah. That's actually by the way, just a sidebar that we should come back to. One of the challenges in navigating all of this has been terminology, but continue.
Jon:
Right. So, yes. I mean, the governor the governor of Illinois issued a stay at home order, last week, which isn't really enforceable in any way
Justin:
yet. Okay.
Jon:
But it's basically stay at home unless you're going to the store or somewhere essential and don't congregate in groups, don't hang out outside in groups. You can go for a walk if you want, you can get outside, but you can't just, like, hang out together in groups. So it's I think it's mostly what people were doing, although some people were not. I mean, it's weird. Like, I certainly haven't been outside that much.
Jon:
I have a feeling it'll get worse, and there's gonna be stricter measures before it gets better, But that hasn't happened yet.
Justin:
Yeah. Because here, it's still, yet people are being told to stay at home. People are being told to social distance, to not meet in groups. I think it's still not meet in groups bigger than 50, but at the same at the same time saying, basically, you know, when you're out, keep your distance from people. Work at home if you can.
Justin:
Schools are closed.
Jon:
And Yep.
Justin:
Bars, restaurants, barbershops, those things are all closed. But restaurants can still do takeout.
Jon:
So, yeah, we're recording this on the 23rd. Yeah. And this stuff obviously, the news is moving fast, so I don't I don't know what it's gonna be like next week or even tomorrow by the time this comes out. Yeah.
Justin:
I mean, that's part of the I think that's part of the what's interesting about recording podcast is they become this snapshot in time. I I've listened to a few podcasts that were clearly recorded before any of this hit North America, and it's just surreal. And then I've now now a few people have started to release episodes that, you know, are more recently recorded. Yeah, it's it's interesting seeing everyone kind of wake up. Not at the exact same time, but I mean, I felt like I was a little bit ahead of the curve, but not by much, you know.
Justin:
Right. Right. Like, you know, maybe I was I was, like, fully woken up for a couple days before it seemed like other people in my my environment were kinda waking up. So it's not like people have woken up pretty fast, it seems. You know, there's definitely examples of, like, you know, spring break on in Florida and stuff that
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Is not great. But yeah. It's a it's a super weird time.
Jon:
It it is. I mean, it's yeah. I was I was talking to some friends and I'm like, we're we are certainly living through history.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
And I don't think anything like this has really happened in a while. Yeah. Certainly not like this. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:
It's hard to know what to say, honestly, because there's just so many moving parts to this. But Mhmm. It's like it's it's hard to it's hard to focus on transistor and get anything done. I mean, aside from helping out customers, like, it feels weird to sit down and try to write a bunch of code. Mhmm.
Jon:
And it's it's been hard to do that and focus on it when there's all these other people out there, like, suffering and their businesses are hurting, or there's people out there who are working in the hospitals and, you know, contributing to, like, trying to make this thing better. Mhmm. So, yeah, it's a little I think it's a little hard to know what to do, and I I would imagine there's a lot of people in that same position. I mean, I can obviously just sit around at home and, like, play video games and watch Netflix, but what is that gonna do?
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's weird because it's not it's you can't just work right now. It's almost impossible because there's just so much of it going on. And and it's also hard to make plans or move towards in in a in a given direction when every day you wake up.
Justin:
And that day is different, completely different than the day that was before.
Jon:
Right. Yeah.
Justin:
And, you know, just you see these things coming in waves almost, like, you can see these effects kind of rippling through society and then eventually rippling towards you. And, like, just now we're starting to hear of people in Vernon getting sick. And, you know, so for a while, it was like, well, why are we doing this? Nobody's getting sick. And then, you know, the the the people in town start getting sick.
Justin:
And it's like, oh, wow. And, you know, but it still hasn't no one that I know in my immediate circle has gotten sick yet, but that's gonna happen.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And but what has happened even faster than people getting sick is people losing their jobs and people, like, a lot of my friends have lost their business or have maybe well, definitely lost a bunch of revenue. And that is I just could not believe how fast that happened.
Jon:
I know. It's pretty amazing how how fast that stuff's happening for restaurants and coffee shop. Basically, the service industry, it's just, like, just collapsed immediately.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. It's it's really weird to know how to help. I mean, I keep getting emails from restaurants I've ordered from or movie theaters I've been to or whatever. They're like, donate to our fund to help our employees. Yeah.
