Jon: 00:10

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020, And I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.

Justin: 00:18

And I'm Justin Jackson, and I've got allergies. Uh-oh. Follow along as we build transistor dotfm.

Jon: 00:29

Oh, it's better that you have that than the alternative.

Justin: 00:31

Oh, yeah. It's true. That's true. Yeah. I'll take allergies I'll take allergies any day.

Justin: 00:37

Better than the alternative. You You know, one thing I wanna talk about today is actually that intro. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020.

Jon: 00:48

Yeah. We've been saying We've talked we've we've talked about this before, I think.

Justin: 00:51

Oh, yeah. We Or

Jon: 00:52

or what or what would happen Mhmm. At some point.

Justin: 00:56

We've we've touched we've touched base on this topic a while. I'll I'll briefly tell you where I'm at right now, and then you can say where you're at. So the underlying question is, what do we do with this podcast? How long do we keep doing it? And Right.

Justin: 01:12

What should the the the focus of it be? And, personally, I think we should keep doing it. I think it's good for us to have a show. It's very difficult to build an audience for a show. And so the idea of doing something else, I think, and starting again, which would be fine.

Justin: 01:32

I think, you know, that's makes sense for some folks. We could do that. But I like the people who listen every week, And we continue to get a good response to almost every episode we publish. And so I feel like we should keep doing it. Where where are you at these days with that?

Jon: 01:53

Yeah. I I I think we should keep doing it.

Justin: 01:57

I I

Jon: 01:57

think it's obviously been good for us just as a as a time set aside to just talk. Mhmm. I don't know if I mean, like, I've I've obviously missed a few episodes. Right? And you've filled in with some interviews and stuff, which have been great, but, like, I don't necessarily feel like I need to do it every week.

Justin: 02:14

Mhmm.

Jon: 02:16

Mostly because well, I mean, partially because there's just not as much for me to talk about that's different every week. And also just the current situation is, like, every week feels the same anyway.

Justin: 02:32

Yeah. But but yeah.

Jon: 02:33

I mean, there's definitely some value in it. I think the listeners, you know, hopefully, still get some value out of it. And it feels like we're at a point where we're not really maybe this is what you wanted to talk about. I don't know. But it's it's harder and harder to know what to talk about.

Justin: 02:50

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. This is exactly that's a perfect kind of foundation for the way I'm thinking about.

Justin: 03:00

And, again, in past episodes, we've thrown around this, you know, like, what do we do with this show? And the reason and this is the same, you know, challenge that Gimlets startup ran into. And to tell you the truth, every other podcast, like Art of Product, Bootstrap Web, Getting to Ramen, Slow and Steady, Product Journey, Bootstrapping SaaS. For every one of those shows where some founders are sharing their journey, the building phase is the most engaging. Yeah.

Justin: 03:35

Because that there's something new to talk about all the time. You don't there's some a natural narrative arc there where nobody knows what's going to happen next. And for all of our listeners that, you know, were with us through that time, I mean, if you haven't listened if you're new and you haven't listened to the first couple years of this show, definitely go back because it's a great it is a good story of a Canadian and an American meet at a conference. And 4 years later, you know, in interesting circumstances, circumstances decide to start working together, and they have no idea if it's gonna work out. And every week is a cliffhanger because you just don't know what's gonna happen next.

Jon: 04:26

Right.

Justin: 04:27

And, eventually, these shows enter a maturity phase where there there is not going to be as much drama to talk about because, you know, like, for example, Ben Orenstein with 2 pole. His updates these days are about, you know, we're we're hiring some people, and we're meeting with some lawyers and meeting within an accountant. And it's it's a I like it because I feel like it's it's almost like catching up with a friend at MicroConf. Like, hey. What's going on?

Justin: 05:00

And just talking through the the the real life stuff that's going on. And sometimes in the midst of those conversations and updates, you you kind of trip over something you didn't know. And so you have to kind of wait and maybe, yeah, you have to wait for those helpful nuggets. You have to wait longer. But when they come, it's like, oh, wow.

Justin: 05:24

That I just never thought of that. All of all of us all of us that have started these kinds of shows kinda get here.

Jon: 05:31

With the intro line, I think, you know, we've been talking about, you know, the scene behind the scenes story building web app in 2020, but, like, it's really that we built the web app.

Justin: 05:40

Yeah.

Jon: 05:44

And, you know, that line could be replaced with anything.

Justin: 05:47

Yeah. I'm in some ways, I almost wonder if we should replace the line with, you know, hi. Welcome to build your SaaS. In 2018, we set out to build transistor.fm. We you know, now we're now we were we quit our full time jobs and we're working on it full time or something like that.

Justin: 06:06

I think we've seen that there are listeners and a lot of them are our Patreon supporters that are just really excited to stay on for the ride. Like, I personally was disappointed when Gimlet started doing the startup podcast and giving updates on Gimlet. It doesn't make for as good of radio. But, man, when you if you're on that journey with them, and you're just interested in the evolution of a company, I, you know, I wanna hear every week. Okay.

Justin: 06:38

So what's what's Bloomberg thinking about this week? What even if it's not terribly dramatic, I still like that. I I like kind of being in that relationship with, you know, with the host. And there are lots of shows like this, like Roderick on the Line, to a certain extent, you know, Back to Work or accidental tech podcast. Sometimes you're just tuning into those shows because it it's like meeting up with an old friend.

Jon: 07:11

Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, that might

Helen: 07:13

be what a lot of our our,

Jon: 07:16

listeners, our audience are are kind of tuning in for these days.

Justin: 07:19

Mhmm.

Jon: 07:20

Yeah. It you know, week to week, it feels like we run into less problems

Justin: 07:26

Mhmm.

