The Tuple Podcast | Josh Pigford, Creator of Maybe.co

In this episode, Ben interviews Josh Pigford, founder of Maybe.co, about the company’s journey from VC-backed startup -> closed startup -> open source project -> funded open source project. They discuss JavaScript and Rails trade-offs, the challenges of building a personal finance software, and the operational difficulties of building a business based on open source software.

Links

Tuple.app - The best app for pair programming
Maybe.co - The fintech startup Josh founded
NodeJS - The starting framework for Maybe.co
Ruby on Rails - The new framework for Maybe.co

Key Takeaways

Choosing the right tech stack is crucial for the success of a project.
Running out of runway can force difficult decisions and pivots.
Making a codebase public can generate interest and community engagement.
Replacing third-party dependencies can be challenging but necessary.
Rebuilding a software project requires careful planning and decision-making. Building a personal finance app involves challenges such as managing pull requests and issues in open source development.
Transitioning to Rails can provide a more stable and efficient framework for building a complex application.
The decision to rewrite the app from scratch allows for better decision-making and faster progress.
Targeting Mint users with a budgeting tool presents an opportunity to capitalize on a fragmented market.
Detangled, a project that simplifies legal documents, has the potential for commercial success. Moonshot ideas can be exciting and worth pursuing, even if the specific angle is unclear.
ChatGPT has the potential to generate usable results, either through heavily massaged prompts or prewritten blocks.
Tools like detangle can augment conversations with lawyers, providing insights and helping users know what questions to ask.
There are commercial opportunities in selling services like detangle to companies that don't have full-time counsel.
Finding the right balance between passion and traction is important when deciding which projects to pursue.

Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction
(01:21) - Making the Codebase Public
(07:21) - Community Engagement and Pull Requests
(12:17) - Ripping Out Functionality
(15:03) - Replacing Data Aggregator
(16:10) - Building a Personal Finance App
(17:39) - Challenges of Open Source Development
(21:08) - Managing Pull Requests and Issues
(23:35) - Struggles with React Next.js
(27:45) - Choosing Rails for Development
(32:40) - Targeting Mint Users with Budgeting Tool
(35:45) - Modular Use Cases
(38:53) - Open Source Contributions and Bounties
(40:47) - Next Steps
(45:16) - Detangled: Simplifying Legal Documents
(48:32) - Exploring Moonshot Ideas
(48:58) - The Potential of ChatGPT
(49:45) - Augmenting Conversations with Lawyers
(50:21) - Commercial Opportunities
(50:53) - Balancing Passion and Traction
(51:20) - Closing Remarks

Creators & Guests

Host

Ben Orenstein

Co-founder @tuple.

Guest

Josh Pigford

Founder of Maybe, Synth Finance, and Detangle AI

What is The Tuple Podcast?

Ben Orenstein interviews great programmers about their craft.

Ben Orenstein: 00:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Today, I am talking to someone that I have known for a little bit in the bootstrapper world, Josh Pigford. So I first ran into Josh when he started a company called Baremetrics. 2Pole used to be a customer of Baremetrics, and they do SaaS analytics.

Ben Orenstein: 00:17

Not too long ago, Josh sold BearMetrics for $4,000,000 and rode off into the sunset. Just kidding. He immediately started another company. That company was called Maybe. And Maybe was a complicated, financial planning and analysis tool.

Ben Orenstein: 00:33

And Josh, for this company raised money, hired a team, and got to building. And I think in his in his own words, they ended up overbuilding. They built ahead of, validation and customers. And after a period of time realized, look, we're not gonna make it on the runway we have. We're gonna run out of money.

Ben Orenstein: 00:52

It's also a bad time to raise. And he laid off more or less all the team and figured that this project was pretty much dead. But then he decided to do something a little bit unconventional, and that is where our story picks up. Now I'm, summarizing the first 20 minutes or so of me and Josh talking. So I'm gonna drop you right into the middle of, Josh telling us what happened next.

Josh Pigford: 01:16

Come January, like, last month, I was feeling real nostalgic about all the stuff we had built because I was like, it was I knew we had shut it down earlier than we needed to. Needed in the sense of like, it had not had enough time to be proven if the product could work. We just ran out of money. And so like, I was like, man, I'm so bummed. I was feeling real bummed about it.

Josh Pigford: 01:39

And because we have just this like incredible, amount of design work that had been done that, you know, for the most part, loved by everybody. Like, it was people loved the the the UI, loved the branding. Mhmm. And we had this, like, very full featured product. I was like, man, I would hate for this just to like rot in a private git repo.

Josh Pigford: 02:01

And that's the end. So on a whim, like, I had not even, like, talked to my cofounder or anything. I was like, hey. I just I'm gonna just make it public. So, you know, basically, it was like, started a new repo with all of, like, the history ripped out of it and took out a bunch of, API keys and whatnot and then just shoved it out there and then tweeted, this is what a $1,000,000 in Fintech software looks like.

Ben Orenstein: 02:26

And I mean, that's a great

Josh Pigford: 02:28

It took off.

Ben Orenstein: 02:29

That's a great little line.

Josh Pigford: 02:31

I that yeah. I mean, that'll that'll get you.

Ben Orenstein: 02:34

That works.

Josh Pigford: 02:35

And it did.

Ben Orenstein: 02:36

It did. That was the top of hacker news.

Josh Pigford: 02:39

I was well, I was surprised. My my biggest takeaway from that, or I guess my biggest surprise from that, was how little people, tried to, like, tear it down of, like, that's stupid. Like, no way does that cost a $1,000,000. No almost no one commented on the price tag of of that. It was just sort of like, oh, okay.

Josh Pigford: 03:01

Cool. Yeah. Like, this exactly, which is true. I mean, we spent a $1,000,000 on that.

Ben Orenstein: 03:05

So But you were anticipating that response?

Josh Pigford: 03:07

I was I was anticipating a massive amount of blowback from people just, like, saying that there's no way that something like that could cost $1,000,000. And

Ben Orenstein: 03:17

Yeah. Wow. That's funny. I I also tend to mispredict negative things like that.

Josh Pigford: 03:22

Yeah. Well, people get but they'll but then they'll get negative about negative about totally random stuff that like, what are you picking that apart?

Ben Orenstein: 03:28

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes sometimes I I actually, I'm probably often taken by surprise at the stuff that people get mad about.

Josh Pigford: 03:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Orenstein: 03:35

And so it's like I'm kind of wasting my time trying to predict it. Yeah. Or, like, changing my behavior because I'm worried that that will be the response.

Josh Pigford: 03:42

Sure. Just gotta do it and let it happens.

Ben Orenstein: 03:45

Yeah. Okay. So what happened next?

Josh Pigford: 03:50

So that brings us to almost today. I

Ben Orenstein: 03:53

Well, talk talk about that that day though. Talk about the next 24 hours.

Josh Pigford: 03:57

Yeah. Yeah. So in the in the 24 hours after that, it's like, very quickly starts taking off. Like, you know, I think we had many thousands of, like, GitHub stars, which, you know, fake Internet points. But I mean, like, still it's people being like, oh, this is kinda cool.

Josh Pigford: 04:16

Let me, like, like. So that was I was just, what are people I mean, this thing doesn't even work. Like, it's not like here's this thing you could just start using. All of a sudden, you just got maybe for free or something. Like, it didn't work at all because we had very complex infrastructure needs, when we built it.

