Product People

Ben Orenstein, Derrick Reimer, and Justin Jackson are all building a new product. What still works?

Show Notes

So many great topics in this episode: 
  • Should developers learn design?
  • Derrick's "viral signup" trick
  • How important is a personal brand?
  • How to promote your project (while you're still building it)
  • Do software companies need to become more service oriented?

Announcement:

Show notes

Stuff from Justin...

Thanks to...


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Creators and Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
⚡ Bootstrapping, podcasting, calm companies, business ethics. Co-founder of Transistor.fm

What is Product People?

A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them

Speaker 1:

Hey, folks. Welcome back to the product people podcast. Justin Jackson here, and we are getting closer to a 100 episodes of this show. It's been around for a while. It's been around since 02/2012, but we have not yet crossed the mighty 100 episodes.

Speaker 1:

And I I think we're gonna get close. I I'm publishing more often. And, today, I've got a great conversation with Derek Rimer and Ben Ornstein from over at theartofproductpodcast.com. Man, we really got into it. Three product people in one conversation.

Speaker 1:

Ben is working on a new pair programming app called Tuple. Derek Rimer is launching a Slack competitor for developers called level.app and of course I'm working on transistor.fm. Wow yeah it was great so I'm just sharing a little bit of the conversation to get the whole thing go over to artofproductpodcast.com and subscribe. Also, before we get into it, my birthday is coming up, and it's become a little tradition for me to have a birthday sale. I'm turning 38 this year.

Speaker 1:

So 38% off on a bunch of things. Product validation checklist is 38% off. Also, all my books, so marketing for devs, Jolt, Product Hunt, Hacker News, you can get that in a big bundle for 38% off. And then, of course, like I mentioned last time, the marketing for developers course, which you'll only be able to buy until July, is $50 off right now. Megamaker.co/birthday.

Speaker 1:

If you want those deals as I speak right now, there's only six days and fourteen hours left. So if you want one of those, jump on it. Lots of folks getting in on that product validation checklist and getting a lot of value out of it too. So check it out. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Why don't we get into this conversation? Just a few clips from my chat with Ben and Derek. Here we go.

Speaker 2:

So yeah. We haven't had editing problems, so they're doing keep it up.

Speaker 1:

Keep it up. Whatever you're doing back there. This is I like Keep being awesome. I like talking to the editor. That's my favorite thing.

Speaker 1:

Like, hey. Yeah. Are you there? Are you still there? Can you hear me?

Speaker 3:

Funny thing is I have no clue who the human is that's editing this.

Speaker 2:

Like Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if it's Becky. We just get like a random email from Becky, but I don't know if that's just an admin or Or a manufactured persona.

Speaker 1:

Hi, Becky.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to Art of Product, Justin Jackson.

Speaker 1:

Hey, thanks. Good to be here.

Speaker 2:

How's it going?

Speaker 1:

I wanna say, yeah, things are great, but things are good. Things are you know, it feels like there's a lot it's a lot of work to build something especially on the side. So I would also say

Speaker 2:

Tell me about it.

Speaker 1:

I feel tired and feel like it's going slow and all that all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Totally. Yeah. Definitely wanna dig into that. One of my explicit questions for you is like, how's your brain? What's your mental state like?

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. I asked Derek this too, but yeah, I think we could do it. We'll all commiserate perhaps.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So it's been a fun week in the land of level the last few days because I decided sort of off the cuff to launch a new landing page. And I've been working on it for a little while, some copywriting, trying to craft something impactful about kind of the level value proposition. And I talked about this a little bit last time, but wanted to experiment with leveraging scarcity as a means for attracting new signups onto the pre launch list. And so basically I had a short long form landing page up on level.app.

Speaker 3:

And at the bottom, the call to action was reserve your handle. Basically, we're still under development, but you can claim your slice of real estate for the future. Level.level.app slash your username of choice and submit this form to reserve it so no one else can have it. And, that worked exceedingly well. Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

So as of right now, there's 2,300 ish people who have filled out that form. Awesome. Yeah. No way. So and I can Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I got to say, that's just Savvy AF. I just thought that that was such a smart move. And then seeing it work so well, was like, yeah, that was just well done. Props on that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Thank you. Well, feel free to rip it off.

Speaker 2:

Totally. Oh, yeah. No. I well, don't worry.

Speaker 3:

I certainly was not the first person to do it. So I'm sure I I'm sure I, like, took inspiration from someone else out there.

Speaker 1:

I also just like this landing page that I like that it's, like, kind of a long form letter. It's almost all words. It has a really strong headline. Remember that time you forgot to open Slack? There's just Yeah.

Speaker 1:

A lot to like about this. And then, you know, people get to the bottom and it's like, okay, reserve your handle. There's yeah. This is great.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And it's it's funny how these come like, this landing page came together pretty quickly, and I spent a few weeks kind of just occasionally jumping back over to it and writing some copy and then scrapping it. And there was just like one writing period where I was like, what if I took this angle and I like wrote that headline and then everything else just sort of flowed.

Speaker 3:

I just sort of started to tell a story. And so it was like weeks of time here and there spent on it, but it really came together in in an hour or two. And so it's kind of fun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. This idea I keep tossing around in my head is like, should I maybe for the long term be investing in my own design CSS skills? And it kind of feels like the answer is probably not. But at the same time, I just I see how you're able to execute on this and I'm like, damn, I wish we could do that too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I don't know. Justin, do have thoughts on that?

Speaker 1:

Here here's I'm gonna say something that might upset some people. I think, to me, it seems like design is easier to learn, at least easier to learn the fundamentals than other things. And if you are already interested in having good taste and, you know so Ben, for example, you've got good taste in lots of other things like music and, you know, you you have a high bar for quality. I think your personality would lend itself well to design because there's just it there's a lot of rules around it. There's a lot of what makes good design.

