Build Your SaaS

And, evil crypto Teletubbies

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Creators & Guests

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

What is Build Your SaaS?

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

Welcome to Build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2021. I am Jon Buda, a software engineer, and I'm Justin Jackson I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build https://transistor.fm.

John we're recording on April fools, the best, the best, your favorite day on the internet. Favorite game. Also half my hardware isn't working today. So maybe that's just, maybe there's maybe hardware manufacturers are in on April fools. They're like funny is if we just made everybody's monitor, not work.

Correct. Yeah, that'd be great.

You're you're not, you're not a fan of the April fools, the internet. No, I'm not. I think it's gotten old, especially just the last year too. I just, yeah, I don't really find it that fun. Yeah. I mean, I I'm definitely, um, I don't desire to do it in April. Fool's joke on behalf of transistor. And there's some of these, like I shared with you, this Teletubbies one, like the official Teletubbies account is I'm assuming making a joke that they are they've released their own.

Cryptocurrency. Yeah. Well, there was, there was also the one about Volkswagen rebranding as Volkswagen because they want, they're going to shift to electric electric cars, but like they did it too early. It actually affected their stock price. And I did it two days ago and then they're like, oh yeah, that was a joke.

That was a bad joke. And it got up early and yeah. Yeah. It just looks bad. Yeah, I did. I think, uh, our friends at fathom did one that I think was pretty good, which was just them saying that they had acquired.

That was pretty funny and it's perfectly, that's like perfectly brand on brand for them. So, but, uh, overall, you know, I think I'm also one of those people that it's like, if it's too cliche, if it's too like, expect it, I don't find it funny. I, I want to, like, I just want to be funny for funny sake. Yeah, April fools.

And, but this will come out, not on April fools. So you folks are, you folks are, uh, don't have to worry about that. We're not, we don't have any April fools jokes planned. Hopefully everything keeps working today. Yeah. Hopefully the hardware manufacturers and their joke and your it's just your monitor. Yeah.

So I have this 4k monitors and it just, all of a sudden, I. I got some office space, right. That I've been coming into and hooked everything up. And it's like one of these weird situations where you gotta kind of find the, for the perfect cable for it to use. Otherwise it just doesn't go. So it's one of those monitors where it can, it can power the laptop and like do the video over the cable.

And today I came in and. It doesn't work at the native resolution and now it's just blurry and they can't make it literally nothing changed. Well, I mean, you don't need to see taxed when you're programming. No, no, I know you just want to Intuit what, what it looks. So if there was a, if there was a window in this office, it would have flown out the window, but there's not.

So that's it. I mean, that's new. You, you just moved to a new office space. You're trying out. Yeah, yeah. Reporting in here. So it's, uh, it's a little noisy. Yeah. You were saying, cause you're in a coworking space. Tell us about it. So it's like, you're, you've got your own. You're not in an open work environment though.

You know, I'm not, I have a, I have a small private office. It's through a friend of mine, Sam, who I used to work for and work with a long time ago. And he's working on a company called desk pass, which is, um, you know, like coworking rentals and membership. And you can kind of get one pass and, and work at whatever space you want.

And it's. Uh, he's been working on it for a long time, but I think it'll, it seems to be going pretty well, obviously the COVID affected things, but yeah, so he has his own space in Chicago that he works out of. And then there's common. There's a common workspace and private offices and there's not very many people here.

Um, yeah. Or usually, but for some reason today it was kind of noisy. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a nice space, just, uh, you know, after working at home for a long time, it's. Nice to kind of step up. Yeah. Yeah. I, I we've talked about this before, but for me, getting out of the house is a huge mental improvement. Yeah.

It's like, uh, if I'm in the house all day, even, I mean, even my house has great, you know, there's lots of natural light. There's, you know, a fridge right there and coffee right there, but getting out and then having a routine for me, where I get out, go to a coffee shop, see people. I know, even if it's just seeing the barista and having a little small talk and then moving on with my day and then saying hi to people who are at the coworking space.

