Jon and Justin talk about "optionality" in bootstrapping. (Justin is concerned, Jon thinks we should just enjoy the moment).
DHH: "Part of what gave us the confidence to turn down the whole world of venture capital was a small sale of equity to Jeff Bezos. That gave our personal bank accounts just enough ballast that the big numbers touted by VCs and acquisition hunters lost their lure."
Are we at peak podcasting? Things are good right now - will they be good for 10 years? 20 years?
How much did the founders of Buffer, Robinhood, etc. take off the table? Article.
Des Traynor: "A founder is spending 60 months of their best years in their startup (instead of their career). That is a substantial upfront investment; it's like a seed round, but instead of money, it's your life."
Jon and Justin talk about "optionality" in bootstrapping. (Justin is concerned, Jon thinks we should just enjoy the moment).
DHH: "Part of what gave us the confidence to turn down the whole world of venture capital was a small sale of equity to Jeff Bezos. That gave our personal bank accounts just enough ballast that the big numbers touted by VCs and acquisition hunters lost their lure."
Are we at peak podcasting? Things are good right now - will they be good for 10 years? 20 years?
How much did the founders of Buffer, Robinhood, etc. take off the table? Article.
Des Traynor: "A founder is spending 60 months of their best years in their startup (instead of their career). That is a substantial upfront investment; it's like a seed round, but instead of money, it's your life."
Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.
Jon:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Bruta, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build transistor dot FM. It is I I didn't realize, today is a somber day. Today's September 11th.
Jon:
It is. Yeah. That,
Justin:
every year, you know, that's
Jon:
That was a bummer of a day.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
But you know what the sad part is is that we have a September 11th every day in this country now.
Justin:
Oh, man. Oh, those are those are laughing, tears of laughing tears. Those are sad too. Sad laugh.
Jon:
Yeah. It is sad.
Justin:
People keep telling us to not make this show political, but we've been pretty political from the very beginning. It's kinda hard not to.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I've got a I've got a interesting dilemma, and we were talking a little bit about this off camera, off off microphone. Mhmm. And you're like, well, I don't care about I don't care about that at all. But I I I think it'd still be helpful to talk it out because there might be other folks who can identify with it. So here here's the here's part of the anxiety is and and this is such a weird feeling when especially compared to when we started.
Justin:
When we started, you're just, like, just trying to get to a place where this thing is, you know, feeding you, paying for your mortgage.
Jon:
Yeah. The anxiety was right.
Justin:
Yeah. Way different. Yeah. The anxiety was more like it's it's almost excitement. It's like, okay.
Justin:
We're doing this. It's like growing, and then you get to a nice stable spot. Then the company keeps growing. And then I feel like the anxiety starts to be, we have a good business here. It's making good money every month.
Justin:
We have a nice, slow, and steady growth trajectory. And for me, personally, I would take if if you could guarantee me like, if the devil came and made me sign a contract and say, listen. Yeah. Here's the you get to keep you sign this contract, and you get to keep a 100% control of transistor. You get to keep working with John.
Justin:
You get to have this life the rest of your life until you die, and you're guaranteed to have the same revenue growth that you have right now. Yeah. I would take that deal.
Jon:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin:
I would sign that contract with the devil. Don't know if the I don't know what the devil gets out of it. But
Jon:
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Justin:
I mean, let's be honest. If Bezos came along and gave me the same deal as he gave 37 signals, which is, hey, John and Justin. I really like you guys. I like your business philosophy. I like this idea of a calm company with lots of
Jon:
Can we make it someone up? Can we make it someone up?
Justin:
Bezos. I know. Bezos is like,
Jon:
who? Not not Elon Musk. Not Bezos.
Justin:
Who's who's palatable here?
Jon:
I don't know. They all kinda suck, don't they?
Justin:
What about, what about Bezos' wife? Ex wife?
Jon:
Oh, yeah. She seems pretty reasonable.
Justin:
Anyway, some some nice, you know, billionaire comes to us and says, I really like what you're doing. I like this Calm company. I like this margin. Just I want podcasting to stay open and and, you know, in this open ecosystem. Here's and we think I think I think, 37 signals got at least 10,000,000.