Speaker 1:

And if you follow those things, can learn those fundamentals and basically be good at design. Design feels more accessible for me than programming does. So Mhmm. I ask myself this question all the time. Should I should I learn more programming?

Speaker 1:

Should I learn more design? Should I learn? And design is one where I'm like, ah, you know, I could read this book or read this blog post and apply a few things and massively improve, you know, my design. Whereas programming, it's just like I can't get into that headspace. As soon as you say variables and classes and all that stuff, I'm just like, ugh.

Speaker 1:

I just it's just a lot harder for me to to get into it. So that that's that's kinda and it it seems like design is something you could work on every day. Like, okay. What am I gonna let me just look at typefaces. Like, how how can I get better at typefaces and then, you know, apply something like that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Think a lot of us are like Steve has mentioned this before when I've when I talked to him and been like, well, I'm not really a designer. He's like, actually a lot of us are designers because in one sense, we all sort of have opinions about what we think looks nice and what's usable and what feels nice. And I think the the hard part is like being able to connect the two where you know you look at something, you know whether it's well designed or not, but then being able to reproduce it, you sort of have to, you have to acquire those skills. And it's different than just knowing whether something is well designed.

Speaker 2:

But Right.

Speaker 3:

Knowing knowing is is half the battle. Then Yeah. That gap. And so I remember when I would try to design stuff, you know, years ago, it would just take a really long time, and it was pretty agonizing because I knew what I was putting out didn't look how I wanted it to look, but I didn't know what next steps to take to get it to feel right. And so it was a lot of like trial and error and experimentation, and I would end up with something, but it would take way longer than it would take a professional designer who could probably knock it out in a day.

Speaker 3:

And then I think it's just through deliberate practice and doing it over and over again, you sort of pick up your little tool belt of design patterns that you'd like to reach for, and it gradually gets easier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I think the other thing is if you enjoy writing, so for design on the web, so much of the design follows the words. And Mhmm. We just went through, we're we're building our official web page for Transistor. And we went we started with some mock ups that a designer had made us a long time ago.

Speaker 1:

And they look right, but I wish I had started with the words because now I'm I'm wrestling this thing and feeling like, ugh. Like, I'm actually really jealous of what you have with level because that is exactly kind of what I would like. That's the form I can see myself pouring into. But now, you know, so much of so much especially templated design, it's like, ah, like this is there's all these little pockets I've gotta it's like filling a cookie tray and, you know, you gotta fill everything this way. And it's like, ah, I don't wanna do that.

Speaker 1:

I wanna I wanna be able to start with words. So if you're already a good writer and you can put the the writing on the page and then you can say, okay. How can I enhance this writing? And it's like, okay. Well, I can add padding.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow. That looks a lot better. I can add more line height. Oh, that feels better. I can increase the typeface size.

Speaker 1:

I can, you know, do all these things. And it just feels better and better and better. Whereas, maybe some folks think that design is starting with a blank sheet in sketch and then building something. And I've never been very good at that.

Speaker 2:

It feels like it's an achievable skill set to me. I think my taste is pretty decent, so that's kind of already there. And I think like most web things or most modern things, it's never been easier to learn these skills. There are more courses for picking up design skills and learning the hairiness that is CSS. All that stuff is more common than ever.

Speaker 2:

So it's like, okay, is this probably not a huge leap to get there, but there are so many things that I could focus on right now. And is that the highest leverage thing? Yeah, it's annoying right now, but a year from now, will the one hundred hours poured into this make sense? Or will it be now I'm not doing any of this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's tough to say.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It is hard.

Speaker 2:

So Derek, I saw you get a lot of play on your share this tweet thing. Yeah. People signed up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. That that worked well, and I think it kind of goes back to that, that lesson we picked up from MicroConf, which is just like, just ask people for a favor in a genuine way. And so that's what I did when they submitted the form. I just swapped it out with like a little emoji, sweet, we saved your handle for you. If you could do us a big favor, it would help out a lot if you just, you know, tweet this out to your friends.

Speaker 3:

Here's a here's a tweet button for you.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

And I haven't got through and counted, but it was quite a few. Like, I was sort of checking in on that throughout the day, and there was a steady stream of them getting spread around.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Can I can I tell you what I think is the missing the essential piece of that? What? The so there's a lot of folks that do stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

There's a thunderclap or whatever.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

This is why I did it, is because I saw other people I knew and respected doing it, and I had a relationship with you. And so I think outside of that context, those kinds of things are much more difficult. Because if Yeah. If you're just some random faceless app and you're asking me to tweet something to my audience just because I signed up, I'm not going to do it. There's there's no but there's an emotional job there, which is I like Derek.

Speaker 1:

I wanna let Derek know that I'm supporting him. That's a huge one, I think.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yep. For sure.

Speaker 1:

The also, you know, other folks I like are doing it. So there's this kind of pack. It's this is acceptable within my, you know, my group. Whereas if if I, like, did a random thunderclap for a random app, people would be like, Justin, what are you doing? Like, this is Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

Cheesy or, you know, whatever. So I think that's the missing piece. That's not, like, a tactic people can just take off the shelf and apply. Yeah. You've really gotta invest in relationships and your profile and all those other things beforehand.

Speaker 1:

So you gotta earn the right to ask before you ask.

Speaker 3:

I think that's a great that's a great point. And I think it helps too that, like, there's, the people who were sort of amplifying the message were in our relatively tight knit community of of, you know, founders, developers, designers.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

And so it sort of did help that I think others others saw it, and that sort of like led to others then feeling more likely to click the button.