It just introduces those micro moments. Yeah. And I don't think we've had a lot of those over the last year, so it is, it's nice to have those. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's gonna be helpful for you. Um, yeah, so that's what we'll hopefully keep reporting back on that. See how it, how it ends up. Hopefully, hopefully it works out.

I mean, it's month to month, so it's, uh, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't have to, but well, try it out for a while and see work environment, I think is something. Uh, remote workers and bootstrappers and entrepreneurs, they, they don't think about it enough. Uh, you know, I think it's actually more important than we think, uh, that we give it credit for.

And sometimes you don't get it right the first time. And sometimes you get in a rut, like you're just used to working in a certain place and you realize you don't realize how the environment is affecting. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. I just got off the phone with, uh, Derek Rhymer at a savvy Cal. It was fun.

I hadn't chatted with him for a while. Like I listened to his podcast all the time, but I hadn't actually, uh, chatted with him for bet. Really? Uh, it's nice. Like, I, I think I'm realizing how much I miss certain things and I didn't realize it like. You know, going to a conference Microcom for something like that and getting to hang out with people or going on our founder retreat that we did and getting to hang out with other people and talk kind of voice to voice is yeah.

Yeah. I miss those days, I was, I was, uh, catching up with, uh, a friend of mine. The other day who worked for Kickstarter started one of the co-founders of Kickstarter and he lives in Chicago. And I hadn't talked to him in awhile and it's kind of the same idea, right? It's like you miss those moments, those like serendipitous moments of.

Being in a place with a bunch of other people and meeting random people and talking and yeah, it's, I think a lot of people are probably missing that. Yeah. I also, I forgotten how much, um, cause as I'm talking to him, I was just sharing with him. Like he wanted us to know how our affiliate program was working.

He's thinking about doing something similar. And so I got to share all these things that I've learned and it just got me really pumped up. And as I'm kind of teaching him everything, I know I'm having all of these insights about stuff we could do for transistor. Like I was like, oh, and you should definitely do this.

And then I like, you know, do this Google search and show him all the things he should be looking at. And I'm like, oh man, I got to do this for transistor too. And so I've been working all morning on all these things that kind of came out. Me having this little session with them. Um, so I there's other benefits, you know, so, so often, especially in pandemic times, it's just like heads down working on your own thing on your own computer, not associating with anyone else, but those sparks of creativity for me, at least come from knocking into other people.

And, uh, you know, there's kind of ideas that come out of that just, yeah. That's serendipity, I guess. Yeah, just, yeah, it's kind of, you know, having discussions about something else entirely can trigger something else. I had this other realization I tweeted about this, but you know, when you have a podcast like this, and then you have tweets and blog posts, you have this record.

And two years ago, March, 2019, I posted the screenshot. I just can't believe this. We were like, just on the verge of hitting 10 K a month. In monthly recurring revenue. Yeah. Two years ago, years ago, March 28th, 2019. Wow. It just, it having, you know, uh, I think Jason fried has this post about how you can't trust your company history.

Uh, yeah. So Jason has this post called your company. History is a myth and he says, everything you've heard is fabricated and manipulated or exaggerated. It probably didn't happen that way. You know, so he's just saying, you know, we, we, uh, we are it's revisionist history, right? Like we, we don't remember the way things are, but I think for you and I, we, because we have such a record, like we have all these podcasts and blog posts and tweets.

That I, for me, it's like, I think we're actually pretty close to the truth. Yeah. So yeah, 10 K a month. Almost two years ago. And guess how, how quickly after that we hit 30 K. Well, I can tell you because I'm looking at it, but I, I mean, if you had told me it was, it was much, much faster than I thought it was six.

Like that. Yeah. I just can't believe that. And that was about the time we left. Well, I left my job and we, we both went on full-time full time, quote unquote, uh, right when we hit 10 K and I think we were paying me something like five K a month or something. And then, yeah. Um, when you went full time, that summer in July.

Right? Right, right, right. It's July or August. It just hit 20 K. Okay. And then in October we hit 30 K. Right. So yeah, I'm continually amazed and sort of just thankful and yeah. Yeah. I think it's helpful for me because I think of the two of us, I still sometimes get pulled into the dark side of comparison and, uh, You know, sometimes I'm like, ah, is this going to be sustainable?