Justin:
So 5,000,000 for Jason, 5,000,000 for David, or something like that. Maybe it was 8,000,000, 3,000,000. Who knows? But let's say they give us 10,000,000. I would probably for a non controlling stake in transistor, like 10% of the shares or something, I would probably take that deal too.
Justin:
What would you take that deal?
Jon:
I guess, probably. But what I don't yeah. I'm still kind of confused as to what that actually means. Right?
Justin:
I think what
Jon:
Like, you're not getting I mean, you're paying this person distributions or dividends or something, but you're not getting something for nothing.
Justin:
Let's just say that you're doing a $1,000,000 a year in revenue. And so to get to 10,000,000, it is going to theoretically take depending on your growth rate, it might take you 5 years to get there, but it up you're if you're at peak podcasting or peak, market, then it also could be that things grow for another year. And then for the next 9 years after that, they go down. So, you know, when you're modeling all these things in your head, it could be like, okay. Well, $10,000,000,000 might be 10 years worth of revenue.
Justin:
And what you're doing is you're taking that now, saying this thing might work. It might not work, but it's giving you some insurance money. It's letting you take some money off the table to go, okay. You know? Like, I I actually think that's a big reason that Jason and David were able to do what they did with Basecamp.
Justin:
Like, they're a couple years in, and Bezos comes along. And they're a couple years in, and the way David tells it, they were still not, like, super sure this thing was gonna work. Like Right. They were, you know, they they they were doing pretty good MRR. But to them, it's just, like, is who knows how long this is gonna last?
Justin:
It might last, you know, a year. It might last 2 years. They didn't know. And with all that uncertainty, in the in the context of that uncertainty, Bezos comes in and says, hey. I'll give you whatever it is.
Justin:
5,000,000 to you, 8,000,000 to you. And that then, I think, allowed them to relax. Now they know that they're taken care of forever. Right? You can live off 5,000,000 probably for the rest of your life.
Justin:
And and then they they can run Basecamp however they want. Right? They can they can it it takes the pressure off the business.
Jon:
Well, it only takes pressure off for the 2 of them.
Justin:
What do you mean?
Jon:
They got they personally got that money. Yes. It takes the pressure off for them.
Justin:
Yeah. It takes the pressure off for them, but which I think also affects the company, though. Like, the if if you have too much stress and you're just like, okay. Like, I don't know if if, you know, like, if every if every year, you're like like, one of the existential threats for Transistor is Spotify. If if Spotify can, get enough market share in the listener category, I don't know what that looks like.
Justin:
Maybe it's 60, 70, 80%. Increasingly, they would be able to say, well, we're just gonna own the whole value chain from creation to distribution to analytics to monetization. Yeah.
Jon:
That's true. But if the market's big enough and it stays big enough, then
Justin:
Well
Jon:
even even a small chunk of that is still quite a bit. Right?
Justin:
Yes. But my my sense is that what's holding that imbalance now is Apple. And if Apple decides, we're out. Like, we don't care about this. It's just it's, it's a distraction.
Justin:
Or if Spotify just keeps innovating on the player side, on the client side, and even on the publisher side, like, right, we've talked about this before. Like, a a, a pattern that we see is people sign up, they upload their first episode, and they submit it to Spotify. Mhmm. And they get that magical feeling of, oh, my podcast is out in the world. It's in the Spotify app right next to Justin Bieber.
Justin:
Like, this is amazing. I I still think there I think, as long as there's some other big players like Google and Apple holding the, you know, things in balance, the Open Podcasting ecosystem will be fine. But I I also don't wanna be too naive and think, well, you know, there's no there's no possibility because we already know. Right. Like, if if our our customers don't really care about transistor, what they care about is getting their audio out into the world.
Justin:
Yeah. The best, simplest, most emotionally satisfying way possible.
Jon:
Yeah. I just don't know if you can plan for every eventuality. I mean, it's
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
You can say, oh, yeah. This might happen or, like, Trump might get elected and clamped on on free speech or something like that and or Spotify will take over the world and everything's free, and they just, like, have their own advertising engine and make money that way. I mean, you can there's so many so many ways to guess at what might happen.
