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We discuss how random interactions create opportunity and how we can increase the likelihood of good things happening to us.
Show Notes
Jonathan, Caleb, and Daila discuss how turning satellite imagery into animated gifs is like building property management software, in that it's just a bunch of random coincidence and that we can increase our likelihood of luck.
[00:39] Building a dynamic image generator Bubble plugin
[02:57] Can we take screenshots of Google Maps? (No)
[08:51] Accounting and property management
[14:17] Accidentally creating things
The Product: OpenHouse.social
[00:39] Building a dynamic image generator Bubble plugin
[02:57] Can we take screenshots of Google Maps? (No)
[08:51] Accounting and property management
[14:17] Accidentally creating things
The Product: OpenHouse.social
Newsletter: factory.twostoryrobot.com
Twitter: @twostoryrobot
Instagram: @therobotfactorypod
The Product: OpenHouse.social
Newsletter: factory.twostoryrobot.com
Twitter: @twostoryrobot
Instagram: @therobotfactorypod
Follow Jonathan: @thejonotron
Follow Caleb: @calebissharp
Creators & Guests
What is The Robot Factory?
Follow along as we attempt to build and sell a SaaS company. A build in public behind the scenes journey of a small software agency, Two Story Robot, trying something new.
Caleb: welcome back to the Robot Factory.
I'm your host, Caleb Sharp
Daila: Oh, I'm Daila Duford.
Jonathan: Hey, Dayla Der I'm
Jonathan Bowers, the other cohost.
Caleb: Oh, welcome.
Other co-hosts.
Jonathan: Welcome back, Daila.
We missed you last week.
Daila: Ah, thank you.
Sorry, just busy, busy, busy.
Jonathan: Busy.
Busy.
We,
Daila: you guys too.
Jonathan: I just published the episode
that Caleb and I recorded last week.
I published it just this
Caleb: Oh, you did publish it?
Jonathan: I did publish it.
Yeah.
It's kind of boring, but there's
Caleb: Yeah.
Daila: What did
Jonathan: really missed you we talked
about just making some, just some of the
implementation that Caleb went through to
make the free tier for OpenHouse.Social.
Um, but the big thing that, or not the
big thing, but the thing that I think
is relevant, uh, to you Daila is we
talked about the possibility of, turning
that idea into a generic bubble plugin.
I know you and I have talked about
this I, I think it's a hard thing
to explain , um, why someone might
want dynamic image generation.
Um, but I don't know if you, if you
had a chance to go and look in the
bubble ecosystem at all or talk with
Daila: No, I had, I had no chance,
but I did think about it lots because
yeah, when you explained it, I
didn't really understand it at all.
But after it like marinated in my
brain for a while, I think, I think
I figured out what you were trying
to say and I think it would be
awesome and very doable with no code.
Jonathan: doable
Daila: mean, I say that about
most things that I hear, but,
Well, no, sorry, Like a yes.
Mixing code with no code.
Jonathan: yeah,
Daila: Yeah.
Jonathan: it's, um, it's something
that I think we could build fairly
quickly without actually you.
I mean, Caleb, Caleb
hinted at it last week.
That we could build it on
top of an existing service.
So there's a few, there's a few
services that I've found that kind of
do what, what we are proposing to do.
Um, they're not inexpensive,
but they're not like dirt cheap.
Like it would be for us to host it
ourselves or to run it ourselves.
Um, so I think it's something that we
could, we could do and we could try.
Um, I just wish I had I, this, I feel
like I need to learn bubble because,
Daila: I feel like you do too.
I'll
Jonathan: There's so much that I want
to do that I think I could just do
if I knew how to use bubble properly.
Um,
Daila: Oh yeah, you'd pick it up so quick.
Okay.
Quick question about, Okay, so, so it
takes like a screenshot of the image
Jonathan: yes.
Daila: I actually need that for
one of the apps that we're making
Jonathan: Oh,
Daila: would make it so much better.
Jonathan: what do you need to do?
Daila: Okay, so right now in one of
the apps, we look for, uh, an address
and then it pulls up an image from
Google something, but then that image
is passed off to a Word document.
But you cannot export a Google
Maps image or a Google Earth
image or whatever it's called.
You just can't, you have to take a
screenshot or go on this API that just
pulls like the little weird map and
it just, it just doesn't look good.
So on their proposal, all
you see is like a Google map.