How long is this going to last? You know, uh, and just seeing that perspective, that history is helpful for me, because really, I mean, what was our expectation? You know, at the beginning it was like, both of us were like, if this could pay us a hundred K a year, that would be a win, you know, and to be. To have achieved so much more than that is just, and have it really changed.

Our lives is incredible. So yeah, it was fun finding that tweet. I think I was searching for something else and I, I F I happened on that. Oh, wow. And it's almost exactly two years ago, so yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the, you know, for people who are building a SAS right now, You know, there's like for folks that are kind of like in those early stages, like John Young, Fuke, who's building banner bear and Derek Kreimer, who's building savvy cow.

And you know, there's all these people who are kind of at the beginning, uh, Peter, some just started another one, a new product called reform. All these folks. Are at the beginning and they're like, you know, kind of grinding away and they're thinking, okay, like when you're in it, it's kind of like, is this ever going to happen for me?

If you think back on it. And w where we were two years ago and what we were working on, how we're working. And it's like, it's honestly like hard to even remember just based on the last year. Cause it was just seems like a lifetime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pandemics, the pandemic added 10 years to our lives.

Well, and I was just chatting with Simon Bennett at a snapshot tutor and you know, he's in those early stages, you know, he's working away. He's a solo founder and I was saying. I was saying a few things to him. One, like he showed me his revenue graph and I said, your revenue looks great. Like, yeah, it feels slow right now, but keep in mind.

Um, I think he's still in his twenties. So like, this happened for me in my late thirties. And I'm 40 now, if you're in your twenties or your thirties, um, and you are. You know, you're getting to two K MRR 5k or 10 K you're so much ahead of a couple old jackasses. Uh, you know, John and Justin, like we're, we're, we're crusty old guys and this happened for us later in life.

And you're going to get those con compounding returns earlier if you're early. So that's one thing I think for all the crusts. Old folks listening to this podcast. I, I think our story should also be inspiring because it just shows you like, you can do it in your thirties, forties, fifties, and you know, two years later.

So you could start something at 50 and then at 52 or 53 you're. You've kind of achieved your dream, right? Yeah. And, and we're still using crusty old Ruby on rails and not using the fancy new stuff. Like it's, it's fine. It's working fine. We're the epitome of the, the old grumpy guys on the porch, uh,

Java script. Um, so I think that's encouraging and, uh, And, you know, like I went back to that old tweet where we just hit 10 K and Jason Cohen from WP engine replies and says concrete. He says, ah, congrats, see, hang in there. Quote, unquote worked. So he had, obviously at some point told me to just hang in there and, you know, trust the process and, um, And this is interesting.

He said so easy for me. I didn't have to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week to get there. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, I don't think we ever actually worked that hard. I mean, in the beginning we were putting in some, some longer days, you know, you were going to the office and then coming home.

Yeah. There were longer days and weekend days, retrospect, um, it didn't feel like we were. You know, really killing ourselves. Uh, it was, it was hard, but so I actually, I actually think those constraints were helpful to some extent, because it really let us focus on what was important to actually launch the thing and not try to do everything.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So we had, maybe you had like three or four hours to work on it and you're like, I'm going to get these things done because they are important and they're a core part of their product. And then the rest of it. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I hope that's encouraging for people that are building stuff and feel like, like feeling like it's never going to happen for them.

I remember feeling like that. I remember feeling like that before we started transistor. Like, you know, when I was depressed those couple of years and I was just like, you know, this is never going to happen for me. I've been working at this forever and it's just, I'm never going to have that breakthrough where things get.

Easy and call call. And, you know, I tried partnerships before I tried, you know, it was just, it, there's something about consistent effort in one direction, over a long period of time. And, you know, I was working on building a business, building a business, building a business, and it didn't work, didn't work.

And then I had little successes and then, but then I, you know, fell off the train and it didn't work. And then. You know, you and I found each other, you and I launched this thing and it worked. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've been involved in starting, I don't know how many companies with people or about myself, like eight.

Wow. A lot. None of them really worked well, one of them worked, but yeah. Yeah. Uh, I mean, that's the thing like, and eventually transistor might not work, but I think. Um, what was different about transistor than anything else I've done is now we were, when did we start this? 2018. So that's three years ago.

Are we in our third year or fourth year? Yeah. Third. Yeah. Um, so you know, we've had three years now of this company and the, for me anyway. Especially these last two years have just been, uh, I've been able to relax. I've been able to be calm. I've been able to have margin, and this is actually relates to something else I've been thinking about, which is kind of a challenging topic because it's, um, it can be frustrating when you're in that build and grind stage of, you know, working on.

Trying to build a business or trying to find that idea. That's going to work, trying to find a co-founder that can work with you. Um, it, this is it's. This is a frustrating reality is that margins create margins. That's a patio 11 quote. So when you have margin, so like right now, transistors profitable. And we have lots of margin, like, you know, you and I have numerous times this past year gone, you know what, I'm not feeling it this week.

I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna like, you know, kind of relax. Yeah. Um, we have financial margin. We have margin with our time. We have margin and that margin really. Gives us the opportunity to think strategically about the business to make slow decisions, to be thoughtful about what we commit to and, you know, in tech, especially there's this drive, it seems often to like fit more into a day to get more done.

Like there's a lot of productivity gurus that are like, you know, here's the. Fill your calendar, like with a block-based approach and here's the, what do they call it? Not the Tam of Gucci. Uh, the, the, uh, what do you think w w with the tomato, the tomato, what is that called? Uh, catch up. There's some people that know what I'm talking about, uh, where, where you work for 20 minutes and then you rest for three minutes.

Oh, the Pomodoro Pomodoro. Yeah. It's not the 10 minute time a Gucci.

Um, you know, there's the Pomodoro technique where you like, but to me, all of that is just like, how do you get more done in less time? And I just like, I don't, my desire is to get a few good things done every day. Even if, even if I got like a few good things done every week, I would be happy. You know what I mean?

Like if I got, yeah, yeah. I think we have, I brought this up before, but there's been, there's been weeks where I've done nothing, but it's not wasteful. It's like, I'm at least thinking about it. And then I finally get to the point where I am able to sit and concentrate and then I'll get it done much faster than before.

Right. And I'll just like, I dunno, it's kind of procrastination. And there are times where I'm like, kind of get anxious about it, that I'm not doing anything, but it always ends up working out. Right. Like I'll, I'll be, I don't know, frustrated or stuck on something for a week or a week and a half and we'll talk and then I'll.

Maybe that's the like kicking the pants, it gets me motivated and then I'll do it. And it'll all work out. Yeah. Well, well, for all of all of those pieces to come together, it I'm surprised by how often I'll be like stuck on something. And then I'll just be like, you know, in that kind of harried work mode where you're just like, you're kind of like thrashing and trying to figure things out and then I'll go to the bathroom and just like walking to the bathroom.

And coming back is enough time to dislodge, you know, my brain, if that's true, like if, if a little three minute break does that, I think, uh, it's okay to take a week to just stew on something, you know? Right, right. And again, this is what I think margin creates margin. So when you're not under the gun, To come up with a solution right now.

Um, you know, that's where you really make bad mistakes, especially when, when we're talking about user interfaces and shaping a product, uh, in a way that's delightful to use and make sense. Most people can't just sit down on their, at their computer and just immediately have the instincts to like, create a perfect, uh, user experience on their first try.

It takes time. It takes like. Time to think about it, to have it kind of in your subconscious roiling around, and you could be canoeing and doing that. You could be, uh, running in doing that. You could be going for brunch and doing that. And so time away from the office, I've never felt like that's wasted.

Actually, when I was used to work for people, I always felt like I wish my boss would pay me for that time. You know, like that time before I go to sleep. Working through something in my mind, right? Yeah. I think we've all been on teams where the boss was like, we need to get this done now. Like we're in a sprint, you got to have this finished.