Josh Pigford: 04:36

And Interesting.

Ben Orenstein: 04:36

Had a

Josh Pigford: 04:36

lot of feet had a lot of well, and a lot of that's around like, like SOC 2 compliance, SEC regulatory stuff because we're giving advice. We have to store every conversation with an advisor for, like, 7 years. So that stuff still exists on a like AWS servers.

Ben Orenstein: 04:53

What's an example of the infrastructure requirement you have to, like, satisfy those things?

Josh Pigford: 04:57

Yeah. So a lot of that stuff is around, the conversational side.

Ben Orenstein: 05:02

Like data retention?

Josh Pigford: 05:04

Yes. Like and and and, like, data retention in that week have no ability to modify Postgres database and call it a day. Like, we have to prove that we can't modify the data. Interesting.

Ben Orenstein: 05:20

Do people offer this as a service, just like backups that are untouchable somehow?

Josh Pigford: 05:24

Amazon does.

Ben Orenstein: 05:25

Yeah. Makes sense.

Josh Pigford: 05:26

For Fintech companies. So but let's just you know, but we just have to build all this stuff in, like and, and you have to like, so we're working with third party compliance companies to, like, do all the paperwork to prove that we're doing this correctly. And,

Ben Orenstein: 05:41

yeah. The SEC doesn't demand that you, like, use microservices or, like, a certain kinda back They

Josh Pigford: 05:46

don't know. Not that kind of stuff. No. But, like, even some of the data aggregators, so, like, we use Plaid and then FENICITY. So FENICITY is Mastercard's take on Plaid, essentially.

Josh Pigford: 06:00

And like they have different requirements around, how data is stored, the, you know, encryption at rest and, like, all this just that kind of stuff where it's like there are some infrastructure things that have to happen, just to pull off the requirements. In addition, we had, like, a w we had, like, something stupid, like half a $1,000,000 in AWS credits. And, so it's like, well, okay. That's free hosting at least to start with. Like Mhmm.

Josh Pigford: 06:34

But you just have to use it in, like, 2 years or something. Either way. So that's we end up making lots of sort of these decisions that build on decisions that build on decisions that, like, in hindsight, you're like, maybe you've overcomplicated some of this, but, like, at the time, that seemed like the reasonable solution. Mhmm. So that's how we ended up with this sort of complex infrastructure.

Ben Orenstein: 06:53

Okay. But so it blows up in terms of interest. Like, at least definitely passive interest. People read about it on Hacker News. They leave a comment.

Ben Orenstein: 07:01

They start again.

Josh Pigford: 07:02

I like the idea of a React based personal finance software that I could download and

Ben Orenstein: 07:07

Yep.

Josh Pigford: 07:08

You know, hack around on. Yeah.

Ben Orenstein: 07:09

Okay. Is there is there interest from people, like, doing things? Does anybody open a poll request or file issues or

Josh Pigford: 07:17

get to work? So so when I when I threw it out there, it was like, no. I'm not I'm not gonna turn into like a like a repo manager here of like trying to field pull requests. If you wanna do something with it, be my guest. But like, I'm a whatever.

Ben Orenstein: 07:31

Yeah. What was the license that you picked?

Josh Pigford: 07:34

Agpl3.

Ben Orenstein: 07:36

What does that do? What does that mean?

Josh Pigford: 07:38

So it's like if you can use it commercially, but if you do anything with it, you've gotta shove it back in or, like, you have to give us access to it essentially. So you can't just, like, fork it, then do whatever you want with it and sell it or anything like that. Like, there's some commercial, stuff that it keeps someone from Like you could launch your own version of maybe with it, but you have to give us modifications that you make to it.

Ben Orenstein: 08:07

Interesting.

Josh Pigford: 08:07

Gonna deploy it.

Ben Orenstein: 08:09

Give them how? Like, what if you don't, like I give you like, let you see them? Like, if you meant you don't want them to

Josh Pigford: 08:13

Send them back to the, like, send like, I don't know. Whatever the method could be, whatever, I guess. But, like, ultimately, we have to have the ability to, like, get your changes.

Ben Orenstein: 08:22

Sure.

Josh Pigford: 08:23

Back. You have to

Ben Orenstein: 08:24

Do I have to open source mine too or no?

Josh Pigford: 08:26

Yes.

Ben Orenstein: 08:28

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 08:29

So I don't know. There's, like, a million sort of one day, I would love for us to, like, list out just have a bulleted list of, like, what ifs. What if I do this?

Ben Orenstein: 08:38

This seems important for you, for your company. Having this license to do what you want to be is like seems actually really kind of vital.

Josh Pigford: 08:45

Right. So it's this very this is different than like, MIT or something where, it's essentially just do whatever the heck you want Right. With it. You know? As long as you leave a copyright copywriter, like, linked to the license, whatever.

Josh Pigford: 08:58

Like, this has to come back to us. Like, you can't just this isn't just take it and do whatever you want.

Ben Orenstein: 09:03

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 09:04

Be done.

Ben Orenstein: 09:04

Alright. So

Josh Pigford: 09:08

and I based like, a lot of that was sort of ad hoc. Like, just sort of quickly threw that together based off a bunch of other open source projects that I commercial open source projects.

Ben Orenstein: 09:18

Okay. Okay.

Josh Pigford: 09:19

That I'd seen at the time. But so yes. So within, like, 24, 48 hours of doing this, I realized, like, hold okay. There's a ton of interest here. Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 09:30

People are pumped about this. What if we could make it work? Still was not like, let me turn this back into a business. It was, what if we could just get it working again? That'd be kinda neat.

Josh Pigford: 09:40

Mhmm. And so that's when, like, pull requests started coming in or I would, you know, list some issues in GitHub of, like, this would need to change if we want this to work. You know? It's like rip out this AWS, dependency or, you know, Nice.

Ben Orenstein: 09:58

You're like product managing more or less.

Josh Pigford: 10:00

I started yes. I'm just like, okay. Again, if the community would like to do this, I have no ability because this is I haven't touched this code. I don't know how to I can't get this thing working on my computer. So, like, if someone else can, you know, I would post, like, the errors I was getting on the command line trying to get this thing to work.

Josh Pigford: 10:14

And Okay.

Ben Orenstein: 10:15

Yep.

Josh Pigford: 10:15

So that's sort of what kicked it off. And then the number of people who were, like, interested in it, I decided to throw, like, a a discord server up just to have a spot for people to chat this stuff out and get it working or whatever. Just because it's like, almost like a, from an experiment perspective, it was kind of fascinating to watch.

Ben Orenstein: 10:37

Yeah. It It sounds exciting. Like, yeah, someone's coming along and fixing up your code base.

Josh Pigford: 10:42

They're like, that's pretty neat. We'll make it work.

Ben Orenstein: 10:45

I'm pretty into that.

Josh Pigford: 10:48

So so then that that but that snowball kept growing. Like Uh-huh. A number of people interested just. You know, I've posted this a couple of times on on Twitter of, like, our GitHub star chart thing. Like, it literally just goes straight up to 10,000 in, like, a few days.

Ben Orenstein: 11:06

That's cool. That's cool. So But that's like yeah. That's like likes, though. You know?