Justin:
Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon:
But but someone who would someone who would pay us money to to take money off the table or whatever
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
They would be thinking about the same thing. So
Justin:
Well, of course, we which is what makes that Bezos deal so, magical. Like, that what they got was, you know, like, if you have a portfolio, if you're a if you're a fund manager, this happened to to Fred Wilson with Twitter. I've got I'll put this blog post in the show notes. But so in 2013, they they bought 15% of Twitter for 3,750,000. And by the time by 2011, sorry, it was worth 1,000,000,000.
Justin:
And so their entire fund was a 125,000,000, but they're sitting on this position that's worth 8 times their entire fund. And there's actually, a there's a analog to us in some ways. We're sitting on this company that produces, you know, x amount of annual revenue. But one of our closest competitors, Simple Cash, just sold for 28,000,000. And so the disparity between the current cash position, like, what this is worth in terms of cash is this.
Justin:
But the potential, you know, the the the overall position you're sitting on is potentially, you know, 2 times, 5 times, 8 times, 12 times annual recurring revenue depending on what people pay for it. And so what Fred Wilson did with Twitter is they sold about 30% of their position. So for about 250,000,000, they they they got 250,000,000. It wasn't their whole position. They kept 70%.
Justin:
But he said it allowed them to chill out, you know, just hold on the balance until the IPO. And Yeah. It was just like it was a it was a it was a way of managing the potential risk, the up potential upside and downside. And in the funded market, like in VC funded startups, typically, what founders will do is in their secondary round, like their series b, that's they'll take money off the table. So, hey, the company is doing good.
Justin:
We raised money in the series a, come back to investors, go, hey. Things are great. We want to do this for the long haul. We want to commit to this for a long time. But, you know, we've been eating ramen for the past 2 or 3 years, and we need to take some money off the table so that we feel comfortable investing in
Jon:
How often does that happen? Or is it they get a they get a series b because they're out of money, and then they don't make any money.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And only and only the people at the top actually make any money.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean And it's
Jon:
a pyramid scheme of venture capital.
Justin:
Yeah. I in the in the in the old days, taking money off the table was really looked down upon, especially in in the in the old days of, like, you know, VCs just wanted founders to just eat shit forever and
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And, you know, work them to the ground. But it's becoming increasingly common. I saw a list here of folks who had done this. So Yeah. It'd be interesting
Jon:
to see what companies those are and if they actually make any money. That that's just my that's just my cynical take on the whole thing.
Justin:
Yeah. I I would actually like to talk to Joel Gascoigne at about this at buffer. So, yeah, here's a here's a list. So so, yeah, Joel it says here, Joel sold 2,500,000 worth of his shares in his series a round of 3,500,000. Wow.
Justin:
So he did a a a round of 3,500,000 and sold 2.5 of his shares. Then, cofounders of Snapchat took 10,000,000 of founder liquidity in their series b round. Robinhood's 2 cofounders took money. They took 17,000,000 off. And the cofounders of Secret sold 6,000,000 worth of shares in an early round.
Justin:
Although the company is subsequently folded. Well and that and that's actually a good point though. This because in that case, the founders were right to take money because, you know, the VCs are pushing them hard. The VCs are telling them to, the VCs are telling them to
Jon:
Let's scale. What are we talking about?
Justin:
For baseball analogies.
Jon:
Hit a home run.
Justin:
Well Knock
Jon:
it out of the park.
Justin:
Yeah. They're saying you try to knock it out of the park. And, you know, they're trying oh, they're trying to knock it out of the park, and they ended up striking out. But
Jon:
And so they got and so they got wealthy by failing, which is just that's the absurd part of all this to me.
Justin:
Yes. But it it to me, it's it's actually more fair because for VCs to have these unrealistic expectations of founders, like, come on. You guys are gonna hustle. You're gonna you're gonna drink Red Bull and eat Soylent, and you're gonna work a 100 hours a week. And, you know yeah.
Justin:
Try to knock it out of the park.
Jon:
Yeah. But shouldn't it be the VC companies that take the risk? It's their money.
Justin:
Well, yeah. The the exactly. So in this case, the VCs are taking the financial risk. And I think a reasonable way to hold that in balance is for a founder, especially a founder who's proven that, you know, they have the chops to make it happen. For them to say, okay.
Justin:
I'm going to derisk myself a little bit here by taking some of this money and putting it in my bank account. And now I can go all in. If this thing crashes and burns, well, you know, that that was the risk you took. But if it if it wins, you know, the in this case, whoever bought those shares was a loser. But
Jon:
It's a win win for the it's a win win for the founders, which to me doesn't really make sense.