Speaker 1:

Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

Is there any do do you recall did you see the copy, and was there anything that you would have changed on the the ask? I can pull up what the actual verbiage is. But

Speaker 1:

I I changed the tweet, just because I didn't wanna have the same thing as everyone else.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

But I think, you know, there was also something nice about just seeing it wasn't like again, sometimes I see those thunderclaps. I'm like, everybody is tweeting this stupid thing. Whereas this was like, oh, another person signed up for Level for Derek's thing. That's cool. And so I think, yeah, to me, it was well executed.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that point is something that we've actually come to a couple of times on this podcast where the best way to make a thing that works is to spend a few years building relationships and a reputation and an audience and then try to do a thing. And it turns out it's gonna be a lot easier than if you hadn't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. And there's different ways to do that. I mean and and there actually, there is other ways to do this. Like, Ruben Gomes does not care at all about building an audience or a profile or anything.

Speaker 1:

To a certain extent, Ian Landsman is like this. You know, they just wanna build the product and then find SEO or something else. But it is one way to stand out. Hey, this is Derek. You might remember me from the conference.

Speaker 1:

You might remember me from Drip. You might remember me from Twitter, and now I'm doing something new. Do you want to share this? It's just so personal. I think Nate Cottney, when he had Draft He did this so well.

Speaker 1:

He had a page with him and his dog on it and just saying, hey. This is me, Derek, and I'm just a guy building software. And I like to write. I like to program. Here's my dog.

Speaker 1:

And that personal approach really stands out on the Internet where, you know, a lot of websites just look like faceless brands. And Yeah. So I think there's multiple ways to do it, and this is one good way to do it. Yep.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I think the the transparency the level of transparency that I've chosen to use with this has made the process so much more fun than it would be if I were just trying to, like you know, yeah. I could be going the more anonymous route, hiring a, you know, someone to write content and produce blog articles, try to build up SEO, try to do, you know, paid ads, and just get at different channels that way. But like, getting that real time feedback from actual humans who are excited about it and feel like they're on board with the journey has been, it's been a lot of what keeps me going on the day to day. You know?

Speaker 3:

Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I'm also pretty convinced that people like buying from people they like.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Like, I think you will win customers who might have chosen other things just because, like, well, let's use Derek's thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 1:

There's again, I I keep balancing this in my head because I know there's other approaches, and I think this is why it's important to identify what you want. What do you want? What do you value? What do you like? And I'm exactly like you, Ben.

Speaker 1:

I like buying from people I like. And so, you know, I've I've purchased every single thing Jason Fried has ever made, I think. It's just because I liked his writing from the beginning. I could identify with him. His next book that comes out, I'm going buy it.

Speaker 1:

I don't even need to read the reviews. I just like him. I like his writing. I'm done. Right?

Speaker 1:

Other people might not buy that way. They might not appreciate that. They might not value that. But that's the way I buy. One of my values is buying from people I know.

Speaker 1:

Building relationships. And so, yeah. Although I also think that there is just humans in general and maybe this is what you're getting to, Ben humans in general respond to people that know them or have some sort of connection with them. I think there's something to that as well. If you can be personal with folks can say Derek asking, Can you share this thing?

Speaker 1:

Is almost just a continuation of a conversation at MicroConf. We were talking about where to go for lunch, and then a week later he reaches out on his website and says, Hey, can you share this thing? It feels like, Oh yeah, sure,

Speaker 3:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, I think there's something to that too.

Speaker 2:

It's also one of those things that you just can't re you can't, reproduce on the fly or, like, buy or like, have to build it the slow way authentically.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And and that makes it a competitive advantage effectively.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like, you can't Slack will never have that feeling for me that helping out my buddy Derek will have ever. So it's like, no matter how big their budget or whatever is, it's just you can't you can't compete that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Do you think because I've only I've only built really small things, so I've never had to scale beyond that initial group. Do you think eventually you just you can't do that anymore, or is it a scalable competitive advantage?

Speaker 3:

Well, I feel like Basecamp is one example of Yeah. I think they still feel very connected to their core their core audience. And a lot of what their marketing is, they don't they they say this. They don't do a lot of marketing, deliberately, and they don't care about SEO, and they don't care about a lot of the things that traditional marketers care about. But they their biggest form, I think, is is like writing Medium posts and tweeting and being just in the community.

Speaker 3:

So I but I think they're in so many ways, they're such an anomaly. And so I don't know, like, if they're just if they've just really mastered their craft. Mhmm. Or if it's really like or if there's something else special about their you know, maybe it's them being early, them being so infused in the in the, you know, mind share of of our community. But, yeah, I I look to them for inspiration on many fronts, and that's certainly one of them.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. I think it's a question of degree. There's a limit to the number of people that you can have dinner with Yeah. Or like spend a weekend with. But I do routinely get people emailing me or tweeting at me who do seem to feel a personal connection.

Speaker 2:

Even though like it's been basically entirely one way, but they're like, I've listened to Art of Product and then before that Giant Robots and I've followed a lot of your work over the years. And it's pretty clear to me that they feel at least some sort of connection there. Yeah. And not quite the same as if we had hung out together, but I think it's actually fairly scalable, at least at a reasonable level.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. I yeah. I think there's like, folks probably feel like they know Seth Godin. Like, they feel like, oh, I've been reading his stuff forever, and I feel like I have a connection with him or so, yeah, I I just wonder how scalable it is because I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I like eventually, there that might not be a strategy. And, also, we don't really know Basecamp's numbers. We don't know like, maybe 25% or 10% of their customers know who Jason Fried is, but maybe the rest of them have no idea. And they're just like, this is just a great product. It was recommended to me by a friend.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, it's hard to tell what's going on for real.