Josh Pigford: 11:11

Oh, sure. It's like Instagram. Oh, yes. It's whatever. It's complete vanity metric.

Ben Orenstein: 11:14

The the people doing stuff, though, that I mean, I mean, pull requests. That's some real

Josh Pigford: 11:19

People doing pull requests and yes. And we had, like, over a 1000 people in the Discord server very quickly who were, like, asking questions about how to get it working.

Ben Orenstein: 11:28

Wow. That's way more than I thought. I was in the wrong order management.

Josh Pigford: 11:31

Yeah. Yes. And, well, again, this is like all of these things that sort of, again, on their own are are vanity, but they all sort of point towards

Ben Orenstein: 11:41

But altogether they they start to coalesce

Josh Pigford: 11:43

to Okay. So maybe there is something. Like, let's let's, like, let's twiddle a couple of knobs and see what happens.

Ben Orenstein: 11:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 11:51

You know? Okay. It's it's like AB testing with humans in the sense of, like, we've now got something to be maybe statistically significant if we try some stuff.

Ben Orenstein: 12:00

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So So what do you start trying?

Josh Pigford: 12:04

Well, just okay. Maybe we can get this thing running. Oh, oh, wow. It is running now. Like, everybody's able to sort of relatively consistently get it at least to work locally.

Josh Pigford: 12:16

Yeah. And, so I at that point, it was like, what if I I started thinking through the, like, what ifs? What if for this thing to work, we are ready. We're gonna have to rip out a ton of, like, all the advisory stuff because

Ben Orenstein: 12:29

So you've decided advisory's a dead end. You're out.

Josh Pigford: 12:32

Because of the regulatory overhead.

Ben Orenstein: 12:33

Fair enough. There's a

Josh Pigford: 12:35

massive amount of compliance

Ben Orenstein: 12:36

stuff that comes up. So delete all the all that.

Josh Pigford: 12:39

Delete literally, I mean,

Ben Orenstein: 12:39

it was a whole app.

Josh Pigford: 12:42

And Yeah. Boop. It was like it was like 20,000 lines of code or something stupid. Did you

Ben Orenstein: 12:46

could you delete one directory and it all disappeared and there were no other changes?

Josh Pigford: 12:50

For the most part, yes. There were some, like, database bits. Like Yeah. Fair.

Ben Orenstein: 12:54

We had to

Josh Pigford: 12:55

do some migrations to remove

Ben Orenstein: 12:56

some Fine.

Josh Pigford: 12:56

But, like Okay.

Ben Orenstein: 12:57

Still. From

Josh Pigford: 12:58

a certainly from a front end perspective with the UI, the entire interface for that. And a little even back end ish stuff because of the express. Either way. Yeah. For the most part, it was just deleted directory and you're done.

Ben Orenstein: 13:08

I like that. Yeah. So That sounds like good architecture, man. If you get a good red diff when you remove a feature, like, some I think I think you built it right. That feels good.

Josh Pigford: 13:20

So what as far as JavaScript based?

Ben Orenstein: 13:23

No. Just in terms of, like, constructing an app.

Josh Pigford: 13:27

Okay. Yes. From an organization perspective.

Ben Orenstein: 13:29

There's something about that that feels really clean. Like, you didn't it wasn't all you didn't have to go change everything else around it to pull it out. Like, it was they were decoupled in their own separate operating things.

Josh Pigford: 13:38

No. That's correct. And that's, you know, to credit for Zach, who ended up he's now back at maybe, like, but he was the original

Ben Orenstein: 13:46

Dude, this story is nuts.

Josh Pigford: 13:47

Full stack engineer. Yeah. So, but either way, so yeah, so we just start deleting stuff left and right.

Ben Orenstein: 13:54

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 13:54

We have to rip out plaid. You got

Ben Orenstein: 13:57

to rip out plaid? Were you excited?

Josh Pigford: 14:00

We had to.

Ben Orenstein: 14:00

It had to be therapeutic.

Josh Pigford: 14:02

It was, but it's also like so much function this is so much functionality was tied up in that. Yeah. And it's impossible to use on an individual level. Like, because you have to have an enterprise contract with them. And, so either way, that was sort of the first, like, people started saying, okay.

Josh Pigford: 14:21

Well, what can we replace it with? What does it look like to get it functioning in a non data aggregator world? And so that was where that was the sort of first big steps of people trying to replace it. And people were doing the work to do it. So

Ben Orenstein: 14:37

And what have you landed on?

Josh Pigford: 14:40

So we initially replaced it with a tool called or data aggregator called Teller. Teller is similar to Plaid, though they're only checking savings savings account support, but they have a have an individual use plan. Like, you could use it for free for just your own bank account stuff.

Ben Orenstein: 15:01

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 15:02

So that's what we we integrated that. This is still all under the React Next JS thing. Like, we

Ben Orenstein: 15:08

have not

Josh Pigford: 15:09

hit the point where we decided to

Ben Orenstein: 15:11

start off here. By, like, saying we're gonna get right to the rewrite. We're we're almost there. It's been half an hour. But this story is good.

Ben Orenstein: 15:18

I think this is legit. I have no regrets.

Josh Pigford: 15:20

Yeah. So that either way, so we are heading down this road of, like, let's rebuild it. It's still all in Next. Js. I hire so I mentioned Zach, who's the original Let's

Ben Orenstein: 15:29

rebuild it. Why like, what yeah. So you decide there's a a bigger rewrite or something needs to happen.

Josh Pigford: 15:34

So this plays a role here. So, like, I I'm still in Next. Js React world Okay. Trying to build this thing. I decide, like, okay.

Josh Pigford: 15:44

If if I'm going to start this thing up again, I need to become functional as a developer. So then I start spending a few days trying to, like, really dig in and teach myself React and, like, modern modern Next JS stuff. Good for you. Yeah. And you would if you, like, watch my tweets around that time, like, it's just me getting angrier every day.

Josh Pigford: 16:04

And, I'm just so mad because I hate it. And, so then I'm like, well, at this point, funding starts, like, the possibility of raising more money comes in. Like, I've decided, I think we can turn this into a business. I think I can make the economics work by not having all the regulatory overhead, by not requiring ourselves to be in the US only, like, massively expanding the available market by actually removing features. So,

Ben Orenstein: 16:35

and you won't connect to my bank account and tell me what's in it, but I type it in manually or you'll do use teller?

Josh Pigford: 16:39

Initially, yes. So it initially, it's like add manual stuff. We'll eventually re add some of those aggregators.

Ben Orenstein: 16:46

But the way is, like, maybe you can just get people to type it in and save yourself, like, the biggest technical challenge ever.

Josh Pigford: 16:52

Right. So but that's this is where, like, the hosted for pay version of Maybe comes in as, like, the data aggregators where we will automatically do it for you.

Ben Orenstein: 17:00

Okay. Okay.

Josh Pigford: 17:01

So, and then there's some stuff you can do around, like dragging a CSV export of your bank account or, or even upload a PDF and we can pull out the stuff from it. These are some solvable problems, overall. But at the so at this at this point in time, I don't know, week and a half in or something away from since open sourcing this thing, and it's just still straight up on, like, every graph that I am tracking of anything. And I'm trying to, like, wrap my head around what it means to build you know, we've got a sizable React Next JS app thing here. It's just there's a lot.

