Build Your SaaS

Tired turkey talk

Show Notes

Jon and Justin talk about:
  • American Thanksgiving
  • Is it better for a product to be simple?
  • The benefits of having a "smaller menu."
  • Why we started a private podcast for our advisors and trusted friends
  • "My opinion is you need to grow fast and become THE platform for managing your podcast. Consider raising venture money."
  • But, if we add investment money and a bunch of employees, and then our company is no longer simple.
  • Tired before the holidays; a break will be good.
  • What should we do with this show in 2020?
  • Should we rebuild the customer dashboard using Tailwind?

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Creators & Guests

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

What is Build Your SaaS?

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

Justin:

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Justin:

Use the coupon code build yoursass and get a free month of sending.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buda,

Justin:

a software engineer. And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build transistor dotfm. Good to see you again.

Justin:

Welcome to December. Welcome to December.

Jon:

Oh. How was your last decade of the last month of the decade? Jeez.

Justin:

Yeah. That's kinda crazy. I I remember back in 2002 when my daughter was born thinking, oh, she she'll be graduating in 2020. Man, that's just so far away. That's never gonna happen.

Jon:

Well, it still it still seems like 2020 is far away. I always it seems like I catch myself being like, oh, yeah. You know, way in 2020. And it's like, it's, like, months away. Isn't time funny?

Jon:

So here we are.

Justin:

Here we are. How's how's the American Thanksgiving?

Jon:

Good. It was good. There's, like, tons of

Justin:

tons of Americans that were just, like, what what do you mean American Thanksgiving?

Jon:

There's only one Well, Americans are fairly Americans are fairly ignorant of every other

Justin:

country. So I think I wonder I think Canada is the only other country that has Thanksgiving.

Jon:

I think so.

Justin:

Yeah. Because I don't think, yeah, I don't think anyone else, any other European countries have it. I think it's just Canada and US. And just like we had to have a different flavor of football, we have a different flavor of Thanksgiving. But it was good.

Justin:

Did you have a did you have turkey, or did you have something unconventional?

Jon:

We we had chicken. And? And it was good. It's great. Chicken's good.

Jon:

Well, turkeys are too big. There's too you gotta buy a huge turkey.

Justin:

Yeah. You you you went down to a smaller bird.

Jon:

Yep. Smaller bird.

Justin:

That's good. And and and do you normally do that in Chicago, or you travel home?

Jon:

It depends. Mhmm. Usually travel home. Yeah.

Justin:

And is that a train ride for you, or is it a plane ride?

Jon:

What do you it depends. No. I had a car. Okay. Car.

Justin:

And So, yeah. Has the snow hit? We we just got our first real dump of snow here.

Jon:

No. Not well, no. Not really. It we have had snow, but it was weeks ago, and it was kind of a freak thing where it got super cold. But, no, there's no snow on the ground.

Justin:

Okay. Okay. So so travel's just fine.

Jon:

It's just gloomy and miserable.

Justin:

Did you see this picture that was circulating? What's that big highway in LA? Is that the 405? I don't know. Maybe.

Justin:

Okay. There's this picture on Twitter of everyone in LA trying to get home for Thanksgiving, and it's just it's it's like 6 lanes on one side, 6 lanes on the other side. Thanksgiving traffic. And it is insane. Like, everybody that.

Justin:

Everybody trying to get home. Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. Probably people leaving after work on a certain day then.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll put this video in the in the show notes, which is at s aas.transistor.fm. But I'll put it in our little show notes here, John. Just right underneath the intro.

Justin:

Just take a look at that.

Jon:

Alright.

Justin:

And tell me if that I'm assuming that the traffic out of Chicago wasn't like that.

Jon:

I think oh, yeah. That looks terrible.

Justin:

It's just like it looks like it just

Jon:

This was also 2016, but still, it's probably worse.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you see?

Justin:

This was circulating like this was just happening.

Jon:

Well, this is the Internet. Right? This is how

Justin:

this is how it goes. Yeah. This is probably all just generated. It's not even real.

Jon:

Right. But Although it's probably accurate. It looks pretty miserable. Yeah. It probably was like that on, I don't know, Wednesday night.

