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 2018. I'm Jon Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson, and I'm standing in a 100 year old bank vault.
Jon:
Did you rob it? Did you how'd you get in?
Justin:
This this is how desperate I was to find a recording spot. I I robbed a bank and barricaded myself in here.
Jon:
That sounds good. Is it all all the money all the money is insulating the sound?
Justin:
That's right. Yeah. That's that's true. That's another good way to insulate that people don't think about. Real dollar bills.
Jon:
Not very economical.
Justin:
That's how we roll here.
Jon:
Yep.
Justin:
Yeah. Follow along as we build transistor.fm. That's why we're here. This bank vault is this is in my co working place, and, this was once the post office. And so Vernon is a very unusual Canadian town in that we most Canadian cities have nothing old, like, no old buildings.
Justin:
Like, if you have anything past, you know, the 19 100, well, there are no buildings past 1900. But in Vernon, we have my kid's school is built in 18/67. No. Not 18/67. Is that right?
Justin:
Or 18 96. I can't remember which one. But we have all these buildings that are, built in the late 1800. And I think this post office is, I'll have to double check. I know it's at least a 100 years old.
Justin:
So
Jon:
Yeah. There was a, there was a restaurant in Chicago that was actually built in an old bank, and you could eat in the bank vault.
Justin:
Oh, no way.
Jon:
But but it it's a really cool place, kinda like underground a little bit, but it they closed. So
Justin:
There is actually you're in Austin right now. Right?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And there is a really cool restaurant there that I ate at when I was speaking at a conference. They had a speaker's dinner. It's an underground, like, gangsters cave. I'll try to find photos. It is crazy.
Justin:
Like, it's
Jon:
Nice.
Justin:
It's unlike any place I've been in. It's all rock. It was, like, blasted out of the rock. I'll put a photo in the show notes as well, which you can find at sas.transistor.fm. Before we go too far, John, why don't we give Yeah.
Justin:
Some Patreon shout outs? I'll do the first one, and you do the rest. We have a brand new, Patreon named apologies if I don't get the pronunciation correct. Samori Augusto. And, quite generous, actually.
Justin:
Thank you for being a new sponsor. And I think we'll just this time, we'll mention his the app that he's building, the bicrowd.com. So thank you to Samori. Who else do we have?
Jon:
We have let's see. We have Mike Walker. We have Brad, from Canada. We have Darby Frey, from Chicago. Kevin Markham, Adam Duvander, and Dave Giunta.
Jon:
Giunta. Also from Chicago.
Justin:
Do you see do you see that little note I left there now?
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. He actually, sent me a note on Slack, and he was like, it's it's hilarious to hear Justin try to pronounce my name.
Justin:
I think it's it's you know, the best comedy are the recurring bits. And in some ways, I I don't wanna lose that bit. So and the nice thing for Dave is he gets so much airtime. Like, we talk about we talk about Junta, like, every single time. It it's a it's a little stop on our podcast train.
Jon:
Well, we'll give you the opportunity to say his name in a couple months and see if you can remember how.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, you practice enough things. So last week, John, we talked about this interview I did with Tyler Tringus of Ernest Capital. And then we played, in an abridged version for all the listeners. And now this week, I thought we would talk about it.
Justin:
Did you get a chance to listen to listen to
Jon:
it? I did. I did. Yeah. It was I really enjoyed it.
Jon:
It actually once I was finished listening to it, I think it sort of set in that that type of funding model is kind of exactly what I would be looking for if Mhmm. I know we we have we've talked about it before.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
It's like, here's what I would want, and it seems to be, like, what Ernest is going for. Obviously, they're not, you know, they haven't launched yet.
Justin:
But Yeah. Yeah. And Tyler said he actually messaged me and said he'd be happy to do a, like, a a follow-up interview. And, yeah, they're still building it. He was very clear to say he didn't expect this thing to blow up the way it did.
Justin:
But I think it's interesting for us to look at it, especially because there are a number of these now. We have tiny seed fund from Rob Walling. We have indy.bc. You know, there's there's all of these new funding vehicles coming online. They're interesting from a variety of perspectives.
Justin:
1, I think they're challenging this old archetype that bootstrapping is good and funding is bad, or depending on depending on which side of the war you're on. Right?
