Build Your SaaS

Still overwhelmed from their launch week hustle, Jon and Justin recorded a phone call to talk about their experience.

Show Notes

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Show notes:

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Creators & Guests

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

What is Build Your SaaS?

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

Justin:

Hey, John. How's it going?

Speaker 2:

Pretty good. How you doing?

Justin:

Doing well. K. It looks like this is recording which is good. This is the first time you and I have talked since we launched Transistor on August 1st. That was 2 days ago.

Speaker 2:

Yep. Yeah. I mean, we've talked obviously, talked online. But yeah.

Justin:

First time on the phone. Yeah. So

Speaker 2:

First time I think we've gotten some sleep.

Justin:

Yeah. A little bit crazy. Yeah. I I thought we would just jump on a call and record something quick for the show. And so maybe we could just back up and and tell folks what transpired.

Justin:

I think I flew to Chicago on the I can't even remember now. This this is it really does become a blur, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

Right. I think it was last Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. So I I flew on Tuesday, July 24th, and the idea was I was gonna MC Laracon. So that paid for my ticket there and back, which was great. Thanks to all the folks at Laracon, by the way. That was really nice opportunity.

Justin:

And then right after the conference, you and I were gonna meet up in person and then hack on the 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th. And then on the 31st, I was gonna fly home, and then we were gonna launch on the first.

Speaker 2:

Right. I think the idea was we would be done before that, but that's not exactly what happened. I mean, it mostly it mostly it mostly went down how we thought.

Justin:

We I mean, yeah. We we got together. I I mean, one thing is we hadn't seen each other in person in a couple years.

Speaker 2:

At least 2 years. Yeah. I don't know when the last time it was an XO XO Fest.

Justin:

Yeah. And I'm years ago? And I missed I missed the last XO, so it would have been the one before that.

Speaker 2:

It might have been 3 ish almost 3 years?

Justin:

Yeah. It might have been 3 years even.

Speaker 2:

Wow. Alright.

Justin:

I showed up at your doorstep, and we, yeah, we just kinda spent that first day. I mean, we got right to work, actually. I was trying to remember. I think we put in at least 10 hours a day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

Like, when we were together, it was like it was just heads down, trying to get things done.

Speaker 2:

We got to spend some time at the the car team and sanity office on the weekend, which is really quiet and nice and got a lot down there.

Justin:

Yeah. That that part was probably my favorite. Because I don't know what it's like to work there during the day, but on the weekend, it's like there's nobody there. It's kind of like getting to it was as if, like, Disneyland got emptied out, and you get to ride all the rides for free, like, when no one's there?

Speaker 2:

It's funny because I actually prefer working in the office, on the weekends or before 9 AM or after 7 PM.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it's, like, basically, when no one else is there, I get more done.

Justin:

I mean, it's just such a cool, vibrant, creative space. There's all sorts of interesting art, and it's really open. It has a lot of natural light. Like, the Saturday Sunday we were there was probably my most productive and also just the most enjoyable. It was just really, yeah, really fun.

Justin:

And we would get I

Speaker 2:

mean really. Yeah.

Justin:

We would get so like, we would basically, like, make coffee at your place, walk to cards, maybe have a little snack, and then we would work until, like, 2 or 3 in the afternoon, realize we were hungry, go get some lunch, have lunch, and then come back. And then that first day, we we we had that meetup, like, on the Saturday. Remember that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. You organized the meetup kinda last minute. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, I I don't know about you. I was exhausted. I was like I don't even know if I really wanted to do it.

Justin:

Yeah. You're you're stretch you were like, maybe we should just cancel it. And I was and I was like, ah, yeah. Maybe we should. And but people had signed up.

Justin:

People had somehow found out about it even though

Speaker 2:

we

Justin:

didn't tell anybody.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It was it just randomly showed up in Meetup as, like, a thing to do in Chicago, which was interesting.

Justin:

Yeah. But it turned out good, didn't it?

Speaker 2:

I I I really enjoyed it. Everyone that came was really interesting and had fascinating stories. And I don't know how we had, like, 8, 9 people total including us show up. It was a little big, but everyone really, like, gelled well together, and we were on the patio for a bit just talking and sharing stories.

Justin:

Yeah. And everyone was Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I thought it was really good.

Justin:

Everyone's really interested in podcasting. They all had Yeah. And, actually, the cool part was you got to demo kinda what we were working on in real time.