Josh Pigford: 17:40

And so I'm trying to wrap my head around, like, how can I even contribute something to the current thing? We're also still hitting a lot of errors around, you know, dependencies because a lot changes in the JavaScript world in 2 years. And so, you know, it's just we're constantly, okay. Well, let's upgrade that thing so that whatever and we're not hitting all these constant errors. So I'm like trying to wrap my head around that while also teaching myself this framework.

Josh Pigford: 18:06

And, but then it's like, okay. Well, we can build the team again. Like, we've got, you know, at least $1,000,000 in new funding has come in over within a matter of days.

Ben Orenstein: 18:16

Talk more about that.

Josh Pigford: 18:18

So so a VC, named Joseph Jacks, but run the name of the VC is like OSS Capital. And it's like the specifically invest in open source commercial open source products. So, like, probably big example of that's like cal.com. Big open source project backed by them.

Ben Orenstein: 18:38

Got it. So the model they like is there's an open source version I could use for free, but we also host it and

Josh Pigford: 18:44

They'll have a commercial version. Yes. And, believe that that ultimately allows for, like, highly efficient use of capital. So, like, you don't need massive teams, especially if you can build a community around your open source project. Interesting.

Josh Pigford: 19:01

Because people are interested in just you know, even if they're not, like, constantly contributing, like, they still want to contribute in certain ways because they want things to I think a lot of developers are, I don't know if someone use the word altruistic, but we have the ability to build things that we want to see exist. And Yeah. If we can contribute that to something that's growing and lots of people love, it also feels good to see your work used immediately used by potentially 100 of 1000 or millions of people.

Ben Orenstein: 19:30

Totally. Yep. Yeah. It seems like the incentives point the same way, which is pretty nice.

Josh Pigford: 19:34

Yes.

Ben Orenstein: 19:35

Like and, like, if I'm a developer, getting landing open source contributions raises my profile, like, raises my value. Right?

Josh Pigford: 19:42

It makes it you know, you when when when I'm hiring an engineer, I send me your your GitHub profile. Right? Like, show me what you've built.

Ben Orenstein: 19:49

Yeah. Totally.

Josh Pigford: 19:49

And this is an opportunity to show that you've built things. Right.

Ben Orenstein: 19:52

So you're getting, yeah, free code contributions. They're getting reputation boost leading to salary.

Josh Pigford: 19:58

Exactly. Which I do think, yes, I do think it can have a direct effect on their salary. Like, they're

Ben Orenstein: 20:03

Oh, yeah. Totally. No no doubt to me. And then also, if they're users of the products, they can

Josh Pigford: 20:08

They should've been.

Ben Orenstein: 20:09

They can add a feature they want.

Josh Pigford: 20:11

That's right.

Ben Orenstein: 20:11

I could fix a bug and be like, this bug is obnoxious. I fixed it for you.

Josh Pigford: 20:14

I'll I've I've done that. Yes.

Ben Orenstein: 20:17

Wow. I'm in. This sounds great.

Josh Pigford: 20:19

Yes. So, and I and I it starts

Ben Orenstein: 20:22

Hold hold hold on, though. Hold on. Hold on. Okay. So it sounds great.

Ben Orenstein: 20:25

But what Yes. Well, how how might this also fail? Like, where might this kinda go bad?

Josh Pigford: 20:29

The commercial open source concept?

Ben Orenstein: 20:32

Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 20:32

Yeah. So if you're not doing a decent job, and I'm not saying I'm doing a decent job yet, but I like if you're not doing a decent job of managing pull requests and issues

Ben Orenstein: 20:45

Totally.

Josh Pigford: 20:45

It very you you can just burn down the whole product in, like, bloated stuff. Like You have

Ben Orenstein: 20:51

to say no a lot.

Josh Pigford: 20:52

You have to say no a ton. And this politely. This is sort of the crux of what started to show cracks in the React Next JS.

Ben Orenstein: 21:01

Okay. Great. Perfect.

Josh Pigford: 21:03

For us.

Ben Orenstein: 21:03

Perfect segue.

Josh Pigford: 21:04

So, after we started, like, getting some big stuff done and there was, you know, dozens of pull requests from lots of pea from from people on lots of different issues. It it despite there being a lot of work to be done and, like, those being listed as issues to tackle, people very quickly started focusing on the, like, semantic stuff. Like, you know, how do we format this function? Well, that's not the way to do it these days. Like let's go into let's refactor all this stuff that like changes zero functionality.

Josh Pigford: 21:39

And it's like, oh, I prefer to have this sort of format. Well, I prefer to have that format. And like, people just start, you

Ben Orenstein: 21:45

know, style wars erupt, basically.

Josh Pigford: 21:48

Yes. And and at the same time, again, when we started with Next. Js, it was like they have their pages router and their, like, app router thing, which app router essentially adds a bunch of back end functionality. We were using the original pages thing, but it was because we had so many disjointed different pieces, it would have it made most sense for us to try to convert a bunch of this stuff over to their like new app router thing. And but even if we didn't do that, it was starting to become very clear.

Josh Pigford: 22:21

We're going to have to rewrite a bunch of stuff. If only to remove complexity from all these previous decisions around our, you know, app that had to meet all these different compliance regulatory things and other features that are getting ripped out and, like, not needing Plaid anymore and how do you decouple Plaid so that we're not depending on it in every single database table.

Ben Orenstein: 22:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 22:46

We're having to rip out a ton of stuff and rewrite it anyways. And,

Ben Orenstein: 22:51

and are you change is this most are you changing user facing functionality or is it mostly rewriting how it's done? This is basically a huge refactor.

Josh Pigford: 23:00

That's essentially it. And, and so, like, that led to a lengthy conversation with Vercel, who's, like, behind Next. Js. And they were great, like, super smart people there. And, trying to like, just talking through, like, they were familiar with our code base, spent time looking at our code base.

Ben Orenstein: 23:24

Cool.

Josh Pigford: 23:24

Had was, like, actually commenting on issues in the code base that people were having confusion over Next. Js stuff and, like, they were being active in the community. Like, that's just fantastic. Yeah. But talking to them, like, it became clear that if we're trying to build something that's very easy to contribute to, that requires relatively little sort of like wrapping your head around where things are, It's hard to stick with something that is changing very fast because we can't we can't just, like, stake it in the ground of, like, here's how we're doing this because the reality is some of that the newest, like, Next.

Josh Pigford: 24:02

Js stuff in 6 months will will be different. And so we're gonna have to, like, refactor some stuff then and, like, it just becomes the the the barrier to contribute becomes very high. And that was the case. That's like the the symptom of that is people complaining over semantics, because they don't know how else to here's a list of things for you to contribute to and build, but you have no idea how to start building it because it's too confusing. Like, there's stuff everywhere in this app.

Josh Pigford: 24:28

And, and so that was sort of like what kicked it off

Ben Orenstein: 24:32

of this thing.

Josh Pigford: 24:33

Like Are

Ben Orenstein: 24:34

there not good conventions in JavaScript worlds that, like, let people drop in and contribute because they just know where stuff is expected to be?

Josh Pigford: 24:41

That would be great, but no. Not when you're like, to me in the so if especially because of the stuff that Next JS has has introduced in the past, that's probably 12 months, that sort of blew up the entire convention. And so there were lots of arguments. I'm like, well, now this is the way that you do it in Next. Js.