And, um, you know, we shipped as product manager. We shipped some stuff I wasn't proud of because we just needed to get it done fast. Right. And I think being able to be kind of methodical about things. Is, um, it's an advantage, right. But it does. Yeah. Like you said, it does. When you have the, I guess, financial margins to not have to worry about paying your bills, losing the company, like it really does open up a lot of freedom and, and time to do things a little bit more methodically, more thoughtful.

Yeah. I think this is why I'm maybe changing my mind. Yeah. You know, funding, um, all the funding, the problem with funding is sometimes that can stress you out that you've taken money. Um, so I think people need to do whatever they can. And again, I'm, I've been there. I've been under the gun. I've been in the slim margins world, both when I was working as an employee and when I was running my own business, Um, I've been in desperation mode where it's like, you know, I lost two clients and it's like, I got to get, how am I going to get three new clients by next month?

Like, what am I going to do? Right. Um, I know what that's like. And, uh, I think this is why I'm I've. I keep banging on this drum of looking for. Products categories and business models that provide you with the most margin. And I think it's easy to fall into a business, to fall into a routine, to fall into a category or a service sector that just requires more of you than you can give.

And. Our category is not massive. If, you know, if there's one thing I don't like about our category is the ceiling is pretty low compared to some other things. But the benefit for us is that the product doesn't have to be super complicated. The product doesn't require, um, some of these. Uh, difficult, uh, like email deliverability.

Um, if you're a email service provider, like that's a massive challenge and we don't have things like that. You know, uh, our category has its own challenges, but there's, there are just certain types of categories, certain types of products, certain types of markets, certain types of sectors and, um, feature sets.

Don't require as much and the more complexity and lower margins and all of those things, they, they don't automatically equal, um, better life and more profit margin for the founder. There are some businesses out there, like if you have to be a YouTube influencer right now, And you're kind of in that middle class of YouTube influencer, like you've got a couple hundred thousand subscribers.

You're super talented at what you do, but you got to put out three videos a week. And from what I've heard, that's a pretty low margin business. Like it's just hard to make it in the middle-class of YouTube. Uh, most of the money is made by the top 0.1%. Right. But in SAS, Um, my guess is that the middle class is much bigger, probably.

Yeah. I mean, if you just think about, I think about this sometimes, but just how many, how many people that are in the world and how many potential customers there can be. It doesn't take a lot. I mean, we don't have a huge customer. We have, I think we have under 5,000 customers. Yeah. I mean, there's what 2 million podcasts now or something like, it's not, I mean, the way you can carve, you can carve out a small portion of the market.

If you keep your expenses lean, your team's small and B that's fine. I mean, I, yeah, there's over a million podcasts right now. And my guess is that our biggest competitors have probably, I don't know, 80,000 customers, maybe each. Um, and so. Yeah, it's not a massive market. Like there's bigger markets. Uh, I was telling Derek Reimer, like the, the market for calendar scheduling software is massive.

Like it's every day I was thinking about this, cause now my daughter's 18. So now she's officially an adult she's gen Z. So she's entering into the. The stage of her life as a working adult, as a pro-sumer, as a, you know, employee or business woman, she gen Z is coming online as potential customers. So every day in the world, you have a whole new generation of kids who are becoming adults who need calendar scheduling, software who need, uh, Hey, Dot com email address who need, you know, a new form creation software.

And they haven't even heard of Typeform and they haven't even heard of Calendly and they haven't even heard of, uh, outlook.com. You know what I mean? Like this is the world we live in and, uh, certain categories. Uh, lend themselves to that. And we benefit from this as well. Like every day, there's new people.

Uh, there's new, like young people that are starting a podcast. There's new, uh, baby boomers that are starting a podcast and haven't heard of any of the other competitors. So there's, there is room in the world for solutions and there's room within existing categories. Because, like I said, there's some people like, like if you asked my daughter, like, what are the, you know, what's, what are the top calendar scheduling software utilities.

She would have no idea. And like, how would you, okay. You need to create a form. How would you do that? And she would, she probably like Google best form software or, you know, like. It's it's the, the, the opportunity is there. Right, right. Yeah. I think, uh, I don't even know how we got on this, but yeah. I find that stuff fascinating and encouraging.

