Reflecting on 2021
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2021. I'm Jon Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing follow along as we build transistor dot f m. End of the year, Jon.
Jon:End of the year. Last Episode of the year. We actually haven't done many episodes this year, have we?
Justin:We have not done as many episodes.
Justin:I think we ended up publishing I'd be surprised if we got 6. Let's see here. 3 oh, actually, we got more than 6. No. We did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Justin:This is our 11th episode, so we almost averaged 1 episode a month.
Jon:Alright. Probably down slightly from the previous years. Well Yeah. Obviously yeah. It was quite a bit.
Justin:But not too bad. If you have stuck with us and you're still subscribed, Thanks. It's it's good. Yeah.
Justin:You know, I you know, now transistor is, what, 3 years old?
Jon:I think so. I am.
Justin:We started in 2018, but your first your first commit was in
Jon:Yeah. March of 2017, which is kind of crazy to think about. I think I just started it as, like, a you know, just something I wanted to hack on.
Justin:Yeah. A little project on the side. Yep. And then it evolved into maybe cards could use it.
Jon:Yep. And And then look at us now.
Justin:Now look at us now. That those jumps are still you know, I was listening to, the Rework podcast, and they were they were talking about The word startup and and, you know, when when should you continue to use that term, and and, you know, we're we're probably we Probably can't call ourselves a startup anymore. No.
Jon:We're just a business. We're just a company.
Justin:Yeah. A small little company. Yeah. It is this is kind of end of the year, December is definitely where I start to reflect, and, Yeah. I thought maybe we go through kind of the year and maybe some of our thoughts about next year and, Hopefully, get into some of those things that that folks like.
Justin:Folks seem to like it when we hash stuff out on the air Uh-huh. And, You know, talk about real real thoughts, real, challenges, real plans. You know, I'm I'm sure folks are There's a lot of people that are, you know, still hoping to build a SaaS in 2022. That's that's still their dream, and, Yeah. I I feel like I wanna keep talking to those those folks too, but Yeah.
Justin:From the perspective of people that are a little bit further along now.
Jon:Yep. Yeah. I don't know. When did we change the name to this? When did we change the name of the podcast?
Justin:Built it.
Jon:Built or built your SaaS.
Justin:Built it. We built the SaaS. Yeah.
Jon:Maintain the SaaS.
Justin:Yeah. Maintain maintain is just it's just not as exciting, is it? No.
Jon:It's not.
Justin:But in some way actually, in some ways it is. I the you know, you and I, before we started recording, We were kinda going through some of the major highlights of this year. I don't know about you. I I think the highlights for me were Hiring Helen and Jason. Yeah.
Justin:Like, having more people in the company was a pretty big boost, I'd say.
Jon:Yeah. It
Justin:was There was something about it. Yeah.
Jon:That was definitely the biggest, positive change we had.
Justin:Yeah. Actually, if you go back to those episodes, we were hesitant. You know? It was like, yeah, should we should we do this? And now I think every episode since we every episode since April when we hired Helen and then we hired Jason in August, Every episode, we've mentioned how great that part has been.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. Has been. I know yeah. We were definitely hesitant for A number of well, a couple reasons. I think one was just, did we wanna grow the team beyond us?
Jon:And would we be able to financially do it? Yeah. Of which turned out to be completely fine, and we even were fortunate enough to give them some pretty good bonuses.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about that because, I mean, they they haven't even got them yet. But, well, actually, Jason's Jason's gonna get his at the end of this pay period. But that was really fun Yeah.
Justin:For for, like, you and I to meet and go, okay, let's look at our finances and go, Wow. Like, this company this little company is profitable, and we can be Incredibly generous. I was talking with some friends. We went snowboarding and we were having some drinks after. And, by the way, I'm I I I've dipped back into having a a beer when I go out with friends.
Justin:So I I I'm still I'm still mostly not drinking, but 1 beer, every once in a while. And so I'm having this This beer, and we were talking about Christmas bonuses. And, 1 1 fellow runs a snowboard shop. Another fellow, is in the wine business. Another fellow is a A, kind of an engineer, like a geological engineer.
Justin:And I was saying, you know, For me, the Christmas bonus has always been kind of significant because When I was a young twenty something and had these kids I still have kids, but I, you know, I had young kids. I remember, like, the costs around Christmas were just so much higher than normal Yeah. And always wishing that, you know, I had friends that would get Christmas bonuses and I didn't. And just feeling like, like anything around this time would be So meaningful. And yeah.
Justin:I I think to Be able to be generous, with the people we work with has been just, I don't know, really meaningful for me.
Jon:Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, I think we we sort of framed it as profit sharing, which I think Mhmm. Maybe is a little more meaningful. Like, you know, they Yeah.
Jon:They helped us get to where we are, and we're incredibly grateful for that. And
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:It's nice that we're able to to give some of that back. I mean, I don't I've never gotten a bonus anywhere else I worked.
Justin:Never?
Jon:Never. Wow. Yeah.