Speaker 2:

Like Yeah.

Justin:

People just kind of looked over your shoulder, and that must have been neat. Hey?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That was cool. I was I think I was finishing up the analytics page, and it I hadn't even deployed it yet to the website. It was just on my laptop, and I was showing people what I was working on, and I got immediate, you know, good feedback about it Yeah. Which is cool.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I actually, in retrospect, like, I remember when it was, like, we've been working all day, and we're just exhausted. And this was, like, day 3 now on Saturday, and it's it's starting to become clear, like, okay. We really need to get this, like, analytics done.

Justin:

And, you know, we're like, are we gonna make it? And I remember thinking, maybe this meetup was a mistake. But in in retrospect, it was kind of nice having, like, human contact and getting Yeah. Getting to show people what we were working on. And, yeah, there was something about it that was really kinda neat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It was actually fairly energizing for me even though I thought it would be the opposite.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because I was tired and didn't necessarily wanna talk to new people, but I actually I actually really enjoyed it.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. That was that was really crazy. And so, yeah, we we we worked again on Sunday at the Cards office and then all day Monday, at your place. We did get a few like, we I think, you know, in our minds, we were like, ah, that'll be great.

Justin:

We're gonna get to hang out and do a few things. And we we definitely got to go out for you know, we got to go out for some good meals. We we got to, we usually end our day with, you know, a a drink and a late supper. And Yeah. That that part was enjoyable, but we were definitely working.

Justin:

Like, it was it was head down time, and that's really what we wanted too. We wanted there to be this to be a time where we could, you know, just get this thing done and out the door.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I think, I think we achieved that. Obviously, we got it out the door. There was some I don't think too many late nights, but I was definitely I was definitely exhausted when you left.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was and then especially, like, I'm flying home on the 31st. Right?

Speaker 2:

Right. And you you have you have things scheduled to send out through Product Hunt, like, 1 in the morning

Justin:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

At the time.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I still hadn't finished the sign up page.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. So that part people people probably part find that part interesting.

Speaker 2:

I was working on that pretty late on 31st

Justin:

Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

And finished that and rolled it out. Yeah. And I think it seemed to go pretty well.

Justin:

Which which was incredible because so I I just remember thinking, okay. So I have to get back home because I live in, like, the woods in British Columbia. I had to fly from Chicago to Toronto, and then I had a layover in Toronto and then Toronto to Kelowna. And in between, I'm, like, keeping up to date with you. I'm, you know, continuing to do work on my side.

Justin:

We're, like, trying to get the marketing site finished. There's things that still aren't there's things left undone. Like, oh, wait. We gotta fix this or whatever. And Yeah.

Justin:

Meanwhile, you're, like, madly trying to get sign up working so that people can sign up when we launch. And, you know, I got back to Kelowna at probably 11 o'clock and got back to my house, I don't know, probably around midnight or something. It's 1 or 2 in the morning in Chicago or something like that. And it's like, okay. Are we gonna keep going, and are we gonna get this done?

Justin:

And I remember feeling a little bit disappointed when you're like, I don't know. I think I just gotta go to bed. I'm like, okay. Well, that makes sense, but shoot. Like, I've got this thing scheduled to go, and we've been building anticipation for August 1st.

Justin:

And so I was like, ah, shoot. We're not gonna be able to do it the day that we thought. And

Speaker 2:

I know.

Justin:

And then and then you must have done some drugs or something because you were like, you know what? I'm just gonna try to finish.

Speaker 2:

No. I don't know. I think I just felt bad, and, like, I thought we had to still switch over the the domain for the main our marketing site, and I had, for some reason, thought that would be a little more work than it was, and it wasn't actually hard. I I was really close to finishing the sign up and sort of restructuring some of our public facing pages, like log in and sign up and stuff like that. And

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I just pushed through and finished it, and I think it ended up turning out pretty well. I mean, like, it it's one of those things where I knew how how I was gonna build the sign up Yep. In my head, and I do kinda knew how it was gonna work. Hadn't really designed anything for it, so I just sketched up some stuff and just, like, did it, and it went pretty well.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. The signup looks great, and folks can see it. If they go to transistor.fm, and then the upper right hand side, they they click the sign up button, That takes you to this sign up page John built, and it looks really good. Like, you did a great job.

