Build Your SaaS

We got the whole band together: Helen and Jason join Jon and Justin to talk about what it's really like to work at Transistor

Helen, Jason, Jon, Justin, all squeezed into the podcasting closet to make an episode

What should we talk about next?

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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
Guest
Helen Ryles
Customer Success at Transistor.fm
Guest
Jason Pearl
Engineering & Product @ Transistor.fm

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 2022.

I'm Jon Buda, a software engineer.

Justin: I'm Justin Jackson, and I do marketing.

Helen: I'm Helen, I do customer success.

Jason: I'm, Jason, also a software engineer.

Justin: We got the whole band together.

Jon, this is the, this is the most people
we've had in our recording, uh, closet.

Jon: It is, we'll see how this works.

It's pretty, it's pretty tight in here.

Justin: Well, it's good to have.

I mean, the whole reason we started this
show is because we knew if we were going

to be working on transistor, we needed to.

Have a podcast and feel what
it was like the podcast.

Uh, did Jason, is this your
first podcast ever absolute first

podcast ever absolute first, Helen.

I know you've been on, you've been on quite a
few podcasts actually as a guest a few times.

Yeah.

I can think of at least three or four times.

I've heard you as a guest.

You've been on SA uh,
startups for the rest of us.

Yeah, that's

Helen: true.

Yeah.

And probably about five, five or six.

Justin: Yeah, perfect.

Jon: Seasoned veteran,

Justin: a seasoned veteran.

Well, I think so just as a background,
uh, Helen started working with

us full time, April 27th, 2020.

And Jason started working with us.

Full-time August 3rd, 2021.

So Helen's one year anniversary is
coming up and then in the summer

it'll be one year for Jason as well.

That feels like that long Helen.

Helen: It does.

Yeah, I guess, um, with me kind of
starting in kind of like a temporary

kind of, um, capacity in 2019, it feels
a lot longer because there's kind of.

No differentiation between, um, part-time and
full-time, it's just, it's just all transistor.

Justin: Yeah, that was, that was the, the nice
thing is that you were helping us out part-time

and then able to move into a full-time role.

How about you, Jason?

How does it feel like you've been working
for us forever or does it feel brand new?

It kind of feels a little bit

Jason: like.

The time sort of has a weird amount of
distortion over the last couple of years.

So

Jon: yeah, it feels like both for me with
Jason, just because I know James for so long.

Yeah.

I've worked with him before, so it's like, kind
of feels like a long time, but also doesn't.

Justin: Yeah.

I mean, sometimes it feels like we've
always because we do these weekly meetings.

We just had one.

Sometimes it feels like we've
been doing those forever.

And then, uh, other times it feels like, wow,
we're still just a new team trying to figure

out how to work with each other and how to, you
know, make, make this work as a, as teammates.

You know, I thought it would be just to ease
in to us all for being on the show together.

We were just in this meeting
and this idea of the.

YouTube integration came up.

Uh, and Helen, maybe you could describe,
like, how does it come up in customer support?

When what kinds of things are people
asking when they mentioned this feature?

Helen: A lot of things as we get really
great feedback about the integration,

um, it's kind of something that perhaps.

Some translates to customers.

Don't even know that's there.

It may be a little bit tucked away, but
I guess the people that do find it, um,

take the time to let us know how much they
enjoy using it and how helpful it's been.

Uh, just to kind of like syndicate, um, the
podcast across to YouTube and just to correct.

Put that audio and a video format and also
do their back kind of go through and do their

back catalog of all previous episodes and kind
of get those onto YouTube, like immediately.

So, uh, yeah, I guess, um, mostly it's
positive feedback and then the kind of

questions we get are, you know, what else can
it do as sort of a way of changing things?

Changing things around or, um,
adding more custom features like

custom artwork and things like that.

Um, yeah.

So I guess mostly it's kind of positive
feedback and people wanting more of the same.

Justin: Yeah.

Now this is a deep cut for build your SAS
listeners because this YouTube integration

played, it played a key role in early episodes.

John did well in the sense
that we talked about it a lot.

Uh, in this, uh, because
it was a pain initially.

So I, and maybe you don't even remember.

Do you remember, like there
was like issues about it.

It caused a lot of customer
support initially, and then.

What exactly happened like for
awhile, Google implemented a new,

Jon: no, I am.

Yeah, it was, it was painful.

I mean, it worked for awhile.

There was, we had to get, we had to go
through this verification process to, to

increase our number of accounts that could
connect through our API integration with.

I think at one point we were a, at like
only a hundred people could actually author

accounts to transistor through YouTube.