Jon: 07:27

That come up. And, again, everything is obviously overshadowed by just, like,

Helen: 07:31

whatever is going on right now in the world.

Jon: 07:33

Yeah. And just sort of taking things day by day anyway. But, I yeah. I'd be and I and I'd also be kind of curious to hear your thoughts on if if it you think it's our personal situations are different because, lately, I've been more working on one big change, which is our, like, redesign of our dashboard Mhmm. For for a while like, weeks weeks.

Justin: 07:58

Yeah.

Jon: 07:59

And so for me, week to week, things are not that different. Yeah. Whereas you're sort of more on the, you know, the marketing side of things and and talking to customers and doing customer calls, and you're maybe you have more of a a pulse on the industry and where it's going or how things are changing or what people want.

Justin: 08:19

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I think that's true.

Justin: 08:23

Yeah. And and, also, I think, you know, I've always been I've invested a lot in the bootstrapping community. And and so sometimes my inspiration for these shows comes from, you know, listening to the Product Journey podcast because they're near the beginning of their journey. And it'll remind me of something that didn't happen too long ago. It it happened a year ago.

Justin: 08:47

But and I feel like I have something to add to that conversation because I've been through it. I've seen what they're seeing, but I'm now 6 months or 12 months ahead. And, you know, that gives me the inspiration. Oh, we should talk about that today. Right after this, let's talk about, you know, what SaaS people might wanna think about starting right now.

Justin: 09:08

What approach I would be taking or we would be taking. And so, yeah, I think, part of this part of that is also yeah. Just I'm I'm pretty tuned in to to where people are at. And I'm at the same time, I'm interested in these more mature companies, you know, like the Rubin Gamas Gamas founders of the world, who are you know, they're further ahead. They're more established.

Justin: 09:34

And to think to know how they're thinking right now is interesting as well.

Jon: 09:39

Do you have, opinions or thoughts on adding more interviews into the show with with founders who are, you know, sort of maybe in a place we used to be in? Or

Justin: 09:50

Yeah. I think we I think it would be good to do both to to have folks that are just starting out because that, again, that it just does make good radio. Because it's the it is the most interesting part of the journey is we're starting out. We we have no idea how this is gonna end up. And there are so many obstacles in our way.

Justin: 10:12

It it it's exciting to hear it. Right. But I think we also want it to to have on the other side some stories of people who've gone through it. Some people who have failed, and also some people who have succeeded. And the the benefit, I think, is everybody's journey is different.

Justin: 10:33

But there are going to be some similar touchstones, some some similar kind of things that we all will encounter. You know, one of those things that we've talked a lot on this show about, but I think it's hard to understand. And so we just have to keep repeating it is the the market you choose to enter really does determine a lot of your success. And until you start to feel that until you start to feel the pull of a market, it's hard to kinda understand that.

Jon: 11:08

Yeah. Yeah. And that that whole market situation is just being turned on its head right now. So, you know, I mean

Justin: 11:15

But in the midst of this, I won't share too much because some of this is just between her and I. But Marie Poulin is doing really well right now with her with her Notion courses and her that this whole focus of Notion. She she was working on client projects before this and a software platform for course creators. And then she stumbled into this this idea of helping people get set up on Notion.

Jon: 11:47

Yeah. Notion has just taken off. I I mean, I haven't really used it, but I know I just hear a lot of people talking about it. So she probably just capitalized on the fact that

Justin: 11:55

Mhmm.

Jon: 11:56

It's a it's a very popular tool right now, and probably a lot of people don't know how to use it or don't know how to use it well.

Justin: 12:01

Exactly. And but it's worth it's worth celebrating those kinds of realizations because for for Marie, this has been a a big deal for her life. You know? Right. And, I love that in our her interview, she shared, you know, her and Ben, her her husband were working full time on their software product, but then Ben decided to take a job.

Justin: 12:27

And the job has been huge for them. You know? It's provided a stable source of income. He really likes the work. And then Marie found this other thing and is also doing incredible.

Justin: 12:41

Showing folks that there are all sorts of paths forward. One of the things I tweet I've been tweeting about lately is just going back to first principles, which is like, what are we doing this for? Are are we are we doing this just so we can be in business, or are we doing this so that we could have a good life?

Jon: 13:02

Yeah. Hopefully, it's the latter.

Justin: 13:03

Yeah. But

Jon: 13:04

what is that? What but, again, what does that mean these days? It's like it's just yeah.

Justin: 13:11

Well, I mean, for for Marie right now, it means that in the middle of a crisis, she's she's found something that is resilient and that, you know, is helping to pay her bills. And I think that's that's worth celebrating. Again, I know that there's that there's some sensitivity, and you and I have talked about this. There's some sensitivity around folks who are doing well, not wanting to talk about it

Jon: 13:42

Mhmm.

Justin: 13:43

Because there are a lot of people suffering.

Jon: 13:45

Yeah. I have I have concerns about that. I mean, it's I think it is great to celebrate those people doing well, but it's also I think you have to be a little bit tactful. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 13:56

You have to be a little bit tactful. Considerate. Considerate not coming across as, like, everyone can do this or everyone should do this. Mhmm. Because there's, you know, there's a lot of people who lost their jobs, but there are jobs that they loved, and it's not like they want to change.

Justin: 14:15

Mhmm.

Jon: 14:16

Or or they or they're in an industry that just doesn't wouldn't work to transition to something like a software platform that you sell. I mean, not everyone can not everybody is gonna be able to do that. Yes. Right? Yep.

Jon: 14:31

So I think we still have to, like this isn't some magic cure for everyone. Mhmm. We still have to support these other, you know, small businesses and Yeah. Hope they stick around and

Justin: 14:43

Yeah. Which is why which brings me to a second thing I wanted to talk about

Helen: 14:49

Mhmm.