Speaker 2:

It's not as fancy. There's there's definitely stuff I left out that I wanted to include, but it it wasn't really that important for launch day. So

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So then, I just stayed up. One thing I realized is I went from central time to Pacific time, and I just, like, didn't realize it because then I just stayed up.

Justin:

You went to bed.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah.

Justin:

And then and then I'm like, okay. I'm gonna launch this thing. And so I had to fix a bunch of stuff before I launched it, but then I was like, okay. I fixed all this stuff. I'm still up.

Justin:

I'm just gonna post this on Product Hunt right now, and that'll be kind of our big splash. And the reason I want it like, Product Hunt has this voting algorithm that it it used to be like you you would wanna be on, like, right 12:01 AM Pacific is when it rolls over. It's like a a leaderboard for, like, the best products of the day. And so the the algorithm used to be really dumb. And if if you were first, you had a pretty good chance of being, you know, doing pretty well.

Justin:

But now they actually have, like, an engagement kinda algorithm. But I I still figured being there early would be better than, you know, posting it late. And so I posted it at 1 in the morning, and then I was like, well, now I gotta stay up and just, like, watch the site and watch chat and stuff. And so I probably stayed up till 3 or 4 in the morning and then went to bed.

Speaker 2:

Yikes. Jeez.

Justin:

I've kind of got this whole machine that I I use when I'm especially launching on Product Hunt. And, yeah, I just wanted to make sure I did all those things the way I wanted to and gave it a good chance to make the biggest possible, you know,

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, I think you did that because you got us to number 1.

Justin:

Yeah. So, yeah. It it it it was it was number 1 pretty soon after. And I again, I think we've talked a lot about building anticipation, and Mhmm. Part of it was that a lot of it is just about building your audience and building connections over time.

Justin:

Because, you know, when I announce something on Product Hunt, for example, it goes to all my, whatever, 4,000 followers on Product Hunt. So they get notified right away. And then we also were using Product Hunt as this, like, upcoming thing that people can sign up for. And so we were also able to email those Product Hunt users directly and say, hey. Now we're live on Product Hunt.

Justin:

So there's a bunch of pieces there. But, yeah, it it it went really well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It did. I don't know I don't know how you feel overall about how it went. I didn't really know what to expect as far as sign ups. Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

But I I we didn't, you know, we didn't get a ton of sign ups, but we got a lot of exposure. We have a lot of people asking a lot of interest. And and I think, like I told you, signing up for a podcast hosting service is necessarily a thing people are just gonna jump into?

Justin:

Like Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's not it's not like a it's not like a service, like I don't know what to compare it to. Like, this new music like, streaming music app is now signed up immediately, and you can listen to music. It's not like you have to kinda be ready to sign up and start a podcast or switch.

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

So

Justin:

It's yeah. So my goal for the Product Hunt launch was just to make a big splash. So get people talking about it, get people linking to it, get people tweeting about it. You know, get all all of the the the benefit is just making a big splash. You know, I figured, well, we might get a few sign ups, but, really, let's just get a lot of buzz.

Justin:

Let's get a lot of word-of-mouth, and then we can leverage that into other things. And so, you know, when we we still haven't emailed our waiting list yet, and when I when we do that, I'm hoping that we get, you know I don't know. I'd hope for at least 10 sign ups from that at a minimum.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

But I knew that, like, people who are browsing Product Hunt, it's a real there's no intent there. They're just browsing and, you know, looking at what's interesting. It's not like they're ready to buy. It's the difference between, you know, finding something on Product Hunt and going, oh, that looks cool, and, you know, searching best podcast hosting application on Google. But, yeah.

Justin:

I mean, the we in terms of traffic, we got, 17,000 page views that day. And then another, oh, another 95 100 page views the next day. So quite a bit of traffic. We got, I think, 7 or 8 sign ups from

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

Which is pretty good if you think about it because you need to sign up with a credit card. It's a 14 day trial, and then you have to sign up with a credit card. So even to get anybody going, oh, yeah. I'm gonna I'm ready to I I need a podcast host, and I'm gonna sign up right now just from seeing this

Speaker 2:

thing on Product Hunt. Right. And put my card in.

Justin:

Yeah. Put my card in.

Speaker 2:

I think we we kind of we kinda knew it would be a slow burn.