You don't actually see the area.
And I tried to figure out a
way to do a screenshot, but I
didn't know what I was doing.
Jonathan: uh,
Caleb: against their terms of
Jonathan: I
Daila: Wow.
And that's what it very
Jonathan: too.
Daila: be.
Jonathan: there's
Daila: tell them Caleb.
Caleb: If I could just, if I could just
take a screenshot of everything at Google
Maps, I could make my own Google Maps
Daila: Boom.
Done.
Is that, No,
Jonathan: And sell it.
Oh,
Daila: figure
Caleb: It's so easy.
Jonathan: I gotta figure out how
to remove that copyright logo.
The copyright notice though,
Caleb: those darn water marks,
why did they put them there?
Jonathan: there's,
Daila: there's, I don't know,
something else we could do.
Jonathan: um, that's,
yeah, that's interesting.
The map that's being embedded onto
a document, is that something that
goes to like externally or is that
something that's only used internally?
Daila: that's what the
client ends up seeing.
Jonathan: Oh, I
Daila: So it's just
and, and like on there.
Oh.
Is this about terms and conditions again?
Maybe they, That's why they can't do it.
Jonathan: Well there's, I
mean, there's maybe some, like,
Caleb: You.
Jonathan: gray area if you were
just doing it as an internal thing,
like I take screenshots of the
Google Maps all the time and send
it to like, send it to people.
Like that's fine.
I think that's, that's fair use.
I don't think it would be fair
use to do, certainly not to send
it to a, uh, to a, a client.
Um, probably also, Fair use to send it
internally as part of some, some workflow.
Daila: What?
Like even if it's their own address.
Does that make you, Were
not taking pictures of
Caleb: it's not there.
But it's a, not like they made the map
of their own address, but there are other
map being services other than Google Maps.
Like there's Mapbox, or even like,
you could use Open Street map.
And then I'm the, I'm sure the, the terms
and conditions are a lot more lenient
Jonathan: I've used the
Mapbox image generator thing.
It's actually pretty, pretty slick to use.
Um, it can do, it can generate
images, static images of, uh, maps,
and then you can give it like zoom
settings and, and like lat longs.
And you can drop pins as well.
You can say, Here's a pin.
I don't think you can put.
I don't know if you can put a, a
popup over top of like, say a pin
with an address bubble over top of it.
I don't know if you can do that or not,
but, uh, Mapbox is pretty, pretty sweet.
Uh, and the other nice thing is that
you can also, you can also style a map.
So
Daila: I've done that.
Jonathan: have you
Caleb: brand branded theme.
Daila: what did I stylize a map for, for
the, the cow thing like two years ago,
Jonathan: Oh,
Daila: I, I went down the rabbit
hole of stylizing maps not
Jonathan: Yeah, this, this map, the
map that's behind me, um, I have
a piece of art hanging behind me.
It's, uh, a map that I made of
the town that I grew up in, or the
two towns that I spent my youth in
and the lake, and I spent hours.
Fiddling around with making
styled styled maps in Mapbox
until I could print this off.
Um, but it's super fun.
Like you could make a totally branded
styled map for this client, um,
which might be extra cool, like put
it in their colors, . I don't know.
Daila: Oh, I like that.
All right.
have to, We'll chat
Jonathan: after
Daila: Because I need to figure it out.
Jonathan: Um, tangents again.
Caleb introduced us last week as, uh,
the show where we go off on tangents.
Caleb: Yeah.
Daila: It's like my life.
Jonathan: I like that idea.
Let's, uh, let's go and
research the map thing for sure.
Um, we can do that offline,
Daila: Cool.
Jonathan: uh, or outside of this podcast.
It's not really in the scope,
but, Well, actually maybe it is.
Like how, what, what kind of mapping
things are there available for For Bubble?
Cause this is a bubble app
that you're building, right?
Daila: This is a bubble app.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, there's honestly
plugins for everything and if
there isn't, we can make one.
Right now, I've really just focused
on Google Maps cuz I, I'm a, I'm a
Googler, but, um, I need to branch
out because it's not fitting my,
like what, what I want it to do.
Jonathan: Yeah, I, I, yeah.
Play, explore a little bit and see if
there's any, what there is available
in the bubble e in the bubble.
In the bubble ecosystem.
Cuz maybe, yeah, maybe there is something
that we could, we could build real quick.
Um.
Daila: Cool.