Speaker 2:

Oh, should we continue with updates?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. We

Speaker 2:

shall. It's a fun little digression though. Let's not know. Thought that was good. All right.

Speaker 2:

So it's been a really good week. I actually have, presold $700 worth of, Tuple accounts. What?

Speaker 1:

Woah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Very nice. And I have verbal yeses for another 500 on top of that that have not come in, but I suspect will.

Speaker 1:

Wow. And how did you do that? How did you get those preorders?

Speaker 2:

So I have basically been keeping a notes. App note on my phone as I talked to people about this. A lot of it was at microconf. People had heard the podcast and they were like, Hey, I heard that thing you're making. And when someone would be like, Hey, I'm like really interested.

Speaker 2:

I'd say, Well, we are gonna be at one point running an alpha and it's gonna cost some money. But if you're interested, if they seem like a good fit, then I would take down their email. And so I've just been working my way down that list and saying, hey, it's good to see you. Remember that thing? It's happening.

Speaker 2:

Do you wanna get in on this?

Speaker 3:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's the kind of the the Jason Cohen WP engine approach of asking for a check before you build it.

Speaker 2:

Yep, totally. Yeah, this is, it's just sort of like the next step for me for validation where it's like, yeah, everyone says they're excited, but can I actually get any dollars? And so I've just been saying, hey, like we're building this thing. We're going to start alpha soon. I can't tell you when it's gonna, we're gonna have a thing in your but we are building it right now.

Speaker 2:

We're whistling in code. We're looking for a handful of people, about 20 people that I'm probably gonna cap at that number. And we're looking for people that would give good feedback and use the product. And so here is basically to get in, I'm asking people to buy an annual plan effectively. Saying like, we're gonna give you access through the whole alpha plus a year after at a discount over what we're expecting our monthly rate to be.

Speaker 2:

So what do you think?

Speaker 3:

Very nice. Question, question. How many people did you ask and did you get what was your ratio of no's to yes's?

Speaker 2:

Really good. So far I have asked 12 people. I got one straight up no. And his no was like, that's actually a reasonable price. I just can't afford it.

Speaker 2:

And so I was like, fine. The and then the then we then I have one, two, three, four. Four four paid already, two verbal yeses, and then I have four that are out that I haven't heard back from.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. You you don't even have a website for this yet, do you? Nope. So you're just like, you're just going into Stripe and just like creating a thing and then

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So they have a thing now, which is great, which is like hosted, invoices.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So I can create an invoice and send it to somebody via email and they go to like a Stripe a page on Stripe site and just fill in their thing.

Speaker 1:

Wow. You don't

Speaker 2:

Where they can even accept ACH, which is really cool.

Speaker 1:

Don't even need a landing page anymore. You just need a spreadsheet with a bunch of people's names on it.

Speaker 2:

Pretty much. Exactly. Years of building relationships with people over Yeah. Yeah. But one thing I have been doing is so we have a landing page mock up.

Speaker 2:

So I've been attaching a screenshot of that to the email and saying, just so you can see like what we're thinking and, you know

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

What we're planning on.

Speaker 1:

That's cool.

Speaker 2:

I think that probably

Speaker 1:

It it'd be cool if the Stripe app had this built in because then maybe they do, but then you could have been at the conference, and they could have said, yeah. I wanna do that. You can go, oh, hey. Do you wanna pay for it right now? And then you could have just, like, done the invoice on the app or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Mhmm. Because then it would be immediate. It'd be like, you know, like, do you

Speaker 2:

It's even harder to say no to that in person too like that.

Speaker 1:

It's harder to say no, but then you would instantly get, like, you know, their reaction. You'd get, if they had more questions. And it feels like I don't know. Maybe you you folks are different, but it feels like if I'm in person and I can't sell you on my thing, then how how am I ever gonna do that on the Internet? Like, you're right there.

Speaker 1:

And, I've, you know, I've had people come up to me at MicroKoff and go, so tell me, why should I get marketing for developers? And I'm like, like, you know? And it's hard doing that in person, but if you can do it in person and nail it, then, man, you can nail it anywhere. So Stripe, if you're listening, add that to your app. This is how people are using Stripe invoicing.

Speaker 2:

So we're basically optimizing right now for, like, get things in people's hands quickly and, like, keep the validation game going and the feedback thing going.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Can I can I ask you a question, Ben?

Speaker 2:

Always.

Speaker 1:

So I I go to Twitter, and there's nothing about Tuple on on rep. I go to benornstein.com. There's nothing about Tuple. There if I go to your media tweets, there's no screenshots that I can see, at least not in the first little bit. Is that a is that a a purposeful decision?

Speaker 1:

Like, you're purposefully not building in public or you're purposefully not sharing too much?

Speaker 2:

I it's it's sort of a failure is this one part of it. Like, part of it's just like, no. That's bad. And you shouldn't do it this way. And I I'm messing up.

Speaker 2:

Part of it is just that, like, I don't have a visual thing or a website or a landing page or anything to share yet. So it's like, I do want to say, as soon as we launch our landing page, all of those places will point at Duple for sure. Although I take your point and I agree with it, think, which is like, I could still be sharing some things, like updates and

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Teasing thing. Well, just screenshots whatever.

Speaker 1:

Pinned tweet or something to say, hey. It's Ben. This is what I'm working on right now, and it's not ready yet. But the ironically, again, when you've built relationships with folks and you've you've people are kinda interested in what you're doing, they will Mhmm. Part and retweet those sometimes because they're like, oh, look what Ben's doing.