Justin:

Yeah. The other cool thing is that when you it's so funny how you can leverage these things. So once, you know, you're number 1 on Product Hunt, that became a headline on Pod News, you know, that day. Transistor launches and is number 1 on Product Hunt, and we got a bunch more interest. We actually probably got more, like, inbound sales kinda inbound sales leads from that Pod News article than, Product Hunt itself.

Justin:

So these kind of waves that happened are and are gonna continue to happen after our launch. Yeah. We're hoping those become significant kind of drivers of business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. We'll I mean, we'll see how it goes. I know it seems like we got a lot of good questions about, you know, why should I choose Trintister over what I'm using. Or

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, a lot of a lot of interest.

Justin:

It's almost like you have to go through that, like, first launch date, and it's just going going to be crazy. Like, there's gonna be a lot of noise. There's going to be a lot of, like I I I probably replied to I could have replied to 200 messages that day, like between Twitter and Product Hunt and our, you know, our chat app and Yeah. Email. Like, it was just so many questions.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad I'm glad you did because I was I was brain dead and and back at my day job and Mhmm. Trying to trying to focus, and I think I I think I went back and fell asleep at, like, 9 o'clock that night.

Justin:

Yeah. I did have a nap that day. I remember, just because it it is exhausting, all of this stuff. Yeah. But

Speaker 2:

And so we also in the process of that, we also forgot to record an episode for this week, this past Tuesday. So that was, I think, the first week we missed for the for our show.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But probably have a good reason for that.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. People on Twitter have been like, oh, wait. This makes sense now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

You were busy launching. If you've ever launched something publicly like that, you know that I mean, there's some definitely like, some folks launch and it's just really quiet, you know? Just quietly launch something. I really wanted us to make a big splash because I I feel like that's your one opportunity to do it. And so, if you want people talking about it, if you wanna, you know, if you wanna be a a news item of the day, you kinda put a lot into that.

Justin:

But the downside to that is it's just it's an insane day. You're just you're just getting tons and tons of inbound. It's really noisy. You know that, you know, most of the folks that are kinda poking around probably aren't going to become your customers, but it's like just this ring of fire you have to jump through. And, you know, things are gonna settle down now, and it almost feels like, okay.

Justin:

Now we're launched. We had, you know, we had that deadline. We made it. It's out, but now the real work begins. Now we've gotta, you know, convince folks that this is the the product for them.

Justin:

And so Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it's not it's certainly like watching, and it's not the end of it by any means. It's Mm-mm. Kind of the start.

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. I and to be honest, like, I found so much of it helpful.

Justin:

Like, the questions we were getting in Product Hunt, I I was trying to create articles in response to those questions in real time because it's it's like this moment in time where you you have all this interest, but you can get people's immediate reactions. Being able to get those reactions and go, oh, yeah. Like, we haven't thought about this, or, yes, we are thinking about adding that, Or you know? And the biggest question was actually, the biggest question was how is this different from Anchor, which was interesting.

Speaker 2:

Right. So I guess yeah. It seems like Anchor is pretty popular.

Justin:

Yeah. Especially amongst that community. You know, it's a lot of folks kind of

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

Makers and people that are, you know, they they they try a lot of apps and, you know, Anchor has been Anchor's done a couple pivots, and so a lot of folks are familiar with them. But it felt good to be able to already say, here's how we're different. And I almost found that our messaging got even sharper as the day went on because I was able to see, wow, this is really where we're different. This is really kind of the benefit we bring to the table. So that yeah.

Justin:

Again, insane, and it just felt like we were, like, sucking from a fire hose. But being able to, like, go, okay. That's a great question. I'm gonna turn that into an article right now. And then I turn it into an article, and then I had to use it, like, 10 times in our live chat because people are saying, how is this different from Anchor?

Justin:

You know, I got that question, like, so many times.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Justin:

So having these kind of assets that you're creating on the fly yeah. It was Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It was a great way to do it. Yeah.

Justin:

It was pretty crazy. Yeah. So that's that's kind of the that's kind of the story so far. I I feel like we're still kinda reeling from it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I, I think I told you I I did a bunch of stuff I wanna work on this weekend that probably will take a day off.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You know, it it's been great because, like like you said, the feedback we got are are new ideas or exciting ideas or just, like, certain problems you notice at a certain scale. Yeah. And they're important things to fix or add in.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So everything I mean, everything we still have everything we still have coming down the pipeline is really exciting. And now it's just, you know, keeping momentum going and finding time and energy and not not getting burnt out, I think, is gonna be the key.