Justin:
I think it makes sense given what founders have to give up to get there. Like, you're giving up your the most, the best years of your life to work on something. You're giving up what you could be making in salary. Like, if you were,
Jon:
Yeah. But so are so are the employees. They're working they're giving up their lives for working for a company that's gonna fail, and they get nothing out of it.
Justin:
Oh, totally. I I think I think that's a that's a good point. It that feels like an adjacent conversation because you're right. I think I think employees should have, more optionality as well.
Jon:
And this is yeah. I mean, this is all clouded by just the the income inequality in this country at the moment. Like, you see all these CEOs who fail and get ousted, and they could get these payout packages of a $100,000,000. It's like Yeah. Come on.
Jon:
Really?
Justin:
Yes.
Jon:
And so this that this feels the same to me for companies that fail.
Justin:
Yeah. The the challenge though is I feel like we because I'm I'm I feel like Bezos is too rich. And I know a lot of actually, I know a lot of people are getting tired of people who complain about how wealthy Bezos is. But the scale of Bezos' wealth and the amount of leverage he has and the amount of leverage he used to get that wealth, it is just it's not even in the same ballpark as what bootstrappers are even successful bootstrappers are going to be making. And so it it's almost like we have to separate those kind of concerns.
Justin:
Like, any feeling any feelings we have about the 0.1% needs to be separate from, in some ways, what a bootstrapper could reasonably, you know, make. I I I don't think we're I don't think we're off the hook. Like, anybody who's listening to this podcast is is probably already in the top 10% of wealthiest people in the world. And I think, again, that's that's a discussion for sure. Right.
Justin:
And you're right. I mean, the other the the zen part of this, I suppose, could be, well, it doesn't really matter. Why even worry about it? Like, we could lose it all, but that'd be fine too. I I guess for me though, I I I've been doing businesses since I was in high school.
Justin:
Yeah. And there's this there's part of me is like and I've seen other folks who, yeah, I I don't know. I I guess I'm struggling in public here. I there's part of me that's, like, feeling like, like, again, if I could be guaranteed our current revenue with plus a bit of growth for the rest of my life, I would take that deal. It doesn't I don't have to be a billionaire.
Justin:
You know, I'm making very good money right now. That would be more than enough to take care of me and my family forever. In in in some ways, that's the deal that Sivers gave himself. He sold CD Baby and he pays himself and put all the money. It was, like, 26,000,000.
Justin:
He put it all in a trust, and it pays him $200,000 US a year for the rest of his life. And it's just a guaranteed
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
Salary for the rest of his life. Yeah. Having that kind of piece would be amazing just to know no matter what I do, no matter what happens to the economy, that trust is just gonna keep paying me $200,000 until I die. Right now, you and I are are completely reliant on this company.
Jon:
Yep.
Justin:
And, again, you're right. Like, employees are even worse off. Employees have less optionality. It's it's totally true. And the typical argument is that, you know, founders are giving up.
Justin:
They're risking a lot. Again, there's this opportunity cost of instead of, you know, instead of working a full time job, we're going to pay ourselves less for the first one or 2 years. And then with the hopes of maybe making more later and then making up the difference. And, you know, that argument might not always
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Hold water. But yeah. I don't know.
Jon:
So for for you for you, it's mostly the fear of, like, this just disappearing.
Justin:
Yeah. It's fear and just trying to maybe I'm trying to be too smart for my own good. I'm I'm I'm thinking about how, you know, people manage risk with you know, by they they manage risk by, you know, balancing out their portfolio, basically. And and so I I'm thinking about that. Like, okay.
Justin:
We've we've gotten here. There there's stages to all of this, and I just don't wanna be I don't wanna be too comfortable and sit too like, you know, just be like, oh, things would be things are gonna be fine. You know?
Jon:
Yeah. Right. I get I get that. But we're not just sitting back, you know, doing nothing. We're actively working on this thing.
Justin:
Yeah. I I think the other thing that's probably affecting me is that I've been, you know, pushing this this narrative that the market determines most of your growth. And Yeah. And waves are, you know, just like a surfer surfing waves. Some waves last a long time.