Justin: 14:49

Which is we've had some folks, not a lot. In fact, most people are have been supportive of this. But there are some folks that have pushed back on us and especially me, because on my blog and Twitter, I get into this quite a bit, about talking about things other than business. You know, the kind of like, stay in your lane, Justin. Don't talk about philosophy, mental health, economics, politics, ecology.

Justin: 15:19

And, I first of all, I, you know, are the people listening to this show are not one dimensional. We all live in social, economic, and political contexts. We have feelings. We have families. We have histories.

Justin: 15:38

We're not doing this for one dimensional reasons. I I imagine most folks listening to the show, their their ultimate aspiration in life is not to build business, make most money, and then die. Like, that that's that that's not the that they want more out of their life. And so we're already three-dimensional. And to ignore that, to ignore that each of us lives in a context Yeah.

Justin: 16:08

Is, I think, first of all, it's just not even practical.

Jon: 16:13

It's yeah. It's not like we could record this show or you could write something that isn't affected or influenced by what is happening with, you know, COVID 19 or anything. It's just not possible. You you couldn't you can't ignore it. It'd be impossible to write.

Jon: 16:29

You would have nothing to write about.

Justin: 16:30

Well and it would also just be boring. And but even then, the advice would be bad. Because and I I see this kind of thinking a lot, especially with, like, Silicon Valley bros. Is there always, like, the economy will solve everything. The the

Jon: 16:46

It's like they're they're you know? Yeah. You you would end up writing something or talking about something for a world that no longer exists.

Justin: 16:55

Yes.

Jon: 16:56

And may never again.

Justin: 16:57

And and by the way, you and I definitely have a bent on this. You and I are more or less, I don't know. We have some subtle differences, but more or less, we are philosophically and politically, similar. And, so we recognize that there's folks that might not agree with us that are listening right now. And that's fine.

Justin: 17:22

But the idea that we wouldn't talk about it is as much a political statement as Jason Calacanis saying, the market will solve everything. Let's just talk about the market. It's like, okay. Well, that's fine. That certainly, that's talking just about business.

Justin: 17:38

But that's in of itself a political statement. That's a very neoliberal philosophy. And so there's no such thing as being able to be, like, unbiased and so, banal that you would you'd never be able to touch on all of these things. Right? The whole reason we're having a podcast and that, you know, you and I are talking about things, and then we have guests on the show, and then we have listeners who can respond at any time, including right now, if they wanted to.

Justin: 18:11

They could send us a note on Twitter or email or however they reach us. The whole idea is that there's discourse, that we are human beings around the world in our individual contexts. And we're at least aligned on one thing, which is we all want a better life for us and for our families and for our communities. And so if that's true, then, you know, we're going we're going to have to talk about politics. And, nobody needs to get offended that that you and I have that you that you and I have some thoughts on that.

Justin: 18:55

It does affect our business. It does. It the the even, if you go back to early episodes, we talked about the kind of technology you and I wanna be involved with. This has been a thread from the beginning. Did we wanna create an addictive social app that relied on ad revenue?

Justin: 19:16

Did we want to be supporting the the Google, Facebook, ad machine? Did we wanna take funding from venture capitalists? These are all decisions made based on your values. We can't ignore it. And, but that doesn't mean that we're, you know, we're trying to create a show just for people like us.

Justin: 19:44

Mhmm. There's lots I I hear there's lots of people I respect that listen to the show that disagree with me on all sorts of things.

Jon: 19:50

Yeah. How can we, yeah, how can we ignore talking about politics or coronavirus when in a given week, it might affect one of us so much that we work, like, 2 hours? You know, you have to you have to bring it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 20:06

And, you know, it it affected you in some way and it those, those opinions that will come out, you know, might not be something that everyone agrees with.

Justin: 20:16

Yeah. That, I mean, that's a, that's also just just getting back to, like, the idea of putting any sort of media out in the world, whether it's a podcast or a blog or whatever. All of us are inherently drawn to people with strong opinions. Mhmm. Some people hate Jason Fried and DHH.

Justin: 20:37

They can't stand them. Some people like me openly acknowledge. I'm just such a huge fan. And it. Yeah.

Justin: 20:45

I'm I'm in I'm I'm hooked up to their religion. It's true. Like but this isn't just me. This is all of us. We're all in in we're we're we're all subscribing to beliefs that we believe in.

Justin: 21:01

And, but to ignore that is first of all, you just you'll never build an audience. Because until you form an opinion and until you're able to communicate that opinion and by the way, that doesn't mean you can be reckless or or, you know, offensive. That's not the point. You still have to do this with some grace. And maybe, you know, maybe DHH is is over the line there.

Justin: 21:25

I don't know. But there's still gonna be some grace there. Certainly, you have to have some opinion. You have to put a line in the sand somewhere and say, you know, this is what I stand for. This is why I get up and do what I'm doing every day.

Justin: 21:41

And if anything, I think, if you've been listening to the show for a while, it feels like we're you and I are at, John, right now, and and even Junta was getting into this. He's like, okay, well, what's driving you guys now? And those are all values based conversations. Like, what values do you have right now that are gonna drive the next couple years now of transistor development? What, you know, what things do you believe in that are going to dictate where you focus your attention?

Justin: 22:14

You know, in some ways, the Tailwind project is a good example example of, like, it's just plumbing. And so it it's just like one of those projects that's like you're just you know, you're kind of plotting along. You're doing it. But it doesn't get you fired up every day because it's not like it's not it's it's different than you building a podcasting platform for Cards Against Humanity because of a bunch of

Jon: 22:40

Yeah. I mean, it feels like I'm rebuilding it, but it should have not taken this long. So it's still interesting, and there are definitely days where I'm, like, tackling something that's interesting, but there's this constant feeling that it should have been done a long time ago Yeah. For multiple reasons and, obviously, things that happen, you know, this year and are currently still happening.