Speaker 1:

And they just make great pinned tweets because then you can see, oh, this is what he's up to now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I I yeah. This is is not ideal. You're you're right to point it out.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a good advice actually for anybody is is to at least it's also good practice for saying you could say, it's it's like exactly the elevator pitch or the elevator question. Like, hey, Ben. What are you doing right now? Oh, well, you know how screen sharing is a real pain in the ass? Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean or pair programming over the web or whatever. Yep. I'm actually literally, like, mining my brain for, like, what the hell is tuple right now? I'm guessing. I think it's screen sharing and and pair programming.

Speaker 2:

Remote pair programming is the way.

Speaker 1:

So you know how that all sucks? Yeah. That totally sucks. Well, we're building a tool that makes it way better because of this and this and this. Well, that makes a great pinned tweet whether you have 50 followers or a thousand or whatever, that you're practicing telling your story.

Speaker 1:

I gotta get better at this too. I still don't always have that even nailed myself. What makes transistor better? It's hard to articulate those things but when you practice them, it becomes easier, I think.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I've I've been holding back because I didn't have somewhere to send people where it's like, I'm working on a thing and you should know about it. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's should know. Yeah. But it's like, what I really wanna I've kind of been, like, saving some of that ammunition, I guess, for like

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And you should go here

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And sign up for updates, I guess. But maybe that's

Speaker 3:

I mean, something you could do too is, the product the product hunt ship page. That's what I did for a few weeks, like and I just set up a it's actually up on GitHub, like Level HQ slash website, and it's just a static site with an iframe. So I put that on Level. App for a little while. And the nice thing about that is it it has a little bit of the social social proof built into it, where if you're on signing into Product Hunt, it shows who of your friends have also subscribed.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

And you can import your existing list into there. So Mhmm. I mean, it it didn't really like every time someone would subscribe, I'd sort of watch and see if there's a little bump in like others who maybe saw the saw it on Product Hunt and like also signed on, and there didn't seem to be a lot of network effects happening for mine, which is why I've I've transitioned off of that Mhmm. To the longer form page. But it at least got me by for a few weeks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Mhmm. There's a few other tricks too. One is you could take a clip of you describing in this podcast what tuple is, Then you could say, hey, I'm working on something new. Check it out.

Speaker 1:

And it's just like a a sound clip on Twitter. You could do it the same with video. Here's a little clip of a video. You could, you know, record a phone conversation with your partners. And it's just like the anticipation, like building anticipation and leaving little teases and hints is a massively underrated, way to kind of build up to a launch.

Speaker 1:

And Mhmm. The just even saying, hey. I'm working on something. Something new. Something that I'll give you I'll give you a little hint.

Speaker 1:

It's in it's for remote programmers or something. Okay. Well Mhmm. At least I know now. And, again, people remember those things.

Speaker 1:

So you're you're cluing them in like, oh, Ben's on a journey. I'm I'm gonna go on that journey.

Speaker 3:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And you probably need more of those. I think most people need more of those than they think they do. Like, some people might think Ben is still working full time. Some people might think Ben is you know, some people might think Derek's still at Drip. Like, the that you you need to kind of leave this bread this breadcrumb trail for folks Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

Especially if you've invested a lot in your relationships and profile. People need something to, like, follow. And you can do that without a landing page or a mailing list or anything. You can just say, hey. I'm working on something new.

Speaker 1:

Here's a little And Adam Waddon is absolutely the king of this.

Speaker 2:

I was just gonna say that. Adam is listening to this going duh.

Speaker 1:

He kills me. I mean, I'm a good talker, but he is the best at just going, oh, like, this is interesting. I should just share this little thing.

Speaker 2:

And Yep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, of course, find it interesting. Right?

Speaker 2:

So Yeah. And then when you launch, it feels familiar. Mhmm. Like, people are like, oh, yeah. This is that thing he's been working on.

Speaker 2:

I've been hearing about it. Oh, there you go. There's that that thing that he showed showed screenshot of.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. You you people need more time than you think they do. If all of a sudden I just, you know, woke up one day and said, hey. I launched a podcast hosting application.

Speaker 1:

People are like, woah. Woah. But if Yeah. If I if I tell them, you know, three, six months ahead, they're immediately thinking, should I have a podcast? Do I need to host a podcast?

Speaker 1:

Do I know people that are hosting a podcast? Do I you know, what problems have I encountered with that? Oh, we're in a meeting, and my boss wants us to start a podcast for a company. Oh, yeah. Justin's starting that thing.

Speaker 1:

It just gives them time to process it as opposed to just surprising them like, hey. Surprise. I got something new. People need time to process things. When you give them that time, it's in your favor.

Speaker 1:

Right?

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. Alright. Fine. Even This mastermind is brutal.

Speaker 1:

Is this how long updates usually take? This is a lot

Speaker 2:

God, no. No. No.

Speaker 1:

It's how

Speaker 2:

long a whole ep a single episode takes.

Speaker 1:

Listeners are like, what the? So I'm working on a new podcast hosting application called transistor.fm with, my buddy, John. We've been doing it well, we signed up our partnership agreement in February or something, but we've been working on it since January and he was working on it even before then. So he had built like a MVP that our first customer, Cards Against Humanity, could use. And, so they've been hosting their podcast since December, I think.

Speaker 1:

And, but we're both doing it part time. And, so John works full time for cards, and I have a business. I I think actually he's in the better situation because it's so easy to work on Transistor. And my regular business is basically selling this course marketing for developers, doing coaching calls, doing, you know, like, that kind of stuff. And it's really easy to just want to do this other do transistor.

Speaker 1:

So I think we're both struggling with that a bit. We're we're we're I mean, we keep launching new features every week. We're getting closer. We have about, I think, about 70 early access customers.

Speaker 2:

Wow. Paying customers?