Justin:
Some waves end right away. And I have that in my head of of just thinking, you know, this moment that we're in won't last forever. Well, actually, we don't know. Pod I mean, podcasting has been growing steadily for 2 decades or something like that.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
But I'm also, like, I just I know that things can change. And, you know, like, right now, I'm I'm I'm I'm moving right away, and I'm I'm gonna have a new mortgage that's let's say, even if the mortgage is 20 years, I'm I'm I'm betting, you know, 20 years of, like is my life gonna be consistent for 20 years?
Jon:
Probably not.
Justin:
Yeah. And so There's no yeah.
Jon:
I mean, there's no they had a it won't be.
Justin:
And so I mean, I think we have some hedges. Right? Like, SaaS revenue is reasonably stable. It's very unlikely that, you know, everyone will cancel at the same time. SaaS revenue is just really steady.
Justin:
But it's it's for the same reason, I think, you know, if Sirius came to us, SiriusXM, and said, hey. We really like you. We wanna we wanna add you to our, you know, to our company, and we'll pay you 28,000,000. It would be very difficult for us to say no Because well, actually, would it still? We we we've played that game before.
Justin:
Do you would it be hard for you to say no or would you say yes?
Jon:
Yeah. I would definitely consider that. I mean but I don't I don't know for sure. I guess it depends on depends on the deal. But, yeah, that's I mean, that's a lot of money.
Jon:
I don't know what yeah. It's hard to think about that.
Justin:
It's super hard to think about it. This is this is what's so it is it is I still think bootstrapping is is the best way to build a business. And what we like about our life well, I'll speak for myself. What I like about my life is I'm beholden to nobody except for myself, our customers, and you. And but in terms of status, you and I respect each other.
Justin:
You and I are, you know, working on this together. There's not, like, a boss that's coming in and saying, John, you can't go for runs in the middle of the day anymore. Right?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And, you know, we if we went and worked at Sirius, for sure, like, there there would be some changes. Like, okay, John. You're you're in, 5 Slack sorry. 5
Jon:
Slack. And now you now you manage 4 people.
Justin:
Yeah. And Yeah. You're now you're you're in, John, you're now in charge of our IT team. And
Jon:
yeah. See You're
Justin:
you're like you're like pulling cable for, for Howard Stern.
Jon:
Right. Yeah. See, that that would not appeal to me, honestly.
Justin:
And so we like the freedom. That's what I think that's like, when Tyler Tringus says this is the new American dream.
Jon:
I mean, to me, that's the whole appeal of it.
Justin:
Yeah. I I agree. I'm I'm totally with you. Like, I I love this. And I loved this when, you know, the first time Transistor gave me a small little paycheck.
Justin:
I was like, okay. That I could live on this forever. And maybe that's the answer there too. Like, I know that things could go down to quite low, and I would still be content because I was there before. Yeah.
Justin:
So maybe I don't know. Maybe I just don't need to worry about it.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, I I understand the concern, but it's personally, don't wanna jump from one anxiety of when will this pay us enough money to another one, which is how how long will this pay us enough money?
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Like, there's gotta be some some, like, amount of calm there.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Right? I mean, what the rest of the world you know, all the other bad things that are happening in the world, like, obviously, that it all compounds in the Mhmm. It all compounds into one big stress, but Yeah. I guess I guess yeah. My my perspective is there's enough other bad crap happening to, like, this is going well.
Jon:
So, like,
Justin:
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a But
Jon:
I get it. But I get I get your I I get your perspective.
Justin:
No. I think that's a good that's a good reminder. It'd be interesting to hear what listeners think. I, again, I I don't think this is this idea is gonna appeal as much to people who are building something new. But I know there's folks listening right now that have more established SaaS companies.
Justin:
And I'd have to imagine that they've thought about this of, you know, like, now that we're here, is there something we should be doing to improve our optionality?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
The way that you and I pay ourselves, it's probably for me. It's like, I just need to sock as much money away personally as I can.
Jon:
So Yeah. I mean, that's always that's always a good idea.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. Sure.
Justin:
Okay. Well, it feels good to get that off my chest.
Jon:
Alright.
Justin:
Let's why don't we just talk a little bit about what we've been working on? So have we told people the API is out?
Jon:
We emailed people.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know if the listeners know. I can't I don't know.