Jon:
Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, I I think Tyler touched on this a little bit in that, like, he doesn't see anything wrong with VC. It's just one other option, and maybe maybe you'll get there eventually depending on how you're funded
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Initially or not funded.
Gavin:
But Mhmm.
Jon:
Yeah.
Jon:
It's just sort of a new a new approach to a model that doesn't work for everyone.
Justin:
And in some ways, it's refreshing because the old kind of religion, which was, you know, maybe maybe spearheaded by DHH and Jason Fried of Basecamp, was, you know, you know, venture capital is evil. And why don't take it. It's not worth it. You sell your soul. You sell your company.
Justin:
It sets up all these unrealistic expectations. And, you know, they're they're they've been quite strong, they've been quite strong on that. Right? Like, it's it's Yeah. The the you can read the blog posts, and and and maybe for good reason.
Justin:
You know, the there's also a lot of blog posts that have come out lately, for example, from Buffer and Wistia who have said, you know, this is the downside to raising money, and they're buying out their investors now. I think Buffer what did Buff I'll put this in the show notes as well. Yeah. They they are going private, basically. Buying out their investors, going private, using debt financing for this, and, you know, there's definitely a and and they talk about the downsides.
Justin:
Right? As soon as you take venture capital, you are setting yourself up to go, you you have to grow. You have to grow not
Jon:
Yeah. You have to grow.
Justin:
Not just 2 x, but 50 x. Have you have you ever worked for a venture funded startup?
Jon:
I haven't. No. I've somehow avoided that. I don't know I don't know how.
Justin:
I've worked for, a startup that was venture funded. And, yeah. It's it is a lot of pressure because it's not enough to be profitable. It's not enough to be basically all you care about is growth because you wanna grow so big that you are Yeah. You know, attractive to be acquired or go public, I
Jon:
guess. Right. It's just such a I don't know. It's just such a bizarre model to me. I mean, you have so much pressure to grow and be big, and it the, like, profits don't matter.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
You're basically only trying to be sold or go public to raise money to then grow bigger. Yes, so then maybe maybe be profitable at some point or then be bought Yes. After you're public. It's just I don't know. It's so much different than just trying to build, like, a stable long term business.
Justin:
Yes. Totally. I I finally found this this, this blog post from Buffer. It really is worth reading. I'll put it in the show notes here.
Justin:
Yeah. I'll just call it Buffer buying out investors. But it is they're using half the cash they have in the bank, plus, I'm guessing, debt financing. So $3,300,000 to buy out their investors. It just sets you the point is it sets you on this train, and, you know, that's been the traditional kind of thinking.
Justin:
So then all of a sudden, NDVC comes out with this essay, makes a big splash on Hacker News. This is a couple years ago. And NDVC says, listen. We are changing the the tone here. We don't wanna invest in growth.
Justin:
We want to invest in companies that are going to be profitable. This is a this is looked at like a innovative technology, and it kinda blows people's minds. Some people are, you know, they're like, whatever. Other folks are really interested in it. And, they were kind of the first ones that I heard that were doing this.
Justin:
And then, yeah, more recently, we have Rob Walling announcing the tiny seed fund, and now most recently, Ernest. And this time, when these announcements come up comes out, the old guard of bootstrapping has changed its tone. So David Hana Meyer Hanssen in a tweet says, earnest capital is an interesting alternative to VC funding for entrepreneurs who can't bootstrap, but don't want time bomb funding either.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And so it it's almost, it's quelled a little bit of the ideology, this entrenched these entrenched ideas that, you know, you either bootstrap, and that's that is maybe more pure than taking funding, or you you know? Or
Jon:
Right. It's just one yeah. One one approach is right, one approach is wrong.
Justin:
Yeah. And to and Rob Walling also, you know, quite a quite famously, wrote a book called, what is it, start small, stay small. And he was an ardent bootstrapper, but then he was acquired his company, Drip, was acquired by, Leadpages. And, I I mean, there's probably other things too. He started investing in small little companies, and he he started espousing this idea of fund strapping.