Speaker 1:

Paying customers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 1:

I think John wanted it to be 10, but I just keep inviting people. Our initial plan, our current plan is that he's going to fly here to British Columbia and we're going to launch officially in July. So we'll see if that happens. Actually most recently what we've been doing, we have a podcast called Build Your SaaS and we we we are always kinda like, okay. Here's the topic.

Speaker 1:

We're gonna figure out pricing. And so in the midst of the conversation, we're, like, supposed to figure out what we're gonna do. And we got into this pricing conversation. We're like, wow. This is a we can't figure this out on air.

Speaker 1:

Like, we need to we really need to chew on this. And so one one thing we're trying to do, we're both in our late thirties. And think probably everyone has this propensity, but there's this propensity to always want to make it seem like you have all the answers and that you're you know, I've been working with a SaaS company since 02/2008. Like, I should know this stuff. But we're really trying to bury our egos and reach out for help whenever we can.

Speaker 1:

Massively helpful because our initial ideas for pricing were dumb. Like, they were just dumb. And it's so funny, you know, I don't know what that saying is. They can't see the forest for the trees or whatever. But when the trees are right in front of you, like you're in the forest and you just can't see, you're looking around and you're you're in the weeds, having someone else and sometimes they don't even need to have a lot of expertise, but someone else that can just look at your situation and go, well, there's a lot of other stuff I'm seeing that you're not seeing.

Speaker 1:

And to have a bunch of those conversations and basically every single person was aligned. They're all like, I would not price it that way. So we were gonna price it based on number of shows. Because in the enterprise space, in the podcast enterprise space, that's what people do because they're selling to radio stations and big podcast networks. But that's not our target market.

Speaker 1:

Our target market is, we think, businesses. Specifically tech businesses that want a podcast. And so they're like, This is a bad way to price and your value proposition doesn't scale with your main cost center which is bandwidth. So why are you gonna like, how much is it like Cards Against Humanity has had 3,800,000 downloads since they launched? It's like, are you guys losing money on them?

Speaker 1:

And we're like, we don't know. We might be. They're like, well, you should definitely make your pricing if you can, it's better to have your main value proposition relate to your main cost center and have expansion revenue kind of go with that. Right? So, the more So, what they were suggesting is downloads, number of downloads.

Speaker 1:

The more downloads you get, the more you get charged. It's also theoretically the main thing people want. Like when we do interviews with customers, they're like we're like, what's the number one thing you want? More listeners. That's what they want.

Speaker 1:

So, that's what we're working on right now and getting getting closer to to that, figuring out, you know, what we're gonna charge initially. And Mhmm. That's kind of like the last piece it feels like. We have lots more product stuff we want to build but that's the piece we want to have in place so that we can launch in July.

Speaker 2:

I'll take it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I've also been thinking a lot I called it activation because actually while you're talking Ben, this triggered something in me which is you've been able to get people to pay for something that doesn't exist which is an incredible thing. Like that's and Derek, you've been able to get someone to sign up for something that doesn't exist.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

Which is incredible. It it shows that, you know, you've invested all those things that we talked about, like you've invested in community, you've clearly you've got a hook that is hooking people. And I think all of that stuff's incredible. What I've been thinking about lately though is what comes after that which is: sure, I can get people to sign up. I can even get people to pay for this, but can I get people to use it and keep using it?

Speaker 1:

And I think that's one thing that worries me that keeps me up at night a little bit is I'm sure for all of our apps, like every app needs usage, but specifically in podcasting, if people are not creating shows and they're not uploading episodes, that is going to be very bad for our business long term. And so activation and usage is something that's on my mind. And I think in the e book course space, we get a lot of people who do not activate. They just buy We're happy to take their money. But in the long term, it's very difficult to build a business off those folks.

Speaker 1:

Because if they never use it, they never get success. If they never get success, they don't tell people about it. If they don't, you know, they never want to upgrade, they never want to get to the next step. And, because I've been in the e book course space for the past two years, I'm I'm really thinking, man, I need it's not enough to take people's money. I really need something that I can invest in and that naturally expands as people use it.

Speaker 1:

There's this activation and usage that leads to further revenue as opposed to me investing in this thing that, sure, I got people's money, but then I'm done.

Speaker 2:

Derek, do you wanna take this one or should I?

Speaker 3:

I so I've got some thoughts, but then you can go. So so, like, so you're building a service. Right? And, the service is software, you're hosting podcasts. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

But, something that's really kinda interesting about Stripe's strategy is that, you know, they've they're launching Atlas to help you start companies, and they're doing that because they want to make it the on ramp easier for people to build businesses, which will then in turn turn into, you know, revenue that is billed through Stripe. And so that's like they're investing in this other thing that ends up, sort of this virtuous cycle of revenue back into their company. So for you, it would be, you know, perhaps something like like, what can you do as a company to to help encourage people to continue creating? I don't even know what this is. If it's education or if there's some software that that some technical component that helps with that.

Speaker 2:

Feel free to interject then. I'm go I'm going even one one level further, which is you're building a podcast host, but no one wants a podcast host. Mhmm. They want a podcast and they want downloads. And they've already told you that they want a bunch of downloads.

Speaker 2:

So I feel like you need to talk to Brian Castle and talk to him about his done for you, we make a podcast for you for your business service. And like, I don't know if that's a business you wanna run, but like that to me is the ultimate answer. It's like, oh, they didn't actually start making episodes. Like, well, damn it. We have a plan.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. It costs a lot. Yeah. But we can make episodes. We make sure you make episodes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. We're already we were already we've already done experiments with that, with do we wanna be in the done for you? And, I think there is something there for sure. I think there's also opportunities in software, but it's likely we're going to have to partner with folks like Castle.