Jon:
I can't remember. I don't remember. So, yeah, we have a version 1 of the API, which is mostly done. I don't know if it's a version 1, but it's version something.
Justin:
I mean, people are already building stuff on it, so it's gotta be 1. Yeah.
Jon:
Seems to be working well. I mean, a couple of people have caught some bugs here and there. It's not enabled for everyone. If people want access, they can let us know, and we'll turn it on. We'll turn it on for everyone at some point.
Jon:
Mhmm. And on top of that, we started to build a Zapier integration
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Which, you know, I I don't know what the timeline is for actually finishing this thing up. It's almost done, but then we have to go through this whole approval stage. But it should be pretty cool. So you can, you know, tie things together, like, when I when a new episode is published, email some people. Or if a new episode is created as a draft, like, notify someone that they should go and edit it.
Jon:
Or
Justin:
Yeah. Oh, I didn't even think about that use case. Because there's a lot of, like, services folks who use Zapier to kind of manage their overall project, you know, that it kinda glues everything together. So
Jon:
Yeah. It's like Or like, yeah. I mean, you can hook it up to Dropbox so that it could potentially create an episode based on a file being added.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Yeah. We have we're gonna have hooks for our our enhanced private podcast so that, if a subscriber is added, you can do something. If subscribers removed, you can do something. If something happens externally, you could add a subscriber based on an email address or remove a subscriber. So Yeah.
Jon:
That'll be that'll be cool for all the membership sites.
Justin:
Yeah. Like, technically, like, you could have a somebody sign a member sign up in member space and then automatically add them to your private podcast as a subscriber. So you can have a paid private podcast. And, also, you're working on a distribution screen too.
Jon:
Yeah. We're kinda reworking our distribution screen for podcasts for public podcasts. So if you, create a podcast or import a podcast, you can go to this distribution page and easily, see what you're already what directories and apps you're already submitted and included in and then submit to more apps and get kind of better instructions as to what to do next after you create a podcast and add your first episode, which has been a little confusing for people, I think.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, sir so if if open the open podcasting ecosystem has a problem, It is distribution. It's like people are super excited. They've recorded the show. They're like, okay.
Justin:
What do I do now? And, I mean, even just getting to that point where you've figured out how to get a microphone and record it and edit it and export it to 83 and what, you know, what hertz rate do you use and a 128 bit or whatever. And then you finally get your MP 3, You upload it, and then you go, so how did people get this on Apple Podcasts?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And then you're like, okay. Well and and if we can make that that that step easier so that once people upload, they get the screen that says, hey. Here's all the places you can distribute your podcast.
Jon:
Yeah. Some of them are gonna be, you know, easy one click additions and some of them are a click with extra instructions, but we're gonna try to do some stuff behind the scenes to make it a little bit more, I don't know, magical
Justin:
Yeah. Or something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no.
Justin:
No. That's exactly it. That's the there's this the I think we're going after, this emotional feel of, oh, look. I'll submit it here. And you click the button.
Justin:
You'll submit it here. I'll submit it here. I'll submit it here. It feels good when you've made something to have all of these channels right there that you can just submit it to. It feels like, okay.
Justin:
I'm I'm now, like, spreading the word about about the show. So, yeah, I think that'll feel good to people. I think that'll they'll it'll I I love stuff like that. Stuff that you can put into your app. That's like, ah, yeah.
Justin:
This feels great.
Jon:
Yeah. It should be a should be a nice upgrade. So, yeah, for both of those, Zapier and and the distribution, I don't know, next few weeks, maybe few weeks to a month, some of these things should start coming out.
Justin:
Yeah. That's gonna be I mean, those are both kind of, things I think that will make people very happy. The API was something that was requested for a long time, by developers. I was actually surprised how many people, like, used it and have tried it already.
Jon:
Yeah. We had we had someone who started building an Apple Watch app so that you can record on your watch and upload it directly to Transistor.
Justin:
And I
Jon:
was like, what?
Justin:
This is crazy. Oh, that's a I don't
Jon:
know if you'd wanna do that, but I guess you could.
Justin:
That's amazing. Because you
Jon:
can do I think you can do stand alone Apple Watch apps now and not have to, like, have it on your iPhone. Just, like, open an app and record and it'll somehow I don't know how you sync up your account, but somehow upload it. Maybe he was just doing it personally on his own. But Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:
It's interesting. I mean
Justin:
I love that stuff. It it actually made me think I should do another round of, initially, when we first started, I'd reached out to some people who had, like, iOS recording apps and, you know, or little web apps or little even desktop clients. And, a lot of them had responded and said, oh, as soon as you get an API, let me know because I'd love to add you as a,
Jon:
you
Justin:
know, an endpoint, basically. So that's I should make I'll make myself a note there.
Jon:
We've talked to a couple of people about that. I'm gonna follow-up on at least one of them.
Justin:
Cool. Yeah. That's exciting. I it feels I mean, I don't know how you feel about our pace, but our pace to me has felt fairly good.
Jon:
I go back and forth.
Justin:
Okay.
Jon:
I mean, sometimes I feel like we're getting a lot done, and sometimes I feel like we're getting nothing done. And I look back I look back and wonder how we got any of this done. Yeah. It's interesting.
Justin:
You know, one one comment we got from a listener was who has a a successful SaaS company. They've been around longer than us. But he said one of the things he likes about us is that we are just more calm. He he says, like, they're just really always pushing hard to get, you know, new features out, and it's just he says it often feels kinda harried. And when he hears us talk, he just says, wow.
Justin:
You guys seem way more calm. Yeah. I've I've always kinda felt like there's definitely been seasons depending on what's going on in our personal lives that where we're working, like, a lot less. But I actually felt like over the summer, especially when we'd said we were gonna kinda slow down during the summer, our pace was fairly Yeah. Fairly rapid.
Justin:
And part of that was, you know, hiring, Mike as a contractor to help us build some of that stuff. But, yeah, I feel I feel good. It it just like, the the the calm feels nice. It feels nice to not have these, like, giant sprint meetings every week where I you and I have to estimate points on a bunch of stories, and then we have a retrospective where it's like, okay. Well, I didn't get that done or that done.
Justin:
I guess we're gonna add that to next week and or even having, like, these hard ass deadlines where you just feel like I mean, I've been on teams where the CEO comes in and just, like, tears the strip off everybody for not meeting a deadline. And, you know, and some of those companies I work for are no longer existent.
Jon:
So it's like,
Justin:
did it really matter? Like, did we Right. Did we really need to get ground into the dirt? Exactly. I was on the Foundation podcast, and and they're like a UX, UI product development podcast.
Justin:
But one of the things they were interested in, was I said, you and I have codified our development strategy into something called wait and see. And they loved that. They just thought that was the greatest the greatest thing.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And, you know, that has saved us a lot of times where you know, especially when you were still working full time, and I'd come to you with an idea. And I'd be like, no. We gotta build this and be like, okay. Well, we we just gotta wait and see.
Jon:
Yeah. I like I mean, I I think it's helped out quite a bit. It's like it's wait and see, but also think about it. And I think once we are ready to do something about it, we can really, like, hit the ground running. Mhmm.
Justin:
Because we've
Jon:
already kind of thought about it. It's like wait and see, but also, you know, throw it away quickly or be ready to quickly work on it because you've already been thinking about it.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like, the the things that keep coming up every time we chat, those are the things and, eventually, though, it just it's like a snowball. Just like there's more and more.
Justin:
It gets bigger and bigger until it's like, okay. We can't ignore this anymore. This thing has momentum now. Like, it has momentum in our brains. Like, it's it's this this thing we've been thinking about forever, and now it's pretty well formed.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Now let's work on it. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Sweet.
Justin:
Well, it was nice getting on the mic again.
Jon:
Yeah. It's been a while.
Justin:
Sometimes just to talk things out loud is so helpful.
Jon:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin:
So, yeah, let's say thanks to everybody who supports us on Patreon.
Jon:
Yeah. Thanks as always, to our Patreon supporters. We, we have Helmut Eirall.
Justin:
He never did tell it. He didn't correct us, so we must have got it right.
Jon:
Hope so. Colt Borg, Mark Binder, Anton Zoran, Bill Condo, Sofia Cantero, Chris Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Orr Hustle Aire, Ward Sandler, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Michael Sidfer, Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.
Justin:
Junta.
Jon:
And Kyle Fox from get reward for .com.
Justin:
Thanks, everybody. We appreciate it that you're listening, and we will see you next week. Next week? Next week.