Justin:
So it you you take this these principles that have developed around bootstrapping. So having very lean operations, trying to get to profit as quickly as you can, being profitable from day 1 if you can, focusing on, you know, on cash and revenue, focusing on building a sustainable business, all of these ideas, but then also saying, but let's give folks some runway. And I think Tyler, in that interview, put it really well. He said, you know, there's some people that, you know, are in their twenties and can move to Thailand and live on $25 a day. But, you know, in our case, we can't do that.
Justin:
I mean, we we drew I so some days I dream about it.
Jon:
Sounds great. Yeah. Right. But in the other hand, like, there's, you know, the fund strapping you're talking about. Like, you're still I don't know.
Jon:
It makes it sound like you're just gonna get this chunk of money with 0 strings attached. There's always some trade off.
Justin:
That's right.
Jon:
Yeah. And Ernest seems like, like I said, seems like the closest to what I would envision as, like, a good trade off. Mhmm.
Justin:
Yeah. And I think I mean, that's what I wanted to talk about with you today is
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
You know, could we foresee ourselves using something like that? And what would be the pros and the cons?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
So maybe yeah. Why don't we just start with you? Like, you've you've talked a little bit. You said, okay. This is probably the closest thing.
Justin:
But what are some of the cons? Like, what would you think are some of the disadvantages to, you you know, you and I taking that kind of money? Right.
Jon:
I mean, it seems like the only only big disadvantages, like, I mean, we obviously wouldn't take it immediately if we didn't think we needed it. But, like so you, you know, they Ernest thinks you're a good fit. We go with something like that. Mhmm. We get the money.
Jon:
We would both have to, like, do this full time, obviously. Would we, later on, feel like we we shouldn't have taken it? Do do maybe we didn't need the money to get to where we got to. Mhmm. And then you're sort of stuck in this you gotta pay it back to a certain return rate.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Right? Which might take I mean, for a business our size, that might take, like, a decade of of just, like, slowly paying back this loan, essentially. Mhmm. I mean, it's a it's a that's a if you think about it as a loan, that's a really high interest loan.
Justin:
Yeah. Well, actually, is it? That's that's when
Jon:
Sort of. Well
Justin:
So, I mean, let's say, commercial money. The problem is we can't get commercial money. So the interest rate we'd be paying is probably what is the Stripes? Actually, Stripe has an interesting one. Let me this was just on Indie Hackers.
Justin:
Let me let me go in and and look at that. But there's yeah. Someone had just said they they got one of these Stripe loans, and, yeah, Stripe gave us a $20,000 advance. The terms are $20,000 advance, 10% fee or $2,000, and Stripe takes 5% of your daily revenue until the loan is paid back with the fee. He's this for this fellow, Travis r, is saying, who I think I know.
Justin:
He's saying, you know, comparable bank loans for $20,000 unsecured line would have been anywhere from 7% to 29%. He's saying this seems like a good fit for us. They took it even though they don't really need it. They just want to, you know, they just wanted to have the cash. This person here you know, in the comments, folks are saying, why'd you take the money?
Justin:
You know, that's, like, that's quite high. Now the other thing is we're talking about scale too. Right? You might be able to get a bank loan or
Jon:
a lot
Justin:
of credit for 10 or $20,000. But if we're talking about $200,000, what is that compounded over Let's put the amortization as 5 years, and we would pay it monthly. Let's let's see what this says. That would be a $4,249 monthly payment. So that's 60 months.
Justin:
4249. So we would pay roughly $55,000 interest on that.
Jon:
Which is significantly less.
Justin:
Which is significantly less. Yeah. So we've done the math now. Although, all of this changes, of course, if we do if we go to 10 years, over 10 Right.
Jon:
Right. Right.
Justin:
10 years, it would let's see. What would that be? 10 years over 10 years, it would be 317,000. So you're paying a $117,000 in interest. Right.
Jon:
I mean, so, yeah, it it's different. But then on the other hand, like, if you don't pay your bank loan back, you're screwed.
Justin:
You lose your house.
Jon:
And and I think with this, you know, it sounds like they would take the loss. Obviously, they're gonna wanna invest in companies that they feel confident in Mhmm. Reaching profitability like that. But, like, if you don't, you know, I think it's just a risk for them. Right?
Jon:
It's not they're not gonna, like, sue you or, like, you're not gonna have to go into bankruptcy.