Speaker 1:

My friend Adam Clark has a new company called Podcast Royale that does this, and he's already referring customers to us. So we can see, okay. Wow. This is one way to do it. Right?

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

And I think there's also I haven't I haven't quite figured this out, but, I had one founder reach out to me and say, I want I've always wanted a podcast, but I want a cohost in the beginning. Like, I want you, Justin, to be my cohost so that I can experiment with this and have some confidence and all the so there is those pieces are there for sure. Yeah. Although, it also it still makes me worried because, you know, like, it's hard making a podcast. It's hard doing it every week.

Speaker 1:

And the the nice thing about downloads though that is encouraging is one problem in the podcast hosting industry is dead shows or, shows that are not being updated anymore. And, the because I can see now all of our new early access users, how many downloads they get. And I've transferred my shows. So product people, which is a show I update occasionally, is one of the shows I imported. Well, it's it goes like Cards Against Humanity and then Product People is number two.

Speaker 1:

And so for a it's a show that's not updated very often, but still gets lots of downloads. And so there's benefit there. I'm still getting the benefit from those shows. And so this idea that folks, instead of thinking, I only get benefit from this if I'm uploading new shows, as instead, they're thinking, I invest in this, and maybe I do a season, and I still get the benefit for a long, long time. If it's you know, like Seth Godin's Startup School, if you ever search Startup, it's, like, super old, never updated.

Speaker 1:

It's still, like, number one on iTunes. That's still it's like an asset that just sits there and, you know, so that makes me feel a little bit better that if we can just get people to make seven shows and they're getting enough benefit from that, then, you know, they might keep paying for a long time. It's like we've invested in this asset. It's still giving us a return.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And I think, like, as much you can build into the product that demonstrates that people are still getting value out of the content they've produced

Speaker 1:

Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

The better you're gonna be. So with Drip, it was always like, how can we put dollar signs everywhere in the app to show you like this campaign is earning you this much money, or this activity is causing this conversion to happen at this stage in

Speaker 2:

your

Speaker 3:

funnel. Because, you know, the more attribution we could do, the more insights we could offer, you know, on like ways to improve or ways to get more more people listening, more downloads Mhmm. More reach. And I think there's probably some opportunities you could do with like mining data that you have, figuring out like, hey, this was your most popular episode and you talked about this and it was this length or this format. Try doing more of that.

Speaker 3:

I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Speaker 2:

I dig it. I understand your fears though. So I started a tiny little podcast hosting thing one time. And the thing I found with it was that it was totally an aspirational thing for a lot of people. And it was like, you've always want to start a podcast, right?

Speaker 2:

They're like, heck yeah. And so I'm like, all right, we're gonna do it. And then we would. And they would record like one episode and they're like, yeah, that's enough for me. These weren't these weren't businesses.

Speaker 2:

These were, like, you know, casual people Yeah. For sure. Yeah. But it was it wasn't like they're like, god. I need a podcast.

Speaker 2:

They didn't wake up every morning thinking like, where's my podcast?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But they want the thing it it's just like anything. So I just signed up for RightMessage.

Speaker 1:

And Mhmm. And it I I had a kind of a joke on Twitter, like, how long it took Brennan to get me as a customer. It took him a long time. Like, he he asked me I've got, like in this one Slack group I'm in, there's, like, 20 messages from Brennan, like, hey. Do you wanna sign up?

Speaker 1:

And I'm gonna do it for my mega maker business, so books and courses. But I got in there once and, you know, fiddled around with a few things, and I haven't been back. And now the clock is ticking because that initial inspiration is dying, and now it's been a week. So now I'm starting to think, fuck. I paid $99 for this.

Speaker 1:

Like, ugh. Like, I'm starting to get that feeling that you get when you haven't used something. And it shows, like, if I can get some activation, if I can get, you know and, Brennan, if you're listening, this would be a good time to reach out and just set up my account for me. But, you know, like, that's a great product. He's got but I just ran into a few things.

Speaker 1:

There was a few things I couldn't do, and I'm like, whatever. I just I'm done. Right? And it's like that for a lot of products. You can't I mean, is the death of project management apps is you're already using one and someone says, hey, do you wanna check out mine?

Speaker 1:

You're like, sure. And you check it out and you're like, okay. Until you really activate, until you get some sort of like investment in sorry. Yeah. You put something in and then you get something out.

Speaker 1:

If that doesn't happen pretty quick, then it's just on the back of your mind like, okay. I'm not gonna cancel right away because Brendan's my friend. But if three months go by and I haven't used this thing, I'm gonna cancel. And that I think all products have that that problem. And even going back to the skateboard thing, like, might buy a skateboard thinking, yes.

Speaker 1:

I'm actually gonna go and learn to skateboard. But it sits in your room for two weeks, and then, you know, clothes get put on on it. And then, you know, you the more it sits there, the more you get guilty about it, the more it it feels like a weight on you. And then you're like, forget it. I'm never gonna learn how.

Speaker 1:

I'm just gonna give this to my little brother.

Speaker 2:

Yep. Yeah. There's a really good talk at MicroConf that Justin Mares did. And at one point he mentioned kind of offhandedly, we did the math and we realized that customer success people caused such an increase in our activation rates and the expansion revenue that they paid for themselves, that hiring additional customer success people was profitable. And so once we realized that we just started going nuts on that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And it's and I'm I'm sitting here thinking that for like, maybe they have one at right message. I don't know. But like if someone had, like, been keeping tabs on you and saying, hey, Justin is not actually activated. Like, I'm gonna, like, reach out to him and maybe do some work for free if I need to to get him over that hump.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I think the challenge is it takes more than automated messages. I'm I'm so used to getting automated messages like, hey. It looks like you haven't set up your thing in the end. Do wanna reach out?

