Mario: Hey, Allen.
Alan: Hello?
Mario: good How's it going?
Alan: It's warm.
Mario: It is, isn't it?
Alan: You have the same kind of problem.
Mario: Yup.
It's pretty
warm here too.
Alan: Yeah.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: not a fan.
I'll be honest.
Mario: Is it?
is it humid.
over there?
Alan: Yeah.
we get it super humid.
it's yeah, it's generally in the 50 sixties, sixties or
seventies, humidity percent.
And it's just sticky all the time.
Mario: muggy
Alan: yeah,
exactly.
Mario: Yeah.
Okay.
That's that?
That's different here.
Hear it.
We have dry
heat.
Alan: Right.
Mario: pretty nice and
dry.
Alan: I've heard that.
That's a bit more manageable.
Yeah,
Mario: Yeah.
it is.
Although some days it gets a little bit humid, but not a big, you
know, not, not anything compared to, you know, what you probably
experienced over there or the east
coast here of the US
Alan: Right show.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Unfortunately the times I've lived in places that have been
warm, have all been humid, places.
So I'm I associate hot with very sticky muggy kind of weather and yet
to be somewhere where it's a dry heat.
So I need to, give it a, give it a fair shot.
I think at some point
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you got to come live in
the west coast of the
US.
Alan: you're offering?
Mario: Yeah.
Come live here and you'll experience
that dry heat.
Alan: Sounds good.
So what one day
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: have you been?
Feeling good?
Mario: Good.
Yeah.
Good.
I have a sort of a big news, big announcement.
So yeah,
I recently accepted a, a new role as a software engineer or software
developer joining a remote team.
So
I'll be working remotely a, hundred
percent.
Alan: Excellent.
Congratulations.
Mario: Thank you.
Alan: That'll get rid of that nasty, long commute that you are
increasingly having to do, right?
Mario: Yes.
Yes.
I'm So looking
forward to not having to do that,
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, I guess this is it does the company, is it entirely remote or is it
like partially.
Mario: I think partially.
Yeah, but a I'm pretty sure a pretty big
part of the company
is remote.
Alan: Okay, cool.
Yeah.
I mean, it's it's, I think it's just going to keep getting more and more like people
are going to be looking for this as a
you know, not even a nice to have.
It's like essential.
You gotta be remote.
or else it's not something that gets considered.
Right,
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Especially in our line of work.
I mean, it's so it's so ubiquitous and, you know, it's, it's, it's possible
because of the nature of the work it's just lends itself to being able to do it
remotely.
You know, it's just,
Alan: Exactly.
Mario: you know writing code and and technology has come a long way in
terms of, you know, communication,
as we can experience
here.
Alan: Absolutely.
Well, I mean, I'm kind of, You know, I have a, you know, a little
bit of an interest in this myself, as you think, if you noticed,
but yeah, I think it's,
It, what was kind of ex not extreme, but it was on the edge of what
people were willing to accept few years ago with work styles.
Now it's, it's just normal.
Right.
And I think companies are going to find it harder and harder if they're entirely
office-based, unless they've got something seriously going for them in terms of
like, you know, everybody wants to work for this company and thinking, you know,
apple, Google, and co which will always have people which will be happy to pay
crazy rents and travel to, to work there.
Other companies are really going to struggle, I think, in the next few
years, just because, well, you know, why should I have to put up with that?
I mean, if you're that way inclined, I mean, there's always going to be people
who prefer an office and that's cool also.
But it shouldn't be the only way of working.
Mario: Yeah.
And there are certain
types of jobs that require that you be in person.
Right.
So it depends on the the type of jobs.
So some of those
are always going to be around and
people need to be present, but,
Alan: Staring at JavaScript is not one of them.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
for
sure.
So
Alan: And plus they don't have to hate your screen when you having to deal with
it.
Mario: Yup, Yup,
Alan: Cool.
Mario: So
Alan: Oh, that's great news.
Excellent.
So is that cause you have pretty, short notice periods in the U S
right.
Mario: yeah.
the standard is two weeks.
So yeah, I gave my standard two weeks notice last week.
So my last
day is a Wednesday next
week,
Alan: so
the UK has a generally one month notice period,
which is
kind of weird because you spend a month kind of going,
I'm here, but
like, don't ask me to do anything difficult because you know, it's
literally just handing over your stuff and then you get that done.
And then you're like, well, what am I supposed to do now?
And nobody wants to give you, put you on any work.
You don't get invited to meetings anyway.
So because everybody knows you're leaving.
It's a really
weird month.
Mario: it is.
Alan: I think when I was in the U S I think one of
the companies was a one week.
And that felt like it was brutal, but it was also like, let's just
get this over with you're leaving.
Tell me what you know, that I need to know.
And then just go, it's all good
otherwise,
Mario: yeah, yeah.
Alan: a month is.
just
weird.
Mario: Yeah,
it is.
It's also a weird, the time leading up to, to that when you are, you
know, searching or mostly after you've accepted an offer somewhere else.
Right.
And, and, or you're in the process and it's almost official,
but it's not for a few days.
Cause you know, you're waiting
to make it official and then you're
at work and they're talking about projects
coming up and things are going to be doing, and then you're in, in your mind,
it's like, well, you know, I might not be
here, but I can't tell you yet.
Alan: exactly.
and you're trying not show that to say, you're trying to be like positive, but
you're thinking, yeah, I don't care.
Mario: Yeah, exactly.
Alan: It's very
Mario: Yeah, So it's yeah,
Alan: You're halfway out the door anyway.
Yeah.
you got your one foot out the door, so that's good.
Congratulations.
That's
really good.
Mario: Thank you.
Thank you.
Alan: Yeah, I've also, we also have school holidays here as well.
So we have my son running around or just is, it's not exactly disruptive
or noisy, but it's definitely adds to the slight distraction of not
being able to concentrate fully.
I mean, it's also, it's, it's nice.
you.
know, it's really cool to have him hanging around too.
But it's sometimes a little trickier than it is when it's quiet.
Mario: Yeah.
How old is your son
again?
Alan: 10.
So Yeah.
I mean, half the day, he's like, so my friends are on fortnight.
Is that cool on the, I say no?
So it, I mean, I think I've mentioned before, it's, it's amazing
to see how Fortnite has become this like social space for them over the past 18
months, you know, during the pandemic.
And it's now we have, you know, 30, 35, 37 degrees temperature
and blazing sun outside.
It's like, well, it's probably not the best thing to go and run around
in a playground at mid date rates.
So, and I've always spent a, you know, really around your Fortnite is
probably a little better for his health,
as you've seen from the, probably the Olympic pain of like trying
to play tennis and like, you know, 38 degrees temperatures that fun.
Mario: Brutal.
Alan: It is
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: cool.
Mario: Yeah.
So I wanted to share with you also, I couldn't get garage band to
work.
I was working on editing some of our past episodes that have been
queued up and waiting for a while.
And.
I mentioned the
other day.
I had a, had some trouble with garage band
Alan: Yeah, it just stopped playing.
Great.
Mario: Yup.
Yeah.
Just stopped playing.
And it, I don't know, there's no sound at all.
Nothing, everything looks there and I can see the fi you
know, the tracks and the waves.
And I played with all kinds of buttons everywhere and, you
know, trying to figure it out, nothing, nothing.
I even closed the project completely and started a brand new
one and brought, you know, audio files over into the project and
nothing it's just doesn't
work.
Alan: Does it work if you come start a completely different audio file or is it
just nothing?
Mario: no, it's just nothing, even if it's, I mean, if it's
a completely different file,
nothing.
So
I don't know what it is.
I decided to just bail out on garage band.
I don't have time to be dealing with that.
So I gave Descript to try again.
I did try it before, one time.
And I, it's a great service and it's a great tool.
I was very impressed, but it also, in some ways kind of
clunky and it to kind of gets, it takes a little bit of
getting used to,
Alan: it does.
Yes.
Mario: and I, I guess it didn't help the first time I tried it, I was
editing a video and not just audio,
so it was kind of weird.
Alan: Yeah.
it is a bit weird it's better when it's just audio.
Yeah.
When I've tried it with
video as well, because obviously it's cutting and
chopping and slicing.
So the video ends up just like that I can't deal with
that.
Mario: Yeah.
yeah, So it, it chops off parts of the video in awkward ways
that you don't really want them.
So this time I try to with audio editing a couple
of episodes of from our recordings and it worked really great.
I really, really liked it.
It was a much better
experience.
Just
editing audio.
Yeah.
Alan: Yeah, it's just such, such a time-saver.
I mean, you know, the, the magic remove ums and uhs is like
Mario: Yeah,
Alan: knowing I am an
um and uhrer is.
Yeah.
It's just like, yeah.
Get rid of that.
Make me sound a little bit more intelligent.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a, it's a great tool.
And I like the the graphical interface as well, where you can just
drag parts of the audio and just remove long pauses or
overwrite, you know, certain
parts from, by just dragging to the
left
Alan: and just re yeah, like I did some stuff where I rearranged stuff.
It was just, I want to say this before that.
And it's like, that's crazy easy to be able to do.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: Like it's I think, you know, it's,
it's got some way to go in some ways, you know, you can imagine,
you know, where it might be in one or two years, but right now it's,
it's really powerful for, for audio.
Just, just as a massive time-saving device, more
than anything.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think some of the work, mostly it needs to be on, on the user interface
and the, you know, the usability of It
where sometimes It gets a little clunky, but.
Alan: It feels a little Yeah.
JavaScript-y.
It's, it's
that weird, not in proper native app things.
So some things yeah you end up selecting the page as opposed
to some text and it's like,
Mario: Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
I'd run into that.
And it's like, oh no, you know, I didn't want me to do that.
So it took some getting used to as well, but overall, the, the technology
behind it is so powerful and so cool.
I love it.
So I'm thinking about paying for the you know, paid service to be
able to do more editing with it.
Cause right now it's just the
free, you know, tier
Alan: right
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I managed to scrape under the free tier
but Yeah.
if we need to split any costs for this, obviously just
Mario: because, well, I was thinking, you know, what, if we hire someone
to edit the episodes, but that can be really pricey, you know, per episode.
And so, well, I was thinking, what are other ways.
we could spend money on, but not as expensive.
And
maybe Descript is, one way to do it where we could pay, but it's not, it's not that
expensive compared to having an
editor,
Alan: Right.
Exactly.
Mario: at least for
now,
you know,
it's just, it's like a middle ground.
Alan: until, you know, the sponsorships are
rolling in and
Mario: Oh yeah,
yeah,
Alan: well, I I'm expecting Fusioncast to be the primary
sponsor.
Right.
Mario: yeah.
Right.
Of course,
Alan: I think it already is.
I think that
the.
Mario: And what about dot plan
Alan: Oh, obviously
Mario: DotPlan.io.
Alan: it's funny.
My son keeps like doing he's like, I think, I don't know if it says a as
big a thing there, but for Japanese TV commercials are, and for any brand they
have like a, a signature like sound or jingle it's, it's almost like a, you
know, like Intel has that ding, ding, ding, ding at the end, every brand has
something at the end of a commercial here.
So whether it's for toilet paper or whether it's for, you know,
face cream or whatever, they all have their brands sound logo.
I don't know what they're called.
Mario: Ringtone or
something.
Alan: yeah.
And they're incredibly powerful.
I mean like that Intel one is probably the best example I can think of in the
in, in the English advertising world.
So everything has on here.
It was like going up with ones for, for dot plan and I'm like, yeah, I'm
going to, one of these is going to stay.
stick.
Mario: Nice.
Nice.
Yeah, you got to have.
You got to have it
Alan: Absolutely.
Mario: you're in Japan.
So
Alan: I was like, what is weird here?
I don't know if I've mentioned before, but it's almost like a
Rite of passage for startups for, they advertise on TV big time.
And it's, I think there's a point when you get like funding you do a TV,
commercial, or a cm as they call it here.
And it's.
It's weird because some of the strangest things which are like, why
the hell are they advertised on TV?
It doesn't seem to fit that profile.
But when You consider like the buying patterns, especially if like any kind of
business apps, that's the person who has to decide on it might be a TV watcher.
As in it might be an older guy that's running the company.
When someone says, you know, we want to pay for this.
He's like, oh, I've seen the TV advert.
So Yeah.
Okay.
So I think it's that some recognition that they need to show that they're
a real company and not just some fly by night internet thing.
But it's, it's weird.
Some of the startups that advertise, Hey, you're like really, you need a TV ad.
It's it's quite bizarre.
Hmm, because in the UK, at least when I left the UK, the internet
companies didn't advertise on TV.
Why would they, they have like this massive market of people spending
all of their times on their phone.
Why would you have, you know, why would you advertise on the
old media,
Mario: yeah.
yeah.
It doesn't, it doesn't make much sense.
It's kind of weird.
Alan: Hmm.
Yeah,
Mario: Yeah, I don't, I don't watch that much TV, so I don't know what the
landscape looks like nowadays on TV, like regular TV, you know, I'm usually,
if I, if we watch something it's
Netflix or, you know, one of those paid subscriptions
Alan: Well, that's my point.
Yeah, exactly.
Who, who watches broadcast TV now it's it
is weird.
So my, my,
this is my interpretation of it.
It must be people, the people who are watching broadcast TV are
probably the people who are going to have to sign off on something.
So getting their recognition of like, oh yeah, I've heard of this thing.
It's yeah, it has that famous actor telling me it's good.
So therefore it must be okay.
Mario: yeah,
yeah,
Alan: Advertising is weird to me.
I don't, know.
I don't understand it at all
Mario: yeah.
Yeah.
Alan: we need to
Mario: Well, what else is new with you?
Alan: It's.
I had an interest in a couple of meetings this week.
This week has been a strange one.
I had you know, I go to the startup
hub, stuck caffeine in town.
So they contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I would like some mentoring
sessions and I'm like, well, I'm always interested in anything get any extra
brain that can give me some feedback.
I'm happy to hear.
So there's actually, there were two separate events, but they
ended up being one day after each other when they actually occurred.
So the first one was it's a guy who, who lives here.
I'm not sure if it's nationalities, you're repeating some kind.
And so he ran a company here.
Grew massively doing backup software, I think.
And so he seems to have quite a lot of experience with growing
and taking investment and exiting and things with con startup.
So I spent half an hour, 45 minutes talking to him just about.
And what we were doing.
so it, I didn't know, going in what exactly his experience was.
So it's difficult to know what to ask for feedback on, but it ended up
kind of being almost like a bit of a therapy session in terms of it's
like, well, why are you doing this?
What's the what's your goal?
What do you hope to achieve for this?
You know, like and so it ended up me almost reiterating or clarifying
what my, my hope is for the product.
And it's like well, you know, are you looking for investment?
Well, not really.
Well, why not?
And what if you did, what would you do with it?
And if you don't, why do you think you can get to?
So it ended up becoming a bit of a, a therapy session rather than
a and product feedback session which was, which was interesting.
I mean, just having that.
Experienced somebody else who you don't know.
I mean, it's different when you talk to people that you already
have a relationship with you, they already know what you're
like and what you're going for.
But when it's somebody who you have no previous interaction with it was,
it was interesting hearing myself justify why I'm doing what I'm doing.
And also the things like you do realize this is kind of a big
thing to try to do on your own.
I, mean, if if I was doing a you know, obviously a micro SaaS something that
is, it's a product that you can sell for $10 a month, and then you can, you
know, sell a product or live, you know, hit some MMR that you're happy with.
But what you're trying to do is something that leads itself to
expansion, just because, you know, you're effectively, your, your ultimate
aim would be selling it to enterprises.
And you're not going to do that as a solo founder.
Right.
And so it's, it was kind of interesting to hear it spelled out
and, and I kind of knew these things, but having someone get me to talk
through it was, was, was interesting.
And it kind of raised some of the thoughts in my mind as to, you know, what okay.
If those things are, where it would kind of ultimately end up, where
do I want to see myself in that?
And what's my six month goal with trying to do I want to head for that
or do I scale back some of the, the goals and try to be a little bit
more focused on a particular segment.
So, you know, say for instance, you know, smaller on the smaller SME side so that,
that was kind of a, it was worthwhile, it was definitely worthwhile doing.
And obviously his biggest feedback product-wise was, you know, focus on
this in terms of product growth and marketing wise was, you know, just focus
on trying to do it like a London expand kind of idea, you know, get a team of
three people in the company using it.
And hopefully it will grow from there.
You know, don't try to sell from the top, just try to sell from what my network
is, which is smaller, not smaller, but developers and engineering teams that
might be within a larger organization that they might not be able to influence
the company as a whole initially.
But if they can use it internally for that small team, then it might grow.
And so that was his, and they had similar success with their
products and he said, it's you know, I, you, you can think of any.
Bigger engineering based SAS, that they probably all start
in a similar kind of way.
Right.
You know, it'll be three people in a bigger team using it because it's
convenient and it's low cost and someone can stick it on their expenses and it's
no big deal versus trying to get, you?
know, top down buy in, which is, you know, requires sales teams and whatnot.
So just at least making me concentrate on that from a a growth strategy
or at least a sales strategies is definitely makes sense.
And it should be probably what I'm trying to focus rather than trying to sell big.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: Um, and the other one was a
This two people, they, the Japanese founders, they sold
their startup a few years ago.
It was a beautician job network, I think like a freelancing beautician.
Service.
So they founded that I think like eight or nine years ago, and
they extended a few years ago.
And so now they're investing and mentoring Japanese startups, and they've got
like 20 startups on their portfolio.
And so I met with one of them.
And so she was which was interesting because she doesn't
speak English at least a little tiny bit of understanding English.
And obviously my Japanese is, is up and coming, shall we say?
So one of the people from FDN he was there to help me with the translation,
but it was also interesting for me because I, I, I got to it probably
the most Japanese I've used in a.
in context with somebody, I don't know.
I mean, you know, I have Japanese lessons.
I will, you know, I can get by in daily life, but in a business
context, it's always been, I've never been the, the main speaker.
It's just, I can understand, but I never really speak that much.
So it was probably the first time when I was sat in a room with somebody that
doesn't speak English in a business sense.
And I had to try as hard as I could in Japanese and then fill in the
blanks with the the translator.
So that was an interesting experience.
And
Mario: Wow.
Alan: it's interesting.
Mario: How did it go?
Alan: It went well.
So, Yeah.
she,
She gave some interesting feedback with regards to how Japanese enterprise.
Would see it and take it and what their,
What their concerns might be, which is kind of valid because obviously,
you know, Japanese selling.
So Japanese business versus a Western one is, is definitely a different tactic.
So she gave some interesting feedback on what, you know, what, what some of the
language we're using and what not to focus on and what to downplay a little bit.
And also some competitors that maybe worth looking at for how they
present their, what they're doing.
I mean, that competitors, in the sense that they're in the HR space and we're
in the people project space, so similar but different, but just again, they're
all, it's interesting because they are all going for the top down sales
strategy, you know, they're selling to the management and, you know, kind of
how decisions get made here, obviously.
I I'm still, you know, I th I think going in and trying to sell to the, the,
the people on the ground is still makes sense as a sales tactic, but it obviously
might be more difficult to pull off here just because people don't have a expense
credit card on for their business.
Whereas I think we've always had in every other Western engineering
company I've worked for, everyone's got an expense card, whereas it's
just doesn't really happen here.
Mario: Interesting.
Alan: so I mean, a manager might, but it, it would have to still wouldn't
be on the ground that they can do it.
So there's a slight difference.
But I still think that that approach of
no, I don't want to try and be a Japanese company from a marketing perspective.
I want to try to show that we're not a a typical company at which, you
know, I can't pretend to be a Japanese company it's never going to work.
Right,
So I might as well play to my strengths, which is it's different,
Mario: right, that's
Alan: but it was, it was, yeah, I hope so.
Time will tell you know, I'm not, I can't, I'm not going to pretend to be something
I'm not, so just be who I am and what I want the company to be and hope that
that resonates with some people that are looking for something slightly different.
So, but it was useful.
Yeah.
So they also wanted me to arrange another session next week.
With the the other founder of this company.
So he apparently is more marketing focused and he's like more creative
kind of side of the business.
So they want to arrange a, another session with him.
And the interesting question came up was like, oh, you know,
what's your what's your team?
Like, you know, having problems, hiring people or kind of managing your team.
And I'm like, nah, that'd be me.
I know.
She's like, but I'm like, Yeah.
I had designed and built the thing and marketing and yeah, That's all me and I,
it's kind of, it's a little bit awkward.
You're like,
yeah, sorry.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: But and the question was, you know, are you looking for investment?
And, and I'm like, I don't know.
Maybe if it, if things work out then possibly,
Mario: Okay.
Alan: it's a stranger.
Mario: Yeah.
That was going to be my next question.
Circling back to what you mentioned earlier, you know the question
being, why are you doing this?
And, and are you interested in, in funding?
And so why are you doing
this?
are you interested in funding?
Alan: It's.
I mean, it was interesting hearing myself, you know, cause this?
has all been internalized.
And, I think, you know, when I wrote the business plan, I
think we've talked about this
before.
Just kind of writing in black and, white,
you
know, what, what am I trying to achieve here was very helpful.
And then there, that was a year ago.
so coming back and somebody saying, well, why are you doing this?
now?
And it's the, especially we know with what we were just saying with regards to
remote work And things is, you know, I really think that there's a better way.
We're integrating work into your life than traveling an hour and a car and
sitting in an office for eight hours.
You know, having done it for so long as in remote work and hybrid work, it
it's, you know, it always shocks me when, when I did go back to an office for
eight hours is more like 10 hours a day.
Just how exhausting, how little time you've got for the rest of
your life and just how much it impacts your family life and things.
And I'm like this, this is just unnecessary and okay.
You know, it's it always felt natural to me to not have to be on a nine to
six schedule, but then seeing how the world responded after the pandemic
that was, you know, well A it's possible, but B it doesn't just work.
You know, you can't just suddenly become remote overnight and that's it.
We're all remote and everybody's happy and everything's fine.
It doesn't just come naturally.
I really want to, I, I guess my, my bigger goal you know, th th the more immediate
is I want to sell software to teams to help them manage their day-to-day, you
know, working the bigger, the goal in, you know, if I was to have you know, the
belief sign on the wall it would be, you know, to, to improve people's, you know,
work life not just the balance, but the way that they work is part of their lives.
You know, if it's realistically, you know, I'm not going to change that
overnight, but what I can do is make remote, working more palatable to a more
accessible to teams that are that have tried it and had problems with it because
it's difficult and people overcompensate by working too much, they're answering
slack, you know, 11 o'clock at night.
I think there's, there's some easy wins by structuring your day and
structuring how you communicate better.
And so I'm trying to nibble away at those and just improve the way people
can, can deal with work and, you know, hopefully that make it bigger
over time.
So it's a big dream, but I don't know how you know, realistic it is in a short term.
So, you know, I'm just trying to achieve what I can.
With me and then see where it goes.
You know, obviously if things start to stick, then I can start to be a
little bit more bigger with my plans.
Mario: right,
Alan: So do I want investment?
I it's, I never say never.
right?
You know, I, I want to kind of what I don't want to do is take investment too
early at, which is what I've seen at least take big investment, you know,
like smaller pre-seed family, friends, rounds is, is no, not our concern.
Not that doesn't worry me.
That sounds like, you know not, not something that I
would worry too much about.
But you know, taking big VC money would I wouldn't want to take it too early before
I know that we're on the right, track.
I know that, you know, part of the reason for taking.
Bigger investment is so you can learn quicker and iterate quicker, but
I've also, I've just had too many bad experiences, bad experiences of that.
Not going well.
From seeing other people, I'm not saying it has to go badly, but
I I'm just very cautious of it.
So, you know, if it was obviously the right.
match and there was an, an a clear you know, clearly a good relationship
and something that made sense to me and, and I felt really good about
then it's definitely possible.
But I'm just super cautious of it.
Just having seen how people respond and how people don't deal very well
with a million dollars appearing in their business bank account.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
I feel the same way.
I think.
Like you said, never say never.
And you know I don't think
I I would want to get into a situation where I have to take
investment from big VCs and not the, you know, I don't even know if,
if my product is,
Alan: I think you would have no
Mario: for that, but
Alan: Yeah.
Right, right.
I mean, I think you possibly could.
There's definitely ways you could, you know phrase
it that that, could make it
viable.
Right.
Mario: yeah.
Yeah, probably, but I dunno, I don't, I don't think, I don't think that's a.
What I need, at least at the moment.
And like you were saying I wouldn't want to do that prematurely, you know?
And I think what I need more is time or, you know connections, you know, marketing,
which yes, that's achievable by having some influx of money, you know, and
then injecting money into the business.
But I don't know.
I think the idea of getting either angel investment or you know, one of
those tiny seed or one of
those,
Alan: Tiny seed.
This is one of the
interesting
ones, right?
Yeah.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I would be open to that.
But
it's still something that I I'm still thinking about.
And I don't know that I would want to get into that right now.
Maybe at some point in the future, I've been thinking about
that lately actually.
Alan: I mean, it's bootstrapping in the, in the sense that we're doing it, which is
literally like, you know, you're working a full-time job and then
doing this on the side, he's
bloody
hard
Mario: it is hard
Alan: not to put it to But it's just time is a killer, right?
You just don't have enough time to
focus on it.
Mario: yeah,
Yeah.
And I think it's just setting up your life in a way that you can improve your
time management and be more efficient with that and, and carve some time out
of your day to work on it is what I.
What
I think is key more than anything else, at least for me at
this point, you know, it, that's the key to moving forward, not so much
investment,
you
Alan: Right.
Yes.
Mario: Yeah,
Alan: Is that it's just enabling and allowing that.
And if investment did enable or allow that little bit, I mean,
you you've taken the step of
changing, changing your job to make that more feasible.
Right.
Because you know?
if you're driving two hours spending two hours in a car each day, then
that's literally two hours that you could be working on a fusion
cast, right?
Mario: exactly.
And that's one of the goals, if, you know, if you think about it two hours
a day, 10 hours a week, at least
Alan: Th that's a business, right?
Mario: Yeah.
That I, that I've, that I'm gaining that I can put into working on, on my project.
So yeah.
So that's, I think that's what I.
On my end.
I that's, that's what I need, you know?
And and, and you're probably in a similar situation as well,
In terms of, cause We're at very similar levels,
Alan: Yeah.
Mario: In, in the stage we are at with our projects.
Alan: So my question to you is
you asked me, you know, what's my
like big picture.
What's my goal.
I think,
you know, I kind of know, but to state it for the record, what's your, what's
your goal to achieve with fusion cast for the next, you know, in, in one year,
what would be the perfect situation?
Mario: In one year, I guess the perfect situation would be that
fusion cast is one of the major goals is to help people, right.
And, help specifically for podcasters to have a a better experience recording And
as a business, one of the goals is to obviously make it profitable so we can
be around for a long time and continue to provide that, those benefits and
that service and on a personal level,
it to a point where it's viable enough To support me full-time, so maybe not in a
year, I don't know how long it's going to
take, but get it
to a point where it's generating enough revenue that I can
go full time with it and,
be able to
support myself with it.
Alan: Do you would you like to hire anybody else to work on it or
are you how you want to keep it.
a personal thing?
Mario: I leaning towards keeping it a personal thing.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't mind hiring help because I, know I need help in certain
areas that I'm not good at, or I'm not the best at, you know, one of them being
marketing or design, you know designing the marketing website or designing
the user interface for the product.
I.
would like at some point to hire help with that, but I
think I would hire, do it in a more targeted way Hiring contractors,
Alan: Right.
Yeah.
Just kind of freelance based thing.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Makes sense.
I mean
it's that, that is
it's.
Well, if you think, if you, if you hire somebody suddenly you've doubled
your, at the amount of money you need to be bringing in every month.
Right.
You know, whereas, you know, if you spend, you know, X, thousands of dollars to, you
know, for somebody to do a job, it's, it's a known quantity that you can budget for.
Right.
So I mean, it makes a hell of a difference as to, you know, what kind
of money that company has to make.
Right.
You know, I mean, this is one of the weird things about like
looking at pricing for it as well.
It's, you know, I I'm pricing original pricing plan is in, okay.
Given, you know, a hundred company, a hundred customers with these
price plans and all the rest and.
You, you realize that, you know, you, your pricing doesn't have to be high at all.
Obviously, you know, you can scale the number of customers you get, but
if, if it effectively takes off, then you don't have to be expensive at all.
Whereas obviously, you know, the other competition they have to either
go massive in terms of amount of customers or they have to charge a, lot.
And it's, I, I kind of miss the,
Th th the old, old web days of people making things, because they could not
just so they can become a unicorn.
Right.
And so part of me is like, you know, I don't need massive amounts of money.
I just want to make something that's helpful to people.
So there's this constant, like balancing like tight wire in my head of like, well,
I don't want to do it too cheap, but at the same time, You know, I, I don't need
that much money, obviously right now, it's not making anything, but you know, you
kind of have to, I think, you know, if you start working on any kind of product,
you almost have to have this, this future image vision in your head, right.
You have to be able to visualize where you want it to be.
And I think if you're not building something, if you're not used to building
products, it always feels a little like fanciful and far-fetched and, you know,
we'll have a hundred people paying for it, but I don't think you'll progress
very far, unless you do have some kind of if you are, if you're not able to,
visualize what it could be, right.
You almost have to, be able to, see that in order to work towards it.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah.
I agree.
I don't, that's one of the things that I think about a lot is you know, how
much do I really want this to grow?
You know, and how fast do I want it to grow?
I rather grow slowly, steady, but slowly and keep it under control.
And especially if I want to keep it small,
I want wanna, I want to follow that company of one
model,
Alan: I
Mario: pull Jarvis's company of one.
I read that book and it's, it's amazing.
And I love that philosophy
and that's kinda what I'm aiming for,
you know?
Alan: I mean, this is the weird thing about my dream,
I guess, is that me too, but
I'm kind of tackling quite a big problem that It seems on the
outside impossible to do for a solo founder, but I'm like, why not?
What, what what's okay.
This there's some technical things, but again, those in terms of you
know, just support things that, that will become overwhelming at some
point, but those are things which can easily be outsourced to an extent.
But yeah, why, why not?
Why can't I build a product that it can be used by, you know, logical companies
and things, you know, th there are okay.
There's, there are limits on my time, but at the same time, it's,
it's not technically not feasible.
It's it's definitely possible.
So yeah, why not?
So, yeah, I mean, I'm kind of going for the similar steady approach and
just learn and figure out step by step.
Just also it's, it's just very fulfilling And very rewarding to do that Right.
Because it feels like you're constantly improving and and learning and
Yeah, like
Mario: Yeah, I was going to say that to your point earlier that it
is hard to be working on it on the side, working a full-time job and
just doing this on the spare time.
But at the same time, yeah, it is really hard, but it's also rewarding.
And especially, you know once you have, when you start having people
on board and, having users using
your, product, it's pretty rewarding to see someone else actually benefiting
from it and, see it being useful to someone else it's really cool.
Alan: it really
is.
Mario: it fuels your, desire to continue and it gives you more
energy
Alan: I mean, having, yeah.
Having been through, you know, I, I built a number of products
back in the early two thousands.
And, then I kinda went through a phase
in the.
Mid early, you know, 2000 tens where I wasn't working on any actual products,
you know, I was, I wasn't even tinkering.
I was just too busy And, obviously I had a son which kind of took
a, a major chunk of my time.
You know, I was working on a book, which I guess counts, but I wasn't working on any
products and having now started getting back into that again, it's amazing what
it does for your for your, mood and, for your, like, I'm not sure if it's
optimism, but it feels like progress.
It feels I'm much better progress than when I was just working.
It feels like I'm constantly improving rather than just fighting fires.
It's it definitely has had a big impact on me.
My personal mood.
And for that reason alone, you know, I'd recommend it.
If anybody who has that inkling, you know, even if it's an open source
project and you're the only user, it doesn't matter that that, that, that
isn't the, the, the, the main point, the point is that you're building something
you're, you're constantly adding.
And to your knowledge, you're constantly learning how to.
tackle different technical problems and use that you, you know, UX problems
and it's, it's just this constant, constant personal improvement that,
that has a big effect on your your, your mood and your feeling of wellbeing,
Mario: totally.
Couldn't
Alan: even if it's sometimes exhausting.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, I totally
agree.
Cool.
What else do you have?
Alan: So I've been I got a bunch
of feature stuff wrapped up.
I think I mentioned that I had to this timecard feature to dot plan for a client.
So I basically
added like editing and things to that, which was.
I can't, I, as I just was saying it was doing stuff, which I technically, I
wasn't sure how I would do it in Elixir, just because I've never had to do that.
Which is, is basically keeping an audit of like
record changes.
So if somebody goes and edits a timecard, you want the manager to
know that they edited the time cut.
Right?
So it keeps like a, an audit log of changes to these records.
Whereas, you know, other cases, it doesn't matter so much.
You know, if somebody edits their check-in, what's probably cause they made
a typing typo or they missed something, you don't care about the history, but in
this case it is a necessary thing to have.
So I, I know how to do it in rails.
No big deal.
I was like, I've never dealt with it in Ecto and Elixir.
So now I know how to do that, so
Mario: Nice.
Alan: that's good.
And I've had a first, a first go at.
During the like onboard, welcoming screens, I've rewritten those and got
those now as like a, a modal, when you first come into the product, there
is actually now a separate, like a welcome modal that gives, that comes up.
And there's a second one for when you go onto the, the new check-in page, I've done
a load of rewording of things that just to tighten things up, tighten up some of
the word in a reorganized, some of the check-in page to make it just look better.
I've just resized things just at the spacing.
So there's a lot of tweaking going on, which it it's amazing when you go.
back to the, just before I deployed it, you know, I've been working on this.
Full-time like you know, in terms of what I was doing, I was
working on development version.
And then I went back to the production version before I deployed it.
And I'm like, whoa, this looks awful.
So it it's amazing what difference just changing spacing and.
So one of the focus, one of the form fields wasn't focusing properly.
So I fixed that lots of little tiny improvements, but I, for
me it feels a lot better now.
So hopefully hopefully people notice, but then, so the next thing now is
I, just want to now, as these are all kind of ready to roll I just want
to send out a bunch more invites and I've got no reason to not do it now.
So
Mario: right,
Alan: that's my plan for this.
This weekend is basically just send out another, like, you know,
five or six invites and learn what they think about, you know, it'll
be a different set of feedback, which I think you mentioned before.
That's what I really want from the next batch is feedback on the changes.
Not from stuff I already know.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
are these invites for
demos or just to, for them to sign up.
Alan: yeah.
I, I kind of, I
I've, I've quit doing the demos now.
I find it much more useful to, I mean, especially since the
feedback I want is from people.
Going through the process of inviting people on onboarding.
I almost know the problems with that already.
So therefore I working on trying to improve those things and let them
just figure it out from themselves, you know, it's I, people don't seem
to be shy about giving feedback what the depends on the person.
Right.
But I'm getting enough feedback from them to make it useful.
So let's say I want to send out a bunch more and see what they make of it, so.
Mario: Yeah.
That makes sense.
I guess, during the early stages of the product, when it's not quite there yet,
you kind of need to handle whole people and onboard them and explain to them
how it works and then you get feedback.
But then at some point you get, you get the product to the level
where now you want to test.
If people can do it themselves and see what kind of feedback comes back
and wipe what points are confusing
and what are the pain points in the onboarding process and all that.
So at some point you have to let go and just, and just,
you know, have them do it themselves.
Alan: Yes, exactly.
And, and I think, you know, to be honest, even fusion costs, I think,
you know, you, don't kind of at that.
point now, whereas, you know, especially with your demo video on
your homepage, you could watch that and that's all you need really.
There's nothing more than that.
So Yeah, you have no excuse
even though.
Mario: yeah,
yeah.
Interesting you mentioned that.
Cause I was exactly thinking about that.
Cause I was like, I have that demo on the website now and it's pretty
much, it's a really quick version of what you can do and what the
back, management area looks like.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't, need to be doing these demos anymore, not so much.
And I have gotten enough feedback that I can
iterate and yeah, I just, I need to catch up and because my list
has been growing as I get feedback and I need to catch up with those.
So yeah, I
think you're right
where,
Alan: out your technical
problems?
Is the
Mario: yeah, And that's part of what I wanted to share with you today
is I'm working on that fixed for the recording issue that I've had.
And obviously recording is working really well, but the problem that
comes up every now and then, which is kind of like an outlier, but at the
same time, it touches on the core.
Functionality of the product and I'm not happy about it, you know?
And actually the one this past week, I onboarded
one more person And I wonder if she minds, if I give, give her a shout out here on,
on the podcast.
Alan: Had the podcast and you probably is very happy for
Mario: right.
Yeah,
Alan: absolutely.
Mario: sure.
Yeah.
Shout out to Vanessa Colina.
She she's a, a designer and a graphic designer and podcaster.
She hosts a a podcast called UX backstage and she agreed
to have me do a demo for her.
And so it was
really interesting and really cool.
She had a lot of feedback and pretty, neat insights from a designer perspective and,
User experience perspective
Alan: And she already has experienced doing
podcasts.
Right.
So she
Mario: yes.
Yeah, totally.
so it was really neat.
thank you, Vanessa, for making time for that time is our most valuable asset.
So anytime someone agrees to, spend time for something related
to what I'm working on is just a gold, I'm so grateful about that.
Alan: So she has a so
she has a podcast already, so she's already used to using tools and stuff.
Right.
So is she going to try using this for future interviews and
things?
Yeah.
Mario: Yes.
So she was gonna try it with what she's going to try recording real life, you
know, one of his, one of her episodes and and provide me with more feedback
in a more structured way during the demo she did provide valuable feedback.
But also
she's going to try it on her own and then, reports on feedback
in a more structured way later.
Yeah, so that was great.
Alan: So you, have you done any work on your, the marketing
side, your side of things?
Has this been an engineering session.
Mario: it has been, but that's part of the problem.
So I shared with you that I was changing the way I do things and
spending one week doing, product development and one week doing marketing.
And I'm sort of getting used to that and
transitioning still into that, kind of
work cycle kind of thing.
So I haven't been very productive this
week or these, past two weeks actually.
Alan: we've been kind of getting another job as well.
So that takes up a lot of brain energy, to be honest.
Mario: True.
Yeah.
That, has had something to do with it.
Just, yeah, my mind has been in multiple places and one of the
things though is that I guess these at first I, my idea was to do one
week cycles, but I don't think that's going to work.
I think it would also be really nice to make those cycles coincide with
our meetings, because then I have, these full two weeks, to sort of
report on and set goals for, and.
Also because one week seems way too short because I'm doing
this during my spare time.
one week goes by real quick and I can only dedicate a
little bit of time every day to the
project.
So,
Alan: on a week by week basis.
I mean, I've had weeks where I like, like, literally haven't checked
and I haven't touched the code
at all just because stuff's been
happening, right.
Mario: Yeah.
so that's been part of, the not making progress in the way I want
it, part of the issue that I've been trying to fix on the product itself.
I haven't been very clear on how I'm going to fix it.
part of my mind has been distracted by just thinking about, okay, what
are the ways that I can tackle this and how can I leverage this,
technology here or there and do it this way.
So a lot of
my time has been consumed by just thinking and strategizing
and trying to figure it
Alan: Yeah.
And I mean, it, it counts and
this is, I think for somebody who isn't used to development or
engineering, they kind of kind of dismiss this time Whereas, you know,
like, well, you haven't, you know, I
haven't touched this for three weeks and it's like, well, I might've
written code, but when I do touch it, I know how to write it as opposed
to before, when I have no idea.
and that, that, you know, sitting in your brain for a couple of weeks, sometimes
it's just necessary because otherwise you'll be spinning in circles and just
wasting time coding when you don't actually understand either the problem
properly or how you're going to solve it.
Or, or the consequences of it.
So, yeah, it's, it's, it's valid.
Mario: Okay.
All right.
That makes me feel better.
I haven't
Alan: I mean, how many times have, yeah.
How many times have you, you know, spending hours trying to fix
something one evening and getting nowhere and literally the next day
you get up and fix it straight away.
you know?
it, it happens to me far too often That you think I've learned by now.
I just go for a walk and, you know, like listen to some music and then
you come back at it and you're like, oh, I know how to do this now.
But whereas before, so it's, it's completely valid and don't
underestimate the value of it.
Mario: Totally.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Cause yeah, it's, I guess work has been happening, but it's just, it's been in
my head, and not necessarily writing code and at the same time I've been editing
episodes and, and making progress in different ways, but a lot of it is not.
Tangible yet, you
know, but we'll get there.
Alan: sometimes all of that is, you know, it just happens below the surface
and it might not be outwardly visible, but yeah, I mean, it's things are happening.
I don't, don't beat yourself up too much about it.
It's a,
it's, it's a journey, not a, you know, you can't just suddenly pop it out.
Mario: Thank you.
Thank you for
that.
Yeah, so that's been my past two weeks
Alan: Nice.
Mario: my goal is in the next two weeks, I actually want to get into
full swing of things, coding and creating the solution for this problem.
And I think, I, I've narrowed it down to how I'm going to go about it fix it.
It's going to require quite a bit of work.
Just major changes in the way the recording is engineered.
what I've done so far, and what I have now is a pretty solid foundation for it.
But it will need to be modified quite a bit to, get around the issue of recording
being so dependent on the browser.
Alan: Gotcha.
Mario: Yeah.
but
I think it's going to make the product more solid and that's the goal.
Oh, now I remember when I was talking to Vanessa and doing the demo, I mentioned
the problem of recording being interrupted and, having recovery mode as a feature
to kind of mitigate some of that.
And she asked, well, how often has it happened or how often does it happen?
Well, it doesn't happen that often.
So she challenged me to think about it.
And offered the possibility that this may
not even be a problem to begin with, you know,
because.
Alan: mentioned this before, right?
Mario: Yeah, Yeah, because if it's not happening very often,
maybe it's not really a problem that I want to spend time on.
And and I can save myself a lot of time, but yeah.
But at the same time the more I think about it and, and just the,
the issue is that when it happens, it has a major impact on the
podcaster, and, also the guests,
Because the recovery part, it's not ideal.
It's not a hundred percent either.
So then it, it really presents a big problem, you know, when it
happens, even if it doesn't happen that often.
Alan: I think you've told me before, but yeah.
How
big are the chunks?
Is it seems to happen more about the video, obviously, because
there's more data, right?
So the audio is
pretty consistently uploading.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it seems like a, usually audio is okay, but video is
a little bit of a problem.
Yeah.
I think I have a pretty good idea of how to fix it and I don't want this to
be part of the it's a problem with a core functionality of the product, so I
don't want it to be a big issue.
And so.
And, and the only reason why it may not be happening a lot right now is
only because I only have a few users
using product.
So if, I, go at a larger scale, then it may come back to bite me if I,
just keep going with it, you know,
so I need to nail it down.
So,
Alan: Yeah.
Yeah.
I can understand that concern.
Yeah.
Mario: yeah,
Alan: with the fact that it is occasionally showing up with
a small number of users means
yeah that it could well be grow with the number of users that you have.
Right.
so I can even, I can understand your hesitancy.
Mario: yeah.
Which would translate into a lot more
support requests and it would translate into a, bigger headache.
So I think I need to really spend the time on that now and
eliminate that problem.
Alan: Least have a good go at it.
Right.
You know, you can, especially since, you know, you spend a
bunch of time now thinking about
ways to make it better.
You've got some ideas and understanding of how to improve it so improve it.
And then if it occurs after that, then consider okay.
How often let's try and measure how often it happens and then try to figure out if
there's a, if there's a, way to fall back.
I mean, you're when you consider that the audio generally is
okay, and that isn't a problem.
You're not going to lose any audio or if you do, it's going to be
like, you know, a few seconds.
You've already got the backup via Twilio anyway.
Right.
So you've always got that fallback.
So the worst case scenario is that someone would lose what?
30 seconds of video at the end.
If this happened and it was that very unfortunate case that that might happen.
So Yeah.
it's be worth, you know, if you're so far along in having to go at
solving, get anyway, try and solve it and then see what happens and,
and think about just measuring it and understanding the plus if you've got
more data points from the real world, you can understand, you know, why it's
happening or what the cases are better.
So
Mario: Sure.
Alan: a sensible thing to
do.
Mario: Yeah.
I think for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be focusing
on that primarily and squeezing
some podcast editing at the same time and and possibly onboard one more, one
more person that probably would be.
Last one or one of the Last
ones to
onboard
Alan: And then
Mario: on one-on-one.
Alan: got enough data, right?
So then
it's just like, you can just.
People answer.
Excellent.
That's good
Mario: yeah.
Cool.
All right.
What about you?
What are your
goals for, for the
next,
Alan: Well, so, so my plan is now is I've got this improvements
to onboarding working.
I'll let.
Just to
finish up a few things on that.
This is a technical technicality rather than a problem.
And now as I have the, my improvements to the UI and stuff, and I plan to send
out a bunch of invites this weekend.
So that's hopefully fingers crossed nothing goes wrong between now and
then, and then see what happens and see what the feedback is from that.
And the other, I guess the, the bit of development which I've been
putting off, but I'm realizing that I.
Should do it just because I need to do it sooner rather than later.
And so I had some interest in feedback from somebody this week
that was they were like, well, I'd be, I'd be paying for this.
And I'm like, oh yeah, I probably should wire up payments.
Right.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: So and I'm going to have a goal why we're in a puddle.
Cause I've got permission.
I'm on the system.
I can create subscriptions and stuff on it now.
So I'm going to have a first go at just wearing that up and
then seeing what's involved.
Cause I haven't really looked into it too deeply.
So
that's, that's a technical thing.
Big, I guess also the, all of the other features that I've got to work on.
Bigger features.
So I'm kind of like feel it's a good time to take a breather and just,
that's what I've been kind of doing some of the UI tweaking and fiddling
just cause the, the next steps are all much bigger things to take on.
So it's like, okay, let's get the onboarding working.
Let's get subscriptions working.
Let's get you know, the UI tidy it up a little bit.
Just kind of iron out all of this, the, where I am right now and get that
looking good and working to its best before I then take on a big new feature.
Right.
So that's, that's the next step.
Mario: Nice.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I'm curious
to see how it works out with Paddle also.
Alan: me too.
Mario: yeah,
Alan: So, Yeah.
it's, it, it, it all looks very straightforward and they've got a Nice.
simple web hooks interface.
And
you know, it looks very straightforward.
They've got a sandbox so I can try it all out in and yeah, that doesn't look to be
any reason why it's going to be difficult, but obviously Well, done it yet, so
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: will learn.
Mario: All right.
Well, good luck with that.
Alan: Cool.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: Excellent.
Mario: If you don't have anything else, I think we can wrap it up
here.
Alan: Sounds good.
Excellent.
Cool.
Mario: been
great.
I'll
see you in two
weeks.
Alan: luck in your
coding
Mario: All right.
Thank
Alan: Hope the hope, the new, are you starting a new job
for next week
Did you say oh, a week
Mario: No, no.
I'm starting at the end of
August.
Alan: cool.
So you got a bit of time off as well.
Excellent.
So full steam ahead on Fusioncast then for August.
Excellent.
Mario: Yeah, and some downtime as well.
Alan: Yeah
of
course
you.
You've earned it
Mario: Thank you.
Thank you.
Alan: Nice one
Mario: Alright Alan, take care.
See ya.