Justin:

Yeah. People trying to get out of town. Probably. Yeah. Crazy.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

Crazy. Well, I thought maybe to start things off, I was you know, I I took a little holiday up at Silver Star Ski Resort. And, I was listening to this podcast called The Happiness Lab, episode 8. And have you had a chance to listen to this clip yet? I did.

Justin:

Yeah. Okay. So, Chris, we'll get you to play that right now.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people in restaurants do have a lot of options, and they try to cater to everybody. But we stick to what we do best and what we've been doing for a 124 years, and that's keeping it simple and making it easy for not only ourselves but everybody else. And when you do that and do what you do best, I think you have a better product.

Justin:

I'm wondering what you thought about that, John. What what were some of the thoughts that came to your mind?

Jon:

I I think overall, I agree. I'm not quite sure what he's referencing in the restaurant industry as far is it, like, the menu size or what? Yeah.

Justin:

He's saying a lot of people in restaurants have a lot of options on their menu. They're trying to give you, you know, every dish imaginable that

Jon:

they can

Justin:

cram on the menu.

Jon:

Yeah. I generally don't like those restaurants. It's, oh, it's a little overwhelming, and probably nothing is great.

Justin:

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Jon:

Everything's probably okay. Nothing's great. Yeah.

Justin:

This fellow runs Lewis's Lunch, which is a restaurant in New York, I think. They the the legend is that they were the first ones to come up with the American hamburger. And so they serve this one hamburger the way they they made it way back in whatever it was, 18 95. And that is kind of the one thing they do and the one thing they do well. And you're saying there's some other

Jon:

That is that's the actual that's the example that I was gonna use. Well, not that exact one, but there's a place in Chicago called Small Cheval, which has a couple of locations.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Gavin:

And

Jon:

there's sort of an offshoot of this other restaurant, which has a really famous burger. Mhmm. And small Cheval only serves burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes. That's it. And they're amazing.

Jon:

Like, they are hands down the best hamburger I've ever had. Yep. And that's all they serve. That's all they do. And they serve so many of these things.

Jon:

But you go in there, and it's like you don't have to choose. You just get in line. You're like, I would like a cheeseburger Mhmm. And maybe some fries. Yeah.

Jon:

And that's it. And they do an amazing job. And, sure, they could probably, like, branch out and say, alright. Now we're gonna do, like, a chicken sandwich or we're gonna do a veggie burger or we're gonna add this and that, but they don't. Mhmm.

Jon:

Mhmm. They just stick with what they do, and they I guarantee they're just making money hand over fist, and people love it.

Justin:

Yeah. It's if you're going you know, if I was gonna come into Chicago and say, hey, where's the best place for a burger? Instantly, something comes to mind. And it's probably going to be a place that specializes in burgers. Yeah.

Justin:

If you land in Portland and you go, where's the best place to get ice cream? You immediately think, well, salt and straw because all they do is ice cream. And I wonder if some of this applies to the software business. When he says

Jon:

Probably. Yeah.

Justin:

When he says we try not to cater to everybody. We try to keep things simple, which is what we've been doing for a 124 years. Not only for ourselves, like, he's saying it's easier on our staff to only have to prepare a few items. But he says it also makes it easy on everybody else in terms of making choices. And he says the simplicity means you have a better product.

Justin:

Yeah. So what do you think? Do you think is this how does this apply to the software business?

Jon:

Well, I think it's probably maybe it goes more into, like, the opinionated software biz like, people are making opinionated decisions on the software, and they're limiting what people can see or can even choose from. Yeah. So they have an idea they have an idea of what's good. Sort of like restaurants that have small menus Mhmm. That may that might the menu might change every day, but they have small menus, like 6 items.

Jon:

That's it every day. Yeah. And they're like, today, we're gonna focus on these 6 things that they're going to be amazing, and you have a limited choice, but they're you know they're all gonna be amazing. Mhmm. And feel like that's that probably compares to a software product where whoever's building it is like, alright.

Jon:

We are gonna make the decision to only have these features because they're gonna be great. We're not gonna give you every little thing that maybe might work okay. Mhmm. And it's also easier for the business to run because there's just less things to manage. There's less stuff to do.

Jon:

So if you have a kitchen with, like, 50 items on the menu, then then you have to stock all these items in the fridge every day. You have to make sure they're there. You have to the cooks have to know how to make everything. Mhmm. The servers have to know the menu front to back, and it's just like feel like it just simplifies quite a bit.

Justin:

Yeah. Even thinking about bringing on new staff, it's like, okay. We gotta teach you how to make 3 items, or we have to teach you how to make 50 items. And, yeah, you can see the restaurant industry is a great example because you can actually tangibly think and imagine, oh, wait. If we add pizza to the menu, we're gonna need to stock 20 more ingredients.

Justin:

And we're going to need a pizza oven, probably need multiple pizza ovens in addition to our burger grill. You can you can see how the complexity adds all of this additional weight to the business. And, you know, now you have to educate customers on it. And then, you know, even if you go into pizza, you're just you're not only opening the door to pizza, but you're opening the door to gluten free pizza, veggie pizza. It just all this You're

Jon:

also yeah. You're also gonna end up competing with pizza places that only make pizza. Mhmm. And have made pizza for 20 years, and they're amazing at it.

Justin:

Yes. That's that's a good point. That's a good point. And it feels like since we've started transistor, every single day, we have people coming into our burger joint saying, hey, it was for example, one thing they don't allow at Louie's is ketchup. You're not allowed to have ketchup on your burger.

Justin:

And so

Gavin:

Okay.

Justin:

People say, hey, can I get ketchup on that? And we have to say, well, are we gonna are we the kind of place that's gonna add ketchup? And how does that affect our business? You know? Or are we the kind of place that is also you know, someone says, you know, back home, we always have chili with our hamburger.

Justin:

Can you offer that? And it's like, okay. Well, we could. But are we gonna do that? And it was kind of refreshing to hear this episode to think about how it applied to us.

Justin:

Because it is a challenge every day. We've had we need people walking in saying, but could you just add this? Could you change this? Could hey. Your competitor has this.

Jon:

And it yeah. And they don't at the outset, they don't seem like big things, but they add up over time to lots of little things that

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Just can,

Jon:

I think, spiral out of control? So

Justin:

Well, yeah. It's like our this YouTube integration we talk about so much. It's like it's like, okay. Now we gotta fill up the chili container every single morning. Right?

Justin:

And that that one thing we added added this all of this weight to the business that maybe we didn't anticipate. It's obviously not this cut and dry because there are and this isn't the only variable that matters. Because there are examples of restaurants with lots of things on the menu that do well. Right? Starbucks has, like I think it's something like 40,000 permutations or something.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

But it is refreshing to hear this idea, especially when you can think about it and go, I can see how simplicity is just easier to manage for us and how that might also affect the customer's experience of the product.

Jon:

Have have you ever watched, Kitchen Nightmares? No. With Gordon Ramsay?

Justin:

No. No. I've probably seen it in passing, but

Jon:

It's great. I mean, he go he goes into these these restaurants and bars that are kind of failing. Right? And Yeah. He just sort of sees how they work, and then it comes up with an idea to to revamp the place.

Jon:

Right? Usually includes some remodeling and rebranding. Mhmm. But most of the time, he takes their menu and cuts it down by, like, 90%. Gotcha.

Jon:

And he's like, just do this. Do this well. And, you know, in throughout the whole time, he's yelling at people and swearing at them and, but I I'm, like, wondering if I don't know, it would be kind of hilarious if someone like Gordon Ramsay were to come into a product company and just be like just start harassing people. What are you thinking? Just Why do you have so many features?

Jon:

Just cut these out.

Justin:

Just cut it down.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean and I think that happens. You know? The features are removed and things are simplified.

Jon:

And

Justin:

Yeah. And and, clearly, I mean, the again, all of these these examples, they have limits. You can't hold to them religiously because there are gonna be times you need to add features or you will, fail. Right? The there's there's tension between these ideas.

Justin:

And, I'm not saying that this is just true all of the time, But it is at least nice to think and remember and feel this, which is if you make the product too complex, it affects you as the founder, and it affects your customers as well. And, by the way, I think this extends to everything. We've just started a private podcast just for our kind of trusted advisors and friends.

Jon:

And Mhmm.

Justin:

I, you know, I added a bunch of people to it. Basically, it uses the transistor feature. So you add an email address. It sends them a private invitation to the podcast. They can open their custom link in their podcast app.

Justin:

And then we just recorded a quick, episode, you and I saying, hey. Here's some things we're thinking about and struggling with. And it was interesting to hear the responses to to that because I I deliberately put some people on that list that I thought would have a different point of view. And one of my kind of trusted advisers was like, you you guys need to raise money. You guys need to go big.

Justin:

You guys need to, if you're gonna win at this, you really need to be aggressive. And, again, I mean, I I am welcoming that point of view into my life. But at the same time, I guess my pushback would be, I can see how that would add weight to the business and weight to my life and complexity that I then have to carry. Like, if we hire 500 people, if we, take, you know, $15,000,000 in investment, it's almost like now I'm carrying that whole load on my shoulders, you know. Even I mean, even if it's 2 of us.

Justin:

Now both of us are, like, we've got this big wobbly bunch of stuff that we're holding and we're trying to walk around with and we're trying to make sure that these things don't all fall. And I I again, maybe he's right, and I'm wrong. But there there does seem to be something about keeping things simple and keeping things basic and the ability to navigate life when you've just gotten less on your shoulders?

Jon:

Yeah. You add investment money, and then you add employees, and it's no longer simple.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Right? I mean, I've like, the last few days, I've been dealing with this some tax related stuff that we have to clean up Mhmm. Before the end of the year. And it's like, if I if this had to happen for a team of people

Justin:

Yeah. I I was just laughing at this idea of you're like, we got this tax this tax situation we gotta clean up.

Jon:

I I

Justin:

was just like, oh, yeah. This is total Chicago thing right here.

Jon:

Right. Well, we got a lot of the money.

Justin:

We we we gotta break a few thumbs. We gotta launder some money. We got but then sorry. You were saying we gotta clean it up. And our finances are still pretty simple right now.

Jon:

They're still pretty simple. And it's and it's still it doesn't even seem simple. Like, it's still Mhmm. Right. They're they are simple, but this the stuff we're dealing with and trying to fix is just, like Yeah.

Jon:

Not that simple. Yeah. So doing that at even at an even bigger scale. I mean, you'd probably would have an accountant who would be doing this stuff for you, but,

Justin:

yeah. Yeah. And, again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't grow. I'm not saying that any of that stuff. But if we're gonna add something else to the menu, whether that's an employee, whether that's funding, whether that's a new feature, I almost wanna consider it in the same way that Luis would think, okay, we've been doing this for a 124 years.

Justin:

We've been feeling this mounting pressure to maybe add one more item to the menu. What's it gonna be? And how are we going to really consider this carefully? And I think that's the biggest thing is that often we make these decisions thinking that, you know, more is better when I think simple is better. Yeah.

Justin:

So that's a great episode. Happiness Lab episode 8. Now you know who does like to keep things simple, especially if you have a small team? Clubhouse. If you have a team less than 10 people by the way, we're in an ad now.

Justin:

I I I realized sometimes my transitions are so smooth. You can't even tell. We're we're now in an ad, folks, at home. Clubhouse, they do project management just for software teams. And they've just announced a new free plan for teams up to 10 people.

Justin:

So super simple. If you if you've got a team of 10 people or less, Clubhouse is free for you to use. Try it out now. Clubhouse.io/build. Maybe we should give folks a little bit of an update on what we're working on.

Justin:

What what we had the Thanksgiving break. Yep.

Jon:

We got some

Justin:

What did we ship before like, right before you left? Do you you it was

Jon:

a bunch of analytics updates to the analytics page.

Justin:

Yeah. And did we talk a little bit about that? We have a graph now that shows podcast players over time.

Jon:

Right. There's podcast players over time. They're and then episodes by day over time, podcast players over time, and geographic location over time is all exportable now as a CSV? Yes. So, yeah, that was part of a cycle we were doing, but we didn't quite finish everything.

Jon:

So I think we're gonna try to finish some more of those little bits up before the end of the year.

Justin:

Yeah. And we'd kind of told ourselves we're gonna try to slow down at this time of year, you know, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And we've even noticed this in sign ups. Sign ups have started to slow down. It feels like, even if I look at my coworking place here, people are showing up less often.

Jon:

Customer support doesn't seem to be slowing down though.

Justin:

That's true. There is and the there's a lot of trials right now. So one of my theories is that there's a bunch of people trying things out because they have time, because all the years projects are kind of winding down. And they're thinking about, okay, I'm gonna kinda preload this for 20 20. So I think that's one reason we've got so much support is that our trial numbers are way up right now.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And I'm guessing people are just exploring the space. And come January, February, they're going going to be ready to kind of launch that new podcast project.

Jon:

New Year's resolutions to launch a podcast?

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Jon:

Yeah. So yeah. I I think we're gonna try to slow things down as far as new big features Mhmm. Between now and, you know, the new year, which I think will be good. I don't know about you, but I feel tired Mhmm.

Jon:

For some reason.

Justin:

Yeah. It's a little bit weird for me because I feel like I've been grinding for so long. I'm just used to be I'm used to just kinda getting ground down to nothing. But, I do feel like a break would be good.

Jon:

Yeah. A break in the sense of, like, we're not building new things, but I think there is a lot we can do to sort of, I don't know, research a lot. Like, a period of time where we can just research and experiment and and or clean things, fix a few things, clean things up Mhmm. To kind of get ready for whatever's next, which I don't think we really know yet. But

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon:

I think you kinda have to give your your brain a little bit of a a little bit of a break to just kinda wander around and just let things pop into your mind.

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. This one one of the reasons I love this time of year is going up to Silver Star with my snowboard and sitting on this chairlift where there's nothing but you and the air

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And your thoughts. And it's amazing how just being out there away from everything, all of a sudden you just have these thoughts just pop into your head of, oh, man. We should try that. And, oh, you know what? We've been thinking about that for a while, but we haven't done anything about it.

Justin:

They they just come kinda come to you. Yep. And, I I think this is kind of the the the big the biggest joke capitalism ever played on the on the knowledge worker is that they have to be at their desk all the time.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

Right. Yeah. So what else are you kind of experimenting with right now? You're

Jon:

nothing at the moment. I mean, we have a big list of of things that we might get to during some sort of cooldown period, but I think one of the things I really wanna look into is, rebuilding our dashboard Mhmm. So that it's a little more mobile friendly and just sort of, I mean, it's you know, the code is has been around for a couple years, and it's using this design framework that is not being updated and is sort of just a little bit out of date. I mean, it's still okay, but probably looking into tailwinds and just kind of trying to build out a version of what we have now in tailwinds that looks similar, feels similar, but is just a little more functional on different devices. So probably, I think the idea was is just to build out HTML first without even integrating into our app and try to get something that just a a basic template of something that feels similar.

Jon:

So

Justin:

Yeah. And when you say dashboard

Jon:

the entire dashboard is gonna be well, when you're when you're signed into your Transistor account.

Justin:

Gotcha. So anything the user interacts with once they sign in? Yep.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

Gotcha.

Jon:

That'll be a big, big change actually to switch everything over to it because Mhmm. A lot of the other interactions in JavaScript within our dashboard kinda depend on the framework we're using right now. So switching all it over might take a while, but I think at least getting a a basic template working and in place would be kind of kinda nice to have.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is that's another one that comes up quite a bit. It's surprising how many people use transistor on their phone or their iPad.

Jon:

Yeah. I don't I actually don't find that that's surprising. I'm I find it surprising when I have more complaints.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Because just people are on their phones, and they're on their phones all day.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, I I use it quite a bit. Like, when I'm doing customer support, I'll log in and I, you know, I have to instantly kinda go to landscape mode and

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

And move around. And

Jon:

Yeah. It's not it's not very functional at the moment.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. That would be that would be pretty awesome, actually, to to fiddle around and get something that was worked as a as a well, worked on the phone. What what do you think about I'm trying to figure out what is this movement of progressive web apps, PWAs, or a type of application software delivered through the web built using common web technologies, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I've heard a lot of people talking about this lately.

Justin:

But to me, it just sounds like, it feels like we've had a a bunch of iterations of this. Like, remember when Facebook, they were gonna not use native mobile apps anymore, and they they built everything, and then they had to go back. Like, they had to what was what was that wave called?

Jon:

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what all these I don't know what all these movements are called anymore.

Justin:

Maybe rich web application. Well, you know, what was what it what what was this? Yeah.

Jon:

I don't really have thoughts on it because I don't know what it is. So I don't I mean, my my goal is to just build the thing so it works in every device you use. I don't

Justin:

Yeah. It it sounds like it's just this is just another way of saying, yeah, we're we're it's web apps that work on the phone that don't need to be delivered through the Apple App Store or Google Play. And maybe now we're at the the point where that's actually possible. So when Facebook tried it, it didn't work. But, you know, maybe now

Jon:

Yeah. Maybe. I think. I mean, they when they did it, phones are slower, but I think it just did the rendering of HTML was just too slow for what they needed.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I I I'm trying to remember what that was called. I'm sure people folks, I'm not even gonna look it up. If if you can remember what what that trend was called when Facebook was was doing this, it was like Facebook.

Justin:

The headline was that, you know, Facebook delivers whatever it was. Oh, I wanna say progressive web application, but it was something else. And so this feels like just a new wave or term for that whole that whole evolution. But Probably. I guess part of what I'm getting at is, you know, one of our competitors is is Anchor, and they have a pretty slick, mobile app.

Justin:

And again, in our pursuit of simplicity, we've shied away from wanting to compete in that space. If we had to maintain like Basecamp has been trying to maintain iOS and Android applications forever. They've tried it multiple times. And I think now they've got dedicated people. But they've they often can cite that as a difficult thing to maintain when you're a small team.

Jon:

Yeah. I think so. I thought they are using they're using a lot of web technology in that the the way they build it. I mean, they're using, it's all rails. It's all rails with with, like, an HTML templates with sort of special Android and, Apple wrappers around it.

Jon:

Gotcha.

Justin:

So maybe that piece is also getting easier now to to have something that feels more native, but, just using web stuff underneath.

Jon:

I think so. But, yeah, I I think part of, yeah, part of the whole experiment with something like Tailwinds will will be just making it functional on on most devices. Mhmm. Yeah. There's a whole lot to do with the iPad, but for especially for phones, it's just like menus are to do and things just aren't, you know, really not that functional.

Jon:

So Yeah. That'll that'll probably be a big a big piece of work for the end of the year and the new year. It's just doing it kinda, like, rebuilding that stuff and Yeah. While thinking about new things that that we're trying to work on.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. That sounds like a good plan. I've been kind of chipping away at different things on the marketing site, experimenting with things.

Justin:

I I think I'm going to actually experiment with taking away. We have an enterprise column right now, and I'm wondering if the complexity of having 4 columns presented to you is too much, and there might be a better way to present that. So I'm gonna fiddle around with that, making that page a bit simpler. But, yeah, I am looking forward to having some downtime and because I love coming back after some downtime where you're just kind of raring to go. Yeah.

Justin:

But the worst feeling is, like, showing up all day in a company that you own and being kinda like, well, alright. Here we go. Like, you're you're literally living the dream that you set out for yourself. But you're, you know, if you're in the you're kind of down, that's not a good place to be.

Jon:

No. No. I think the other thing too we were gonna think about is what we wanna do with this show. Yeah. And we've we've talked a little bit about it, but I don't think we've really made any decisions about how to handle it in the new year.

Jon:

So

Justin:

Yeah. Can can you give people an idea of kinda what like, why do we why do we need to consider anything?

Jon:

You know, we've done it for, what, a year and a half now? Mhmm. Probably.

Justin:

Mhmm. Yeah. We started in March of 2018.

Jon:

It takes up quite a bit of time. I mean, it's it's not an insignificant amount of time. Mhmm. And it's always it's always helpful to to talk between, you know, you and I. But, yeah, I I think there's an opportunity to change it up in the new year and and either do something like we reduce the amount of time to do it once every couple weeks or, change the format to something else where we're talking to other people more.

Jon:

Or Mhmm. You know, I I feel like the topics we're gonna talk about are gonna be recycled, and the same problems are gonna start coming up. And we're just gonna sort of, I don't know, have less meaty topics to talk about.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Because if the show is called build your SaaS, we built it, and now we're building it.

Jon:

We're

Justin:

Yeah. This is in some ways the the the challenge that Alex Bloomberg had with startup, which was, you know, they started up. And then what do you do with the show? And in some ways, I was disappointed when they stopped talking about Gimlet because I think it's still interesting getting that behind the scenes look at what, you know, what's happening. The show obviously, I think Transistor needs to have some sort of podcasts that we're actively producing.

Justin:

But, yeah, I I do want it to be well, first of all, I want to be interesting for us. Because if it's not interesting for us, then, you know, that that's not as that's no fun. And I think it also we need it to be interesting for listeners. And yeah. If if folks have ideas about that, about I think we'd be open to hearing them.

Jon:

I'd definitely be open to hearing some opinions, or we start a different show and do something else. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I I think also I mean, we're we're open to what listeners want for sure, but we also have to consider, yeah, what what do we wanna do? Right. And how can we make this interesting for us?

Justin:

How can we make it, kinda helpful all the way around? I I think one thing we're definitely considering is is, you know, should we continue to have Patreon sponsors, supporters? Should we continue to have, ad sponsors? And, you know, maybe there's something we can do with all that momentum that would benefit someone else that's starting out or, you know, there's there's some ideas there that I think could be helpful. Yeah.

Justin:

So we're just thinking through some of that stuff.

Jon:

Yeah. We'll see. Or we start a podcast and we talk about

Justin:

I'm waiting.

Jon:

I'm trying to think of something totally random.

Justin:

What are we gonna talk about? Yeah. The what we we've alluded to this a few times, like, maybe we have, He Man, fan podcast. Maybe we we talk about, just only old nostalgic, tech podcast.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

There there's there's some other things. That would be really interesting, like, if what would we do just for fun that we wouldn't even care if that we had that many listeners, but we would do it just because we really dug it. Right. You know?

Jon:

We have we have think about that when our minds are a little more free.

Justin:

Yeah. Totally. But with that in mind, John, would you like to give some shout outs to our Patreon supporters?

Jon:

I would. We have someone new. We have Ward from memberspace.com.

Justin:

I know Ward. He's great.

Jon:

Cool. Thanks, Ward. Eric Lima, James Sours from user input dot I o, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things dotio, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Pradyumna Schembecker, Noah Praill, David Culligan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray from alici.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother.

Justin:

Danbuda.com? What what part of the chicken did Dan get?

Jon:

Dan didn't get any chicken because he's in he's in Austin.

Justin:

Oh, he didn't come out.

Jon:

You didn't So he probably he probably had turkey. I think he had turkey.

Justin:

Dan, you you gotta send Dan a a wing or something in the mail.

Jon:

Yeah. Wrap it in an envelope and send it via UPS USPS. We have Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta. Junta.

Justin:

I mean, that would be that's the natural spin off for, like, if if Joey was the spin off from Friends, then Junta is the spin off from Build Your Sisters. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I don't

Justin:

know what we're setting ourselves up for because Joey didn't have a great

Jon:

Not a good

Justin:

Not a great run.

Jon:

Not a success.

Justin:

But that that would that would definitely be the spin off show.

Jon:

And finally, we have Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com and our sponsors, Postmark and Clubhouse.

Justin:

Thanks, everyone. I do really appreciate these Patreon supporters. You've been with us. Some of you have been with us from the beginning. We know that you a lot of you listen to every episode that you cheer us on, that you send us ideas, that you suggest transistor to other people.

Justin:

Really appreciate it. And we will see you next week.