Jonathan: Anyways, so the thing we
chatted about last week was could we
turn our, our idea, this automatic
image generation Into a bubble plugin.
It sounds like you have a potential
use case, although it's questionable,
whether it's legal or not.
, um, . Um, but that's interesting, right?
There's, there's, there is a, there
is a potential use case for it.
It's just questionably how would we
protect against that in terms of service?
Like people using our tool to violate
other companies terms of service,
Caleb: Google might be somewhat leaning
as long as you have their watermark on it.
You might have to just pay for
like an API key or whatever.
Depends on what you're
screenshotting, Maybe.
Jonathan: I know that the, the terms of
service are funny because they say, I
think they say things like, You can't,
you can't store these images anywhere,
Daila: Wow.
Jonathan: Like you can't
cash them for a long time.
Um, Because they want you
to keep using the service.
Like you can't just copy all of
Google Maps and then use your copy.
Caleb: That surely can't apply to printed
things though, cuz it's not like your,
your piece of paper can dynamically fetch
Google Maps images from the internet
Jonathan: No, I know.
I, I, I think, I don't
think it applies there.
The other thing I wanted to touch or
check in on is, uh, it , I know the
answer to this, but have you done any
further work on property management stuff?
Daila: No, no.
I've thought a lot about it in the middle
of the night because I'm always thinking
about the podcast and I'm like, Hot.
Dang it.
What am I gonna talk about?
But no, we are going to, there is a
light at the end of our very busy tunnel,
and then it's, it's in that light.
Jonathan: Sweet.
Is that next week?
Daila: Uh, yeah, it should be like,
this week is the, the big push.
Jonathan: week is the big push, and
then next week is also a big push,
Daila: Next week is two, but then
yeah, Thursday, Friday next week
we breathe and we do realtor.
Jonathan: Well, I, I've had a,
I've had a chance to chat a little
bit more with, um, with Brendan.
He referred me to his bookkeeper, which I
haven't had a chance to reach out to yet.
Cuz last week was, was, was
busy, as you said, Daila.
I, I also was pretty busy.
Didn't get a chance to reach out to her.
But he said that, there's like
some features that exist inside
of existing accounting packages
that that can solve some of this.
Like, I mean if you think about
it, like if you're just invoicing
people, you can use Wave, Xero.
We use Zero for our accounting.
Uh, I think he mentioned Sage or
Daila: Oh, Sage.
Yeah.
Jonathan: And so some of these, some
of these accounting tools have, have
capa like some of these capabilities,
but I doubt they have all, like, all
the things that we're talking about,
you know, putting, uh, maintenance
requests and that kind of thing in.
So I've got a call, I've got hopefully set
up a call soon with, with this bookkeeper
or accountant to get some insight.
And then, uh, he also referred me to
somebody else, another person like.
that could, you know, shed
some light on, on using some of
these property management tools.
But I was talking with, I was talking with
someone, uh, in the office, uh, one of
our, one of our mentors on something else.
But we often talk about, uh,
what we're doing on Little Robot.
And he thinks, he thinks the opportunity
is not in these large, property management
organizations, but it's in, it's in
the, professional who has a couple of,
income properties and rents them out.
And I don't know, like I, I, I just feel
like that that market must be huge, but
I don't know how to get at those people.
Like that just feels like
consumer marketing somehow.
And I don't, I don't
know if I wanna do that.
I.
Daila: Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if I know many
people who have multiple income
properties in my circle, so
Jonathan: I just know one
person, actually we know, we
know the same person, Daila
Daila: Oh, we do.
Apparently I do know
Jonathan: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, he, he's a teacher and he's got,
he, he almost bought his third house,
but he's got, he's got two houses.
He rents out the basement.
He rents out the apartment
or another house.
and, I just don't, I don't see
him like paying money to do this
cuz it's something he can just do.
Daila: I don't know.
I've heard from people that being a
landlord is tough, so if we can make it
easier for just a little bit of money.
Caleb, you rolled your eyes.
Are you a.
You might be, I don't know.
You're like a boy genius.
Caleb: I don't have, I don't have, I
don't have sympathy for the landlords.
Oh, my job is so hard.
I have to collect money for doing nothing.
Daila: till you can't collect the money.
Caleb: Yeah, we should cut that out.
Daila: So yet, does
your landlord listen to
Caleb: Uh,
Daila: I think it's worth exploring.