Justin: 23:01

But Mhmm. So, yeah. Well, as always, if you've got thoughts on that or you wanna give us some feedback, let us know. We do obviously wanna make this podcast valuable as well. And one of the things I thought we could talk about is what kind of SaaS what kind of software product would I be starting or would you be starting right now in 2020 and, you know, April 2020?

Justin: 23:28

And, one of the things I've been thinking about is just if you go back to our episodes on pricing and all those, in some ways, philosophical arguments we were getting into with people about pricing. Mostly, like, we were on the side of the debate of, you know, some people were saying we should charge way more for transistor. Because historically, bootstrappers have said, you know, anything below $50 a month is too cheap for a bootstrapped app. And there's some good reasoning behind that. But one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is in the midst of this pandemic.

Justin: 24:15

The people who are in motion right now, a lot of them are looking for lower cost alternatives to what exists right now.

Jon: 24:24

Mhmm.

Justin: 24:24

It feels like there are opportunities there. If there's enough demand, if you can get enough customers at $19 a month, $5 a month is probably too cheap. But again, there's no there's no clear rules here. It it all depends on how much demand there is. How many people are there out there that are willing to pay?

Justin: 24:49

And how often do they pay? How easy are they to reach? And if a lot of those things line up in favor of doing a $5 per month app, then maybe you should do it. Yeah. I do you have any thoughts about that?

Justin: 25:04

Have you noticed any of your friends or any businesses you know that are have made or have we switched to anything cheaper? I'm trying to think.

Jon: 25:13

No. I don't think we have recently. I mean, some you know, a few things we use have opened up free plans.

Helen: 25:19

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Jon: 25:21

You know, get GitHub has opened up a free plan for businesses, which we haven't converted to because we already paid for a year through whatever, July.

Justin: 25:30

Oh, they they already got our money.

Jon: 25:32

Yeah. You know, Clubhouse went free a while ago. Basecamp is free. Mhmm. Or can be.

Jon: 25:38

So, like but other than that, I don't think we've really

Justin: 25:41

Well, even that, like, that shows you Clubhouse, Basecamp, Trello, all of those have a free plan now. And I think that's interesting in of itself that if you're gonna bootstrap a project management app, you're probably going to need a free plan.

Jon: 25:59

Mhmm.

Justin: 25:59

This is this is one thing that this is one of the reasons I I disagree with that kind of, that charge more mantra just on its own because it ignores the idea of competition. As soon as Mailchimp took over most of the email newsletter market and is and went freemium, and then they adjusted their pricing, that already anchors the entire sector. That entire product segment is now anchored because the market leader is saying this is where we're at.

Jon: 26:35

It's interesting. I mean, it's because free is such a such a low amount Yeah. That it just drives things to 0.

Justin: 26:43

And you might not need to start there, but, you know, ConvertKit just recently announced a free plan after being in business for 2 to 3 years. And initially, their their whole pitch was we're gonna do what Mailchimp does, but it's gonna be simpler and better suited for bloggers and podcasters and YouTubers. And that carry them pretty far. And now, strategically, they're they're looking around and they're going, okay. Our biggest threat right now is still Mailchimp's free plan.

Justin: 27:19

And so, you know, we've got a healthy healthy MRR, and we've got lots of margin. We've got lots of money in the bank. I think Nathan published that they have 5 or 6,000,000 in the bank. Now might be a good time to introduce a free plan even though it threatens 30% of our recurring revenue. Even if we lose that 30%, we're okay now.

Justin: 27:41

So there's timing with these things. But, those are the types of opportunities I would be thinking about. Like, card, carrd.co. Just a great idea. Because, AJ noticed I think that's his name, AJ.

Justin: 28:01

He noticed, you know, there's a lot of websites that are just single page websites. You know, a restaurant just needs a single page with, a list of their menu. A lot of businesses don't need super complicated websites. And so on a card pro plan, you can build tons of websites, single page websites for $19 a year or something like that. Mhmm.

Justin: 28:25

You know, I think a lot of bootstrappers would say, well, that's too little. That's not enough money. But it it's it's I've paid for it for the past 4 or 5 years. I actually use it for transistor all the time to demo, you know, our embedded player. And it's just such a no brainer.

Justin: 28:42

It's like $19 a year. I'll keep paying for that forever because it it's just been so useful. I think there is a place for those kinds of apps and especially right now. In fact, I still think you could build a competitor to card, you know, a really simple site builder that maybe only does 1 page. Or maybe if you wanna compete with card, you do 3 pages.

Justin: 29:05

You know, like, there's room for these things. And there are lots of folks right now that are looking at their $150 WP Engine bill. And they're thinking, man, how can I get this down? How can I reduce this bill? And that's gonna create opportunities.

Jon: 29:27

Yeah. It's gonna be you know, they're they're at home, working from home. Maybe they have some extra time because they don't commute Mhmm. 2 hours a day. And, you know, it might be a 2, 3, 4 day project to convert all those over to a static site and just save a bunch of money.

Jon: 29:43

Somehow somehow find out a way to do it for free Mhmm. Because they're not maybe they're not you know, their websites that aren't really heavily trafficked or something like that.

Justin: 29:51

Yeah. Yeah. And, actually, friend of the show, Miguel Piedrafita Piedrafita, He's working on sitesauce.app, and this is such a brilliant idea. It you just give it the URL to a WordPress site and it deploys that to Zite or Netlify basically perfectly. So it converts that WordPress site.