Josh Pigford: 25:06

Oh, okay. Well, that means rewriting all this other stuff. And, like, it just became, a con like, the struggle when we were already gonna have to refactor a ton of stuff more than, like, I probably realized at the beginning. It was like, well, like, we could stick with something that's rapidly changing for better or worse, you know, whatever. It's a lot of work's being done around that.

Josh Pigford: 25:29

Or we can potentially do something that, like, me as the guy who's like the central foundation of this entire company from the beginning and will be with it for who knows how long. Like, there's also a need for, like, me to be able to maintain this thing and, like

Ben Orenstein: 25:44

Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 25:45

Be functional. We could stick with potentially a framework that's been around for 20 years and does have a lot of strongly set convention. Whether you like the convention or not, like, it still has a lot of this is the, in this case, rails way of doing things.

Ben Orenstein: 26:02

Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 26:02

And,

Ben Orenstein: 26:03

So you're like, we're making a rails app.

Josh Pigford: 26:05

That's right. So I was like, okay. Do you

Ben Orenstein: 26:07

wanna hear something funny?

Josh Pigford: 26:08

Sure.

Ben Orenstein: 26:09

So I ran a product at Thoughtbot called FormKeep, and it was a form back end as a service. It was like an endpoint you could post to with some form data and we would like forward it on and like send you an email or like trigger Zapier or things like that. Pretty simple app. We built it at a time when, like, everyone was, like, we were using it as, like, a learn JavaScript experiment playground.

Josh Pigford: 26:28

Sure.

Ben Orenstein: 26:29

Yep. It was maybe Backbone app or something. It was a little bit later than Backbone, but I mean,

Josh Pigford: 26:33

I remember that.

Ben Orenstein: 26:33

You know, it was like not that would not way later. And it was like we wrote this really complicated JavaScript front end to show you a bunch of form entries. And it was kind of like a pretty basic crud interface, and it was pretty darn complicated. And when I took that product over, the first thing I did was rip out the JavaScript and replace it with just basic rails views.

Josh Pigford: 26:55

Sure.

Ben Orenstein: 26:56

And it made it so much easier to work on.

Josh Pigford: 26:59

That's right.

Ben Orenstein: 26:59

Some of that's my personal bias because I'm a rails expert, but not a JavaScript expert. So, like Yep. Some of that was, like, I made the same decision that you were making, which is just like, I know I could do this one. There's definitely trade offs here as it's not a pure win. But, like, for making a damn app, it's Rail's a pretty good choice.

Ben Orenstein: 27:15

I still feel great about that choice.

Josh Pigford: 27:16

Well, and I and especially, you know, this I think in, like, the rails sort of 6 era, it was rough on the on the front end stuff. And, but with with all the Hotwire and all of the whatever, you know, I I use Hotwire in the, like, umbrella sense of turbo stimulus strata, I think they have now. Like, it's become much more of like a first class citizen on building these like really nice UI bits in a railsy kind of way. And, I think having spent the last 6 months of, like, floundering around figuring out what on earth to do with maybe the entity, and experimenting with all sorts of stuff. I was doing a I mean, there was a time where I was, like, doing rails new, like, weekly.

Josh Pigford: 28:04

You know? Like, I'm just building a ton of rail stuff. And so, like, I well, I found myself when we were trying to make this decision between React and Rails, essentially, I found myself very confident in rails ability as a framework, both front end and back end to be able to pull this off. And but I also understand people's hesitations because they're maybe a lot of times people haven't used rails since rail 6 or it's been 3, 4, 5 years. And a lot's changed in sort of the rails world since then, and, I don't know.

Josh Pigford: 28:41

I'm still a lot more confident in it now and, like, our ability to foundationally build something that's very easy to jump in and start contributing to. It does reduce the number of developers available to us. But I think it probably increases the caliber. Like

Ben Orenstein: 28:58

who knows?

Josh Pigford: 28:58

So I want to I well, so I want to be clear there that I'm not saying React developers aren't good developers. Okay. I think because there is so much it's such a popular thing, it it means that there is a lot more entry level availability because there's a ton of people. That's the thing they learn. And they're like, let me go contribute to something.

Josh Pigford: 29:17

It is popular with beginners. So you end up skewing

Ben Orenstein: 29:21

Yeah. Sure.

Josh Pigford: 29:22

Towards a lot more entry level people.

Ben Orenstein: 29:24

Right. Especially if anyone can submit a poll request or something.

Josh Pigford: 29:27

That's right.

Ben Orenstein: 29:27

And you're open.

Josh Pigford: 29:28

So I think rails, if only because of that single dynamic, tends to skew a little bit more towards people who are, slightly more skilled.

Ben Orenstein: 29:38

That's probably that's probably true. I feel like that wasn't exactly true in in my day. Like, rails was the thing, but then I think this has just shifted. This is just the new reality.

Josh Pigford: 29:46

That's right. So, and so far, that's actually I I would say has proven to be the case.

Ben Orenstein: 29:51

Cool. You've been happy with the caliber of Rails people you're seeing?

Josh Pigford: 29:54

That's correct. Now there's still certainly some people it's like disagreements over how to do this or people sort of overcomplicate things or whatever, but that's programming.

Ben Orenstein: 30:02

Do conventions for open source things I mean, like or for I mean, for anything. It's just, like, if you just have strong app conventions, I think that's such a huge win. It makes it so much easier to drop in and do something productively because you just know where stuff will be and where your changes gotta go.

Josh Pigford: 30:14

Exactly. So that's sort of how we ended up on the rails thing. I think I think we covered the how we ended up.

Ben Orenstein: 30:23

I'm convinced.

Josh Pigford: 30:24

Did we touch the bases on that?

Ben Orenstein: 30:25

Mega Rails f. You sold me.

Josh Pigford: 30:27

Yeah. That's right. That's right. So we'd literally started from scratch.

Ben Orenstein: 30:30

Oh, you did you okay.

Josh Pigford: 30:32

I mean, I I rails nude it.

Ben Orenstein: 30:34

Yeah. So you're you're not refactoring a thing. You are rewriting from scratch.

Josh Pigford: 30:37

We're rewriting from scratch. And the caveat there, though, is, like, that I think makes us different than oh, man. You're just like, you're having to remake all these decisions. We're not having to remake all these decisions because our well, one thing we're very confident in was, like, the data modeling that we had done, in the previous app. And there's a lot of decisions around product functionality that, like, have already been made, like, how we're doing this stuff.

Josh Pigford: 31:02

And so

Ben Orenstein: 31:03

do you know that you've made something people want yet though, product decision wise?

Josh Pigford: 31:07

I believe that we have. But I mean, like, there's almost it's we can't know that because we never built a successful business. Like Right. Right?

Ben Orenstein: 31:19

Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 31:19

So there's still some there's still a lot of, assumptions being made here. And Yeah.

Ben Orenstein: 31:24

So you're gonna def you're gonna just, like, accept all the product decisions you've already made. You're not, like, also changing functionality yet.

Josh Pigford: 31:30

Essentially. Yes. Same same product decisions. However, we will because we're doing this rewrite, and so that means we're still building a feature, then the next feature, then the next feature. We will put this out in the public far sooner.

Josh Pigford: 31:46

Right? Like, you can you'll be able to start using this stuff way before it gets to the feature parity to the preview.

Ben Orenstein: 31:54

Oh, okay. Great. Cool. Yeah. Because it seems maybe maybe weird to reimplement product decisions if you're not confident about them, but also trying to change them as you rewrite it also seems insane to me.

Ben Orenstein: 32:07

Josh Pigford: 32:08

There's there's a lot of variables there that's like, okay. How can we ultimately prove that people want something? And Yeah. We're essentially doing that by making similar product decisions but testing the waters with them before there's a lot of decisions to get feedback on.

Ben Orenstein: 32:24

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 32:25

So, you know, that's starting off by just, like, being able to add a bank account and the transactions with them, and then let's see what people say about that. So, like, very basic stuff.

Ben Orenstein: 32:35

Okay. And how you get in the transactions? So you're hosting this and charging people for it. Right?

Josh Pigford: 32:40

Eventually. Yes. That's not there yet. Yep.

Ben Orenstein: 32:43

Gotcha. Okay.

Josh Pigford: 32:44

I mean, we should be there by the end of the month, but, yeah. So the initial manual input will be balanced based, and then you can input individual transaction at a time or upload CSVs of transaction data.

Ben Orenstein: 32:59

Okay.

Josh Pigford: 33:00

So that'll be the initial pass at that.

Ben Orenstein: 33:03

Cool. Okay. And your hope to and you'll hope to sign up some customers who want to pay for whatever

Josh Pigford: 33:09

that is needed. Real I mean, even, you know, not not at whatever full price we decide is what you should be paying for. But just to, like, say, if somebody's willing to pay $5 a month, then, like, that gives some level of, validation. Like, if they can if they'll give a credit card, then okay. We've proven a little it'll something.

Ben Orenstein: 33:29

Mhmm.

Josh Pigford: 33:31

So, but I, so to go back to the rebuilding the same features, I say that, The way that we view this is still is is a little bit different this time around. Like, instead of it just being this sort of before, maybe it was much more on the, like, wealth management side of things and, you know, let's grow our investments and, like, figure out where to put money and so that it'll grow. And, like, this is part of having a financial adviser who can help you make decisions about what to put money where. We are changing that to be so, like, our first big feature will not be the forecasting stuff. It'll be budgeting.

Josh Pigford: 34:08

So, part of the opportunity here comes, from mint shutting down and there being 4,000,000,000 plus people who like have used Mint for a decade and now are like, what that what what do I do? Like, I have nothing. And, you know, you'll see, like, I've seen I've seen this some stuff on the some, like, private data around, other, say, budgeting tools in the market and what what this mint thing has done for their growth over the past couple months, and it's, like, straight up because people are just looking for something. And so I think there's an opportunity to sort of capitalize on that with a budgeting tool.

Ben Orenstein: 34:53

I think you have to be fast, though. Right?

Josh Pigford: 34:55

No. And that's the thing. Like, again, we're You know what things are? That by the end of the month, we'll have something there to start using. And then, like, the first thing we're building on top of that is budgeting.

Ben Orenstein: 35:04

Okay. I guess what I'm saying, I think this opportunity of the the ex maintenance customers probably is short. Like

Josh Pigford: 35:10

I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure.

Josh Pigford: 35:12

But it's just like the market is that that was the thing that everybody was coming from before. When we would talk to people 2 years ago about maybe it's like, what are you using now? Mint. Mint. Mint.

Josh Pigford: 35:23

Mint. Everybody's using Mint. And now it immediately goes to 20 other tools. So, like, nobody's taking the lion's share from them. And, so I think the market has become much more fragmented and so there's opportunity that, will stay around for at least a little bit longer than just a single flash in the pan.

Josh Pigford: 35:46

So but the way that we're thinking about maybe at this point is much more modular based on where you're at in your, like, financial journey. So my 19 year old doll daughter who works at Starbucks, I picture her using maybe for budgeting, and that's it. Eventually, she's, like, gets to a point where she's like, okay. I want to save up and buy a house. Okay.

Josh Pigford: 36:12

So, like, now we can talk. There's like a save component that you could or module or set of tools that come with that. You know? And then it's like, eventually you start a family. And so it's like, okay, now we've got like joint stuff to take into account.

Josh Pigford: 36:24

And then, saving up for kids. And there, if you have a do like an educational savings thing, like there's all these sort of steps that happen in like a financial journey. And there's no reason most people do not handle all of them at the same time. It's it's you're not piling up the same stuff. Right?

Josh Pigford: 36:41

And, like, for instance, okay. So we sold a company. We've got a big pile of money. We care a little bit less about budgeting than we did Totally. Pre acquisition.

Josh Pigford: 36:49

Right? So it's like I care less about budgeting tools. I'm like either way. So so we've now viewed it as the kind of tool that you literally use until you die.

Ben Orenstein: 36:57

What do you what do you wanna use maybe for?

Josh Pigford: 37:00

So for us, it's a let's track all of investments, ultimately. Like, that's the that's the component or module that I'm personally most interested in. So

Ben Orenstein: 37:11

What are you doing for that now?

Josh Pigford: 37:13

We nothing great. I mean, the closest thing I've sort of found is Kubera. So it it does a decent job of aggregating lots of data sources, but I don't think it's just sort of like reports on a bunch of numbers. And I don't think it it doesn't really do anything to help, affect those numbers, I guess. And I we sort of view, providing stuff for you to be more hands on with your money or with suggestions or, like, reminders that, hey.

Josh Pigford: 37:42

It's tax time in your region, so, like, you should talk to a CPA or something like that. So, yeah. So but I I feel a lot less urgency this time around, which some would argue be better or worse. But if I view building maybe as something that, like, I will personally be involved in for the next 10 to 20 years, And I view it as the kind of we're building tools that people will use for a lifetime. Mhmm.

Josh Pigford: 38:16

There is a lot less urgency to, like, do something, pay $500, you know, to acquire a customer and then hope that we can make that back over the course of a couple of years. Like I can do I can take much longer term long sort of long play risks because I'm not needing to, you know, end up, I'm avoiding where we ended up last summer, which is like a runway that we can't support. Yeah.

Ben Orenstein: 38:42

Well, yeah. And you just got another $1,000,000 and you have 2 paid people? Or, like

Josh Pigford: 38:47

1,500,000 and, and she has 2 full time from a salary perspective. Yep.

Ben Orenstein: 38:53

And then a bunch of open source contributions, which

Josh Pigford: 38:55

That's right.

Ben Orenstein: 38:56

Are those are those overall, like, been very helpful? Like, are they making, like, good decisions, big strides, helping you out a lot?

Josh Pigford: 39:02

So what I've found is you start seeing, like, a few people who've are heavily invested as an open source contributor. And so they will you don't necessarily see them tackling every issue, though they do tackle some of them, but they're, like, commenting on code of like, hey. We did this and this other commit. Like, here's how we can sort of stick with that convention that this app has. So I would say that they're yes.

Josh Pigford: 39:29

It feels like you you find people who sort of bubble up who are super invested in, contributing and other people who are, like, come and go, whatever, which is fine. So but we're also playing around with, like, bounties and, you know, paying people for certain features and functionality and,

Ben Orenstein: 39:48

Any results from that yet?

Josh Pigford: 39:50

Yeah. I mean, we've paid out 3 almost $3,000 in bounties over the past couple of weeks.

Ben Orenstein: 39:56

Cool.

Josh Pigford: 39:57

I'm still trying to figure out, like, what's a reasonable amount that's not, like, offensive. Like, you wanna only pay me a $100 for this? Like, well, it's not so much the I just want to, like, convey sort of a thank you for your time and that this is important to us. But, like, you know, it's I don't know. It's that's a weird line to, to walk on, but, you know, so we're we're experimenting, I guess, with that at least.

Josh Pigford: 40:20

And, I want to I want to pay people, especially if they're contributing something that has a commercial benefit to us directly. So, you know, if it's like implementing some Stripe stuff, well, like, the self hoster doesn't give a rip about that. They will never use that. So that's like a prime candidate for us to do some sort of bounty because it's of only commercial benefit to us. So Cool.

Josh Pigford: 40:45

Yeah. We're packing all that stuff too.

Ben Orenstein: 40:47

What's next in your mind? What's coming down the pipe?

Josh Pigford: 40:51

Get the thing working. Like, you know, having a functional personal finance app.

Ben Orenstein: 40:57

Meaning hosted somewhere.

Josh Pigford: 40:58

Hosted. Yeah. Like, you could go sign up at beauty.co.

Ben Orenstein: 41:01

That's right. Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 41:02

Yeah. So we'll get there quickly. It'll just be really basic and but it'll also change really fast. Like, it took us a long time to build that sort of React version for a lot of different reasons, not just because, oh, it's like React's slow to develop with. Like, I'm not saying that.

Josh Pigford: 41:19

It's just we had to make a lot of decisions that we've now thought through the pros and cons of a lot of those decisions so we can remake similar decisions now with much greater speed. And I think we also happen to have a code base that lends itself to working quickly. So

Ben Orenstein: 41:35

Cool.

Josh Pigford: 41:36

Yeah. It's just get the start making some money, like, not wait 18 months again to try.

Ben Orenstein: 41:42

Are you gonna charge people right away? Uh-huh. Customers instead of testers?

Josh Pigford: 41:46

Yes. I mean, that's the that's the plan. It's like, okay. We'll, you know, have some sort of, like, early early customer discount or something because it's, you know, very basic functionality. But and figuring out what that looks like around, like obviously, we'll wanna test out freemium and and most financial tools start with some sort of free component.

Josh Pigford: 42:04

So, like, we're competing against that.

Ben Orenstein: 42:06

I would want to see you charge for it, for everybody.

Josh Pigford: 42:11

I mean, that would be great.

Ben Orenstein: 42:12

Just to make sure that like people value this and you're making something they actually want, like get get the money. You

Josh Pigford: 42:17

know? Yeah. And then we can also, you know, play around with the free side Totally. Down the road.

Ben Orenstein: 42:21

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Awesome, man. Good luck.

Ben Orenstein: 42:25

I hope it works. Yeah. Yeah. That's the the whole what a story. That was great.

Josh Pigford: 42:29

It's bonkers. It's totally bonkers. It doesn't make any sense.

Ben Orenstein: 42:34

It's awesome. I I hope it I hope it works out because I want the ending to be great, you know. Like, just I just finished the story. Alright? Like, you need to make this a huge success.

Josh Pigford: 42:42

I know.

Ben Orenstein: 42:42

The the framing of, like, what what if it was the thing you used for your whole life is interesting. Like, it's it's kind of audacious. It's like, yeah. Like, our our LTV is gonna be, like, $100,000 because they're gonna be a customer for 4 years.

Josh Pigford: 42:54

Like, I love

Ben Orenstein: 42:55

yeah. I love the idea of it. Yeah. And and, like, I don't know if you'll be able to pull that off, but almost like the orientation of, like, trying to do it.

Josh Pigford: 43:01

Trying to.

Ben Orenstein: 43:02

You know? For sure. Like, aim for the moon sort of thing. Aim for the stars.

Josh Pigford: 43:05

It's like, imagine, the Internet 20 years ago. Like, the idea that somebody would have built something 20 years ago and that they're still using that thing today is super rare. And I think I think of, like, I have an eBay. My my eBay account might be 15 years old or something like that, but like, sure.

Ben Orenstein: 43:21

Yeah. My Reddit account is real old. It's in the teens.

Josh Pigford: 43:24

I see. Mine is probably similar. But, but again, like, you're directionally if we're if we're making decisions that support that type of outcome.

Ben Orenstein: 43:35

Exactly. Right. That seems good. Like, you won't you'll, like, be like, I'm not gonna make the short term trade off ever because what I care about is the

Josh Pigford: 43:43

long term. That's right. And and I You're like,

Ben Orenstein: 43:46

I I'm yeah. Exactly. I'm already rich, and we raise a bunch more money.

Josh Pigford: 43:50

I'm so I'm so hesitant to ever be like, well, I've got a lot of money. Like Sure. But it matters. But it it does. It changes it changes the types of problems that, like, I'm I'm willing to tackle because I don't it doesn't matter to me purse if I personally make some money.

Josh Pigford: 44:05

Now do I want to, like, do right by our 1,732 investors from our crowdfund thing. Like Mhmm. Yeah. You know, that was one that was the reason that we pivoted and tried this whole detangle thing is because, like, I didn't want her to shut it down and be like, sorry, guys. You lost all your money.

Josh Pigford: 44:21

Like, I I do want people to become whole as much as as possible because

Ben Orenstein: 44:26

that's how I

Josh Pigford: 44:27

that's how my brain works. But, like, at the same time, I don't personally be it's not like, well, we need I need a paycheck. So we need to figure out how to do something today in the short for a short term win. You know? So

Ben Orenstein: 44:40

Cool. I guess just yeah. The alarm bell rings a little bit, though, which is like like, that seems great, but also don't go slow.

Josh Pigford: 44:47

Sure. I

Ben Orenstein: 44:47

You know?

Josh Pigford: 44:48

My brain doesn't my my brain also doesn't let me move out. Like, I have to not be bored. So I have to be working towards and, like, seeing progress. It's just I don't like the feeling of, like, well, we need to figure this out, tomorrow. Sure.

Ben Orenstein: 45:04

Well, I'll

Josh Pigford: 45:05

give it a few days. It's okay.

Ben Orenstein: 45:08

Nice. Alright. You talk about detangle just a little bit because it seems like that kinda is working. And I play with it a little bit and found it, like, nice.

Josh Pigford: 45:16

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you're familiar with this where, especially in business, you just get contracts for all sorts of stuff even if it's just even if it's like an NDA. But any kind of business business acquisitions or just business agreements or employment agreements, whatever it is, you get a lot of this stuff. That was the impetus for, like, well, it'd be cool if you could, translate this into, I I say, like, human speak.

Josh Pigford: 45:50

Yeah. And, so built detangled to do that where you just upload a document. It's got some it's ultimately getting processed by GPT on the back end And like but it breaks it down into these different modules. Like, we have this, like, favor scale thing where it tells you here is this document favors party a more than it favors party b and here's why.

Ben Orenstein: 46:10

Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 46:10

Here's, you know, all the money stuff that's in the document and here's

Ben Orenstein: 46:14

That part that part's pretty cool.

Josh Pigford: 46:16

Yeah. I I think it is pretty cool overall.

Ben Orenstein: 46:19

Yeah. I think it's a cool

Josh Pigford: 46:20

And it's right now, it's a it's one off charges per document, so there's no subscription component. It's one of those things that

Ben Orenstein: 46:27

How much revenue has it done?

Josh Pigford: 46:29

I don't at this point, I mean, it's not a ton. It's like maybe 4 or $5,000 or something. Like and these one off couple months.

Ben Orenstein: 46:39

2 months? A

Josh Pigford: 46:39

little bit less. Yeah. Okay. It's the kind of thing that's like it feels like there's something there. We're probably not the people to tackle it.

Josh Pigford: 46:47

I just don't know what to do with it now. Because it's also it's part of maybe finance inc. Like, it's under that umbrella. Oh, geez. It complicates things.

Josh Pigford: 46:55

Like, I've had people be like, well, let's do like a rev share thing and like a what but it's like, well, it's technically owned by the C Corp. And how do we detach it and do something with it? Or I don't know. So

Ben Orenstein: 47:07

Is anybody, like, asking you like, are people asking for new features or, like, raving about it?

Josh Pigford: 47:11

Yeah. People want subscriptions.

Ben Orenstein: 47:13

Like Do you wanna do a bunch of docs every month?

Josh Pigford: 47:16

Right. And, there seems like Sounds

Ben Orenstein: 47:20

like nothing.

Josh Pigford: 47:20

Wanting to be able to ask questions of the document, like, the sort of typical sort of chat, like

Ben Orenstein: 47:25

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Pigford: 47:25

Especially if you've got a long document, it becomes kind of valuable to be able to like, wait, what was that thing where it said this thing about the thing?

Ben Orenstein: 47:32

Totally. Yeah. I can see that.

Josh Pigford: 47:34

We played around with, like, a couple of big organizations. Open Door was one that we had a lot of conversations with where they do the, like, buy and sell houses. Like, they'll buy your house from you, and then you can also buy houses from Open Door. So they they're dealing with a bajillion different documents around homeowners associations and, also buying houses. And so, like, they want to be able to dump in tons of documents and pull out information from them.

Josh Pigford: 48:02

And so it's like, okay, maybe there is a commercial sort of Sounds like there is.

Ben Orenstein: 48:07

Very much there is to me. Right.

Josh Pigford: 48:09

And so

Ben Orenstein: 48:09

I hear that you're not into it. I'm not trying to sell you on it. It just sounds interesting.

Josh Pigford: 48:12

No. But it's like I do think there is something there, and I I hesitate to just be like, well, that was the opportunity cost. Like, shut it down. You know, whatever, maybe is a bigger opportunity. That's like, I don't know.

Josh Pigford: 48:22

Like, in fact, that's what

Ben Orenstein: 48:23

hate is. Though? I mean, just just I

Josh Pigford: 48:26

don't know.

Ben Orenstein: 48:26

I I mean, maybe I am trying to sell

Josh Pigford: 48:28

you a little bit.

Ben Orenstein: 48:29

Maybe I am trying to sell you a little bit, which is that one of these things already is making money. Sure. And like yeah. It's it's got to

Josh Pigford: 48:36

be I think but that's where this goes into the, like, what what do what's like I want to tackle, like, moonshot stuff.

Ben Orenstein: 48:42

Yeah. Totally.

Josh Pigford: 48:43

Right? Yeah. So, but I but it is also the reason why I haven't just, like, well, bye. We'll shut down shut down the servers and call it a day. You know?

Josh Pigford: 48:51

It's because, like, I I do real I still feel strong that there is something there. I just don't know what our angle is.

Ben Orenstein: 48:58

Does chat gpt give you, good enough results?

Josh Pigford: 49:04

So so there's the that of, like, will chat GPT get to a point where, like, we've we've heavily massaged the the, the prompts on the back end

Ben Orenstein: 49:16

Sure.

Josh Pigford: 49:16

To be able to spit out this stuff in a usable way. But does chat gpt get good enough or, like, do these things like templates where you can just be like, here are my pre written blocks. Let me throw this out a document and get the output of it. Well, then that's essentially what detangle's doing at the moment. Like, we're sort of taking chunks of this and and just asking different questions of it and then summarizing it in these little blocks.

Josh Pigford: 49:41

And Yeah. You could do that over and over again with chat gpt.

Ben Orenstein: 49:45

I guess what I guess what I'm asking is, is the stuff that's coming out about the legal documents, like, legally smart enough? Is it, like, enough like what a lawyer would tell you that knew what they were doing?

Josh Pigford: 49:58

Well, I mean, the the the line that we sort of walk there is saying, like, this isn't a replacement for a lawyer. If anything, it's to, like, augment your conversations with your lawyer so that you'd know what to ask them about.

Ben Orenstein: 50:09

Mhmm. That's I thought and and are you and it sounds like you are delivering that. People seem to

Josh Pigford: 50:15

I think so.

Ben Orenstein: 50:15

Feel that way.

Josh Pigford: 50:17

Very consistently, it's been like, man, this was amazing. I don't have any more documents to detangle, but I love it.

Ben Orenstein: 50:21

Yeah. That was me.

Josh Pigford: 50:22

Sure. I mean, that's that's I

Ben Orenstein: 50:24

would buy something. Yeah. And then, yeah, I had one.

Josh Pigford: 50:27

That's the crux is like

Ben Orenstein: 50:30

But but it were I mean, when I was doing sales for Tuple, I had a lot of documents in my life.

Josh Pigford: 50:34

Sure. I so I think there is a commercial component where you could sell to companies and just say like and especially companies that were at the point where, like, they didn't have full time counsel or something. Like, Yeah. They don't have it in Yeah. Which is like every Probably

Ben Orenstein: 50:47

a lot of them.

Josh Pigford: 50:47

Small business. Yeah. So Yeah. You know, there's there are so many angles that have been left unexplored with that. And

Ben Orenstein: 50:54

I But you only get one life, so you gotta work on the things that gets you.

Josh Pigford: 50:57

I know. I know.

Ben Orenstein: 50:58

But but traction can be really exciting. Right?

Josh Pigford: 51:00

I don't there's either way, I'm I'm all in on maybe. So but it's just but I'm but I'm not so all in that I am willing to, like, throw out detangle. Not that I'll keep working on it, but, like, I want someone else to do it. I just don't know how to format that.

Ben Orenstein: 51:16

Yeah. Interesting. Cool, man. This is great. I love chatting.

Josh Pigford: 51:20

Yeah. For sure. I'm glad to chab you on, man. You're only what? You're a couple of episodes into this thing, right?

Ben Orenstein: 51:24

Yeah. I think this is 4. Alright. Or 3. I forget.

Ben Orenstein: 51:29

Anyway, yeah. You're early. You're single. Did you're low you're below 5 for sure.

Josh Pigford: 51:32

Look at that, man. I'll I'll I'll I'll make note of that somewhere.

Ben Orenstein: 51:35

I'm gonna try to make this I'm gonna try to make this cool for you. So that one day you can be like, I was on episode 4.

Josh Pigford: 51:40

I was I was in single digit episodes.

Ben Orenstein: 51:43

Alright. Take it easy.

Josh Pigford: 51:45

Alright. Thanks, man. Have a good one. See