Caleb: I don't know cuz I mean, at a
certain scale all of that stuff might
take a lot of time, but if you only have a
couple properties, you're like collecting
rent once a month for two, two properties.
Two or three rare maintenance requests.
I just don't.
I don't know if there's
enough time there to save
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah.
That's what I feel, and I just
feel like it's a, it's a hard.
I don't know where to
find those customers.
Like where do I find teachers that have
their third house or, uh, another friend
of mine, he's a, he's a graphics designer,
um, like , Where do I find these people?
Like they're not going to conferences.
They're not
Caleb: you
Daila: That's true.
Caleb: could look for rentals and contact
the people that are putting properties up
Jonathan: Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.
That's, that's a good
Caleb: Kind
Jonathan: scrape, just scrape kijiji and
Caleb: Be like, Oh, you wanted,
you wanted my money actually,
Jonathan: I want your
Caleb: I've got something for you.
Jonathan: I like that idea.
That's funny.
Okay, well, so there's not,
not a lot, not a lot to report.
These podcast episodes are getting,
um, low in , low end content as we've
been so busy the last couple of weeks
trying to get some other stuff done.
Uh, and losing Caleb off
to, um, to another project.
Um, but.
Caleb: technically I'm supposed to
be half time on strategic stuff.
Jonathan: Uh, yeah,
but we're dropping that
Caleb: yeah.
O OpenHouse is also kind of,
there hasn't been a lot to do, so
Jonathan: Yeah.
I need to do some more, Like, I've
been promising for like three or four
weeks, four months or something to
actually do some, do some content on it.
Um, But you wanted
Daila: that kind of month though,
Jonathan: Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
September has
Caleb: Yes.
You mean?
Yeah.
So September is over somehow.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Daila: like next week
we'll be different people.
Caleb: Well,
Jonathan: We'll be different.
More interesting.
Um, people that are more rested.
Daila: and rested and, yeah.
Caleb: Yeah.
Jonathan: Caleb, you wanted to talk
a little bit about, uh, this other
project that we're working on, um, why.
Caleb: Um, Oh, I just
think it's been cool.
Some of the stuff that I've, not
even like the actual goals, just
some of the side side artifacts
that I've accidentally created.
Jonathan: Is it all, uh, technical stuff?
Caleb: Uh, uh at a high level, no, I
think, I think there's some, I don't know.
Jonathan: I, I'll share, I'll share
at a high level what we're doing.
Because I don't wanna, I don't
wanna disclose too, too much, but
we're using, essentially satellite
imagery to do a certain kind of
calculation on the landscape.
So we're working with an industry,
an industry insider to build a p.
prototype.
the goal of which is you can just
sort of draw an arbitrary polygon on
the landscape and you get back some
numbers about that, place on the planet.
Um, it's about as vague as I wanna, or as
as detailed as I want to get, but we're
using satellite imagery and it's, it's
neat because it's, it's, um, the, the
values that you get change over time.
And so we're showing
that change over time.
Caleb, tell, tell a little bit about
like some of the things that you've,
you've done as a result of that.
Caleb: Well, one of the things,
this is slightly more technical, is
there's just like tons of data to, to
go through like these, The world's a
big place and there's lots of data.
So, and it goes back, um,
a couple decades to data.
So dealing with all of that and, and
in a way that's like quick, cuz we
don't wanna, we don't want our thing
to take like, 10 hours to load whatever
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Caleb: Um, so that, that's
been a fun challenge.
Plus all the, all the other map
stuff, like I, I didn't, I didn't
know anything about even like
coordinate reference systems.
And so learning all that's been fun.
But, uh, the, the cool thing that
I worked on yesterday and a bit
today is, um, I made some gifs.
because cuz it's, it, it's, it's
like spatial time series data.
We can make a gif showing that data
changing over time and like animated.
Um, I think it looks super cool
because you can see the change.
it hasn't really been
the goal of the project.
It just kind of happened.
It's like, it's like, I
wonder if I could do this.
but now it, now it's sweet.
I, I, I can't stop looking at them.
Jonathan: are.
They are neat.
Like you can see the, uh, We're not
actually gonna show this to anyone
unfortunately, cuz it's like kind of top
secret, not top secret, but whatever.
We're not gonna
Caleb: Confidential
Jonathan: Yeah.