Justin:Actually and I don't think I have either. I I think there I mean, this is the I guess, this is the great thing about running your own business and also Being able to grow it slowly. Because if we had we can talk about this a bit later, but Captivate, one of our competitors, just sold. And, I'm pretty sure they had a pretty big team. My my my guess is 20 people.
Justin:I mean, if we had 20 people, we would not be able to, give bonuses like this. Right?
Jon:Or pay them.
Justin:Yes. And so, by keeping the team small, you know, it really does make a lot of these decisions when when margins are good And when you're still growing reasonably, you know, it it gives you a lot more flexibility to be generous with those.
Jon:Yeah. I am still eternally grateful that we didn't take funding and grow the team. Yeah. Hopefully, it's nice to be able to run a lean company that's, you know, Doing really well and, you know, not not have super complicated software and Yeah. Small teams and not not a much of meetings every day.
Justin:It's it's uncomplicated in many ways, and I I think I was talking with was it maybe this was on the Indie Hackers podcast. I was saying, you know, especially once you get to know other people and other people's companies and, you know, you see their numbers, you hear what They're struggling with. You hear what stresses them out. You hear what is, you know, bugging them. And I think there's 2 types of stress.
Justin:There's stress that's just inherent in the way you've structured your company, the market that you're in, the type of customers you attract, etcetera. And then there's, like, a different stress that's, like, maybe a good stress, which is, You know, when you decide, I'm talking about you now, Jon. When when when you decide to build something, a new feature, There is some stress around how are we gonna do this, how how are we going to do this well. You know, there's some good stress about a challenge, Having a purpose and kind of living up to that purpose.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:But in my view, you wanna minimize, if you can as much of that other stress, like, like, something else that I thought we could maybe talk about is Another competitor that I won't mention, just there was a bunch of drama because they sold lifetime deals for their
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:Podcast hosting. I don't know what it was, like, $74 for a lifetime of podcast hosting. And there's there Just that premise alone. Like, any other premise we've we've explored here, like, what would it be like to take funding? What would it be like to hire a bunch of people?
Justin:What would it be like to, serve this kind of audience? What would it be like to serve this kind of customers? What would it be to have this pricing structure. Setting up a lifetime deal for SaaS just seems like almost always a bad idea.
Jon:Yeah. It does.
Justin:And you're setting yourself up for stress, setting yourself up to fail, and and also just thinking about the types of customers that that attracts. Not saying that those customers are bad people, but, in terms of, like, the kinds of people that are gonna be attracted to a lifetime deal, may not be the kinds of customers you want.
Jon:Yeah. And plus, you're ultimately gonna have a pretty good chance of letting them down realize that the lifetime deal is not gonna work out for the lifetime of the product.
Justin:Which is what we saw. You know? Yeah. Right. And I think they've got, like, 400 feeds on on like, they serve total.
Justin:So in terms of a growth strategy, it actually didn't work. It's not if it I mean, I think if you if you could say I know Ruben Gamas for his new SaaS. He was like, you know, I am gonna do an AppSumo deal because I'm just gonna learn so much. I'm gonna get tons of customers in the door who've had to pay something, And I'm gonna, interview them, and I'm gonna you know? I think that's fine if if that's part of your strategy, but In this case, it sounds like it was a part of their growth strategy, and it actually didn't help them grow.
Justin:It also kinda reminds me that in a things that are no shortcuts. And if you think you're, you know, you're gonna take a shortcut, it's gonna get you somewhere, often that comes back to to haunt you, which is what happened.
Jon:Yeah. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
Justin:Yeah. I I know people peep maybe people are tired of us saying this, but it has been so significant for you and I that I think it's just worth repeating that, You know, these things do matter. The the way you the markets you go into matter. The market's gonna dictate a lot of these dynamics. You know?
Justin:The kind of product you have to build you know, if we if we had to go into compliance, if we were building compliance software, the stress that's associated with that goes up. And I think one thing that was helpful for me over the years was Taking a look at at business owners that just seem to have a calmer baseline and just taking note, like, what kind of What kind of businesses are those? You know? What kind of products result in a calmer baseline, and what kind of products and industries and services. Do people just seem to be perpetually stressed out and overworked, Under fire.
Justin:Yeah. So I think there's lots to be thankful for. One thing I'm thinking about now is I was really excited, Actually, you and I said, okay. We're we're gonna get together in January. You were gonna you booked tickets to fly here to the Okanagan.
Justin:And as soon as we did that, I was, like, on cloud 9. Like, I was I was, in a very good mood
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Telling people, oh, I can't wait it can't wait. Jon's coming. We're gonna go snowboarding together. We haven't seen each other in over 2 years.
Jon:Yeah. Almost. I mean, it's getting on to well over two and a half.
Justin:Yeah. And so Really excited about that. I'm hoping it still happens because now the world is in the grips of another, COVID variant.
Jon:Yep.