Uh, because I think for us, especially with this show, one of our objectives has always been, you know, especially once we experienced some success, like this is, this has changed my life and I want this for more people. Like, I would be happy if there's less billionaires and more, a hundred thousand heirs and millionaires, you know what I mean?

Like let's create more of those, uh, in the middle-class we are definitely in the middle class of SAS. Like if you compare us to like, like enterprise SAS or like slack level or Microsoft 360, like where we are in the lower, lower revenue wise. Right. You know, not even close, but the, for us, this is dramatically changed our lives.

And we're at now, we're at the stage where, uh, we're planning on hiring somebody full time. We're pretty close. Uh, we'll hopefully be able to talk about that soon, but now we're able to, uh, you know, hire other people and have them be a part of this. Now, now we're going to be providing a livelihood for other folks as well.

And that'll be, that'll be a new adventure for us. I mean, you know, as far as I guess, managing people and yeah, that'll be a change, but yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing to be at that point. It's yeah, it's fun. So yeah, hopefully all of that is encouraging. Hopefully all of that, uh, speaks to folks out there. I, I said in this, someone asked me when I was saying, you know, I have no desire to get more done in a day.

They asked, did you always feel this way or only when things were going right. And I said, you know, I definitely hustled the hardest when I was working for businesses with low margins. That's the thing about low margin work. You spend an enormous amount of energy, treading water, high margin work. It gives you the space to do less tasks with more impact.

Um, and you know, this is, if you work for a boss, who's in a like, you know, things aren't going well. They will download all of that stress onto you. It's like, if your boss is treating you like shit, it's it's because things are not going well. Right. And I'll talk to people like that. We've all been in situations like that, where, you know, you talk to a friend and they're like, oh man, like my boss is calling me at all hours.

And they told me I had to work on the weekends and then they blew up on me because I didn't do the spreadsheet. Right. And it's like, you know, If you can get out of this situation, you should, because low margin work leads to that kind of, uh, toxicity because people are under pressure, higher margin work.

They're being pressured from someone else above that is that when you have margins, especially as a boss or a manager, it's so nice. You can just, you, you see things more clearly, there's less cognitive load. You're not under, you know, the, the thumb of the world. You're, you're, you're free to think and calmly assess and, um, you know, it's easy for you to say, oh, that's okay.

That doesn't matter. Great job. Oh, it, mistakes happen, you know, like, um, you know, you and I have both made mistakes with transistor. And it's so nice for me to be able to tell you, like, if you make a mistake to say it's okay, John, it's not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. You know, we're. Yeah. So, but for sure, our relationship would suffer.

If things get bad. You know, if we lost 80% of our customers overnight, uh, you and I, our relationship would be worse for sure. That's a big, that's a big unknown about how that would sort of manifest itself rollout and what would happen. Yeah. I have no idea what would happen. We're talking about it now so that we can remember that we talked, like, I just know, like, you know, if, if, if everything's falling apart in your romantic relationship, It's just like, uh, sorry, if everything's falling apart in your life, it'll affect your romantic relationship.

Like if you lose your job and you get in a car accident and you, uh, your, your dad's in the hospital for sure. Your friendships and your romantic relationship is going to suffer. Um, and the same, you know, the same is true for business partnerships and for employee, employer relationships. Absolutely. So, uh, that, I mean, that's really the benefit when you get to this scale of having margin.

Yeah. So that, I think that's the benefit is just, um, For those folks that are trying to get there, who are listening, going? Yeah. I just want that life, like, when am I going to get there? You know, make sure that you're in a good category, make sure you're working on the right things. But if you know, I think Jason Cohen's timeline.

Like you saying, you know, if in two years you can get to 10 K MRR per founder. That's that's a pretty good benchmark. And, um, you know, and maybe it's taking you longer, but you're, you're still young and you've got time. So if, if you're at eight K MRR, but you're 27. Maybe it's worth keep going. Like, like I said, like I, you know, uh, one of the nice things about being young is that your, your margin, you need less margin because your expenses aren't as high that's true.

Or you haven't been working so long. Like the, the challenge for old guys is that we've been gradually ratcheting up our salaries and, and even, and then the industry as a whole, like right now, software. Yeah. Like, if, if, if you wanted to, you could go work at Google app, Amazon Facebook for, you know, 350 K.

Um, and so that's always becomes, the other challenge, you know, is if you're in an industry that's kind of ascendant, um, and you get older and you've got seniority, then you need something that has enough margin to replace what you could earn somewhere else. Right. And honestly, if you could. If you, if you're a developer and you can be happy, I'm going to one of those places.

I think you and I would not be happy there, but it's worth exploring. If, if you're thinking about starting a business, like starting a business is a bat, it's a risk and you can keep, you know, like John said, you tried eight bats, right? And there was no guarantee that your ninth bet was going to. You could have, you could have had at ninth and 10th and 11th to 12th or 13th, and then you could have done.

That's true. Yeah. It's a dark way to think about it, but yeah, that could happen. Uh, so if you want a surefire bat and you're not sure if business is right for you yeah. Go play at Amazon, like, or, or figure out how you can ratchet up your career to, to get a position like that because you might be able to get, um, a lot of the freedom you're looking for, uh, without having to.

Take the risk. Yeah, absolutely. How did we talk this long? I think when I was in new, well, that's why don't you give people an update on all the cool stuff we've released lately? Um, there's a bunch of, yeah, yeah. We have released, we have released a bunch of stuff. Um, the biggest one was the update to our private podcast, um, which allows you to.

Send out an email notification every time a new episode is released, which we didn't have before and then include the way for you to listen on the web. So you can no longer have to actually subscribe to your private RSS feed in a podcast player, because a lot of people like just weren't familiar with them, or I don't know how to add it to we're on a device that, you know, a corporate device that they couldn't add new stuff to or whatever.

Um, so now you can. Yeah. Have emails go out with each new episode, you can actually customize parts of those emails. Huge, huge like that. First of all, not only was it not possible to transistor, I don't think anybody has done this, uh, notifying private subscribers by email, and then having a web player that is happy.

Unique to that subscriber. Um, this is, this is a podcast industry innovation, I think. So this is something we realized was important because we were listening and observing our customers, the, the, the traditional kind of. Uh, Mo not moat, uh, the traditional kind of line you can get stuck in is like, oh, well, we've got to figure out how to get this into a podcast player.

But when you observe people in a corporate context, you know, what's the most popular podcast player email in the web. That's that's like, if you got to, uh, if you get a notice from your boss that there's a corporate podcast and he's like, you gotta listen to these for training purposes. You're even if you're a podcast listener, it's very likely that you're going to be like, yeah, just give it to me by email.

And then every morning I check my email when I get to the office. Oh, there's a new training session. I'll just listen to it in the web. It's it makes sense when you think about it, but that, that idea wasn't apparent from the beginning. So yeah, that was a huge release. That, that one there. Yeah, that was a big one.

Um, along with that, Getting requests for this a long time. So we have this, uh, integration where you can connect your podcast to Twitter. And then every time a new episode goes out, it automatically tweets and it has an embedded player and links to your, your, a shareable website where you can play. Uh, people were always asking to be.

Edit those tweets and kind of compose their own custom tweets. So we rolled that out where there's, you know, you can write whatever you want in the tweet and adding these placeholders for the show, the podcast title of the episode title and the URL to link. Uh, that one. Yeah, that one was easier, easier than I thought.

I guess I'd finished it a little quicker, but it still has a little, few drawbacks that are hard to fix because there is a limit of how many characters you can use in Twitter and your podcast title and your episode title are all variable. So. Uh, it does kind of cut off certain sentences and truncate things a little bit.

We'll see how well that works out. That release got the most love on Twitter than anything else we've done. It was like, people are just like waiting for that one. They're like, yes. Yeah. You know, some customers have been asking for that since day one. Yeah. Right. It's always like, uh, maybe, uh, but great. A great example of, you know, Uh, sure.

You can't move so slow that people get frustrated and go somewhere else. But, you know, that was always like maybe 10, 20% of our customers really cared about that. And, um, yeah, it's great to do it eventually, but it wasn't mandatory. You know what I mean? It was like, this is a nice to have and now we've done it.

We fixed it and it improved it and yeah, people are happy. Yeah, exactly. Added a extra security feature where you can turn on two factor authentication for your account, if you want and use one of the authenticator apps and scan a QR code and have it generate your code for you, um, did not include anything like texting you a code because that's actually fairly insecure from what I read, you know, your, your phone number can be spoofed and you can, people can, you know, it, it is, it is like, you know, a podcasting happened at your bank account, but like, Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And also then we have to sign up for Twilio and now we have to manage SMS. It's like, yeah, this is easy. It's like scan a QR code, get it in your authenticator app. You're done. Uh, and then the last one we rolled out was improvements for importing a podcast. Um, previously it was, it just sort of sat there importing and told you it was importing, but never gave you an update on what's going on.

Uh, now when you import, it'll actually send you to a page where it live updates, how many episodes have been imported and tells you when it's done? So that was, you know, not really requested very often, but I think this is kind of one of those nice to haves where it's, it's even good for us. As you know, when we're doing customer support, to be able to log into someone's account and see like, Where the thing is that and why it's taking, you know, six hours or something.

Uh, yeah, I mean, that's, when, again, those things that people probably wouldn't request, but by observing customers, we know like, okay, how are we going to improve their, their, uh, experience, uh, well, improve the experience by improving the way this kind of onboarding works and, uh, also improve the way we can, like.

Customer support reps and things like that, help them to serve the customer better. Yeah. So those are, yeah. That's what we're doing. We've got a couple of other things we've been thinking about that, you know, my building knockout pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is, I feels like I'm getting excited. I think, I think it's still going to be, I like to get out of this pandemic mode.

My guess is by the time autumn rolls around, I think. You know, I'll be vaccinated. Um, the, I think conferences will open up again, travel, open up, and I'm feeling like I'm starting to get more creative energy. I feel like, uh, the end of 2021 and 2022 are going to be big, big years. I think it's just, yeah, I can feel it in the air and, um, Yeah.

Um, I'm excited and there's people like Tyler, us. He's tweeting like, you know what he says from all the data he's looking at and he's got, you know, all sorts of inside looks at different software companies and, you know, new people that are applying for funding. He's like, this is the time. Like, if you want to start a SAS company, this is a great time to start a SAS company.

Yeah. I think the best time is now. Like it's always. There's no better time than, yeah, I guess. Well, and I think he's especially thinking, like, things are opening up and this is going to be a, you know, if you want to be. And again, like I said, there's in the meantime, you know, like, uh, my daughter is becoming an adult and she's going to need tools by the time, you know, like all that stuff's happening right now.

Yeah. I think if you're thinking about building a business, nothing wrong with starting right now. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So sorry, folks did a little bit of a longer one, but you know, we haven't done an episode in a while, so, uh, hope hopefully you enjoy it. Let's go through our patron supporters. We have few new people.

I just want to mention that we've actually been giving away most of this money. Uh, so if you are a Patriot and supporter, that's true. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And, uh, what we're doing is we're sponsoring other creators. So, um, Uh, you helped enable our, our work, uh, especially early on when Patrion like more money than we were making from the company.

Uh, but now you're enabling all sorts of creators around the world to do their work. So, yeah. That's awesome. Thanks everyone. Uh, yeah, we do have a couple of new people. Uh, we have Oleg Kulak and I'm gonna not get

Is that, is that Canadian, French Canadian, that would have been more like

And I'd have a cigarette in my mouth

as well. And we have the, uh, the ticket UV podcast, Ethan Gunderson, Diogo, Chris Willow, or hustle, air word, Sandler, Erica. James sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown of Andrew sassy. Prior to you, mission Becker. No, Praill Colin gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kurkova Shane Smith. Austin Love this Simon Bennett, Michael sipper, Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis.

Um, my brother Dan. Darby Frey, Somalia Gusto, Dave young referee, Canada, Sammy Shukert Mike Walker, Adam demander, Dave Giunta, June, uh, and Kyle Fox from get rewarded. Thanks everybody. Hopefully we'll be backstage.