Jon:
Because it's like and you can't do that for everyone. I mean, you can order takeout delivery and help out, but you can't. It'd be nice to be able to donate to everyone, but you just can't. So I don't yeah. It's it's sad to think that, like, maybe you have already been to out to eat at your restaurant for the last time ever that you liked?
Jon:
Like, your favorite restaurant might never open again Mhmm. Or in the same way that it that it was. But, yeah, it happens. I mean, the the margins on restaurants are so low that I don't they obviously don't have just, like, money sitting around.
Justin:
Yeah. The how fragile they are. And, you know, when this first started hitting, there there there's a tension between 2 things, which is on one hand, there's all this social pressure for restaurants to shut down. And on the other hand, they're like some of these restaurants are like, if I shut down, I will lose everything I've worked
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
For up to 10 years. And some of them were still within the boundaries of what the government had said was okay. And, you know, even today, there's some that are trying to stay alive with takeout and delivery. But just how even, like, the the multidimensional difficulty of on one hand having a group of your customers that are judging you for even doing delivery and takeout. And then on the other hand, just having to figure out all the logistics of that, getting your store online.
Justin:
And I've been, like as soon as it started hitting, I had people messaging me. 4 or 5 local businesses saying, can you please help us figure this out? And I've been, like, trying to help them using the tools that they have, Square and Weebly and Squarespace and all these things. And I'm just realizing how difficult this is. And part of it is the tools just aren't really there yet.
Justin:
Like, they're I don't wanna throw anyone under the bus, but it the the user experience of some of these apps just makes me angry right now because the same questions keep coming to me from restaurants. And and then, like, for ex just a quick example. So people are like, okay, I need to make switch my store online. And they've been using Square as their point of sale. And so Square just bought Weebly.
Justin:
And so the idea is that you should be able to flip a switch and just, you know, all the stuff, all of the items you have loaded in your, your Square point of sale device on your iPad, should then just be able to automatically go up onto your online store. It just it's not that easy. And guess the the biggest place where they get stuck is DNS. Right? Like, so they were using a
Jon:
It's not.
Justin:
A Squarespace site, and now they've got to they've got to update their domain. They want their main domain to be this new Weebly site. And I'm technical, and I still can't navigate through all this stuff. Just just seeing the weight of all that applied to these people, like, right now. And it's so easy, you know, even as I've expressed some of this frustration online, it's so easy for people to have, especially technologists, to have pat answers.
Justin:
Like, oh, well, you just gotta, you know, throw a Stripe checkout with a little Stripe JS, and I'm like, you people don't understand.
Jon:
Right. Yeah. These people are scrambling to say their businesses don't they don't wanna worry about technology. They want to immediately be able to sell online.
Justin:
Exactly. And the mobile checkout experience for Square, I'm again, I don't wanna throw anyone under the bus, but it is atrocious. It's 17 fields, 4 different confirmation steps. And for me, at least, the save your settings for a future order isn't working, and I've tried on multiple devices and multiple browsers. And so these things that are broken, it just making me realize.
Justin:
And me even for us as Transistor now, like, when customers call us and sometimes are frustrated and and upset, it makes me I I have so much more sympathy for that now. Because when you're just a a layperson trying to navigate your way through this stuff, and you have to update your DNS settings, and you're, like, trying to figure out what the heck that means and how it actually can work. It is it's frustrating. And and and these steps, these hurdles that you have to overcome, they just increase the chances that you're gonna give up or yeah. Just give give up.
Jon:
Right. Right.
Justin:
And it's just been heartbreaking. It's been heartbreaking to see that a lot of these things are fixable. And even if it even if the these store these shops going online doesn't save the business, it's just even just giving people hope for a day or a week. You know?
Jon:
Yeah. What worries me is, like, I mean, this stuff is just starting to happen. Right? But places have just closed down, and it will in all likelihood, it'd last for a while and I I'm a little worried that people are gonna get burned out by it. Mhmm.
Jon:
Like, there's gonna be this fatigue of, I don't know, trying to help these places out. Mhmm. Like, I think you saw this after
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
After the, the election in the US with Trump. Right? He won and you saw this immediate, outpouring of donations to to certain, like, foundations or whatever charities that would that would sort of, like, help mitigate some of the stuff that he wanted to undo or all these policies he wanted to do. Yeah. But that that didn't last that long because I think people ended up just getting so tired of of just the constant bad news.
Justin:
Yeah. Just getting shout out to Good News Podcast.
Jon:
Right. Exactly.
Justin:
So you think people are gonna get lose steam?
Jon:
Well, yeah. I think they're gonna lose steam. I think there's also gonna be a lot of, like, just people going a little stir crazy by being inside. Yeah. I mean, like, how often can you really order delivery or takeout?
Jon:
Yeah. Probably can't afford it that often.
Justin:
Yeah. No. I I I agree. I'm still fired up right now, so I'm trying to keep as much of this momentum as I have. Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
But I I see the writing on the wall for sure. And I think what gets me even more fired up is just looking at all of these. I think when we rebuild, there's gonna be an opportunity to have a long hard look at how our societal norms are set up, how our government policy is enacted, how our health care systems are structured, and how our our commerce is structured. And Yeah.
Jon:
There's gonna I mean it.
Justin:
There's gonna be like, what's killing me right now is that Amazon is making bucketloads of money right now while local shops are going out of business. And it it's just so clear, like, how many people were actually employed by these local businesses, you know. Like, we always kind of just brush that aside.
Jon:
Right. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I there has to be some assistance from the governments to help out with these small businesses, and I just am, at least in the US, not super confident that that's gonna happen. And but that is, like, that that is what drives the economy because you have all these people making salaries and working in these small businesses that, like, maybe you get overseen and they're the ones obviously buying stuff and going out to eat. And Yeah.
Jon:
So if you get if you remove all of that, it just I I don't know. It just Yeah. It's gonna be it's gonna be bad.
Justin:
Well and but here's the here's what makes me hopeful or at least, yeah. Here's what makes me hopeful is that I can imagine a society that looks different after this. And we are gonna have to make those decisions. Like, those decisions are getting made right now. Are we gonna bail out big mega corpse?
Justin:
Or are we gonna petition our government to send that assistance to small business? So that's, like, the government policy side. There's also a technology side to this, which is it's clear, like, in a crisis, it's that's when you notice if you're the platforms that you've built, are sturdy. And to me, it seems like these ecommerce platforms and, you know, the the way we've organized the technology is breaking right now because it it's just it's not designed to work effectively. And I can imagine a future where let's say, let's just take Square as an example.
Justin:
If Square had an a way of opting in to a network. So if I go to order a screwdriver from my local hardware store and they don't have it, Square automatically recommends another store in my area that does have it and offers free delivery to that place. That's a relatively simple technological fix. It's a platform decision. And you can see how those kinds of network effects would actually make small business stronger.
Justin:
If there was a competitor to Amazon and and a way of like, if I could go on a website, not not amazon.com, and I could search for, again, screwdriver, something that maybe I would have just ordered from Amazon previously. And all of there's all these networked local stores in my area that are there that I can order from easily. And then if there's a way in cities for us to figure out delivery so that the delivery is faster and more efficient than Amazon. Because these people have stock locally, but we're ordering from a warehouse in where I don't know. Where are their warehouses?
Justin:
Minnesota or something?
Jon:
Everywhere.
Justin:
We're ordering from some warehouse in, you know, everywhere. A network of stores with stock become a lot more powerful than some, individual shopkeeper that's just trying to keep his head above water. And there's a way to to network these stores together and make them stronger as a whole and actually compete with Amazon. Because cuss customers, you and I, and everybody else in the world, we're always gonna take the shortest, easiest path. Right?
Justin:
And right now, that's Amazon. Like, I've ordered stuff from Amazon in the past 2 weeks because I I had to order these little security cameras because my office was getting broken into.
Jon:
Oh, jeez.
Justin:
Sorry. That's a a little bit of an impassioned rant, but there's no reason that those little security cameras that I ordered, those might not be in stock somewhere locally. And think about instead of shipping it all the way for again, I don't know where the closest warehouse is to me, but let's say it's 5 hours away. There's there's a a possible future where there's just, like, this efficient green electric transportation that we've enabled in our cities that can get goods to people faster than Amazon can. That's the kind of world I wanna live in.
Justin:
You know? I wanna live in a world where Jeff Bezos doesn't make more money from a crisis.