Justin:

Yeah. And one thing that was cool about us hanging out is just to have things in perspective. When you're when you're spending time with another human being, there was times I think we were just like, you know what? Like, this is important, what we're working on, and we're highly motivated to get it out, and we care about it. But we're just people that are living our lives.

Justin:

And, you know Yeah. You know, what are we doing this for? Are are we doing this

Speaker 2:

Right.

Justin:

So we can, you know, like and so it it felt I felt like even though we worked hard, we also had this pretty good balance of let's go let's go, you know, have a meal together. Let's, you know, have a cocktail. Let's, like, let's not make this all about just, you know, heck. That might one of my favorite moments is that you and I were in your apartment, and it was, like, super light. And we just, like, look at each other, and it's like, what are we doing?

Justin:

We're too old for this. Yeah. Like, what are are we supposed to we're like like, should we keep going? Isn't this the moment where, you know, our 22 year old selves would be guzzling Red Bull or whatever? And we're just like, we're almost 40.

Justin:

Let's just go to bed. You know, and truthfully, like, I I'm glad we got it out. I'm glad we made our deadline. But the it's okay. Like, the now now we're launched.

Justin:

Now we're gonna have this, like, slow organic growth. Let's let's take a break. I've got family in town now, and it Yeah. It's okay for us to you can't sprint forever. And so, yeah, I felt like we had a good time of, like, you know, pedals to the metal.

Justin:

We're really giving it everything we have. We did it. And after you run a race, it's good to rest. And so Yeah. That's kind of on the agenda.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. But you just gotta train for the next one, and I'm I'm excited to do that again at some point.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It it really was productive, having this focused time of we're both in the same room. We didn't we didn't talk at all. Like, it was just Yeah.

Justin:

We're in the same room, but it was more the purposefulness of it. You know?

Speaker 2:

We're Right.

Justin:

What we're what we're doing, the intent of it. You know, we're here because we wanna launch this thing, and we're gonna get it done, and we're gonna do what it takes to get it done.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Justin:

Right on. So yeah. If if you're on our mailing list, our waiting list, we're gonna be emailing you soon. But you can sign up right now if you you're ready, to start your podcast. We'd love to have you.

Justin:

We've got so many great shows that even in the past few days, I think a handful of people launched new shows on Transistor. It's really fun. That's the fun part is seeing people use it and get a benefit from it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. A lot of lot of good things being worked on. We just got approval yesterday for the Spotify Analytics APIs, so we'll be able to bring in Spotify Analytics in the in the Transistor as well.

Justin:

Yeah. It's looking so good. If again, if you folks have time, go to transistor.fm/ features, and you can just see kinda all the features and especially analytics. I feel like our initial version of analytics is really, really good. We've gotten some good feedback from that.

Justin:

I've been able to demo that for people, you know, over, what do you call that, like live webinar or whatever, and

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

The response has been really good. I feel like we've got a good foundation there that's unique. It's it really is going to set us apart as we continue to build on top of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Those turned out nice. I think there's you know, having built it, I I see I see the places where it can be fine tuned Yeah. Probably more clearly, but and, like, optimized and, you know some I think some of the stats aren't perfectly accurate as far as tagging them the right way, but we can fix that stuff.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. But that's the whole idea. We you ship it, and it's never going to be as good as you wanted it to. You you want it to be in your head.

Speaker 2:

But now it's out, and we just Yeah.

Justin:

Now we can iterate.

Speaker 2:

Iterate through it. Mhmm. Alright.

Justin:

Well, cheers, John. Cheers to to shipping and, for getting it out. It really feels like we've accomplished something significant. And, yeah, I'm, I'm happy we were able to do it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it's you too. All the help getting it out there, getting the word out.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. So, folks, this is kind of we're we're hoping to be back on our regular schedule. You know, this episode's going out on Tuesday, and we're gonna keep updating you folks. If you have things you want us to cover, if there's things that, you know, we're we're still we're we're still, like, completely dazed and confused.

Justin:

So if once we've had more time to rest and think through things, we'd be, you know, happy to to reveal more of the process and talk about more about kind of what's happening, give you as many of the numbers and things like that that we can. So reach out to us on Twitter at transistorfm. Email us at shows at transistor dotfm, and, yeah. We'd be happy to answer as many of those questions as we can on the show.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Justin:

Alright. See you next week.