Justin:
Yeah. And and by the way, I don't know if we've mentioned this actually, but the so the the terms that Ernest has right now are, so you take, let's say you we took a 100,000. We would they would want back a 3 to 5 x return. So anywhere between 300,500,000. And the way that they get that return is interesting.
Justin:
They don't take any company stock. They don't take any equity
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Which is quite, interesting, because traditional investors, they want they want a big portion of your company. They wanna see it on the board. Ernest just wants a portion of founder earnings up to, you know, 3 to 5 x. Mhmm. And, the the folks I've talked to have said, you know, Ernest is interesting, because that's quite a lot of risk on their side.
Justin:
Yeah. Here's one comment I got by email. I'll be interested to see if these new small profitable business investing models work. It always seems to me that investing in tech startups was so risky, they had to get at least a 10 x return out of 10% of their investments just to break even. I listened to the abridged version of your podcast with Tyler Tringus.
Justin:
But upon reflection, I'm not sure I understand how they're attempting to reduce their own risk, allowing them to succeed with only, 4 to 5 x return.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, they must have to be really diligent in the kinds of companies they invest in, I guess.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
But I I would assume other venture capital firms are as well.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean
Jon:
So it's tough.
Justin:
Yeah. I think it it's a new it's a new theory. The new theory is they will lose less. So when you're you know, it's kinda like Babe Ruth. You know, when Babe Ruth was swinging, he was always swinging for the fences.
Justin:
And I think his batting average wasn't that good. Now I'm all the baseball field. He swung for the fences, and, you know, that's what venture capitalists want.
Jon:
Right. So those are the kinds you are paying back. It's a decent chunk of money. Like, if you think about it, it's it's being taken out of your being taken out of the founder's salaries or the the, Dividends. Dividends or distributions
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Over time, you know, that adds up. Yep. $400,000 in lost, you know, income is a lot. Yep. But but at the end of that, you're obviously in a place where, assuming you pay all that back, you're obviously running a successful company at that point.
Jon:
Yeah. And then once it's paid off, you are in a great spot. Yep. I think I think in the case of Ernest, it seems like the pros kind of outweigh the the cons quite a bit. Yeah.
Jon:
It's it seems like a very a very hands off approach, and I think this goes back to what I was talking about when I, you know, had had this idea for a type of investment that would be I would be comfortable with, which is, like, you know, you have someone investing money in you, and they they have obviously vetted you, and they trust they trust you to to kind of continue on as you are. Mhmm. They they have a feeling that you can be a successful company, and they just it's very hands off. They don't, you know, they don't they're not making decisions for you or telling you which way to go. Mhmm.
Jon:
They don't put someone on the board. You know, they might have, like, a community for you to talk with other founders, but they're not pushing you in one direction or the other.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it is interesting. It's something I wanna keep chewing on. The challenge with all of this stuff, and I think I mentioned this in the interview is what's what's difficult about the dogma on both sides is that it's very difficult to take one business who are at a crossroads like we are and say that one move was better than the other because we can't AB test reality.
Justin:
We can't say, okay, let's take earnest money. And let's try out that path. And if that doesn't work, we'll get in our time machine, we'll come back to this point. And then we'll we'll take, you know, $2,000,000 in venture capital. And if that doesn't work, we'll come back to this point, and then we'll just bootstrap it the way we're going to before.
Justin:
We can't do that. And, you know, all of the the survivor bias in all of the publicly available examples doesn't really help us, because, you know, I don't know. We could say, okay, ConvertKit. It's wildly successful. But maybe it would be even better if they had taken money.
Justin:
Or, you know, someone who failed, maybe they wouldn't have failed if they had, you know, chosen a different path. Yeah. And so it's so difficult because the the number one risk with all of this stuff is burning out.
Jon:
Right. Can you, yeah, can you stay in it long enough?
Justin:
Can you stay in it long enough? Can you grow at the right time? You know, I I think I told this story before, but I was in the the ESP industry, the email service provider industry quite early. And I remember at the time, you know, we were looking at Mailchimp, and we were looking at, Yeah. Mailchimp primarily.
Justin:
And just thinking, man, they are so behind. Like, they they they we didn't even consider them, you know, I mean, they were competitor, but we just thought they're they're, you know, not as formidable as campaign monitor at the time.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And Uh-huh. It's just amazing how things change. You know? At the time, we had campaign monitor, which was bootstrapped. We had Constant Contact, which had taken money and gone public.
Justin:
And we had Mailchimp, which was bootstrapped. And we were just thinking, you know, the the playing field was still wide open.
Jon:
Yeah. And and today, when you think of that industry, who do you think of first?
Justin:
Yeah. It's it's Mailchimp. Mailchimp. So Yeah. Obviously, it wasn't just one decision that led them there.
Justin:
I think that's important. You know, there's often people think it's just, you know, one decision that's gonna make or break the company. It it's this is this decision isn't the one thing that's gonna make or break us. There's other things too. But you also think, you know, there were some certain things Mailchimp did that really helped them leap forward.
Justin:
And, you know, maybe in retrospect, some of those competitors would have been like, maybe we should have done that. It's tricky. Right? Because we wanna make the right decision. We wanna be able to go to the distance.
Justin:
But, you know, what how do we make that decision?
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
I think one another interesting point, I've put this in the show notes as well. Indie VC just tweeted this. And, John, I sent this to you as well. He says, interesting tidbit from our LP meeting prep. So So this is NDBC.
Justin:
They're getting ready to say
Jon:
What is what is LP? What does that mean?
Justin:
Limited partner. I so I think that means, these are the the folks that have invested in the fund. I think that's what it means. Feel free to correct me, everybody. Anyway, interesting tidbit from our LP meeting prep.
Justin:
Medium sorry, median rev growth per company post investment. So after in the VC invests, how how much does revenue growth increase? Median revenue growth was a 196%. So you take the baseline of all their investments, and you compare revenue growth pre investment and post investment, the median rate of growth is a 196%. The average revenue of grow average revenue growth was 723%.
Justin:
So there's clearly some big some folks, this this money was all they needed to unlock Yeah. A bunch of growth. And, you know, growth
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, I
Justin:
Growth isn't everything, but that's Right. That's certainly, you know, something. Right.
Jon:
I mean, there's no. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that if we went the investment route and we are doing this full time, that our revenue would grow significantly.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Like, I I I know that'll happen. It's just is it enough? It's like it's it's tough to decide.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. Where where are you where are you at with
Jon:
the how do you how do you feel about it?
Justin:
This is what makes it interesting when you have cofounders is that, you know, we've talked we talked quite a bit. And on your side, you've you're thinking about things like health insurance. You're thinking about
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
You've got a great job. You've got, you know there's there's all these things on your side. On my side, I'm thinking, okay. Well, I've got this little business that I'm running aside from Transistor. And, you know, if I can make that pay the bills, I could probably keep going.
Justin:
But I've also seen both of us frustrated by just like, if we could just invest more, this thing would really you know, I I agree with you. Like, I feel like we could kick ass. Like, there's Yeah. If if we're able to invest our whole selves in this, we could really unlock some some great stuff. Yeah.
Justin:
So I think part of me is, like, oh, that would be wonderful to be able to do that. But even then, it's so I I say, I'm sure we would unlock that growth. But you you never really know. Like, it might just keep growing the same way it's always grown. Even if we're working harder, I I I'm Right.
Justin:
I imagine that it would increase. Even, like, in terms of mind space. You know, I think that's one thing we've challenged we've been challenged with is Right. It's it's really yeah. Our brains are just full of shit.
Justin:
Like, they really they really are. Like Right.
Jon:
That's I think that would be that would be the biggest win. I mean, it's just the focus, and it's really hard to to it's really hard to get momentum. Mhmm. Yeah. I think it's the big it's the biggest problem when you're not doing it full time.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
You know, it's like, yeah, you can maybe knock out some support requests here and there and and, like, fix really small things, but, you know, these ongoing larger features that I I personally keep saying are almost done and are gonna be done soon Yeah. Are still are still not done because it's like it basically requires, like, an entire day
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
To focus on it at least, like, 8 hours of focus time, which is really only possible on the weekends.
Justin:
Yeah. And even having the mind space to make decisions like, how can we improve our pricing? How can we improve our user experience? How can we improve our onboarding? And you have these things that you notice as a product person.
Justin:
So, like, one thing I've noticed is our help system is still not very discoverable inside of the app. And it's frustrating because, you know, people will contact us, and I have to go and find these articles and and and show them to them. But if if there's a way of exposing these things, the the the all these articles we've written already, people's experience would be way better. But just to tackle that problem, to think about it and go, okay. How can we best deliver this one thing?
Justin:
It requires mindshare. It requires focus. It it it requires time to think. My friend, Tan, says that the the role of a founder is mostly thinking. Like, that's most of your job, especially once you have people working for you.
Justin:
Most of your job is just thinking. And Steve Jobs famously took a lot of walks where he was just thinking. And I can see that because so much of this is just put, you know, get myself in a space where I can really think about something and really go deep.
Jon:
Yeah. I think that's that's ultimately what that freedom would afford. The freedom right. The money the money would afford the freedom to really give it the the time to the thinking time that it requires.
Justin:
Yeah. The challenge for companies, no matter what stage you're at, is eventually you need to make decisions and move on. And so what's great about being, opinionated, like the folks at Basecamp were, is it just helps you set your course. It helps you say, you know, what are we about? We're about not taking investment.
Justin:
Okay. Let's go. You know? And then they just worked for 2 to 3 years, on base camp on the side. David Hanamura Hansen, actually, he tweeted out so I wrote this article about startup costs that got a quite a bit of traction, and he tweeted it.
Justin:
He he shared it. And then people responding saying, you know, what did you mean by that or whatever? And, the one thing he's they asked him is, you know, how much were you paying yourselves in those early days? Let me see if I can find this. And he said, 40 to $50,000 a person.
Justin:
So, you know, even that is interesting. Right? Like,
Jon:
that way so what
Justin:
do you say? He said, reducing costs means reducing risk and adding options. Growing business is a maybe. Lowering costs is a definite. We didn't go full time with Basecamp before it could comfortably pay the meager salaries meager 2,005 salaries of 4 people.
Justin:
Could we have gambled? Sure. But I don't gamble. He's he's he's he's so strong. But, you know, he's saying, well, back in 2005, we didn't go full time with Basecamp until it could pay 40 to $50,000 per head.
Justin:
Well, one of the challenges we have, you know, this was young DHH, no kids. You know, young Jason Fried, no kids.
Jon:
Not Yep. Yeah. It's a much different situation.
Justin:
And for us, it's like, well, we'd have to it it would have to be a 100 k per head for us.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Just just to even put us in the ballpark. And so we're already kinda doubling that, just different stage of life, etcetera.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, different stage of life, different time, different decade, different time. You know, there's a lot of a lot of things that are different
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Now than I think when
Jon:
they were worried about that. Yeah. Certainly, the cost of living is a little bit higher, especially in cities.
Justin:
Yeah. And and just stage of life is different. Oh, the only other thing I wanted to mention actually, I can I can just blast through these? So what kinds of companies does Earnest want to invest in? These are some notes from the interview.
Justin:
Organic customer acquisition channels. I think we definitely have that, by the way. So if anything, this is a nice scorecard for us. So we get tons of sign ups from word-of-mouth, from search. I had someone the other day that said, yeah.
Justin:
I was just searching this term, found your site and signed up. Low levels of structural churn, so ready to stay customers for a long period of time. There's tons of evidence that, people who pay for podcast hosting stick around for a long time. I was at a party, and, a fellow said, you know, I he had a hockey podcast, and he hadn't updated in a while, but he was still paying Libsyn every month for the podcast. Right?
Justin:
So these people, they they create these shows, but they want them to live on. They don't want them to cease to exist. Right? Founders a good fit is the other check mark he wants. Product is launched and has revenue.
Justin:
That's also us. And it has to be a space that Tyler Tringus feels comfortable with. He's as the general partner, he wants to have some sort of interest or understanding of the market. Mhmm. And he's talked a lot about podcasting.
Justin:
And, he's even given us kind of private feedback on our user experience and marketing. So we met we meet a lot of the the requirements.
Jon:
And Right. I mean, yeah. I mean, you haven't really talked to him necessarily directly about us. Yeah. Right?
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Yeah. No. I haven't talked to him.
Jon:
It's also not he also hasn't really opened this for business yet.
Justin:
So Yeah. I also got to ask him about republic.co, which is something I've been interested in. Republic.co is a crowd equity funding option. And, Radio Public, who's in our space, just raised, I think, 2 or 300,000 doing this.
Jon:
K.
Justin:
And I just didn't understand, like, what are the pros and cons. Tyler has a pretty good pretty good understanding of it, and he said, it's a great option if you have an audience of fans that wanna support your work. But in terms of the people who invest, their crowd equity doesn't have monetary value unless you raise a big round or go public. So my understanding is that folks who invest in these things, they either are fans or they want the perks that you're offering as a part of the,
Jon:
for
Justin:
a better word, Kickstarter. Right?
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
So that that was interesting to me because I I didn't quite understand the equity portion. But he says, basically, it's like, you're getting a promissory note or something that if this company ever raises money in the future or goes public, then that crowd equity converts to something that's actually valuable. But, yeah, I think we'll leave it there. Folks, if you have kind of feedback or ideas or if you can see into the future, if you have this time machine, please let us know.
Jon:
You might be have some other benefits. You already have a time machine.
Justin:
Yeah. No. I want you to only use your time machine to go in the future and look at our future. Maybe we don't want that. Maybe this is actually the best part right here.
Justin:
It's just 2 guys hustling on the side and talking every week, and recording a podcast. This might be like we will look back on this and go
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Wow. Those were the days. Remember that? Remember when we were just Justin was just recording in his closet? You know?
Justin:
Yep. Those were the best days.
Jon:
We might. We might look back look back wistfully on those days. It's true. Say, well, we weren't making any money, but we had fun talking.
Justin:
Yeah. But those were the days. Okay. So we gotta wrap up. What, Yeah.
Justin:
So we're still working on SSL.
Jon:
Yeah. Still working on Spotify Analytics.
Justin:
Those are both coming.
Jon:
Yeah. Nothing nothing really big. I mean, I I rolled out a small update for iPhone X and XS. Oh. In the web browser, if you look at your, transistor host websites, there's a little bit of CSS that Apple kinda provides these weird little hacky CSS override that sort of add padding for the notch.
Jon:
So it'll, like it'll in in lands in in landscape mode, it'll still look good and be, like, full screen and bleed to the edges, but not not like your your content won't be cut off. So, anyway, we had a customer, one of the cohosts of Supercomputer, who sort of suggested it. And, honestly, I didn't even know that CSS existed. So
Justin:
Nice.
Jon:
Your site your sites will look better in landscape mode.
Justin:
Cool.
Jon:
That's the only that's the only real thing we've rolled out. You know, just a few, updates to YouTube here and there that's still sort of not that feature still feels somewhat beta to me. Like, it it it's better, but it for some reason, some of these videos, like, they stall out when we encode it, and they just sit there for hours. Mhmm. And I don't quite know why.
Justin:
Yep. Well, we'll keep working on it.
Jon:
Yep.
Justin:
That's that's the I mean, the not every week can be a a nice big feature release anyway even when you've got tons of people working for you. So
Jon:
Right. I mean, it feels good, you know, it feels good to knock out the small things, but it also but also feels like sometimes you get behind on the bigger the bigger pieces. But
Justin:
Yeah. Can you wanna tell folks quickly about Apple Pay?
Jon:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Stripe has pretty good support for Apple Pay. So when you when you sign up or or even change your payment method within Transistor, you'll eventually have the option to just use Apple Pay, and it'll autofill everything.
Justin:
Sweet.
Jon:
And then that'll be your payment your subscription payment is Apple Pay.
Justin:
Nice.
Jon:
It basically ties to it, you know, ties to your credit card, but but it it makes it makes signing up pretty pretty simple. Basically, like, one, you know, one touch.
Justin:
Yeah. So in the future, we'll be able to tell folks, hey. If you're listening right now, just go to transistor dotfm on your phone. Sign up right now.
Jon:
Or your or your or your MacBook Pro if you have the the thumb reader.
Justin:
Yeah. All you need is your thumb, and you could be podcasting right away. Yeah.
Jon:
That's it.
Justin:
Alright, folks. I I gotta go. My battery's down to 5%, and I don't wanna lose this recording. So Yeah. We will see you next Tuesday.
Justin:
As always, reach out on at transistorfm on Twitter or at John Buddha, at m I. Justin, the letter m, the letter I, Justin. And we will see you next week.