Justin: 30:16

There's other things that I've tried that have tried to do this. Like there's WordPress plugins that try to do this, and they just never worked. And I used Miguel's product. I had to back up a bunch of sites. And, man, it just worked.

Justin: 30:30

And so now these sites are backed up on Netlify and or what's the new name for Zite? Did you see they changed their name?

Jon: 30:39

Yeah. But I never really knew what they were in

Helen: 30:40

the first place.

Jon: 30:41

Didn't I don't really care.

Justin: 30:42

It's just it's just another Netlify thing. I have opinions by I think that was a silly move. Like, Vercel is the new one. Vercel.com.

Jon: 30:51

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The the Toyota Vercel.

Justin: 30:56

I I think I did

Jon: 30:57

see some comments about how it sounded like a car.

Justin: 31:00

Folks, like, why why build a brand and people are finally getting it and then change it? It's like, I this just sounds this is like a recurring segment on our show. That's that sounds like some venture capital bullshit.

Jon: 31:18

Yep. It's

Justin: 31:19

like there some VC told them they need that to have the dotcom.

Jon: 31:23

Yeah. Probably.

Justin: 31:24

Anyway, I I think Miguel's app is gonna do really well because there's lots of people. And if they know they can they've got 20 sites on WP Engine and they're paying 100 of dollars a month, but they only update those sites, you know, maybe every couple years. Man, just make a backup and Yeah. Put it on Netlify, run that WordPress site locally, and then when you need to do an update, just do it from there. Those kinds of products, I'd be looking at that.

Justin: 31:53

Those kinds of things. Look where people are looking to make moves. What when they evaluate their credit card statement for their business, what are they looking at going, okay. You know what? I should change that, remove that, switch that up, fix that.

Justin: 32:11

I think there's going to be opportunities there. And the the traditional kind of bootstrapper stance, which isn't necessarily bad, but is, like, in the charge more, double your rates, kind of, philosophy.

Jon: 32:28

Mhmm.

Justin: 32:29

I I would just just question it a bit because, again, you go back if you go back to those episodes and especially, you know, some of those debates we we had with folks on the show. I I think we were right. We were right to keep a $19 plan. And, really, we didn't have any choice because our competitors had already dictated what the pricing in our industry would be. Like, there's you can't just ignore what everyone else is doing.

Justin: 33:04

And I think there is opportunities to get a 1000, 2000, or 3000 customers on lower priced products. It's not it's not like the the the traditionally, people say it's gonna be too hard to get thousands of users. I said that in the past until we started Transistor, and then I realized, woah. Wait. There's product segments.

Justin: 33:29

There's product types where, not that it's easy to get thousands of users, but none of this is easy. But we were able to get thousands of users. And it's not impossible. It's not impossible for a 2 person team. It's it's it's completely possible.

Justin: 33:48

And Andrew, sorry, Andrew. AJ at card, he has, like I have no idea. Like, tens of thousands of users.

Jon: 33:56

Yeah. I I wonder yeah. I mean, I I wonder if there's some correlation between, like, cheaper plans but services that require less customer support. Mhmm. Like, if we if we had a $5 plan, but we had 10 a 1000 accounts on that, and I think our customer support would be

Justin: 34:12

Yeah. That would be hard.

Jon: 34:14

Really overwhelming. So just because I think a lot of people starting a podcast are, like, kind of confused and need a little help getting going. But if it was a simple product that really didn't require a lot of customer support, I think, you know, $5 plans.

Justin: 34:31

Yeah.

Jon: 34:31

Would be great.

Justin: 34:32

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And, again, I think I can't remember what AJ has, if you could I'll put his Twitter thread in the show notes, but he talks about how much customer support he does.

Justin: 34:44

He's a one person team, I think. And

Jon: 34:48

Right.

Justin: 34:48

You know, it's fine. He's he has tens of thousands of users. And in that segment, it's it's working fine. And you folks that are screaming right now, I can hear you. You're screaming.

Justin: 35:03

I I can hear it right now in my ears. You're saying you're saying, but, Justin, that's that product or that that's, you know, that's easy for you to say or, you know, that's yours your situation. And, that's true. All of these are context, relate to context and relate to who you are, what skills you bring to the table, what connections you have. All of that is true.

Justin: 35:38

But I don't want people to to automatically ignore something that they might be well suited for Just because they heard somebody on a podcast say, you should never have a $19 a month product.

Helen: 35:52

Right.

Justin: 35:52

If you can build a product like Tuple, where you can charge a lot more and, you know, Tuple's probably doing a lot better than us revenue wise. Then you should do that. If you if you're in that if you're if if you are at the stage in your life where that opportunity has shown itself, you know, you've been you've been paddling around with your surfboard and all of a sudden you see a big wave or a wave that, you know, fits kind of the profile of something you could ride, then go for it. That that's exactly what you should do. When John and I were were paddling around on our surfboard, we we just happened to be in the waters that led us to podcast hosting.

Justin: 36:42

And, we were well suited for that that task. Right?

Helen: 36:48

Yep. Right.

Justin: 36:48

But don't ignore it. If if you see a wave coming along, that's perfect for you. But you're like, you know what? Like, I heard somebody say that you should never start a product that that you can't charge more than $50 a month for.

Jon: 37:03

Right. Or, you know, there's too many of these already, but, you know, you might have a different twist on it.

Justin: 37:07

Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is that's the other thing that I I I find it just boggles my mind. How many old, crusty, legacy apps are there out there that like, Ian Landsman. Ian Landsman does help software.

Justin: 37:23

He does he does, installed help software, like, on on location. Oh, wow. He has a great business. And he, like, spends most of his time playing poker. And most of his customers pay by check.