Speaker 1:

I'm like

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Doesn't want.

Speaker 1:

I don't wanna do that. I just I want this reminds me of like, the first SaaS company I worked for was an email newsletter company, and I'm I got started on customer support. And one of the things I realized was if I watched new accounts sign up, and I would just go into their account, set up their template with their logo and stuff from their website, and then they would go into their account, and it would be magically their their newsletter template would have all the stuff from their website. And people loved it. Like and exactly that thing.

Speaker 1:

They if whenever I did that with an account, they were like it was like I don't know. Way more likely that they would sign up for a paid plan and stick around. And so I could see that, like, customer support people, like, reaching out and just going and, again, it's almost like you gotta be a bit ballsy. Like, reach out to me on Twitter DMs or or something and say, hey. Like, can I help you get this thing set up?

Speaker 1:

The the automated approach, I don't know. I I maybe it works for other people, but I'm just getting I I'm so used to those, you know, pop up intercom things.

Speaker 2:

Intercom.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't feel real. But if there's a real human being like, hey, we just want to help you out and get you started, I'd be like, okay, I'll do it. Yeah, And maybe it doesn't scale or I don't know. But

Speaker 2:

But may but that's the thing about Justin Maris is like that it wasn't just like, hey. We're doing a thing that doesn't scale because we have to. It was like, actually, this makes money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And and for them, you could see, like, once people get it installed and it starts, like, generating revenue, man, like, I'm in. You know? And Mhmm. It's it's kind of, again, like I don't know why more consultants don't do this is I get pitched all the time about stuff I do not care about at all.

Speaker 1:

But if someone could if someone noticed something, like like, where I'm clearly getting stuck and reached out to me and said, hey. Like, this is what I do for a living. I just get people unstuck from this thing. Do you want to pay me? I'd be like, Yes!

Speaker 1:

I will pay you for that right now because that's something that is very applicable at this point in my life. It feels like people not good at recognizing those things where people are getting stuck or they don't care or I don't know. So

Speaker 3:

many of us want to build automated software companies where we I where we ideally don't have to talk to a single human being. Mhmm. But like the the truly successful SaaS companies, I think, are the ones that when it makes sense to are proactively doing as much for their customer as possible and really emphasizing that service component. Yeah. Such a powerful thing.

Speaker 1:

Did you did was that your experience at drip too? Like, is that something you leveraged?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Early on, we had our we called it our concierge service, and, we would build an email course for you. So, like, we we sort of strategize, like, what's the minimum path to awesome to getting value out of the product. And, early early days when we were mostly centered around just like basic email follow-up campaigns, we would we would do those for free for you based on I think we would take your some existing content off your blog and put together an email course for you. And then for a while, think we even did some of the like fully done for you evergreen, like give us some ideas and we'll go off and write a five part email course.

Speaker 3:

I think we did that for free for a while, and then we started offering it for $500 maybe. But yeah, that stuff was huge in the early days. And the services component is still a big thing, at least account migrations. And now it's like, you know, DRIP is a much more complicated product. But I think there's still like, a big service component that we have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. How could you use that though, Ben, with Tuple?

Speaker 2:

I was thinking that as you were talking. I don't know for sure. So one thing I've thought about coming at it from a slightly different angle, which is not quite activation, but more like building the next generation of pair programmers. Because there's some people that feel like they should be pairing, but they don't feel like they would be good at it or they're intimidated or they have concerns. So one thing I strongly suspect that we will be building either as a low cost product or for free is some sort of pairing course or book or something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Is where having a profile and having a following could be helpful. Because if you're talking about pair programming all the time, that becomes the trigger. Right? So it's like, I'm on Twitter and I'm a Tuple customer, and all of sudden Ben's talking about pair programming, it's like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I I need to do that more. I should or even just a human being. If you tweeted, when was the last time you paired with the most junior person of your team? Then you're like, when was the last time? That's different than an automated message, and maybe that's your key.

Speaker 1:

It's just, you

Speaker 2:

know For sure.

Speaker 1:

Adam Wavin is always getting people to think about testing and refactoring because he's talking about it all the time. Like, I don't give a can I swear on this program? I don't care at all about, refactoring. Like, I don't. But I'm thinking about it all the time because Adam's tweeting it all the time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. It's providing, mean, as corny as it sounds, it's being a thought leader in tangential to the technology you're building or the business you're building. Right?

Speaker 2:

Yep. And that's totally where you want to be. Yeah. Yep. When I made a refactoring course for Rails apps, I was like, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people think of me as the refactoring guy. And so I have to now become the pairing guy.

Speaker 1:

Alright. There you go for the whole thing, artofproductpodcast.com. As always, you can reach out to me on Twitter. I'm the letter m, the letter I, Justin, m I. Justin, if you're listening to this right now in breaker, leave me a comment and a heart.

Speaker 1:

That'd be nice too. But right in the app there, you can jump in at any time. You can say, hey. Wow. This was interesting, or I've thought about this.

Speaker 1:

Or even right now at the end of the episode, hey. Thanks for, you know, thanks for making the episode. Whatever you wanna say. I don't care. Also, you can do this in another app called Castbox.

Speaker 1:

That's another app for iOS and Android where you can leave comments. I'm trying to jump in there whenever I can. As always, mean, you've got a new review for iTunes, that helps other people find the show. Still a ton of people downloading the show. It's the second most popular show by monthly downloads on transistor.fm.

Speaker 1:

I switched it over to, from my old provider to Transistor and a lot of people still downloading the back catalog. So thanks for listening. I appreciate it so much, and I will talk to you next time I release an episode. See you then.