But it is cool, like to see these, to
see these things change over time and
you can make out like, features of
the landscape, um, as it changes, uh,
because we're only looking at a certain
number of bands, from the sensors.
It's, it's really cool.
Caleb: Yeah.
Jonathan: So one of the things that
stuck out to me about one when you
asked if we should talk about this,
and I thought, Ah, not really.
Like that's not the point of this
podcast, like this podcast is.
My goal for the Robot Factory
Podcast is to talk about how to build
smaller things like, like our goal
is we're trying to diversify our.
Our strategy or income stream, I guess.
And one of the things that we're
experimenting in is building
smaller products and seeing
if we can get those acquired.
This product that we're building that
you're talking about, Caleb is not small.
It's, it's kind of big.
Relies on some, advantages
that we happen to have.
But the way in which we got to that I
think is relevant in that we talked with
people about some things that we had
done in a completely unrelated space,
like we had done, uh, certain kind of
visualization of, landscape level data.
And so it all, it all kind of
came because we were just out.
Chatting with folks and trying to, trying
to like, here's what we're working on.
Here's what we're doing.
Is this useful?
Does this, is this helpful?
And, you know, they said,
Yeah, that's kind of cool.
You should talk with this person.
And then we go and talk with that
person and they say, um, yeah, not
really, but can you do this other thing?
And that actually turned
into a big, a big project.
We got a big project out of that.
Um, and then, then they
referred us to someone else.
And cuz we were saying like,
Oh, what else can we do?
Can we, you know, can we visualize
data on a map in a cool way?
And, uh, or can we do this kind of stuff?
And they said, Oh, you should talk
with, you know, person X and we go
and chat with them and then turned
into this whole, this whole big thing.
Um, and similarly I would say, The
one, like one of the reasons I want
to do this podcast is because it
forces us to go and have some more
conversations and share some of this
stuff a little bit more publicly.
So we've been talking with realtors and
uh, we ended up talking with Brendan
and he hinted at this, like, this idea
that we had no idea was a problem.
And so we start digging around
and poking around and trying
to, trying to iterate on it.
Um, and our, our process.
um, I think works really well for
that because we can, we can iterate
relatively quickly on things,
something faster than others.
Like I think this property management
stuff is something that we can
iterate on a little quicker than say.
Taking terabytes worth of satellite
data and turning it into gifs
, that, that was quite a process.
Um, but it, it, it's cool to, it's
cool to be able to find some of these,
and I don't think it can happen unless
we're out just chatting with, chatting
with potential customers about the
problems that they have and also
showing them what, what we are up to.
Um, because yeah, I just, yeah, I
think it's, I think it's really cool.
It's, it's a way of.
doing the thing that we have been
successful at doing, but without
any real, system to it, which is
we're really good at being lucky.
. Like we just, we just happen to,
stuff just falls in our laps.
Um, but it's the result of, it's
the result of talking with people
and building relationships.
Uh, and that's, that's like
what we're trying to do here.
Um, so I don't know.
I thought, I thought it was cool.
It was kind of a cool parallel to
how we got to that, you know, Caleb
making gifs of the world, and
Daila, making property management,
um, things, they're very similar
Caleb: Yeah.
Jonathan: in how they started.
Caleb: Yeah.
Who knows?
Maybe.
Someone at NASA's listening right
now and then be like, Oh, you
want to, you wanna make the, the
satellite mask for our new spaceship?
Who knows?
I, I would do that.
I probably
Jonathan: I would absolutely do
Daila: you would
Caleb: I could figure that out.
How?
How could it be?
Jonathan: So that's it for this week.
I think , we we're still trying to find
our, trying to find some space to, to
work on some of the things we want to
work on and talk about on this podcast.
Um, so just, just.
Bear with us.
We're trying, I'm trying really
hard not to just not record
things as much as I want to make
sure every episode is amazing.
I wanna have the cadence.
I just wanna be regularly
showing up and doing stuff.
Even if sometimes it's like, Oh
shit, we didn't, Sorry, , I'm
trying not to swear either.
Ah, shoot.
We're not, we're not, we're, we're
not doing the things we wanted to do.
Daila: All right.
This has been The Robot Factory Podcast.
I'm Daila Duford.
Jonathan: I'm Jonathan Bowers.
Caleb: and I'm Caleb Sharp.
Daila: Thanks for joining us.
See you next week.
Jonathan: Bye
Caleb: B.