Justin: 37:43

So so, like, there there's an how did how did that opportunity come to Ian? Well, he was working for a big university, and they had a help system there installed. And he thought I could build something better than this. Even though there was tons of these things around, he just thought, you know what? I could do better than this.

Justin: 38:05

And he did. And, again, that that would only work for Ian. Like, there's a very low chance that you and I would have started a business like that.

Jon: 38:16

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That does that has no appeal to me. Even so even this this kinda relates to I mean, we've had a few arguments recently in Slack. We had arguments, but, like, disagreements on what to do.

Jon: 38:28

Yeah. One of them was this, like, white label situation that came up where a client was like, I think I would love to have you guys have a white label option where we could basically, like, rebrand your system and then resell it, which sounds absolutely miserable to me. You seem to be sort of interested in it.

Justin: 38:46

Yeah. Yeah. That that's perfect example. It it the who you are actually matters a lot in these context because

Jon: 38:56

Yeah. Right.

Justin: 38:57

You're gonna have this filter. And that's not to say you and I shouldn't keep pushing each other. Going, hey, maybe you should think about that. Right? That's fine.

Justin: 39:06

But there is gonna be just part of it is going to be dictated by now we've come full circle. Your beliefs, your values, what kind of business you wanna run, what kind of life you wanna have.

Jon: 39:19

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Previous experience even. I mean, I I have I have a I've had a little experience with white label stuff.

Jon: 39:26

I know a lot of people who have and have sort of really not enjoyed it. Maybe you have maybe you you've had the opposite experience where, you know, people have done it and it was like Mhmm. A great success and Yeah. But, yeah, it obviously flavors kinda everything.

Justin: 39:40

Yeah. Your history matters so much. It it it's another reason that I think if you're younger, if you're in your twenties, you should go out and get as much experience as you can. And, you know, for, like, for Nathan Barry, I think this meant when he was 16 or 17, he was working for in web design already. Right?

Justin: 40:02

Like, he was a homeschool kid, I think, and graduated early, and he was able to start working right away. But having some work experience is helpful because it it kinda opens you up to these are the the things I'm familiar with. These are the opportunities I can see. I I

Jon: 40:22

Yeah. On the other hand, it does it does sort of can sometimes, I think, solidify you in your ways or

Justin: 40:32

Mhmm.

Jon: 40:34

So, you know, you're like, oh, this is the only way to do it. Or this is how I've done it before, so this is how I'm gonna do it. And you sort of close yourself off to new Yeah. Ideas that

Justin: 40:42

But once you've gone through a couple cycles, you know so I was working in the in the email newsletter sector. And when I started, we were about equal with Mailchimp. And, in some ways, we were better. But when they came out with their freemium plan, at the time, philosophically, all of us were like, no, we shouldn't do that. That's just that's just no, that's not gonna work.

Justin: 41:12

But now that we've seen that, you know, there's been a few cycles since then, we can see we were probably wrong about that. This is the advantage. This is why it's like why people caught in the middle have the hardest time. If you're young and naive, you just don't know. You just jump into it.

Justin: 41:32

When you're old and grizzled, you you're either, like, still delusional, or you've started to recognize that maybe you were wrong in the past, and now you gotta change your opinion.

Jon: 41:47

Now you gotta hire some young people.

Justin: 41:52

Is it is it on the show that I keep joking about, drinking their blood?

Jon: 41:58

Right. Yeah.

Justin: 41:59

You gotta get some young people because I yeah. You just you just suck up that youthful that youthful, optimism. Yeah. Yeah. So, some other ideas for folks outside of SaaS is thinking about annual recurring revenue.

Justin: 42:16

Like, maybe we get stuck on these tracks. Like, oh, it has to be monthly. It has to be monthly. Because that's that's a but there's some great annual recurring revenue businesses. Card is one of them.

Justin: 42:30

Every year, people's plans renew. And because it's so small and inconsequential, like, nobody complains. Everyone just lets go. Didn't did I use it last year? Well, I didn't, but it's still good to have around.

Justin: 42:43

It's just it's one of those products. It it fits. And there's also, now we would never do this for hosting. Well, I shouldn't say never, but hosting products, this is doesn't make so much sense. But lifetime deals where people pay once and get access for life, the Tailwind UI components are a good example of this.

Justin: 43:05

And they've done really well with that model. Right? So there there's some products that have lifetime deals. But if you've shut yourself off to that potential, like, oh, no. No.

Justin: 43:19

Can't think about lifetime deals because that's just, you know, that that'll never work. Well, maybe it will work. Maybe you're in a, you know, you're in a sector where that make or a market where that makes sense. Yeah. And then the other one was pay per use.

Justin: 43:38

I've started using for transistor, I've been experimenting with some contests. And I'm using this app by my friend Yaz called contestkit dotcom. And he has this we're doing this Twitter, retweet contest. It's pretty cool. You you tweet through the app, and then it tracks all the retweets to that tweet.

Justin: 44:00

And then it when the campaign ends, it automatically selects a winner. And, right now, he's experimenting with I think it's, like, $19 a campaign. So because, like, with contests, unless you run a lot of them, maybe it doesn't make sense to have someone on a subscription. But, you know, when I when it comes time to do a contest and I'm looking for a way to do it, it's like, oh, well, yeah, $19. That's that's the campaign.

Justin: 44:29

And then you get to use it for that campaign and then you're done. I think there's some there there's some opportunities there that people should look at. You know, there you can there there's another product called placeit.net, which is, you can upload screenshots and then have them appear in, like, stock photos. Like, you know, you've got an app UI and you want it to appear on the laptop where, you know, there's a person in a coffee shop using the computer, and you you pay, for a certain amount of credits, download credits, and then you can download those. That that's a great model too.

Justin: 45:10

There's lots of folks that do that, and it works. You know? There's a theme song marketplace that does this as well. What's it called? Is it theme?

Justin: 45:20

Themesong.studio is another example of this where, Joseph McDade sells you a theme song for your podcast For $350, you get the entire track and exclusive rights to that track, so no one else can use it.

Jon: 45:36

Oh, nice.

Justin: 45:37

Yeah. That's awesome. Like, to if if you

Helen: 45:40

if you had

Justin: 45:40

to hire a band to record a theme song for your podcast, that would be 1,000 of dollars. But he's just got, you know, the studio all set up, and he writes a song. And if you want that song and you want Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis did this for their podcast, actually.

Jon: 45:56

Nice.

Justin: 45:57

So, yeah, I think there's some some cool opportunities out there if you're willing to kind of open up your eyes and expand, you know, what you're willing to investigate. There's some really cool opportunities out there. Do we wanna and just people do like to hear a little update on what we've been working on. What,

Jon: 46:18

Yeah.

Justin: 46:18

What what are we what are we kinda working on and shaping up for, the next the next cycle?

Jon: 46:25

Well, I mean, we're still finishing up this dashboard update, which is getting closer and closer. Yep. Kind of on the the last little bits of kinda optimizing a few things.

Justin: 46:36

You know what we did last after last episode is that was the catalyst for emailing our users.

Jon: 46:42

It was.

Justin: 46:43

Which was nice.

Jon: 46:44

That's the big one. I mean, obviously, we've been we've been talking more and more about, you know, building out an API and kinda improving some features around private podcasting because we've been getting a lot of demand

Justin: 46:56

from it. Yeah. That that almost seems like man, it's funny how priorities can change week to week. Because I think last week, I said podcast websites and API. Yeah.

Justin: 47:07

And I think you were saying analytics and API. And this week, I'm like, all I can think about is private podcasts.

Jon: 47:17

Yeah. But it it's interesting because, like, I've been working on this dashboard stuff for so long, but once we get it out the door, I mean, there will be a period of, you know, probably some fixes and people, maybe complaining or some problems popping up. But so many of the things I think we wanna do are so are so much smaller than this redesign that it's like that that is exciting. And I wanna get to that part where I can actually you know, or we can sort of shape something together and build it, like, you know, with

Justin: 47:45

the glass. Yeah. Yeah. That is

Jon: 47:47

Small things get a lot of updates out. So people are, you know Yeah. Aware that we're still around and working.

Justin: 47:55

Yeah. Like, for folks that have been who have been, like, waiting for, like, updates, like product updates, I think you're right. Like, after this is done, it's going to be like it's you know what it's going to be like, John? It's going to be like when Michael Jordan had his cast on and couldn't play for 6 months, and then he got healed up, and then the coach let him play, and it was just like unleashing an animal on the court.

Jon: 48:18

How how great was that? So I'm I'm assuming

Justin: 48:20

you've been watching Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 48:21

The Last Dance on ESPN, which I I caught the first two episodes.

Justin: 48:25

Yeah. Yeah. I That, that

Jon: 48:28

that part was great. He was like he was like playing these these pickup games in college, like, without them knowing about it.

Justin: 48:34

Yeah. He's He's

Jon: 48:35

like, oh, I've been playing for the last 6 weeks.

Justin: 48:37

And when he

Jon: 48:38

And they didn't want

Justin: 48:39

him to. Gets out on the court, and then he, like, single handedly gets the bulls into the playoffs.

Jon: 48:45

Yeah. He scored, like, 60 points or something.

Justin: 48:47

It it you're just it's like looking at it, just an untamed animal. Like, he's I mean, I

Jon: 48:55

yeah. Were were you are you were you a sports guy?

Justin: 48:58

Not really. But back in the back in the eighties nineties, like, we all loved the Bulls. Like, that was just it it was it was like it's it was like loving the Oilers in the eighties. Like, it's just universal. Because when you've got a team that is that good and just the and, like, we didn't even know what we're doing.

Justin: 49:21

We're playing, Bump. You ever play Bump with basketball? You don't play Bump where you're you're in a lineup of kids and you each the 2 front kids have a basketball, and they shoot at the same time. And if you both miss, you can the one person when you get the rebound, you can bump the other person's ball and, like, send it, like like, you know, 3000 meters.

Jon: 49:45

Okay. Maybe we had a different name. I don't know. I've yeah. We certainly played that on the on the playground.

Justin: 49:50

Anyway, we always pretend that, like, oh, I'm I'm Pippen. And, oh, I'm I'm, you know Yeah. I'm I'm Dennis Rodman. You know, we're all pretending to be those characters.

Jon: 50:00

Yeah. Yeah. I'm I wasn't really a huge sports watcher. So I'm still not, and I'm not, like, pining away and missing sports like some of my friends are, but, like, it is a really good document. Gotcha.

Jon: 50:14

Yeah.

Justin: 50:15

And it's the it's the best kind of sports because you get to see these highlight reels of

Jon: 50:20

Oh, man. I just, like I I mean, I you know, obviously, I knew Jordan was, you know, the greatest at the time, but, like, I didn't realize how good he was from the start. Mhmm. Like, out of college or whatever he after a sophomore year of college, age 21 or so. He was just, like, immediately, like, the best person in the end of the day.

Justin: 50:41

Well, what what's also interesting is how, like, he he didn't make his high school team. Yeah. He got caught. Right? Yeah.

Justin: 50:50

And he in his family, he had all those siblings. He wasn't, like, the best at sports. His older brother was. Right. And, you know, his coaches at the beginning were like, you know, he was like, okay.

Justin: 51:02

And even his college, his college coach said, you know, Michael showed up and he had potential, but where he really excelled was between his freshman year and his, what do you call that? Is it your sophomore after that?

Jon: 51:18

Mhmm.

Justin: 51:18

Yeah. And just hearing that was encouraging to me to go, wow. Like, you know, some of it was him growing taller, and some of it was him, like, you know, filling out. But some a lot of it was just focus, hard work, putting in the reps. That was and he was the other the other documentary I wanna see sorry.

Justin: 51:39

This is going long, Chris, and listeners. The other documentary I wanna see is what happened to those the 1st and second draft round pick, yeah, picks. Because Jordan was 3rd.

Jon: 51:50

Right. One of them was Akeem Olajuwon, I think.

Justin: 51:55

Yeah. What happened to him?

Jon: 51:56

If I remember correctly, he was he was I mean, he was a huge star too.

Justin: 51:59

But I I just I never heard of him. Like, no one on the Stony Plain, Alberta, school campus had a jersey for him.

Jon: 52:07

I mean yeah. But Jordan was just so I don't I don't know what I mean, you know, marketable. I don't know what it was. It's like

Justin: 52:16

weird to me that the that that first and second draft pick, just nobody like, I don't know their names. And and Yeah. You know, on the playground, we knew it was we knew Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, and then the only other basketball player I knew was Larry Bird.

Jon: 52:36

Magic Johnson?

Justin: 52:36

Oh, Magic Johnson, maybe. Yep. Yep. But okay. So it's 5.

Justin: 52:41

You you know, it's like Right. The the it's interesting that those other 2 were before Jordan, and it just shows you sometimes that people just don't know, you know, like, the the way we place bets. Even personally, as we're starting businesses, like, there's so many factors that go into a success, but one of them is just, like, putting in the work, putting in the effort, being, you know, like

Jon: 53:12

Well, I mean, I think yeah. It's it's I think Scottie Pippen was a good example of that too because he he seemingly came out of nowhere, played for a small college. Like, people at there were there were, like, head footage of the of the NBA draft that year, and people were like, well, if you haven't heard of him and most people hadn't. And he was like I forget what round he was. But Yeah.

Jon: 53:32

Yeah. And he became one of the best players in the NBA.

Justin: 53:35

I'm sorry, folks. This is gonna go long, but we gotta talk about this. How it it just becomes painfully obvious that if they if the owner had just paid him better Yeah. Everything would have been different.

Jon: 53:53

It was yeah. It's yeah. He was so underpaid for what compared to other people, but he he made a mistake of signing a really long

Justin: 54:02

contract today. You can get out of You just as an employer and this happened this happens to women all the time, by the way. Women find out that they have more seniority that whatever. But they just negotiate when they got hired, they sign a contract or whatever that put them below what men who are often below them are making. And I think it's bullshit.

Justin: 54:28

And it it just seems like that the lesson in that that that you know, and we're talking about superstar athletes here, you know, who are making mil like, even Pippen. He made $16,000,000 or whatever, in the eighties. And not like, that's pretty good. But but you know what it's like to be you know that feeling when you're on a team and you find out you're getting paid less than people were doing similar work, there's no bigger demotivator than that.

Jon: 54:59

Oh, yeah. Right.

Justin: 55:01

And it just when I'm watching it, and I'm like, you know, and that the owners on there, and he's like, Yeah, I just don't renegotiate contracts. It's like, dude, you it's like

Jon: 55:13

Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you wanna keep him around, you should renegotiate. But on the other hand, like, there's so much I don't I don't know if they had, like, team caps in that. Yeah.

Jon: 55:22

Then for, like, salary caps, but, like, they have to keep it below a certain amount. They can't you know, they maybe they wanted to hire someone else who was, like, also really good.

Helen: 55:30

Yeah. But if you've got if you've got

Justin: 55:32

the 2nd best player in the league, and he's the 10th best paid play he's the 10th best paid player on your team, and the 100 and 40th in the league, that just is like

Jon: 55:45

Yeah. It's it's crazy.

Justin: 55:46

It's a little weird. If I it just I don't understand how they couldn't have seen that happening. You know? Like Yeah. The

Jon: 55:57

And then he wasn't he wasn't getting the Nike deals, like, Jordan, obviously. So it's not like he had other income, which, by the way, I looked up how much Jordan was worth. He's worth, like, $2,000,000,000. Wow.

Helen: 56:08

Although

Jon: 56:09

And most of that is not

Justin: 56:10

a deal. 2,000,000,000? That's interesting. Because, like, the Collison brothers, how much are they worth?

Jon: 56:15

Well, I don't know.

Justin: 56:16

Probably, each of them is worth that same amount. Net worth of Patrick Collison, 3,200,000,000. Wow. That's kinda crazy. Like, you can be the best basketball player who's ever lived.

Justin: 56:33

Dedicate your your best years to the sport have, you know, maybe billions of people in the world who know who you are, and your your net worth is less than some tech guy?

Jon: 56:51

You're right. Yeah. That's just kinda weird.

Justin: 56:53

Man, your net net worth is definitely not merit I mean, what do you call that? A meritocracy? Meritocracy? Yeah. It's not a meritocracy.

Justin: 57:06

Right?

Jon: 57:09

I don't know.

Justin: 57:10

Alright, folks. John, why don't you thank our Patreon supporters?

Jon: 57:16

Alright. Yeah. Thanks as always, everyone. We have Sofia Quintero, Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Pradhyumna Schimbecker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sidfer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Jukta, and Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com. Facts.

Justin: 58:02

If you listen to this entire thing, wow. Thanks. Thanks for being here. We'll see you again next week. We love hearing from you.

Justin: 58:11

So write us some messages. Talk to you later.