Justin:Surge. We
Jon:started the year with a wave, and now we're in another one. And I think we kinda have to see in the next couple weeks what happens. Mhmm. I mean, it's you know, Chicago's starting to implement some new rules, and, I guess, the concern would be Canada would shut its borders again.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:And everything like, things at the snowboarding at the at the mountain would be Closed?
Justin:Yeah. So
Jon:I who knows? I mean Yeah. Probably a 5050 chance.
Justin:Yeah. I think it's 250. My fingers are crossed, though. I hope it happens because that that's definitely been the the downside of the past few years, You know, with everything we have to be thankful for, which we just mentioned, but
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Not when you have a remote company and you you're not seeing the people you work with, and you're not seeing other people in the industry even, like Yeah. Going to conferences or events, Even local meetups, you know, not having any of that interaction.
Jon:I've done none of I mean, I've done none of that in so long, But, yeah, it's just unfortunate that, you know, you and I can't get together and celebrate, you know, the past 2 years, really.
Justin:Yeah. We're we're coming up to 20,000 podcasts, I think, in Transistor. Yeah. I know.
Jon:When I tell that number to people, they're like, oh my god. That's so much, and I'm like, it's so small compared to the market. I know. And I still I'm like, It's a lot, but it's also, like, kind of a drop in the bucket still. Mhmm.
Justin:Yeah. We're at 18,215 right now. Incidentally, Captivate, who just sold, they they reported they had 14,000 feeds. So I thought
Jon:they were bigger than that, but
Justin:It's hard to tell, isn't it? Yeah. People like it when we have a little gossip. Yeah. So what what do you what do you think do you think that's bad for us, good for us?
Justin:What do you think about Captivate getting acquired.
Jon:I kinda go back and forth. I think I think it's good for us because it's We're sort of one of the remaining smaller independent hosts.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:That said, you know, this group that bought them has, like, $1,000,000,000 in annual revenue. Yeah. And, You know, it it really depends. Are they gonna are they gonna change Captivate, or is the team staying on? Are they gonna just acquire it and then just, like, dismantle it?
Justin:I think they're they I think they're staying at least for a year. There must be some sort of earnout.
Jon:Are they gonna put a bunch of marketing dollars behind it, Which Yeah. Could work or it could not work. I don't you know, I it's really hard to say. But I think, ultimately, people I think some customers kinda get disappointed when that happens, and if things change, they'll be looking elsewhere.
Justin:Yeah. I I actually think on both sides, it it could be a benefit us. You know, on one side, people are still looking for an independent company to work with That's small, that cares about their customers, that's responsive. There's not very many left. You know?
Justin:No. Buzzsprout is still out there doing the good work, and, you know, Lipson is publicly traded. So it's really you know, there's a there's a handful of maybe of us left that are that are independent, but I'm guessing, off the top of my head, I think Buzzsprout and Transistor are maybe the last
Jon:Fireside is still around. They're still
Justin:Fireside's still around. Yep. So there's a handful of us, but, you know, Captivate was definitely the one we got compared to
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:We got compared to them quite a bit, partly because they copied our pricing model, Which is fine.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And, you know, so so I it could be good on that side, people looking for an independent option. And, also, you know, I I'm not under the the I I don't wanna delude myself. I I think eventually, we Probably will wanna sell transistor. And Yeah.
Jon:I mean, there's a there's a point in time and a and a number that would Probably satisfy that.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, I think this is a good In that sense, because it it shows every time a podcast hosting company gets acquired, there's still demand for companies like ours.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:So, every year, I'm kinda worried that maybe we missed our window. Yeah. And, I think this shows that there's just I hadn't even heard of this company before, but they're
Jon:I'm actually I'm actually kind of curious if Captivate was looking to sell Yeah. Or they were approached to be bought.
Justin:I think I'm not sure if this is true, but I did see, a listing for a SaaS, a podcast hosting SaaS, that sounded a lot an awful lot like Captivate.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:That was sent to me. And so I think that they were looking to sell. I mean, ultimately, they have to be looking to sell. Like you know what I mean? Like, these deals, I think, they don't happen Very often when you're just kinda sitting there
Jon:Right.
Justin:Putting off vibes that you don't wanna sell, they generally happen when you open yourself up to it. Our friends at Rewardful just sold, Kyle Fox
Jon:Yep.
Justin:Who's, I started my very first podcast with back in 2012, really the reason I'm here today probably. Yeah. And it sounds like, they got a really great deal from this SAS dot group, and, You know, I I checked in with him and said, you know, how's it been? And he's like he's like, honestly, it's been awesome. Like That
Jon:That's cool.
Justin:They they have a bunch of resources, DevOps, HR, finance, recruiting analytics, and they they got a pretty generous acquisition, I think. I keep bringing this up because it is something I think about, but there is kind of 2 feelings I always have, which is, on one hand, I love running this company. And If I could be assured that I could just run it for the rest, you know, another 10 years and it'd be Yeah. And nothing happened, I would be okay. But my Existential question is always, yeah, but what how how big is this window?
Justin:And, you know, that's You know, I'll I'll probably think about that until until there's enough money in my bank account that I don't care anymore. Right.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's not That's something that's, like, on top of my mind all the time, but I think about it. It's not something I'm rushing to do. Yeah. Because I do, yeah, I do enjoy enjoy running it.
Jon:And
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not something I'm rushing to do. Because like I said, like, people sometimes ask me, like, hey.
Justin:Should you want me to introduce you to some people? And I'm like, you could, but I don't know. It's just Right. It's just I think, You know, for example, if it was 25 mil, that would be if someone came to the table and said 25 mil, I'd be like, okay. Well, we gotta think about that.
Justin:But the idea of actually, like, pursuing people and doing a song and dance and you know, everybody I've talked to that has sold has said that the selling process is Really shitty. Just the dance and the due diligence and, everything else. So
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:So No plans to sell, but, yeah, there's definitely definitely movements. And now with right like, SaaS is Getting hotter and hotter in terms of people wanting to buy it, both small SaaS. You know, there's micro acquire. People are buying small little companies, And, and so Yeah. It seems like
Jon:some of these bigger groups are just buying up software as a service Just to, like, build a portfolio of recurring revenue, it seems like.
Justin:Mhmm. And and there's probably good actors in that business and bad actors.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:I from what I've seen, there's actually you know, when I actually talk to people who've been acquired, more and more of them are saying, And I guess the only true test of this is after some years have elapsed, but more and more of them are saying, you know, this has actually been a really great deal. Like, there's some some of these groups, private equity firms that are buying that are actually really great operators and, you know, end up giving the founders a great life and a great earnout. Mhmm. So I I think that landscape has changed a little bit. Cool.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:We'll we'll see what happens in 2022 with that discussion. I don't know.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing nothing on the table right now.
Justin:Nope. In terms of next year, 2022, you know, we've got these 2 folks. What are do you have any thoughts about, like, some big things you want to accomplish? Some some things you'd like to see happen? This is actually more personal, I think, in that like, what would you be personally excited to do, excited to see happen?
Justin:Is there a certain type of work that you don't wanna do anymore? Is there, you know, is there certain types of goals you wanna go after?
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the infrastructure work is not fun. We don't have to do much with it very often, but When we do, it's kind of annoying and not really my or Jason's specialty. Yeah.
Jon:But it's not like we really need someone full time for that, so it'd be I'm not sure what would happen there. There's, you know, there's a bunch of things we need to upgrade in Amazon and AWS and things like that. But
Justin:So you think, like, a big infrastructure upgrade?
Jon:Yeah. There's some, like, platform versions we have to upgrade, which may or may not be bad. We just haven't really I think we're gonna try to tackle that early in the year, but that that'll be nice just because at some point, the platform we're on in Amazon is They're basically gonna, like, decommission it, so we have to upgrade. Yeah. It's just a matter of when and how hard it is.
Jon:It's not Terribly different, but there's some quirks I think we gotta work around.
Justin:Yeah. And that's probably a quality of life Upgrade for you too. Like, anytime we can we can make the infrastructure piece less stressful.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:Because right now, that stuff mostly falls to you.
Jon:Yeah. It's kinda one of those things that's, like, been on the back burner, and it's just, like, Kind of always in the back of your mind that it
Justin:would be
Jon:nice to just get it done. Yeah. That'll be that'll be a nice quality of life thing. As far as other stuff, I mean, I still I still enjoy building back end features and front end features. I mean, it'd be nice to sort of Focus on some more front end work.
Jon:I think with Jason around, you know, doing more of the the really nitty gritty back Back end stuff.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:Should should free me up to do some of that.
Justin:Yeah. Like, more like designing features, designing screens, designing flows.
Jon:Yeah. Designing you know, we have plans to kind of rebuild our our website our built in websites for people, kind of really getting a dive into that.
Justin:Yeah. You know,
Jon:and just, you know, play around with some ideas, work out some designs, couple different templates, or even You know, Jason brought this up too as, you know, maybe we wanna hire some designers to sort of work out a couple different, like, templates or themes that we can Mhmm. What people use. Yeah. Some of that you know, we're still kind of planning out that feature. It's gonna be kind of a big one, maybe a multiphase release, but
Justin:Yeah. That stuff gets me really fired up. I I think in in some ways, looking back on 2021, 2020 is there was a lot of self care in those years
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Because of COVID, Because of also just, like, there's some hard personal stuff we both went through, and it just felt like In the midst of COVID, in the midst of everything else, we just needed to be gentle with ourselves, and, You know, we I mean, if you look at the list of stuff we released, we actually released tons of stuff. We're we're we're punching way above our weight in terms of Yeah. What we were able to accomplish with the number of people we have, but I think for the first time, I'm feeling like 2022, I really think we can go after some big goals. I think we can become, like, not just, you know, like, we can really, What's the what am I trying to say here? I think we can really take some ground, like, in the podcasting space.
Justin:We can We can build some stuff that podcasters really want. I think we've always done a good job of staying close to the customer. I think we've done a good job of being, reasonable with the customer saying, you know, we can't give you everything, but there are certain things that I know would just be huge improvements.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Quality of life improvements for our customers. Websites is one of them. Like, give them an amazing website that looks great, that Has the the listen badges in the right place that, you know, really enables them to grow their show, which is ultimately what people want.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And there's kind of 2 main things I think it we should be thinking about and, and building, stuff that helps people grow their listenership, you know, gives them a better chance of getting listeners, of getting noticed, of having someone land on their website and actually going, oh, this this looks professional. This looks good. I'm gonna give it a chance. And then the other one is monetization and giving people the tools for monetizing their show. And I think we're so close with this dynamic ad insertion and giving like, closing the loop so that They can sign up for Stripe, but then easily connect that to their Transistor account, and all of a sudden they Can start charging for private podcasts, for ad campaigns, and, Just integrating all of that stuff in the simplest way possible, but really enabling our customers to do cool shit.
Justin:And, I think one thing that definitely fires us up in in our team is we have this, customer research channel. And whenever a customer is, like, hyped on what we're doing, something that we've released, That's like rocket fuel for all of us. We all enjoy that. And so, yeah, I that that's the stuff I'm starting to get excited about and feeling like I have the energy and I think the team has the energy and you have the energy to actually Invest in some pretty big moves, like, for our team. But Yeah.
Justin:You know? And and, like, I I think in the past, I wouldn't I wouldn't have said this, but because I I just again, I wanted to be gentle with us, But now I just feel like I wanna be the best. Like, I do want to be the best, and That gets me fired up to go, I wanna I want people to look at Transistor and go not for them to Compare us to Simplecast or Captivate or whoever. I want them to look at Transition and go, it is just clearly the best, and to to have that you know? Already a lot of people think that, but I want it to be unmistakable.
Justin:I want it to be like, no question. These people know how to build product. These people know how to serve customers, and they do it not just a little bit better than anyone else. They do it heads and shoulders above anybody else.
Jon:Definitely.
Justin:Are you feeling the same way? Are you feeling like you got a little bit more energy?
Jon:Yeah. I do. Yeah. I mean, it'll be nice to, like, you know, take a little slow for the holidays and get back into it in the New Year. And, Yeah.
Jon:And and, you know, I think we have A great team for it works, kind of excited about the same ideas. Mhmm. Sometimes, I think we We get a little excited about too many ideas. Yeah. We kinda maybe have to dial it down and choose something to start.
Jon:Yeah. There's a lot that we wanna do with still a handful of people, but it, you know, definitely helps to have Jason on as well.
Justin:Yeah. To have to have There's multiple times because I'm the last person to wake up on our team because of the time zones, and there's days where I wake up and it's, like, in Slack, There's a great kind of, whatever shower thought from Helen, and then there's a great shower thought from Jason. There's a great shower thought from you. I like, This is just and it is a little uncomfortable because it's pushing me at least to be like, okay. I gotta think about this or, You know, we may have considered this in the past and discarded it, but maybe it's time to look at it again.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:Naturally, the the challenge the tension there is How do we focus on, you know, just achieving one thing at a time? But I think Having the excitement and having these kind of, thoughtful, like, You know, these thought the idea that there's now 4 people thinking at night before they go to sleep like, you know, what about this? Or having These moments of inspiration
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:It just multiplies everything and creates A much better pool of ideas, I think Yeah. Absolutely. Than 1 or 2 people. And I I I'll put this in the show notes, but I I kind of mapped out 2022 in terms of, like, cycles. And we just put a few ideas in there, but I think That visualization for me is helpful to go, okay.
Justin:We've got maybe 6 cycles of, like, Focused work. And so that's not that many. And so what could we actually accomplish in a year? And just being able to, like, Put a few things in there as ideas was also helpful for me, at least, to be able to go, okay. I can see There's a plan here that could emerge.
Justin:You know?
Jon:Yeah. Definitely. I guess, you know, 2022, we'll see How well we stick to those cycles?
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. We haven't you know, we did work a little bit like that, but it was just the 2 of us. And then Yeah. We haven't really worked like that much Yeah. This entire year.
Justin:Yeah. I I I I wanna give that a good Good old college try. You know? Like, let's see if we can actually create some a framework for, Some rails for our work. Because on one hand, I really like the flexibility and openness, but I I do feel like, in some ways, I've gone too far on the you know, I'll just wake up and, you know, see what I feel like doing that day.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:I there's a benefits to that, but
Jon:But it is it is nice to have not, I guess, not I was gonna say have a reason to wake up, but That's not
Justin:right.
Jon:But but, you know
Justin:A focus.
Jon:A focus to get up and get excited about and, like Yeah. Know what you're know what you're gonna do that day. And
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:I think the times we've done that even with Jason and I kinda working on the dynamic, you know, audio insertion stuff, like, It's helpful, and you you get focused and you really, like, are kind of on it all day as opposed to sort of like Jumping around from this to that.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It creates intention for the day, which is, yeah, really helpful. I I've I'm feeling fired up about 2022, feeling like also, like, love our schedule that we've developed.
Justin:Like, It's interesting to see some of the things we put in place in their early years of Transistor now translating into the small team because, you know, it rolled around to December 17th, and midway through December is typically where we really slow down. Like, we have no new projects. It's just, like, Customer support, cleaning up a few things. You can do something if you feel like it, but our intention in the past was to really slow things down for the holidays. And now we've just carried that on to our team with Jason and Helen going, okay.
Justin:You know, it's December 17th. All all we really want from you is to check, our customer support chat throughout the holidays. Just go in there. Check it. If you can answer some tickets, please do it.
Justin:And that's it. You know?
Jon:Yeah. And so nice to have that that freedom and that yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And that that, Pace. Because I'm hoping what it does is by the time January 3rd rolls around, we're just Fired up. You know?
Justin:And if if you and I get a little retreat together, like, that's gonna be that's just gonna create so much energy, I think, for the New Year.
Jon:Yeah. And, hopefully, we can all get everyone together in the spring, which is the tentative plan, but
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. So that'll be the The other thing is probably fly Helen to North America, and then somewhere in North America,
Jon:Yep.
Justin:Have all 4 of us. Do you think I mean, I we who knows? But I I think I'd be open I I don't have an immediate, like, role in mind. I there's a few things, but I'd I think I'd be open to hiring 1 more person, next year,
Jon:what are your what
Justin:are your thoughts about that?
Jon:I'd be open to it. Depends what it is and, you know, what we think we need. I don't At the moment, I don't know exactly what that would be.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, there's a few thoughts going around my head. One is if we really want to have customer support and have the best customer support and have it handled. Because right now, throughout the day, once Helen's off, it's like you and Jason kinda cover it, and then I cover it for the rest of the day, and then I usually try to stay on it until, like, check it whenever I can up until I go to sleep, which is, like, 11 o'clock. But, you know, there is sometimes, You know, I just don't check it for a while, and it would be nice to have 1 more person Yeah.
Justin:Kind of responsible for that. I do think I wanna experiment a little bit more at the very least with hiring people on short term things.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:Like, I just hired Jason Beggs to do some work on the transistor website, and it just really got me unstuck. He just went through. He refactored some of my code. I've just got pull requests just waiting for me to check right now.
Jon:I saw that. Yeah. That's cool.
Justin:That's the good feeling. Yeah. And I also am open to you know, I think it'd be easy for me especially to become complacent, and I think bringing in Some you know, maybe somebody some a marketing contractor for a couple weeks just to shake things up, just to be like, you know, let's try this. Let's Why why aren't you doing this? You know?
Justin:I've got experience with this. I can help you try it. I I'd like to experiment a bit more with that because I think it can be healthy to Not you know, the the my biggest risk is complacency or continuing to live in my little box that Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, you
Jon:know, we hired Jason, which kind of helped me out a lot Mhmm. In the, you know, software side of things, And, you know, he challenges me quite a bit. Yeah. And then, you know, we're I think we're in the early New Year, we're gonna Do have some contract design work for a feature we're gonna do. Yeah.
Jon:I I also wouldn't be opposed to having A designer Designer. For the website or the interface or the podcast websites or whatever. Yeah. Man, finding that person is, like Yeah. That's that that's stressful for me.
Jon:Like, finding the right person who is a great designer, but also Can work with, you know, rails and the code and, like, it's just that there's a type of person I think that would be perfect, and I honestly don't Know what to ask for or where to look?
Justin:Yeah. What what do you mean with the type of person? Like, are you thinking, like, people who can Do illustration work but can also design in Photoshop for the browser, or you think of someone No. Who's, like, more full stack?
Jon:Think someone who's who knows full stack, but is definitely more front end, like, interface heavy. Yeah. Or
Justin:Someone like Steve Shoger?
Jon:Probably. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. Who knows, you know, who knows marketing websites, who knows interface design, who
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:Who can, You know, who knows JavaScript to it's just like Yeah. You can type of person. I you know? I don't know. I don't
Justin:I think Shogren knows a little bit. Like, I think he can write CSS now, but I don't think He's probably not as full stack as that. He's mostly design, and then also has you know, can do illustration and and other stuff. But, yeah, that that is a challenge. Those per people are hard to find.
Justin:The the other thing I think In the past that I've noticed is that when we did hire that designer person I guess it depends on how you work. But In the past, as a product manager, I found it challenging to keep them busy. Because often it'd be like, okay. We need this thing designed, and they would design it, and then it's like You're just waiting for developers to implement it, but Right. Like, keeping, like, that constant flow of, like, okay.
Justin:Now, you know, it's
Jon:No. I think I think I would want somebody who would just go out of their way of find stuff
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:To and be like, this can be improved. Here's what I'm thinking. Like, here's a mock up. Yeah. And then we'd be like, yeah.
Jon:It's great.
Justin:Go do it. Yeah.
Jon:And, you know, there's obviously would be things we would, you know, want them to do, but it's Yeah. Just go through our system, our site, our marketing site, everything, and, like, pick and choose things where you think, Yeah. You have some some fresh ideas about how to
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:How to rework this.
Justin:The unicorn is somebody who was Raised on Photoshop, but then taught themself HTML and CSS.
Jon:Yeah. That's kinda what I did. Yeah. But at the same time, like, I get stuck in my own ways, and, like, I think I think where Trent is at is that now is is great, and people love it, but, like Mhmm. I'm definitely stuck in my own head with my own ideas, and there's Tons of others out there.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's been one of our Advantages, I think, that you've had that sensibility. Like, You have a good it's a simple design style aesthetic, but it's really worked for us.
Justin:And in some ways, it's been beneficial.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Because because There is there's also there is some it depends on who you hire, but there is some drama in this too, which is like, depending on who comes in. You know, sometimes it's like you can tell when startups have had a new design person come in, because it's like, okay. Now we got tie all the type typefaces are changed and everything's you know?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And there's, You're right. It'd be hard to hire for it because you want a sensibility that would kinda augment what we're doing.
Jon:And it's also, like, for me is and it was the same with hiring Jason, which is, you know, this thing is kind of my baby.
Justin:Yeah. I'm like
Jon:To have someone come in and be like, no. This needs to be changed.
Justin:Yeah. I mean Yeah.
Jon:You know, there were certain things with Jason where I'm like, I don't know if we should do that. It doesn't seem like the right thing. And then he'll go and build something. I'm like, oh, this is obviously a 100% better.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. You you have to practice your breathing. You know? You take a few breaths.
Jon:Yeah. Okay. You gotta learn to let go a little bit.
Justin:Yeah. But that is healthy. I mean, a certain amount of that is healthy. I think this is the tension is that, again, part of this is My own previous work experience, but, you know, too much fighting and too much divergent Opinions, becomes very difficult.
Jon:You
Justin:know? But there's I this is why it's Great to hire people that you know because then it's the the fights are Like, that's the benefit with you and Jason is that there's a a backdrop, a backbone, a relationship there where He knows he can he can push you a little bit. Yeah. I mean,
Jon:we can, like, give each other shit and push each other, and it's fine.
Justin:Yeah. You know,
Jon:it's not like But I agree. If there's too much argument, then nothing gets done, and then employees get fed up and they wanna leave.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't even for us, don't wanna have a company that you don't like working in, you know.
Jon:Right. Right.
Justin:And that's the tension is that, the you know, having a a go getter employee that's, like, always Kinda pushing pushing buttons, can be great, in one context, but If it's the wrong person or the wrong tone or the wrong thing or the whatever, and then all of a sudden, it's like, fuck. I don't like going to work anymore because Every time I go to work
Jon:Yeah. That way. That's it.
Justin:I So hiring staff.
Jon:Yeah. It is. I don't, yeah, I don't wanna get to a point where I'm Exhausted and frustrated and angry at the end of the day because I haven't had that at all Yeah. Transistor. I mean, I I think I was talking about that with a friend, and I was like, I don't I don't ever, like, end the day angry or exhausted or or, like, thank God it's Friday.
Jon:I don't Yeah. I don't I don't I don't ever think that, and I don't Yeah. Wanna end up in a ring running a company where I think that or other people think that.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And we've just been so lucky up till now. Yeah.
Justin:It just feels like I I'm glad we stressed out about hiring, Helen? I'm glad we stressed out about hiring Jason because it showed that we were taking it seriously. There's always a leap of Faith you've gotta take, but, I think we'll know the the great benefit now is, like, An incredible rails engineer could come along, and we might not be looking for somebody, but we could be like, you know what? Like
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:This just makes sense. Like, this this would augment our team even though we weren't looking for them. Let's just do it. You know? Or, you know, there could be somebody on the on the marketing side.
Justin:There could be someone on the customer success side. There could be someone I I think it's possible that There's some flexibility here in the sense of, like I feel like we have room for definitely for more contractors that we could work with, but we also have room for, like we have the budget for 1 more full time person, and If the right person comes along, we don't have to push it. Like, if they come along, it's like, woah. Like, Jon, we gotta we gotta check this person out. Like, this is this just feels you know, if if a young Derek Rymer came along, he's the guy that started SavvyCal, so Derek's you know, he's too he's too far gone.
Justin:Like, we can't get him. But if a young Derek Reimer came along, The you know, I think we would notice that. We'd be like, okay. This is this is just solid. Like
Jon:Someone who wants to work with a bunch of crusty 40 year olds and and some and a boring rail stack. A a young a youngster who
Justin:I think I think Helen is, like, the youngster in our group. She must be quite a bit younger than us, I'm guessing. Is Jason in his forties?
Jon:Yeah. He's, Yeah. He's older than you. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. We need to get we need to get some we need to get some millennials in this company, man.
Jon:Mix things up.
Justin:Next thing's up. I don't know.
Jon:Maybe they just maybe they just want us to sell at NFTs and
Justin:Yeah. We gotta that's what we gotta do is we gotta start a Web 3 project, and then that's how you attract the talent.
Jon:Re rebranding as, you know, podcasts on the on the blockchain.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Just transistor 3. Blockchain stuff, there is a corner of podcast to stand that is That you know, with the Lightning Network and everything, and that that's pretty big on that stuff. But, yeah, that that I am still I'm open to it, but the,
Jon:yeah. Yeah. I'm in I'm on the sidelines interested and cringing at the same time.
Justin:Yeah. It's it to me, it has nothing to do with, like, what upsets people, which is, like, I don't think I'm in I well, maybe I am, but, you know, there's a there's a certain kind of, like, visceral, like like, screw NFTs. Those are just dumb. To me, it's more like I just what's here right now is not compelling enough, sociologically. Like, there's just the wallet system, the the way that Cryptography works and, like, having your own keys and
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Losing keys and your phone falls in the lake and you lose $100,000 in Ethereum. Like, those are the things that, still feel too It's not there yet. It's just not it's not at a level that makes sense, you know, at kinda popular scale. But, certainly, something's gonna emerge out of this time that's going to be think 99% of the stuff that's going on right now is going to, not not persist, and then it'll be large
Jon:out of
Justin:1% that is you know, that that continues on.
Jon:Yep.
Justin:Yeah. So I think we can wait. Yeah. That's that's the advantage of being Yeah. Trusty 4 year old I
Jon:just don't know what it would I just don't know what it would mean for podcasting. I there's no, like, there's no light bulb moments like, oh, this would be great.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're still not sold on JavaScript.
Jon:Right. Yeah. We do complain about it, Jason, and I quite a bit.
Justin:That's that's who we should hire next is someone who's, like just loves JavaScript.
Jon:Yeah. Well, I think the idea is we use less and less of it Yeah. If we can.
Justin:Oh, man. Yeah. We've been recording for a while.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Anything else we should we talked a bit about this year. We talked a little bit about next year. We got some cool stuff we just released, like mid rolls for dynamic audio insertion. Oh, Black Friday. Yeah.
Justin:Was Black Friday worth it? No. Yeah.
Jon:I don't think so.
Justin:In my in my head, I think I would have been happy if we'd gotten 300 new customers. I think we only got 15 new customers
Jon:Okay.
Justin:And then, maybe a 130 existing customers upgraded.
Jon:Yep.
Justin:We can track that cohort now and see, you know, of that group that upgraded to annual, was it better to have them upgrade to annual, in terms of lifetime value.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:But the the real push for me was saying, I wonder if this can bring in a bunch of new people.
Jon:Yeah. It didn't.
Justin:And I think it it shows that, this dynamic that we've observed, I think continues to be true, which is, the reason you can't just send someone an ad for podcast hosting or like an Instagram ad or a promotion like this is it's not like like, if you're doing a Black Friday promotion for a course, People will buy that and put that on their shelf for later. It's like West Boss. You know, you and I have bought courses from West Boss that we were like, you know what? Let's buy this, and we'll just put it on the shelf for later in case we need
Jon:I used to buy courses all the time. Got through about 2 lessons and didn't
Justin:Yeah. Continue.
Jon:I forgot about it. I think my hunch from the beginning was people aren't out there. It's not like a TV where if it's on sale, you're gonna go buy it and immediately use it. Like, people aren't out there just being like, waiting for a deal on podcast hosting to start their podcast, I think.
Justin:No. It's it's they ramp up. It it's like what What was the analogy I used? I said it's kind of like, you don't put an offer on a house until you've got all your financing, until you, you You know, you've got, you've sold your other house or whatever. You don't you don't hire a mover until you know you bought a house and you're ready to go.
Justin:It's like one of those things where you have to be already committed, and then you've ramped up to that point.
Jon:Right.
Justin:So it's like Kyle Fox in 2012 DMs me and says, hey. Do you wanna start a podcast? And that's like, oh, yeah. Let's think about it. And then we think about it, and we write down notes, and we're Passing back and forth ideas, and then we record this shitty first episode.
Justin:And then it's like, okay. Where are we gonna host this? Let's get some microphones. It it ramps up to the day that you go, okay, now we need podcast hosting. Where who are we gonna choose?
Justin:You know? And unless you're at that stage, you're not going to, respond to a promotion.
Jon:Yep.
Justin:Because we actually got a lot of exposure. Like, Our our affiliates, emailed their lists about it, and some of them have thousands and thousands of people on their list. I emailed my personal list about it, Emailed the transistor list about it, tweeted about it a ton. We had tons of people, share it themselves on social. So I feel like, You know, we got the exposure, but, the the people who buy podcast hosting are searching for it because it's the day, It's the time.
Justin:Now is the time. Okay. I'm gonna do it. You know?
Jon:Yep. Yeah. And, you know, ultimately, I think caused you a lot of Work and stress Yeah. Leading up to it, which is probably Yeah.
Justin:I forgot what that was like. Like, it was just, like, a lot of extra work and, like, