Build Your SaaS

What happened at Basecamp? We announce our first full-time team member. And: cost/benefit analysis.

Show Notes

This week Jon and Justin discussed:

What should we talk about next?

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

  • Mitch
  • Harris Kenny, Intro CRM podcast
  • Oleg Kulyk
  • Violette Du Geneville
  • Take It EV podcast
  • Ethan Gunderson
  • Diogo
  • Chris Willow
  • Borja Soler
  • Ward Sandler
  • Eric Lima
  • James Sowers (like Flowers)
  • Travis Fischer
  • Matt Buckley
  • Russell Brown
  • Evandro Sasse
  • Pradyumna Shembekar (PD)
  • Noah Prail
  • Colin Gray
  • Josh Smith
  • Ivan Curkovic
  • Shane Smith
  • Austin Loveless
  • Simon Bennett
  • Michael Sitver
  • Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, 
  • Dan Buda 
  • Darby Frey
  • Samori Augusto
  • Dave Young
  • Brad from Canada
  • Sammy Schuckert
  • Mike Walker
  • Adam DuVander
  • Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
  • Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com
Thanks to our monthly supporters
  • Pascal from sharpen.page
  • Rewardful.com
  • Greg Park
  • Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit.com.au
  • Marcel Fahle, wearebold.af
  • Bill Condo (@mavrck)
  • Ward from MemberSpace.com
  • Evandro Sasse
  • Austin Loveless
  • Michael Sitver
  • Dan Buda
  • Colin Gray
  • Dave Giunta

Want to start a podcast on Transistor? Justin has a special coupon for you: get 15% off your first year of hosting: transistor.fm/justin
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2021. I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.

Jason:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing follow along as we build transistor dotafam. Alright. It's been a while. Lots of stuff

Jon:

has happened. Busy couple of weeks in podcasting Ruby on Rails land, I guess.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of lots of things we're we could talk about. I think we should at least touch on the base camp fiasco, partly because, well, you and I both have friends at base camp.

Jon:

Yep.

Jason:

You live in Chicago, and base camp's a big part of the tech scene there. I've worked a day at base camp. They they tried to hire me a long time ago. And, I've definitely been friendly with Jason and David, and they've also been, advisors for Transist.

Jon:

Yeah. We've had Jason on the show a couple times.

Jason:

And I'll say, I'm pretty disappointed in Jason and David. I think you don't have 20 of your best people quit for innocuous reasons.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Some of these people who have been there 15 years, some of these folks are just, you know, quiet, hardworking people, who don't wanna stand out, don't wanna stick out, aren't trying to, you know, create problems for themselves or anyone else.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And so I publicly, this has been made into, you know, the media and the Twittersphere is making this about whether or not people should be allowed to talk about politics at work. I think that's a good discussion to have, but this is not about talking about politics at work.

Jon:

Yeah. There's yeah. And, clearly, there's something else going on, and they hit a nerve with employees, and the employees didn't feel comfortable working there anymore.

Jason:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. I don't I don't necessarily disagree with the things they're trying to do, you know, limiting talk of certain things if it's causing problems in the in the at work. I mean, I can understand that, But, it's a it's a tough position for everyone in there to be in. I mean, I I feel for everyone on both sides. Like

Jason:

Yeah. Well, I I feel less for David and Jason. Yeah. That's to me, this is about leadership. Publishing publicly, a policy change like that.

Jason:

First of all, you don't need to do that. Yeah.

Jon:

I don't really understand. It's like

Jason:

You can keep you can you can with grace and patience, which are both leadership attributes, you can figure things out with your employees. It's not going to be always fun. It's not going to be easy. And, you know, working with people is messy. Yeah.

Jason:

And that's just the way it is. There's no way to as soon as you become a leader, now you're that's your life now. You're gonna have human interaction with real human beings who are dynamic and all of those human attributes, and all of the human experience, and you're gonna have a bunch of folks working together, you you can that's part of life. Yeah. That's part of business.

Jason:

And, this is much more about leadership and hubris, ego, arrogance. And I say this as like, I've been a huge fan of David and Jason for a long time. Yeah. But this is this is, from the beginning, a terrible way to respond to whatever was going on in base camp. And, again, you and I know a lot of people there, and we also know some people who left in the past.

Jason:

And and there's just a lot more kind of thread here that I think people on the outside don't see.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

And, Yeah. I I'm I'm, definitely not impressed with the way that that David and Jason dealt with us. I think it's just bad leadership. And and what do you think about the knock on effects of this on Ruby on Rails?

Jon:

Yeah. It it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. I mean, so much of so much of Rails is dependent on what comes out of base camp, and I think David is still kind of the one I don't know if he's in charge, but he I think he has a pretty big impact on what gets put into rails. Mhmm. Not to mention, you know, a handful of the employees that left were big, big open source contributors to multiple projects that we use and they publicly said they're not gonna work on it anymore

Jason:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Which is, you know, really unfortunate. I think it's gonna it's gonna be tough. I don't I don't know where it goes from here. I mean, I've definitely seen people be like, I'm not gonna use rails anymore because of David. And

Jason:

Mhmm.

Jon:

I I mean, that seems a little bit premature. But

Jason:

But on the other hand, this is what I'm talking about about leadership and knock on effects. And what's confusing to me is some people are blaming the employees here saying, you know, why would they ruin all of base camp's goodwill? Why would they create so much drama? Bullshit. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Jason:

They have almost all of the power. They have all of the equity. They have you know, it they set the tone. They get to decide how they respond to things. This is and there are, ripple effects on everything you do as a leader.

Jason:

Yeah. That just is. Absolutely. Of course, they know this. And, of course, we know this because every business leader has a certain amount of influence.

Jason:

You have a certain amount of influence on your customers, on the people who work with you, on the broader community. Like, it would be ridiculous for us at Transistor to say we had no effect on the podcasting world. Right. Of of course, we've had an effect. That's the whole point.

Jason:

You're you're as soon as you become part of an ecosystem, you are now contributing to it. This is like saying, you know, building a sewage plant next to the river has no effect.

Jon:

Of course,

Jason:

you have an effect. You're you are now part of the ecosystem. And so, this will have an effect on rails.

Jon:

It will. Yeah. And I'm I'm not obviously, I'm I'm still happily using it, and I love it. And I'm not gonna rewrite a transistor in something else, but, I just hope it doesn't speed up the I hesitate to use the word decline. Mhmm.

Jon:

Like, it it you know, Ruby and Rails are no longer, like, the new hot thing, and a lot of people are putting their energy elsewhere into new frameworks and new ecosystems. And I hope it doesn't expedite Rails and Ruby getting, I don't know, stale. Mhmm. Right? Like, you know, gems are out of date and code is old and, you know Yeah.

Jon:

I don't know. People aren't working on new libraries that interact with other services. I I hope it doesn't speed up that process. Yeah. But we'll see.

Jon:

I mean, you know, the rails community is huge and it's it's Ruby on Rails isn't made by more than just a handful of people at base camp, but it does have an effect. So we shall see.

Jason:

For sure. You know, the official response from the rails core team, say we make decisions and work towards consensus as a team when needed. But right at the top of that list is David. And this is you can't dig in publicly like this. This is just like this is just the way it is.

Jason:

The things we say and do matter. Mhmm. And that's not to say that all, you know, every cancel train on Twitter is warranted, and that mob justice always is always justified. But this is entirely different. Yeah.

Jason:

And and the I I hope people are concerned because in order to especially for rails, in order for it to kinda move past this, there's gonna need to be some opinions.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, it's gonna It could it could be. This is a this is a good thing. I don't know. We'll see.

Jason:

Yeah. And but, certainly, do not none of this horseshit. This was warranted because they can run their company the way they want, and they can folks, when when 30% plus of your team leave in a day publicly, and we don't even know who's left privately, these are not these are these are people that they hired slowly over decades. Basecamp has some of the highest revenue per employee of any company in our industry.

Jon:

And it seems like the highest retention, I mean, until now.

Jason:

Highest retention. These are people that did not wanna quit. They liked their job. They liked who they worked with. They liked the work they were doing.

Jason:

These are not folks who make, and they're they're these are a lot of these people are older as well. They're not they're not folks who are used to switching jobs every 2 years. There is something going on there that was not healthy.

Jon:

Yeah. I think there's probably a lot more going on behind the scenes than we know about.

Jason:

And it's yeah. That what is muddying even you read this thread, effects of the last week on Ruby on Rails in the on the Ruby on Rails forums. The the conversation is getting so muddy because it's it's trying to pivot around this idea of whether or not you should talk about politics at work.

Jon:

Yeah. You know,

Jason:

I think even you and I I think you and I maybe not disagree on this, but I I think we see things a little bit differently in terms of, you know, what's what's appropriate, what's not at work. But we can talk about that. Yeah.

Jon:

I mean, I think I think there's a, yeah, I think there's a big difference between talking about politics and things like that at work and talking about it with your coworkers.

Jason:

Mhmm. Yes. And and, also, the nuance in in this conversation is just that so much of management and leadership is case by case, dealing with things case by case. It's why blankets blanket statements and blanket guidelines that remove all nuance, are are very, probably not the wisest Mhmm. To say there's no politics at work when your entire organization, I'm talking about Basecamp, has been incredibly political from the beginning.

Jason:

When when your founders are unbelievably political, when your podcast, which I love and now is going to you know, Waylon has left officially. The rework podcast, go listen to the last 10 episodes. It is incredibly political, and this is a a podcast by Basecamp about the better way to work and run your business. Mhmm. This was a political company.

Jason:

Yeah. Every company is political to some extent. And, you know, when we're talking about people being able to discuss, especially minorities and people of color and, you know, all these folks coming to work, they have to have some freedom to express their point of view, to also, challenge leadership when they're being discriminated against. I I I have this Twitter thread from a while back that, you know, people are always telling me to stay in my lane and not talk just talk about business and not about politics. But, people, business is politics.

Jason:

Business is incredibly political. It is affected. Every industry is affected by government policy. You can't get away from it. You just can't.

Jason:

And so, anything from minimum wage and what you're gonna pay to, you know, what's required for you to hire contract workers to, what grants the government might give Spotify and Apple. That all matters. And, this idea that any organization can be purely apolitical is just impossible.

Jon:

But, again, I don't think yeah. I don't think we we believe this is actually about No. Political discussion.

Jason:

No. That's that's what's that's what's difficult. And, also, I'll say bringing our whole selves to work doesn't give anybody license to be rude or careless or offensive or obnoxious or inconsiderate or discriminatory. If anything, we need to be more considerate, more kind, more patient, and more thoughtful. But that's the solution.

Jason:

The solution isn't, more blanket statements from the founders or more, you know, more employee guidelines.

Jon:

There's also I mean, I I yeah. It's tough. I think I think one of Jason's posts mentioned something along the lines of, like, you know, if you're if you are an employee and you and you feel like you don't wanna wade into this, whatever discussions were happening on base camps, like, employee forums

Jason:

Mhmm.

Jon:

You shouldn't have to feel like you're complicit in the problem if you don't wanna con if you don't wanna contribute. And I I get that. I agree with that. But Yeah. So maybe I maybe I I don't know.

Jon:

Yeah. It's

Jason:

But, again, the there's a, this is why leadership is not easy.

Jon:

Yeah. No. Absolutely not.

Jason:

This is you can paint a a situation one way. And but, you know, when

Jon:

We can also move on from the topic you want.

Jason:

We can move on. We can move on. It's true. I I I think the wrong response to all of this well, first of all, the wrong response to the base camp thing would be say it's about politics. It's not about politics.

Jason:

It is about leadership, full stop, and it's about hubris, arrogance, and, this is just it's just on full display here. Mhmm. And to justify what was some incredibly bad leadership decisions, Do not publish a blog post about a new company policy before you've fully discussed it with your employees. That's just rude and obnoxious. And, yeah, you can do whatever you want.

Jason:

But, by the way, some people think base camp's gonna this gonna recover from this fine. I don't think so. You hired those people over decades carefully, thoughtfully. You weeded through hundreds of applications to hire them. These are people who have an incredible amount of experience, who are are doing, relative to the impact that Basecamp has, the number of customers, the amount of revenue, etcetera, these people are shouldering an incredible amount.

Jason:

They're absolute linchpins.

Jon:

Yep.

Jason:

I think they may have destroyed their company. That nobody I saw someone on Twitter say nobody has burned more goodwill faster than like, just by any definition, this was a bad decision. These kinds of things do blow over, but the who's gonna wanna work for them? That's that's an actual competent, thoughtful developer, the kind of person that would have, made them a custom web page application, to to you know, in their application process.

Jon:

I I yeah. I don't know. I'm sure so. I I think they'll probably still fill the roles.

Jason:

I don't think so. Yeah. I'm sure I think they're gonna fill them, but it's not gonna be with the same kind of people. You don't get rid of people like that and then just, like, instantly recapture all of that experience, all of that shared culture. Yeah.

Jason:

True. Years years of contributions, even like the open source stuff, like Sam leaving but even take one thing like the tricks editor. So where are you gonna find somebody else to replace somebody like that?

Jon:

Yeah. We'll see.

Jason:

It's like taking taking away 30% of your of the load bearing, walls in your house. There we go. We got a metaphor. Let's move on. Hey.

Jason:

Let's let's talk about some good news. This is a big a big milestone for us, John. Yeah. We hired Helen Ryals as head of customer success.

Jon:

Yeah. That's a big step. First full time hire outside of us too.

Jason:

Yep. 1st full time worker outside of you and I. And this was, I think well, first of all, Helen's negotiation tactics, very good. Because she said we were, like, pretty she Helen's been working with with us part time since 2019, I think. And, you know, has always had a big impact on what we're doing.

Jason:

But she's she was only able to contribute a couple hours a day. And, you know, we started talking about this. Like, you and I, the customer support, like, we've we've committed ourselves to doing live chat, which I think is still the right answer, but it just takes a lot.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And especially for a 2 person company. So we started talking about bringing someone on full time. Helen was a clear choice. She's the person who the part time person who's been with us the longest. She can cover all of the overnight hours.

Jason:

And we talked to her, and and and she said, well, first of all, let's, like, let's just do a a 4 week trial.

Jon:

Mhmm. And

Jason:

then she says, I've already booked some vacation at the end of the 4 weeks. So then I'll go on vacation, and then I'll come back and we could talk about it. And so then she did the 4 weeks, and then she left. And what happened?

Jon:

We immediately felt it. Yeah. Yes.

Jason:

That was like the day she left. You and I were like, holy shit. That was

Jon:

a lot of support. Man.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon:

I mean, we you know, we we were waking up for those 4 weeks in the morning, and there's, like, nothing in the support queue except for maybe a couple questions that we we would have to take care of or answer. But Yeah. Yeah. It's been it's been I think it'll make a huge difference for us and for the company and just the quality of service that people get and the quality of information and help docs. And we have, you know, a person dedicated solely to that.

Jon:

So

Jason:

Yeah. I I mean, to feel it like that, that that the the contrast between her being there and her not being there was just it was like, you know, there's no doubt in our mind that we wanted to hire full time. So welcome to the team, Helen. We're really excited to have you here. And I mean, again, you if you look at how she responds in support, her answers are just way better than ours.

Jason:

She has answers and has figured out things that I don't even know the answers to.

Jon:

Yeah. Also just keeping calm with certain customers. Like, it's

Jason:

Oh, yeah. So great. It's so great.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

So big big step for us though because, you know, I I think some people are surprised that it's been you and I Yeah. Full time. And we're really the only full time folks for, you know, since 2,018. Well well, 2018 and then 2019 really when we both came on full time. Yeah.

Jason:

I I both people are surprised.

Jon:

But compared to some of our competitors that are roughly the same size Mhmm. Revenue wise and number of podcasts, like, you know, 22 or 3 of us compared to, like, 11 of them.

Jason:

Yes. Yeah. We're, yeah, we're much, much

Jon:

We're either doing something right or something horribly wrong that we're gonna regret. I don't

Jason:

No. No. This is well, this brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about is I think one of the hardest things in business is cost benefit analysis. Making a decision with the idea that it'll help you grow or it'll help you, you know, improve the business or it'll help you do whatever, but not fully knowing what the ramifications are.

Jon:

Yeah. It's tough.

Jason:

And I in in so many ways, one of our competitors is for sale right now. And a bunch of people have sent me this link. It's a public link to public listening. Mhmm. And I don't know their situation.

Jason:

I don't know what's going on. But they the the reason they're selling is they they they want more time in their family. You know, they've got kids or it says right on the listing. Like, we've got children. We want more time with the kids.

Jason:

And whenever you and I have even thought about selling or getting investment or whatever, At this stage that you go back into our archives, there's times where I was like thrashing, wanting, you know, okay, we gotta sell some of the company. We gotta get more money here. But there's something about what we're doing that has led to an incredible amount of calm. And I think people are surprised when they hear that. What?

Jason:

You've it's just the 2 of you. How how are you getting all this done? I was on a call with a Fortune 50 company. I think I told this person. And and, he was like, okay.

Jason:

So after you and I discuss things, let's get your legal team on the phone and your ops team, and, we'll also get your integrations team. I said, hold up. I said, this is a very small company. I said, there's only 2 full time people working on this right now. He's like, what?

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

He's like, you're you're consistently one of the top 5 podcast hosting services I find online. I said, yeah. But we're really small.

Jon:

Did you did you bring in the legal team so you just changed your voice a little bit?

Jason:

Yeah. Just let me, buzz in. Hey. Hello. This is this is Elmer.

Jason:

I'm on the legal team. And we got I just start playing

Jon:

We got Frank from finance.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. Frank's a New Yorker. He's from Brooklyn. Is that the Yeah.

Jon:

Hey, Frank. Over here for finance.

Jason:

This this is a this is a whole new version of the show.

Jon:

That didn't that company also ask if you wanted to be bought?

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. And then and I they're like, so are you guys looking to be acquired? I said, honestly, there's no way we'd wanna work for you. He was like, wow.

Jon:

I appreciate it.

Jason:

Alright. Well, I appreciate appreciate the honesty. He's like, clearly, you guys are kicking ass and taking names. But this is all indicative of people are surprised. How are you so small?

Jason:

How are you doing this? And I think the other assumption would be, oh, well, you must be working super hard, and you must be just grinding every day, and, you know, you must have tons on your plate. I've never had less on my plate than I do now. And this this thing, now part of it's the market, which could change. Right?

Jason:

The momentum in podcasting could shift. I think it's actually already shifting already. You know, we're we're getting to the the later stages of the pandemic. A lot of folks tried podcasting out, decided it wasn't for them. So I I think we're gonna see growth slow down maybe to pre pandemic levels.

Jason:

But there's also some product decisions that we've made that have made, this company much more calm, much more margin. And, having a good business is about having good margins, not just financial margins, but margins for everything.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And I think it's really going back to that cost benefit analysis, it is so difficult to figure out, you know, like, well, I we should hire some more people because that's what companies do. They hire people. They grow. They you know? And, you know, a company about our size should probably have more people.

Jason:

But what is the real cost of that? Now there'll be a financial cost. And it's even possible that if we invest, you know, let's say we invested another I don't know. Whatever. We invested a bunch more money in hiring full time people.

Jason:

What is and maybe out of that, you get 2a half times more revenue. But there's all sorts of other costs. Like, you've been pretty clear that at this point in your life, you don't really wanna manage a bunch of other people.

Jon:

No. I don't. I don't I don't think I would enjoy that. I've been there. I think if we were to hire someone to help me out, it would be I wouldn't be necessarily be, like they wouldn't be working for me.

Jon:

They would be working with me, and I wouldn't necessarily be managing them. I'd just be, like, working with them. Right? It would have to be that kind of Yeah. Relationship.

Jason:

Yeah. And and by the way, I I tried to when when we announced Helen joining us, I I tried to word that very carefully because my initial headline was, we've hired Helen. I was like, that is just not true. Like, the the power dynamic in that is just not right. She's decided to join our team.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And we're we're gonna be working with her. She doesn't work for us. She's working with us. And, yeah. Anyway so you you kinda feel similar if if someone was gonna join you on the dev side.

Jon:

Yeah. It would have to be a certain type of working relationship. Mhmm. But, yeah, I I just I don't I haven't wanted us to get big Mhmm. Team wise and otherwise, I guess.

Jon:

Like, if we didn't really wanna take investment, I think that was a great choice. Mhmm. I don't feel the need to, like, grow super fast and build tons of features at once because it would just add a lot of complexity. And I think the calm that you're talking about that we've achieved is because of how we've decided to build things and what we've decided not to build. And

Jason:

Mhmm. Yeah. And and, again, that calculation is so difficult. Like, I see our competitors, you know, building mobile apps. A lot of podcast hosting providers have mobile apps.

Jason:

And, you know, there's I can see the reasoning. A lot of a lot of customers request it, you know, even on the public podcast side. How come you don't have an app? How come you don't have an app a mobile app where we can record and upload our shows? How come you don't have a listening app where we can, you know, send people directly to Yeah.

Jason:

To the show? How come you don't have a listening app for private podcasts Right. Which would enable us to and what were you gonna say?

Jon:

No. I mean, part part of that is that I've never built those, so I just you know, part of saying no to that is that I have I just don't know how or where to start. Mhmm. You know, in a year, maybe it'll be a thing where I'm like, I kinda wanna learn that. It sounds exciting, and I'll dive into it, and it'll be fun.

Jon:

Yes. Or we hire someone who knows how to do it, and, you know, they kinda teach me how to do it, and we build it together, and and that ends up being fun. But along with that, now you build this mobile app you gotta worry about. How do you distribute it in the Apple Store? How do you distribute it on Google?

Jon:

Do we need it now a support person for the mobile apps? App we gotta now we gotta worry about, like, Apple App Store policy changes, different versions of iOS and Google and Android and, like, all that stuff just doesn't sound fun.

Jason:

And and it's difficult to make that calculation of we're gonna add this complexity to our product and to the company. Mhmm. Like, everything you add, everything you commit to adds legal complexity, adds, human complexity, add maintenance complexity, add support complexity, add code complexity. And are you calculating all of those externalities when you're doing your cost benefit analysis? And, by the way, you're making bets on what you think and hope might happen.

Jason:

Yeah. You know, like, when we were considering dynamic ad insertion, we were we were considering it based on well, look at you know, there's there's Megaphone, and they've got a bunch of customers, and we have this many people asking us about it. And but we could have launched that, and it could have had a negligible effect on our bottom line.

Jon:

But enormous impact on our stress levels and just those integrations and, like yeah. I mean, we see all these competitors doing, like, oh, this advanced audio editing and audio insertion and all this stuff and yeah. Maybe some people left us to go to other platforms. Yeah. But some came back.

Jon:

Some a lot of people didn't leave. The other the other I mean, the other cost benefit analysis that is, like, would I rather be outside in the summer doing something that I enjoy or sitting at a desk building something that becomes frustrating and annoying.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. And and I actually think about this all the time for founders is so that that this for sale listing of a competitor got me thinking about this. Because it's, like, clearly something's driving this. Like, why would you sell if everything's going great?

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

They're in the same industry as us. And so why would you sell? What's what's pushing you to sell? And And then I talked to another, founder in our industry who's just taken a bunch of funding. And I was like, wow.

Jason:

You're killing it. Like, all this funding and really kind of high quality investors, and I'm just seeing, you know, their ads everywhere, and it just seems like they have tons of momentum. And he said, well, it's added a lot of complexity to my life. Like, he didn't look calm. Right.

Jason:

And, you know, he's excited about it. He's younger younger than you and I. And I think if you wanna go after that, that's great. But we often don't think as founders, like, what do we want? How can we optimize for what we want?

Jason:

And then is there an intersection point between getting what we want out of the business as founders and helping, you know, 80% of the customers out there get what they want. Yeah. You know, everything you add, you have to support. Everything you create, you have to maintain.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

And we we've we've seen this most well, long running listeners will know, like, that YouTube integration Yeah. It is just a constant reminder for us Yep. Of, you know, you build something and you go, it's just a little feature, like and people like it. And, you know, what could go wrong? You're integrating with Google.

Jason:

It's, like, the biggest company in the world. They, you know, they they've got it all figured out. Yeah. Nope.

Jon:

Nope. Not at all. And most recently, on to the next on to the next topic, speaking of integrating with other services and platforms. Well, I

Jason:

guess this You're talking about this Apple release?

Jon:

App both Apple and Spotify had big releases last week.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon:

Both of which had problems. Apple, most notably Apple. Yeah. You dealt with most of it. Sounds like it probably stressed you out a little bit.

Jason:

It burnt me out a little bit because, you know, first of all, they didn't communicate anything to us. Yeah.

Jon:

They didn't. So Typical Apple fashion, they didn't communicate anything to the providers who are, like, providing the content to the Apple Podcast system.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. This goes back to the base camp discussion. See how you like it when somebody with power just decides to do something and not let you know. It is so frustrating.

Jason:

And, you know, Apple had so many opportunities. We knew something was coming because all of a sudden, podcast connect, which is the the dashboard for podcasters, stopped accepting new submissions. And so the, you know, the podcast echo chamber was like, oh, something's coming. You know? Apple must be getting ready to launch something.

Jason:

But Apple didn't communicate anything. And maybe you could get away with that without people being too grumpy if the launch went well.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And it just went so bad. And then a week later, Spotify announced their so Apple released a bunch of new things, including paid subscriptions. And paid subscriptions necessitated a whole new podcaster dashboard and some other changes on their back end, which has broken everything. You can't submit a new show. You log in to podcast connect.

Jason:

It it originally told you it'll take you a couple hours for them to, you know, set up your account. Now it takes, like there's some people that took 8 days for

Jon:

the year. Disappearing and, like, their show is disappearing.

Jason:

People's episode and from big podcasters. Like, Jack from Darknet Diaries messaged me, and he's like, what is going on? Like, why is why isn't why am I missing a bunch of episodes?

Jon:

I they have such rigorous, like, quality, like, quality testing in place for their hardware. I just don't understand why they don't do that for their software. I mean, I get it. Podcast the podcast stuff doesn't really make them money, and maybe it's, like, small office back in, like, the back corner of, like, the behind the kitchen or something. I don't know.

Jon:

But

Jason:

Yeah. Like I'll be at my kitchen.

Jon:

You know? It's like this dusty this dusty closet that someone forgot about, and that's where the podcast team is. But I, yeah, I just I don't understand why. It's so many problems with the update. Mhmm.

Jon:

Yeah. And and and it trickles down to us and to other platform providers. Oh. Our competitors It's like we we are handling support now for Apple.

Jason:

Yeah. Which Like, 75% of our tickets are

Jon:

Apple related.

Jason:

Yeah. Or Spotify. Or Spotify. Yeah. And and, ironically, Spotify released their you know, announced their subscription, product, and then Spotify stops working.

Jason:

Mhmm. Yeah. There's a big bug on Spotify. To their credit, they fixed it right away. And to their credit, they actually responded to my my, support requests.

Jason:

So the bug on Spotify was recent episodes also weren't showing. So for a while, you published an episode, and it's not showing on Spotify or Apple. Yeah. And, you know, all all these folks that are eager to get off the the open standard of RSS and move to something else. Let me tell you.

Jason:

If you were subscribed or follow a podcast in Apple Podcasts, you were still getting your episodes. They just weren't showing up in the public directory.

Jon:

Right.

Jason:

And Spotify, wasn't showing up at all because they rehost the audio. So RSS, this old spec that, you know, everyone says needs to be replaced, Just keeps on working, keeps on delivering episodes. And meanwhile, the the the biggest richest corporation in the world makes this major announcement. It's the first thing Tim Cook mentions in his keynote, and everything's broken. The back end is open the back end is broken.

Jason:

The the admin interface is broken. Podcast delivery is broken, like, delivering episodes to the directory. The app itself got released. I don't know if you tried it yet. Like, people the people are like, this this app does not work.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

You and I neither you nor I have worked for massive corporations. Here's how I think about this. I realize there's probably tons of legacy code in there. I'm I realize there's probably tons and tons of difficulty that comes with making up an update like this. But if you're gonna do something, and this goes back to our our idea of complexity and what you start you have to maintain, you're gonna start something, and you've got all the resources in the world.

Jason:

You can release a good product.

Jon:

Or at least, yeah, at least tell people what's coming and what to expect. And if things don't go right, just, like, maybe talk about it publicly.

Jason:

Yeah. Or or maybe reach out to your hosting partners and say, you know, here's a little update. Here's what we're thinking. We could have given them so much feedback.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

But they're operating in a vacuum, not talking about it at all. And, again, to Spotify's credit, they are much better at

Jon:

this Yeah.

Jason:

Of of communicating and having people accessible and answering questions and giving people a preview normally of what's coming.

Jon:

And their and their private podcasting feature could be pretty interesting.

Jason:

Yeah. They've got this new OAuth, Yeah. Part of it. We we haven't seen it yet. Yeah.

Jason:

We They haven't told us anything about it.

Jon:

I think we might have to reach out and actually, like, ask them about getting access to it.

Jason:

Yeah. Why? I I sent them an email. I haven't got anything back yet. Anyway, so there is a a certain amount of platform risk in podcasting in that you're we're kind of reliant on Apple and Spotify.

Jason:

But on the other hand, we have Google Podcasts pulling at them and Amazon pulling at them. You just released the new Amazon integration. Right?

Jon:

Yep.

Jason:

So the the the thing that's different about an open ecosystem like podcasting is that yeah. Sure. There's Apple and Spotify own most of the market, but they don't own all of it. There's always gonna be this tension. You know?

Jason:

Everyone's kind of, like, there's a, there's a what do you call it? A tug of war, you know, between all the these big companies. And that's that's helpful because you have other competitors to hold them to account. Right? And in this case, like, Spotify did 2 things that really changed my opinion of them.

Jason:

1, they fixed that bug right away Mhmm. And were really transparent about it. And 2, this new OAuth thing seems to be a commitment to the open ecosystem because it's going to allow norm like, if you wanna have a paid podcast on transistor and, you know, have it go everywhere and not let Apple take a cut or whatever, You can still do that. And now you can actually add private podcasts to Spotify. Again, this is this is what we think is gonna happen.

Jason:

We haven't actually seen it yet, but that's a big deal. And competitively, it's a great it's a a great hedge for them because, you know, Apple's decided to do it like the App Store. So very interesting, very frustrating. We're still, like, Current Bugs in Apple Podcasts. I've got I'll I'll put it in the show notes.

Jason:

Like, there's this huge list, and when when I thought this one was coming, I was like, oh, I can't wait because they've had all these issues with Apple Podcast forever on the back end, like, cover art not updating and, like, them needing to manually refresh things, them needing to approve new podcast submissions. It takes 5 to 8 days. I was, like, okay. Here we go. It's they're gonna fix all this stuff.

Jason:

They're doing a major revision, and then they release it, and it's more broken than it was before. On the podcaster side and on the listening side, Just just

Jon:

A little bit frustrating.

Jason:

Frustrating. And as a as a product person, also just a little bit, like, come on. Like, if you can't if you can't build a good product and you've got all the resources in the world Yeah. What is going on? It it it's it's again, they've clearly figured this out on the hardware side.

Jon:

And and to some extent, some of the software, like, you know, they're not great at services but you know iOS and Mac OS are pretty solid but those go through rounds of public testing and it's like that doesn't happen with podcasting. And, again, it's is that a moneymaker for them? It's like

Jason:

Yeah. But if you're gonna do it, like, if you're gonna make this big update and pour again, cost benefit analysis.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Like, part of me is confused that they even announced this, like, private subscriptions for podcasters. It's there's just such a tiny group that is going to take advantage of this. It's like, why are you investing all of these resources in Like

Jon:

I said, it's probably, you know, it's the it's the podcast closet. They they

Jason:

Yeah. Like, why? But that's that's like that's like going down to the podcast closet and saying and saying, you know, for a while, we're gonna stuff a bunch more engineers in here and try to build something great. So it's costing them a lot of money, but what came out clearly came out of the podcast closet.

Jon:

Yeah. Like, it

Jason:

was just not I don't know. Like, why invest all that money and time? Why make it a big splashy announcement that's you know, every major publication's talking about the new Apple Podcast subscription thing. All the Wall Street, analysts are, you know, deciding if they're gonna raise Apple's, you know what do you suggest people buy or sell or whatever? It's like you're you're you're making all these waves, and it better be worth it if you're Yep.

Jason:

Apple, if you're listening, please just fix your shit. You can you can have a a culture of privacy and secrecy and, you know, surprising the world with what you make, but when you release it, it better be good. I don't like surprises personally. Like surprise birthday parties or surprise gifts. No.

Jason:

Just let me know. Give me give me a

Jon:

heads back. There a little bit.

Jason:

Yeah. We've probably been chatting long enough. So Alright. Let's, let's thank the good folks on Patreon for supporting the show.

Jon:

Thank you. As always to everyone who supports us, we have Harris Kenny from the intro to CRM podcast, Oleg Oleg Gulick, Violette du Genevieve. Did I say that right?

Jason:

Let's see. Oh, Violette du Genevieve.

Jon:

Alright. And, the Take It EV podcast, Ethan Gunderson, Diogo, Chris Willow, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Niemah, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Prady Umesh Schimbecker, Noah Praill, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitber, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta

Jason:

Junta. And

Jon:

Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.

Jason:

Nice. We also had Mitch. Just Mitch, become a patron in the Thanks, Mitch. Last month. Thanks, Mitch.

Jason:

I one thing Apple came out with is this new you can see where people drop off Mhmm. When they're listening. And a lot of folks drop. And there's a surprising amount that stick around for us to go through the credits, but, I I think we need to start. I don't have anything planned this time, but we we need, like, some sort of, you know, tasty bits after the after the credits so that people stick around.

Jason:

You know what I mean? Like, a little surprise ending. But the surprise ending this time is that if we I wasn't prepared. I just came up with this idea now.

Jon:

Next time.

Jason:

So, next time. Well, we will, yeah. We'll see you next time we publish an episode. Thanks, folks. I was like, Yeah.

Jason:

I was like, oh, wait. No. That's not the right button.