Jon:
Yeah. Right. I mean, I've ordered from Amazon. It's just because it's the easiest thing to do because I know it's gonna have things.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. But but the and so far, their advantage has been the platform because they've they have all this money and they could create all this distribution. And, you know, they haven't given dividends to shareholders in a long time. And maybe they gave a little bit last year.
Justin:
But the it they they were just kept reinvesting all of this venture capital money and then all this public shareholder money and building this crazy infrastructure that nobody else can compete with. But there is a future world where maybe Shopify does this or Square does this or maybe they all band together and say, you know what? We're gonna create some sort of open source network for these for us to have, the the best inventory, the best prices, and the fastest delivery on the planet.
Jon:
Yeah. That still really only works for cities of a decent size.
Justin:
Yeah. We'll see. I mean, again, theoretically, if you can reveal like, if you're a farmer in in Wetaskiwin you ever been to Wetaskiwin?
Jon:
Never. Sounds lovely.
Justin:
Wetaskiwin, Alberta. If you're a farmer in Wetaskowen, and, you know, the closest the closest city is probably 2 or 3 hours away, It still might be more efficient, especially environmentally, for you to order something. And it says, oh, it's there's there's 1 in Calgary and 2 in Edmonton. And we can ship it via Canada Post, overnight for this price. Maybe that's where the government policy comes in.
Justin:
Like, maybe, like maybe Amazon can't keep subsidizing the cost of postage to run everyone else out of business. I don't know.
Jon:
Yeah. My yeah. I just I'm my concern is that they're gonna be the only ones left standing after this, and it's gonna be just really sad if you can walk around the city and nothing's open. You can't go to eat and all you can do is, like, order from Amazon food delivery or whatever.
Justin:
All of all of Bezos's drones just flying around delivering you stuff.
Jon:
I mean, that is, like, some serious dystopian future that
Justin:
Exactly. And this is why I think part of me even though all of this hurts, and to be honest, I'm pretty naive still because, you know, people I know are gonna get sick and people I know might even die. And that's gonna be super hard. And, you know, I I was listening to, we have some folks on Transistor. Ivy and Dan, I think their last name is Meehan.
Justin:
They have a they have a podcast called Local. And they were talking through, you know, how their first response to this was to do the same thing I'm doing, which is, like, reach out and help everybody. And they were trying to help people get online and try to buy gift certificates. And and then they both had their hours reduced. And I think in Ivy's case, completely.
Justin:
And so there and Dan works for an event startup. And so they're not doing super hot. And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, wait. And they went into little self some self preservation mode. Right?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
So I realized that wave might be coming and that might be coming for you and I too. Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. It's hard to say what's gonna happen.
Justin:
But while I still have this feeling burning in me, I want it recorded somewhere so that maybe it it it puts a fire in all of our bellies at some point to say it's we've gotta do it different. And we can we can imagine a world and it might be a completely different paradigm. Like I said, like, maybe every town center has, like I said, like, a delivery depot that is that's not it's not run by Uber or Grubhub or any of those other people. This is Blurry Depot, and it's got all these high efficiency, high highly efficient electric vehicles, you know, electric bikes and electric cars and whatever. And they're just zipping around town all day delivering goods.
Justin:
And maybe it coordinates with, you know, shipping companies and everything else, and we get we anything that needs to go further can go further. But there's a there's a world where something like that could work.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And there's a world where instead of independent shops having to do everything themselves, there's a network of shops where they have strength in numbers. And if I search for a bike part, you know, at my local shops store and they don't have it, they can immediately recommend another store in town that does. Because currently, what happens if, you know, a local place doesn't have it, I just go to Amazon. But if we can if we can surface all of this stuff, you know, that that it's already in our town or it's already close by.
Jon:
Yeah. It has to be basically just as convenient and just as
Justin:
Exactly. Which is what
Jon:
just as affordable.
Justin:
Which is why I think us technologists have a role to play here. Because, like, bad checkout experiences, we can fix that. Right? Like, we we have we have examples of good Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. That's true. I I don't know. I get I get pretty, yeah, I get pretty pessimistic on this stuff, though. It's just like a bunch of people saying they wanna change the world and then Mhmm.
Jon:
But they're really only in it to make money Yeah. Off their venture capital. It's just like I
Justin:
Yeah. Well, that's that's why I I don't I don't I don't necessarily know if this needs to be venture driven. But
Jon:
Right. But if it's gonna be started if something like that's gonna happen in the US, it's gonna be someone who's gonna wanna make a bunch of money on it. Mhmm. Like, unless something drastic changes.
Justin:
Well but this might be the time where it does. Right?
Jon:
Maybe. We'll see.
Justin:
It'll probably happen locally first. Like, restaurants are gonna band together and go, okay. Next time, this cannot happen. Like, we've gotta figure this out. And they'll be like, oh.
Jon:
Yeah. And again, like yeah. We're I mean, we're talking about the US and Canada mostly, which I think there's certainly other countries in the world that have been preemptively doing a better job of this of protecting these businesses and, like, the government is actually stepping in saying, we're gonna pay employees of your business, like, 75% of their of their of of their wage until this is over because it's worse it's worse and more expensive for us for these businesses to fail than it is for us to just pay money.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, Canada has announced some stuff that I think will be helpful, but I think there needs to be more on that front for sure.
Jon:
And I just don't. I don't see that happening in the US right now with who's in charge because
Justin:
See, this is this is the hard thing that's the hard about talking to you, John, because I I get these hopeful Canadian, spurts of energy.
Jon:
I'm sorry to I'm sorry to crush your dreams.
Justin:
What, yeah, what else should we talk about? We haven't been able to work much.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, we're, you know, trying to get whatever we can done, obviously, you know Mhmm. Doing customer support. But I think you see a lot of this stuff online of people being like, oh, are you new to are you new to working at home? Working from home, here's how best to adapt to it.
Jon:
But also these are sort of weird times, and it's okay if you're not productive right now even if you have been experienced working at home because it's just weird. Mhmm. Nobody can just really sit at home and focus on work and not think about this other stuff happening.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, you you and I have had had a remote company from the beginning, but there's nothing about this that's that's normal. I'm, you know, I I moved all my stuff back home, partly because no one was downtown anymore. And so we had a break in or an attempted break in at our office just because it's easier for people to kinda take advantage of that. And I was like, I gotta
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I gotta bring my gear home.
Jon:
You know, we're obviously there's 2 of us and we can make our own rules, but it's nice to not have either one of us being like, oh, we got all this free time and all this time to just let's crank crank out some code and really focus on this Yeah. Software.
Justin:
Yeah. And I think you
Jon:
know, it's probably an important thing for other managers and owners to relay to their employees of, like, it's okay if you're not a 100% productive right now Mhmm. Or even 50 50%, like Yeah. Just give give your employees a little bit of breathing room.
Justin:
I think this is going to I mean, already there's been a lot of people talking about how to be recession proof. And it's kind of a weird time to talk about that because people are hurting and losing their jobs. And, yeah, I please, if if there are any government officials listening to this, please take care of people. Like, I know this is a huge problem. Like, there's Goldman Sachs is predicting that 2,200,000 people will apply for unemployment insurance in the US this week.
Jon:
Like like this this week. Yeah.
Justin:
And this past week, 500,000 Canadians applied for employment insurance.
Jon:
Yeah. That's amazing how and that is probably mostly from these small businesses and restaurants and service industry. Mhmm. Like, places that have just closed down and, like, it's amazing how fast it happened. It was, like, something like well, movie theaters Yep.
Jon:
Saw some number of, like, movie theater tens dropped 97% in, like, a few days, which makes sense.
Justin:
But Yeah.
Jon:
But, like, god. That's just, like, devastating.
Justin:
It's so devastating. It that this is why in some ways, it it it, shoot. I I can only think of this it it behooves us. Is that a is that a word?
Jon:
Yeah. It's a it's a word.
Justin:
I didn't wanna say it. But okay. It behooves us to actually think about how we can make our businesses and economies recession proof because clearly it has an impact on people.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Obviously, not every business is gonna be recession proof. And obviously, like, this is why it has to there's has to be 3 pillars in our society, and it feels like we've ignored 2 of them. I think the 3 pillars are capitalism, so people starting businesses, all that stuff that we need that for society to run. Government, good governance. And, you know, we can talk about whether there's been that or not.
Justin:
And then the one we're really missing is that third pillar, which is associations and nonprofits and, like, those those kind of organizations in the past had a big effect on societal change. Labor unions might be a good example. Like labor unions have lost almost all of their power. This isn't a comment on whether those should exist or not. But we definitely need organizations like like labor unions that stand up for people in society.
Jon:
Yeah. I think that should be the government. I mean
Justin:
But that's that's why we need it. We need it has to be a triangle, I think. It can't just be because if it's just government and businesses because the businesses are hiring all these lobby groups and stuff, and so they're pretending to be that 3rd pillar. But I think we need, like, a genuine 3rd pillar that's holding the other 2 to account. They should all be, like, intention with each other.
Justin:
You know? The government the government the government should be pulling back on businesses saying, oh, well, hold on. You can't you can't just dump your oil your dirty oil in the river. Sorry. Right?
Justin:
Like, that's the government's job. And, the labor unions are maybe not. But the the nonprofits and these other kind of third party associations need to be looking at both. You know, the Canadian Taxpayers of Federer Federation is one of these in Canada. And saying, hold up, government.
Justin:
We want you to be accountable for the money that you're getting from taxes. And at the same time, business, you need to pay your taxes. Like, they're they're looking at both of them. Right? I know for me, the feeling I have now, and we'll see if this sticks around, is that I wanna be get more involved in both.
Justin:
You know? Like, I've actually written my and my member of parliament letters this week. And it's mostly just an exit like, who right now they're in chaos, so it doesn't matter. Like, they're they're they don't have time to read. But but getting in the practice of saying, you know what?
Justin:
No. I need to write a letter and at least try something right now. And Right. And, also, maybe we need to in our local neighborhoods, in our local places, maybe we need to form more organizations, more more associations. Right?
Justin:
Like maybe you need to form the Chicago SaaS Owners Association, just so that locally, there's a group of people who all are doing the same thing who, you know, wanna hold the government to account or, you know, work together to make business better. Like there's that it feels like one of the things that's kinda come out of all this is that we are we were already isolated before this. Like, now we're in isolation, but we were really isolated before. Everyone was kinda like in their lane, just taking care of themselves, taking care of their own business, build your sass. This has shown me that it can't be that way.
Justin:
It's there's gotta be more.
Jon:
I've already seen that happen in Chicago anyway with, restaurant owners and chefs. They all banded together and sort of wrote they they recorded videos and and these they had this prepared statement to, like, actually send to the governor of Illinois to be like, hey. We need, like, we need help or so that's I mean, in some respect, it's happening informally. Yeah. But
Justin:
Well, that's good. That that that I think that it should encourage us that people are banding together. Because the the the the opposite option is just fatalistic. Is it the we we either, like, we either say, yeah. You know what?
Justin:
We're gonna band together, and we're gonna fight this together. Otherwise, we just all stay in our homes alone and, you know Right. Those are the options. And and then Bezos wins. Like, I I that that's not the world I wanna live in.
Justin:
I I think this is the time for us to be thinking. How can we be forming meaningful associations locally, online. Like Mega Maker, this little Slack group I run has become so valuable in this time, like, just feeling connected with people all over the world. I can talk to people in Italy and actually know what's going on there. I can talk to people in Spain and get a real life, like, here's what's happening here right now.
Justin:
I can see how this is affecting people all over the world, and we can talk about it. We we're gonna need way more of that in the future. And, Yeah. Definitely. That's this is the time to yeah.
Justin:
And when this is over, like, you know, that retreat we did with Darby and Shea, like, those are the things I think that need to happen. Like, we need more of that in the future. We need less of, especially in technology, less like hotshot entrepreneur raises a bunch of money by himself and does this thing. Like, we need less of that. We need and we also need less of the bootstrappers who are just building stuff by themselves in their basement to like, have any sort of meaningful resilience.
Justin:
I think we're gonna need, cooperation and collaboration and association with other people.
Jon:
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it it has been interesting, like, even the last week, I've talked to friends and family more than I have normally. Mhmm.
Jon:
I don't know. We'll see if that keeps up, but everyone's just been staying at home and realizing they're like, oh, man. I really miss people.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. And, also, like, thinking because this disease affects older people so much. I just think about my parents a ton. Yeah.
Jon:
Although, I think we're learning that it does, in fact, also affect younger people pretty pretty badly. So
Justin:
Yeah. Some of that. One more thing before we go is I don't know if you've experienced this, but it's been super weird to see like what were previously really toxic platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It in this crisis, they were actually kinda helpful.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I mean, I know some people got burnt out and stressed out by, like, constantly refreshing Twitter. But, overall, I feel like as toxic as those platforms were beforehand, there's something about them that's been helpful in this time. Have you experienced that or no?
Jon:
Right. I mean, it does it does give you it does give you a sense of connection when you can't physically connect with people. That's that's for sure.
Justin:
Yeah. But it it's almost like it it they transformed or something. Like, it's different. It's different. Because I hated Facebook before.
Justin:
Like, I was barely on it, and I find myself on it every day. And and it's it's just changed. It's it's way less toxic on there. It
Jon:
Interesting. I haven't I haven't really been on there, so I can't really speak to that.
Justin:
But There
Jon:
is
Justin:
have you been on Twitter or anything or no? I mean, yeah.
Jon:
But mostly just for, like, news. I mean, it's just I think I feel like there's more credible things happening there from people I sort of trust.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
And, you know, you obviously get the news a little faster. And
Justin:
Yeah. Well and also But that's it. Also, as an agent of change, maybe this is what's been significant. Because we've really had to see peep a lot of people change their behavior. And we're all, like, reticent to change our behavior as humans.
Justin:
And I've heard a lot of people say, you know what? If it wasn't people for people on Twitter kind of saying, you know, like, no. This is real and these are the actions I'm taking. A lot of people have said, well, I wouldn't have done anything. I I would have just kept believing that this was not a big deal.
Justin:
And so there's something about that that's interesting in this time of actually, Ali and Tamar's podcast, Not Overthinking. He expressed that exact thing. He's like, they they were asking each other when they started taking this seriously. And Mhmm. He was like, well, I I started taking it seriously as soon as people on Twitter I respected started saying it was a big deal.
Justin:
You know? And there's something about that that is significant, I think. It can obviously be used for, bad stuff. But overall, it's been interesting that the actual effect of this, even though there are, you know, some people who still are saying this isn't a big deal and pushing it the other way, it's amazing, like, how actually good the information coming out of those platforms has been compared to other times in our history. Like, you know, it's certainly better than the US election.
Justin:
Like, the the actual quality of the news and the information is is good. And, you know, like, I saw there's this one there's a lot of tech bros posting medium posts about, like, you know, their their predictions about the about about this epidemic and stuff.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And but then there's real epidemiology epi can you help me with this? Epi
Jon:
Epi epidemiologist. Yeah.
Justin:
There's real people like that.
Jon:
Right. Yeah. Those are the Who are
Justin:
taken taken generally. Taking those people down. And you get the information faster as opposed to just reading something and going, oh, like, this really resonates with me. But then having someone immediately take it down and go, no. This isn't and to Medium's credit, they've been removing, inaccurate blog posts.
Justin:
So yeah. I don't know. It's just been interesting. I don't know if anyone else has found that. I I I I'll find it.
Justin:
There's a I think it was a New York Times opinion piece about how the this one person the the author was finding Facebook helpful in this time, and it was surprising. Sorry. Was that was I was I too much there? I I I got No.
Jon:
Gotta get it out of your system.
Justin:
I got it out. Did you did you is there anything you still need to get out of your system?
Jon:
Not not really. Just, you know, basically, just taking it a day at a time at this point. So I hope everyone is, you know, staying safe, washing your hands. Mhmm. Yep.
Jon:
Staying home if you can. Have have staying home, have people to talk to. Yeah. I think it's gonna be, an interesting few months.
Justin:
Totally. If this was helpful for folks, like, if it's helpful listening to us just kinda ramble, if this gives you any sort of, I don't know, sense of normalcy or if it's helpful, let us know because we don't have to record episodes during this time. We'd be happy to take a break too if it if it's not helpful. John, let's give a shout out to our amazing Patreon supporters.
Jon:
Yeah. Thank you as always to all of our supporters on Patreon. We have Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Soler, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evan Grossasi, Prada Yumneschen Becker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sittfer, Paul Jarvis, Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Shukert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Jota and Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com. Actually, one more.
Justin:
Sofia Quintero. Thanks, Sofia. Everyone, have a great week. Stay safe, and we'd love you. Talk to you later.