And then in order to raise that, you had to
go through this verification process that

included, like recording a video and telling
you about telling them how you used it.

Uh, and it took, it took like six
or nine months or something like

that to actually get it approved.

And I w and Google is like a, sort
of a black box of emails if you

ever want to send an email to them.

But I think what happened.

They were sending it back to the wrong
email address or something, but there was

just like no way to hear back from them.

Yeah.

And no support and or anything like that.

Finally got it figured out.

So we turn it back on, but there was
definitely a time where we were thinking

of just removing it because I mean, we
removed it from the app for a bit for new

users, but yeah, we were just going to cut
it entirely because it was kind of a pain.

Justin: Yeah.

So now.

This is that's the background.

And this is what's interesting about
bringing on new people is that I think it's

pretty easy, especially when you've been
working on something from the beginning to

just get a cranky about things like this.

Just be like, I mean, I've had
conversations with people where I'm like,

we're just going to tear this thing out.

Like it's just a pain.

And all I have is the old memories of
doing customer support and people going,

it's not working or it sinked wrong,
or now it's not it's disconnected.

And when you have those early experiences,
sometimes it's like, okay, well, that's

just the way it's going to be forever.

But, uh, maybe this is a time for
us to reevaluate that with the.

The fresh blood we got here on a show.

I

Jon: don't know if Jason's
really touched that at all

Justin: though.

Have you touched that yet?

Jason?

Jason: I haven't.

I've looked at it a bit only because
it's sort of loosely related to

some of the audio processing stuff.

Um, but I've w I've

Justin: withheld jumping in, does it
process like the processing stuff?

Is it, uh, is that still a problem?

Does it process like having to
process all of that video and stuff?

Is that still a problem?

Is it.

Okay.

No, it's,

Jon: I mean, it's slower than audio,
but it's not, it's not terrible.

It's, you're basically stitching together an
audio file and an image, an image that's on

a loop of like one or two frames per second.

And you stitch it together with
the same command line program

we use for our audio processing.

Justin: Okay.

And Helen, have we, cause I I'm
actually a little bit disconnected

from this now is do we get a lot of
bugs of complaints about the YouTube.

Do you have that sense of like, this is
maybe the sense we used to have was it

was too costly to support this thing.

How do you feel about that?

Yeah, I guess

Helen: that's one consideration when you kind
of build an integration, you always end up

doing a little bit of support for whatever
company you're integrating with, whether

that's YouTube, um, you know, apple, Spotify.

Um,

Justin: just so just as an aside,
what if we were, if we're going to

talk badly about, uh, other companies,
who do we do the most support for.

Out of all the companies.

Do you think what's, what's our
top three or four, do you think I'm

Helen: amazing.

Neutral,

Justin: like Switzerland.

I mean, apple and Spotify have to be up there.

It feels like we do a lot of support for apple,
Spotify still, but I don't see YouTube as much.

Helen: Where we were answering.

There are lots of questions about why the tube
intubation isn't, wasn't working, um, and kind

of trying to set people's expectations based
upon, or perhaps not having had an update

from, uh, or kind of clear communication.

I think we are fortunate that a
lot, lots of our partners do kind

of communicate well with us though.

So, um, we can kind of
pass on that information.

It was more a case of like
educating people on how.

Things kind of changing their expectations
on how things are going to work.

Um, so what are the, what is
the scope of the integration?

You know, are they expecting something
to happen that isn't actually part of the

feature set of the actual integration?

So, um, yeah, a lot of it's just kind of
passing on the information and helping

people based on our previous knowledge of
perhaps fixing various issues 10 times over.

Justin: Yeah.

But, but it has YouTube been coming up as much.

Is it, is it like in terms of it not working
in terms of there being customer support or is

it more just people are interested in it now?

Helen: No, I think it's, um, since
the, um, kind of off issue was fixed,

there's very little support need really.

Um, but the trouble is if something does
go wrong it's then how do we go about.

Communicating with Google to fix those issues.

So if we did expand upon the integration,
um, you know, how, how many more

kind of features, what kind of speech
set can we support, um, without kind

of having better communication with

Justin: the YouTube side of things?

That's actually an interesting way.

I haven't even, I've never
thought about it like that, where.

You, one of the questions you're asking
right now, Helen is like, well, we could

make this better and promote it more.

But if something goes
wrong, who would we talk to?

Like, do we have any channel
to YouTube right now?

Because now we have it
with apple and Spotify, but

Jon: I don't think we do.

I don't think we ever have.

It's like almost no support for the
API stuff beyond just a bunch of times.

Yeah, unless probably unless you're a
huge company and have a direct contact,

but

Justin: yeah, that's th that would
definitely be an issue on the flip side.

Like I just had, I think I posted this.

Slack, but Jonathan Stark, who
does the ditching hourly podcast?

He just like impromptu raved
about that YouTube integration.

Like you said, I just found this and
he's like, it just feels like magic.

Like suddenly my show is on YouTube
and in parallel right now the podcast

industry is talking a lot about YouTube.

Tom Webster with Edison research
is saying, listen, all you all,

you cranky old podcast purists.

You might not like YouTube.

You might think that nobody listens to
podcasts on YouTube, but the truth is

people do listen to podcasts on YouTube.

It's becoming, um, I can't remember.

It's like number two, I think
in terms of actual, um, listens.

And so he said, you can try to
avoid it, but you're just, you're

just avoiding the inevitable.

It's something that you're just
going to have to accept and.

Movement the big conference.

The keynote speaker is the new
head of podcasts at YouTube.

We need his email

Helen: address.

Yeah,

Justin: yeah, yeah.

That's a good point.

I should get that.

Uh, I'm actually going to be, I'm not
going to that version of the conference,

but they're the same time I'm in LA
for family vacation is the conference.

So maybe I should try to sneak out
and go to one of the parties and.

Get that guy's email.

What do you think about all this, Jason?

What are some of your thoughts about
whether we should improve this feature?

Promote it more, or should we just hide it?

Keep it in the closet?

Yeah, it's

Jason: interesting.

The, I mean, we've gotten, we've gotten a
few people that have pinged us about doing.

Like video podcasts.

So it's like this, this is sort of, you
know, copying audio with some static image

to YouTube, which to me, like you said,
I don't know who was sitting there going

to YouTube to listen to something like,
I don't, I don't know who that person is.

Apparently they, they exist.

But, um, but certainly getting, getting
into more video content, that stuff

starts to make a lot more sense.

Justin: I don't know how you and John think
about this cause you actually have to build.

But when you're hearing customers and
remembering being a customer yourself,

like when I was a podcaster, it's
just like anything that happened.

Automagically.

I published something.

And then a series of auto,
automatic magical events happen.

Like I publish an episode, it
automatically tweets it for me.

It automatically publishes a
little video on YouTube for me.

It automatically, you know, one thing I
would love to do is first to automatically

create little promo video clips that can
get published on LinkedIn and Facebook.

And there's something about that
feeling of it just happening.

Like all this, this, this magical sequence
of events happening every time you

publish, you know, we've talked about
like, uh, well with private podcasts, we

automatically email all of your subscribers.

And there's just this kind of magical thing.

Like, well, I don't need to do that now.

I don't need to notify
everybody about the episode.

It just happens.

So what for you and John, like,
what are some of your thoughts?

Like when.

Because it is cool.

Like there's something cool about
it and we could make it cooler.

Like right now it's just a static
image, but we could put a little

wave animated wave form on it.

We could, uh, automatically generate an
image like Helen, you were saying someone was

asking about, I didn't quite understand, like
there's people expect you upload a thumbnail.

And what's the expectation and what
did they want, what were they saying?

Yeah,

Helen: so people are already going to the
trouble of adding individual episode artwork.

Um, and there was kind of an expectation
that, that aren't work with that.

Maybe a unique custom thumbnail for the video.

Um, whereas currently we just use one static
image, which is both the thumbnail and

the background image for the entire video.

So at the moment, any podcast episodes that
get uploaded all have that kind of same image.

Um, and it would be kind of nice
if you've got different guests each

week to have that artwork showing

Justin: up on YouTube too.

And Jason, you see how this.

Inner laces with the stuff we're
doing with podcasts websites,

which we can talk about in awhile.

But if we have a, an object called host and
an object called guest, and both of them have

a image attached to them, it's theoretical.

We could generate those cool images
automatically that have like the host image and

the guest image and the name of the podcast.

Right?

Yeah.

Jason: That'd be cool for sure.

Jon: Yeah, there's definitely a lot
of stuff we could do to improve it.

Um, I dunno where it's,
where it's at on our roadmap.

I mean, there's a lot of custom images
and backgrounds, animated backgrounds, and

right now, like, you know, we we've had
the YouTube integration around for awhile

and then we also added dynamic audio.

So you can add ads and stuff
like that to your audio, but that

stuff doesn't get sync to YouTube.

Yeah.

I think probably kind of impossible because
you can't replace a video on YouTube.

Yeah.

Uh, and we don't really mention that
right now in the YouTube integration.

We're not like, you know, your, your
audio is going to be in sync on YouTube.

It's just, whatever gets uploaded at
the time that the episodes published

is what's going to be on YouTube.

Yeah.

That's a really good point.

There's no way.

There's no way for a customer right now to
like delete it from YouTube within transistor.

And then re-upload it.

Which we've done for people manually, but
there's, you know, there's all sorts of

little things that have really, I mean,
the YouTube integration, we haven't really

touched in a couple of years probably.

And besides Jason and I working on fixing
a bunch of bugs with our scheduling system.

So we had, we had, uh, a few problems with
people with the Twitter integration being

like, oh, I pumped by publishing episode.

Yeah.

Uh, it didn't get automatically
posted to Twitter.

We're like, that's weird because
it looks like it should have.

Yeah, so we had, there was something
we did where we updated our scheduling

system and kind of broke it and we
had to figure out this whole timing.

Uh, and that's kind of
where the magic breaks down.

Right?

It's like, it's magic until it's not.

And then Jason and I have to like dig into
it and be like, why, what is happening?

Justin: Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon: And I honestly forget
what we, what the problem was.

Jason: I don't know that we ever, like,
it was some kind of weird timing issue.

Like I don't know that we ever
completely tracked down what the issue

Jon: was.

It was, I think we did figure
it out and it was really.

I don't, I don't remember.

Jason: Maybe I just expunged it from my brain.

Cause I didn't

Justin: want to know.

I mean, that's the other point is.

Uh, underneath every magical feature is a
developer that might be stressed out about it.

That it's all going to break

Jon: for.

The magic is actually someone who's manually
running a bunch of things every hour.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was not the case for us, but

Justin: it's like, people love that hot
water when they turn on the taps, but

the plumber knows what's really holding
everything together, down in the base.

Jon: Right.

There's some guy with a blowtorch
on a pipe, eating the water.

Justin: I'm somebody that gets up every
morning and hits the pipe without wrench.

Get to go.

And again, yeah.

Well, I mean, I think the other thought
I had when you were saying that John was

sometimes in product development, like you
can have ideas, like we've had this, this

loosely held philosophy called wait and see.

Right.

Like, should we do this?

Well, let's wait and see.

And sometimes that's a reaction to the market.

Like, let's just see what the market does.

Like does the market still
want this thing in six months?

You know, like six months ago or maybe
it was a year ago, everybody was super

excited about, uh, live audio rooms,
like clubhouse and Twitter spaces.

And, uh, you know, w we were kind
of like, well, let's wait and see.

You know, it turns out that that is not as
it's still around, but it's not as frothy

as it was, but the same can be true with
product development, meaning, wait and see.

And there's, we can already see
there's like all of these, um,

adjacent things that we're building up.

Like we're building up podcast website.

We're building, which may eventually
mean we generate automatic images for

the social image on podcast websites.

And then that's one piece of this.

And then as the product that kind of gets
the scaffolding and the product gets built

up sometimes when you wait, uh, maybe in
whatever six months we'll go, you know what?

The timing is kind of good
now for us to augment this.

Cha, uh, integration.

Jon: There's definitely.

Yeah, there's that, there's
definitely one piece that we've been

working on in the background that.

Having dynamically generated images for us.

We kind of need that, but
we haven't built it out yet.

So once we have that in place, we can
kind of use that technology for a couple

of different things, which would be nice.

Justin: Well, and even like, uh, transcripts
are now, uh, an, uh, an object in transistor

and maybe in the future, it'd be like, it's
actually not that hard to add, uh, transcripts

on the video, you know, when we render it
or, uh, so there's all this other stuff

that comes to get built up at the same time.

I think we should talk about a little
bit about podcasts website stuff.

Yeah.

You guys okay.

To change gears and anything
else, Jason or Helen that you felt

like we should be talking about?

Jason: I still think we should
have a bouncing transistor FM logo

in the background for the YouTube

Justin: videos.

Yeah.

Like the bouncing DVD logo.

Yep.

I agree.

I agree.

One of the things we talked about.

After John and I did our founder retreat
was this idea of how do we become the

most recommended podcast hosting option?

And I think like John, I mean you, that
website, the podcast websites we have, so.

That's one of the benefits, right?

And this is something you did when
you were building simple cast as well.

You, you start a simple cast
account and you get this beautiful,

uh, built-in podcast website.

So you don't have to host it
on WordPress and everything.

And we did the same with transistor,
but the initial one you built was like,

no, never really intended to be for.

Right.

No, it

Jon: wasn't.

It was, it was, it was built for
the cartoons, humanity podcasts

that they did the good news podcast.

And then we just sort of just stuck
with it and expanded on it a little bit.

And it really hasn't changed since 2020, I
mean it's or 2019, or no, 2017, late 2017.

Justin: Think about how many of
those websites have been built.

Yeah.

Like, including, like when you think about
in our industry, We don't have super high

churn, but you know, let's say it's whatever
3% churn that means there's like, it could

be 6, 7, 8 thousands, 8,000 versions of
that website have been built at some point.

It's crazy to think about.

And it

Jon: definitely, I mean, it it's showing its
age and people request things all the time,

but we just haven't added really anything.

.
Justin: Yeah.

And we have people like doing crazy hacks.

I mean, in some ways it was, it was cool
because you got to see how far people could

take that simple design you're dead, like,

Jon: right.

And then you can, you can post in custom CSS.

I mean, it's basically like a MySpace page.

Right.

You could kind of do whatever
you wanted to with CSMs.

Justin: Yeah.

Which was cool, but it was time to, to.

Build something else.

So, uh, maybe Jason, why don't you describe
how you and John started working on this?

So we said, okay, we want.

Build a new system, and this has always
been too big of a project for us.

So like, we're always like nervous about it.

Cause it's basically we're building a
CMS and then we have to figure out how

we're going to template it and all that.

So how did you and John start working on that?

I think we

Jason: both kind of been
thinking about it the same way.

Like there there's like a lot of
interrelated stuff that we want to build.

Um, John had thought about using liquid,
um, which is it's a templating engine

that Shopify uses, um, to let people sort
of build their own sites or purchased

sites off the shelf and roll them out.

But, um, like rather than
kind of revamp our existing.

Websites.

It made a lot of sense too, to build a
framework that we could build several

different websites or a bunch of
different websites on, and then people

can roll out these different themes.

Um, so that was sort of
the approach that we took.

Um, and we've been working,
we've been working on that.

Um, as we speak

Jon: technologically though, it's gone through
a couple of different thought processes.

Like I think we w we kind of.

Went back and forth on this a lot, Jason
and I about how to actually build this

thing and like serve up the websites.

And I don't know if you want to speak about
that, Jason, but your initial ideas for like

a standalone, a standalone app that runs
the website templates from like kind of.

Infrastructure.

Jason: Yeah, well, a couple
of different iterations.

Like the very first thing that, um, that
I was thinking about doing is, is just

rolling out sort of having an engine
that, that builds a static website

and that just like lives somewhere.

Um, I always sort of moved on from
there on to, um, a completely separate

application from chances for FM, um,

Justin: Why did you move on from that idea?

Yeah, that's a good

Jason: question.

Um, I think it was really just around, I think
the main problem was, um, SSL, right gen.

Um,

Jon: yeah, it was.

How do we do that and get everyone to
have their own custom domain with SSL

without having to like kind of rebuild
what we do or we would have had.

And mess with our DNS, I think a little too

Justin: much.

Yeah.

Got it.

Okay.

I mean,

Jason: there's certain, there's
certainly something compelling about it.

Um, like if you just have static
files that you're serving, you can,

you can serve them extremely quickly.

Um, but yeah, the nuts and bolts around
it, we're just going to be too complicated.

I think a

Jon: lot.

I think a lot of the discussion too was
like, how do we build this in a way that

when we roll it out, customers won't
notice they want us to do anything.

They want to have to change their DNS.

They want to fill out.

I think if we had gone a different
route, people would have had to

basically update their DNS settings in
transistor or in their, in their, you

know, wherever they buy their domains.

And it's just trying to avoid that pain
for customers, I think was kind of a big

Justin: deal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good point once you get that set up.

Okay.

So how did, so then how
did you go on from there?

You decide you're not going to go to the state.

Generate a route.

What, what did you do next?

There

Jason: was, there was still sort of this,
this idea of like the, that the websites

would like live on this separate thing.

Um, and I'm, uh, I'm a big fan of go
and sort of often looking for places.

Did you have it.

But it made a lot of sense because there,
there is a liquid engine implementation

and go that's really, really fast.

Um, just sort of on a whim.

I, I built out like a little like proof
of concept one day to, to try that out.

And it worked pretty well.

Um, but we wound up running into a bunch of
technical challenges as well, also, um, having.

Having a liquid engine and
go, and then our actual,

Justin: um, and you try to its initial
implementation and go, is, is that,

but is that the receiver application
you built or is that the next thing?

Jason: Um, yeah, so this is the receiver.

So this actually worked out really well because
we wound up using, um, this go tool as, uh,

like a development tool rather than the actual.

Um, website itself or the actual like web
server itself, um, which is, it's sort of

an easier, like it's a command line tool.

So it makes it a little difficult, um,
for a lot of people to use, but it it's

easier to implement for us then to build
some kind of like editing front end.

So you can create templates and
save them in different folders.

Um, like if you've ever played around with
Shopify, it gets, it gets really complex.

And to.

To build the UI around
that it would take forever.

Whereas this just lets you kind of just
build stuff locally on your computer

and you can immediately see what it
looks like and you don't have to there's

there's no like crazy UI around it.

Justin: Yeah.

You just connect it to your account API, Helen.

You got it set up.

Right?

Did you try

Helen: it?

Yeah, I've tried it.

Yeah.

Um, then, uh, kind of looking at the receiver
and looking at different liquid tucks and just

kind of, um, Getting a good understanding of
like the kind of structure of what it is that

we're building and how it's going to work.

Um, and I kind of appreciate that really
cause uh, taking like a kit, a bit of an

incremental approach to build a new features,
um, especially from the support side of

things, because, uh, it's kind of tempting
sometimes to kind of release a fully fledged

feature, um, both to your customers and
to your support team at the same time.

Um, and it's kind of nice to be.

Part of, um, that process of just having
that general base level of knowledge

enough to build upon as changes get
made or as, you know, new, new kind of

updates come out and things like that.

So, yeah, we've kind of got to make
sure that, um, I've got enough knowledge

to be able to troubleshoot that.

So the issues don't necessarily
take up John Jason's time

Justin: in the future.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think this is all the, also the
advantage of having a team that, where

everybody has some technical knowledge,
you know, For you to be able to set that

up for me to be able to set it up, right.

Like, and actually get it going and
go through all the, I went through

all the dumb questions with Jason.

Uh, but you know, having, and you've
worked with liquid in the past when you

were working with other companies, right?

Helen, like you've, you've seen
this templating language before.

I think convert kit uses it.

Yeah.

ConvertKit

Helen: uses it.

Um, I've used Shopify in the past, um,
and kind of having an understanding

of how their theme structure works.

Um, well, now it's kind of interesting to kind
of be part of that and just to be able to.

Hopefully share that with
our customers and future.

So we can kind of give them a better
understanding, educate them, right.

Health articles, and
documentation on that as well.

So yeah, kind of teaching me at the same

Justin: time.

Jason: I was just going to say that
that's a lot of the win with, um, cause

there's a lot of different routes.

We could have gone for creating templates,
but using, um, using liquid and doing things

in a similar way to how Shopify did them.

Sort of immediately makes this accessible to
however many hundreds of thousands of people

have, have like built themes on Shopify.

Jon: Um, yeah, we ended up rebuilding
our current or the classic 10th

that we call it, which was the
original template we launched with.

We rebuilt that.

Liquid and rolled that
out a couple of weeks ago.

And you know, the idea is if we did it
right, and nobody would notice, and I

don't think anybody noticed, did anyone

Justin: notice Helen?

No.

Don't think so.

Oh, there we go.

Again,

Jason: it almost didn't feel like it happened.

Like we, we, we sorta, we
did like all this work.

We were like rebuilt basically like
the engine and internals of a car.

And then months later, like flip the
switch and then heard nothing and

Jon: nothing.

Helen: It's kind of like maybe a couple of
questions about, um, different individual

elements within the website, but nobody
said, have you completely replaced my entire

Justin: website?

Yeah.

Jon: So then the idea, then the
idea is we'll, we'll keep slowly

building out additional templates.

Um, I have one I built it's already in use by
our website for build your SAS, but that's it.

And

Justin: then we'll have
to see if anyone notices.

Jon: Yeah.

W we have a couple people.

Or at least one person lined up to build a
new template and we'll just go from there

and, you know, add a handful of templates
that people can choose from and switch

between and customize in different ways.

And, uh, eventually I think the idea
is to potentially open it up for

people to create their own templates.

Uh, however, however they want to, and just
use our liquid system, but we'll see where

Justin: that ends up.

Yeah.

And then we, Jason, you
also added localization.

Uh, which is like different language
you can, it's actually pretty cool.

I didn't realize you're going to do it
this way, but you can just add like,

um, uh, um, what do you call, what
do you call an appendage to a URL?

Uh,

so why don't you explain how that works?

Cause it's really neat and
it's already live like it.

We already have a few

Jason: languages.

That's like one of the huge wins.

Well, there's, there's like a few things
that we get out of putting everything into.

These templates.

Um, so we have this like translation
filter that you can put on anything.

So you just kind of like name a thing.

So like the label has episodes and
then you've got that in French and

Spanish and German and whatever.

Other languages we have.

Um, yeah.

So you can just tack on a
query string appendage and

see what it looks like, but you would generally
just pick the, uh, the low California website.

So we went and looked and we
we've, we have thousands of.

English language podcast.

Um, but if you rolled out a website, it was
still going to be like the buttons and links

and stuff were all going be, um, in English.

So we're sort of going through those in
order of how many we have the most podcasts.

So, um, Justin, Justin just did French for

Justin: us.

Yeah.

I just did the French translation
it's live, which is so cool.

Like.

Helen, you must see this in support.

Like there's people ask
about that all the time.

There's a French podcast, but all
of our labels were in English.

Right.

Helen: And also the fact
that our support staff.

Helps to communicate in other
languages, but yeah, websites aren't.

So it's definitely been kind of a deal
breaker for some, um, customers in the past

that they, you know, they want to release a
website that they may use for their company.

That's primarily in the Netherlands.

And, you know, obviously it's, um, we
can only provide English only navigation.

So even if they put their own content and
the page, um, in whatever language they

choose the sort of navigation and the core.

The core keywords of that
page are still in English.

So yeah, I think it's, um, it's been something
that's on the list for a long time and it's

nice that we sort of slowly rolling out.

Jon: Yeah.

Well, we knocked that out pretty quick.

Jason, Jason built that really quick.

I don't even think we
weren't even really planning

Justin: on doing that again.

This is the advantage of
having other people here.

Yeah.

I, I also like how we do, we, we
do that weekly meeting where Helen

kind of leads us through all of the.

Things she's noticed in support because
I think it can, it can get easy to

just forget about how people our
customers are feeling and reacting.

Like it's, it's easy to have blinders of
like, you know, I make an English podcast.

And so why would anyone need
labels that are in other languages?

And just having someone on our team, that's
constantly bringing that stuff up to us

and going now listen, like people are.

Saying like it would be nice to have, uh, you
know, some, the labels in a different language.

Uh, and there's been a few times where
Helen's brought something up and then

you were, well, any of us, like any of
us can immediately make that change.

That's.

You know, causing the friction.

We see these

Helen: trends and patterns
emerge over time as well.

Like it's the same thing keeps
coming up week after week.

Um, kind of convinces us there's enough.

Um, the month to make that change, especially
if this kind of like a big amount of work

involved, um, we've kind of got to be convinced
that it's, um, with making that change.

Justin: Yeah, totally.

Um, what, yeah, what else do
we want to say about websites?

We're getting close.

Right.

Getting close.

You're you're building a
theme picker right now, John.

Jon: Yeah, we're getting close.

Uh, I would say the new
theme should be available.

I don't know, maybe next week, next week.

Justin: Nice.

How are we doing in terms of our yearly plan?

Outline?

Let's just say click here.

So we set our first.

What's going to be on podcast V1, and then the
cool-down was going to be February 14th, 2015.

Did you guys do a cool-down
February 14th to the 25th?

Jason: We forgot to cool down.

Justin: He didn't, he just kept grinding
and then cycle two was supposed to

be February 28th to April 8th, and we
thought we'd still be working on podcast

websites and maybe the embed player.

We definitely haven't gotten there yet.

Um, so we're, we're, we're pretty much on
we're, we're kind of where we thought we'd be.

Jon: Yeah.

I think we're doing pretty well.

I think, I mean, we should probably
get through all the websites.

So if we really wanted to do.

Justin: In these two cycles
of work, I think so we're

Jason: just talking about it yesterday and
like that theme picker and each theme can

be configured a little bit differently.

Like they'll have different colors or
some toggles or whatever, but once,

once that's out there with a new theme,
that's sort of, that's the whole thing.

Like that's new websites, new website themes.

Jon: Yeah.

There's another, uh, big part of this,
which we haven't really talked about.

It.

Dealing with like free accounts for people,

Justin: but oh yeah.

Yeah.

Let's save that for the next episode.

We do.

Cause I think, I mean, going back to like,
what's driving this, obviously we want to

make the experience better for customers.

We want to make the experience better for
us like supporting these old templates

that were never really meant to be.

Distributed at this scale.

And ultimately we want to have more people
using transistor and yeah, we want to bring in

Jon: new customers.

That was the, that was the
definitely the big driving force.

Yeah.

Justin: Yeah.

And so this is like, this is the, this
is what's going to draw people in,

you know, the website is one of the
things that people look at, like what

does the built-in website look like?

And I mean, I think sometimes it's hard.

It's hard to forget.

Being a user and a customer, but like when
you signed up for Tumblr and you started

posting stuff and there's automatically
a cool theme that you could choose and

it just made you feel cool and made your
content feel cool, it made you want to

share, you know, your tumbler site and,
um, or even like my space or whatever else.

Used, you know, it, it felt you wanted
to share it when you felt good about it.

And I think, um, this is
going to accomplish that.

We're going to get it.

And it's always been, frankly, like in customer
support, Helen, I don't know if he felt

the same way, but I was always a little bit
embarrassed about the website, like, ah, okay.

Like I can't people would ask me about it.

Let me just set it up for you because
they couldn't do it themselves

and make it look good, you know?

And it just feels so nice that we're going
to have something that we can now feel good

about that we can just recommend to people.

We know when they sign up, it's going to be
like, it's going to feel good out of the box.

Yeah.

Jon: And it's cool that we can just
kind of add in new templates as we want.

If we find a designer who's like, I'm really
excited about building a podcast website,

then we can hire them and, you know, have a
new template that probably looks quite a bit

different than from what we already have.

Yeah.

Justin: Well, especially three customers,
like if we have customers signing up and

they're like, you know, that's one thing
Helen you could watch out for is if there's

like, That is designing client and they
sign up and they're like asking questions.

That's the, you know, that's the time to
say, well, Hey, let's talk about maybe

you building something because, uh, having
people that are podcasters themselves,

they're putting a lot on the line.

Like when they share a transistor podcast
website, they're putting a lot on the line.

This represents them.

This represents the show that they are,
they're putting all this work into.

And so helping people feel good about
that is such a, I know it's a, it's

an awesome job to be done for us.

Like let's help a user feel good about
sharing their podcast website, feel proud.

Helen: I'm really looking
forward to seeing how.

Like take it and run with it as well,
because it's always been kind of impressive

to see what people have done with the
existing templates, um, with kind of

even a minimal amount of customization.

So, um, yeah, I think it's going to
be interesting to kind of see what.

Create with it really?

And it'd be good to keep an eye on

Justin: what people have built in.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

We're at about the 43 minute mark.

So I think we're going to wind things down
before we read out our patron on supporters.

Uh, if you have questions.

If you have questions for Jason and Helen,
if you want to, you know, you want to

know what's it really like working with a
couple of old pieces of coal, like John and

I, uh, tweet us get ahold of us somehow.

I'll put all of our Twitter handles in the,
in the show notes, except for John John's.

You can't reach John, but you can, you can
reach John at, uh, at build your south.

And Justin come on or, or email me.

You can, you can email us@showsattransistor.fm.

Uh, but yeah, tweet us message
us, get ahold of us somehow.

Uh, you can even go to our live chat
widget and, and chat with us there.

And just, if you, Hey, I was listening
to the show and I had this question.

I want you to talk about the next episode and
we'll re we'll, uh, Record those somewhere.

And then we'll, we'll have some material
for the next time we get the band together.

Jon: Yeah.

I'm really glad we finally got through this.

Yeah, we've talked about it before.

Um, this is fun and it's been, I don't know.

I really enjoy the team we built so far.

It's really fun working with everybody.

I think we're getting a lot of, a lot of
good work done with a very small team.

Yeah.

And I know, I know initially
Justin and I were both like, uh,

hesitant to hire anyone full-time.

Yeah.

But I think it's worked out really well and
I don't, you know, maybe there'll be someone

else who hire, I don't know when, but.

Uh, this seems like a pretty,
pretty good size for now.

Justin: Yeah, I agree.

So, John, why don't we read out
our good Patrion supporters?

Uh, yeah.

Do the shout outs.

Jon: Uh, thanks to everyone as I was for
supporting us in Patrion, we have Marcel filet

from, we are bold dot AAF, Alex Payne, bill
condo, Anton Zoran from prod camp.com Mitt.

Harris county from the intro to CRM podcast.

Olay Coolic Ethan Gunderson, Chris
Willow ward Sandler from member

space, Russell Brown from photo.com.

Noah.

Praill Colin gray, Austin Loveless, Michael,
sit for Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis from fathom.

Uh, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby fray, Brad
from Canada, Adam D Vander, Dave Giunta,

Jill and Kyle Fox from get reward for.com.

Justin: Thanks everyone for listening.

Tell your friends about the show.

Recommend an episode.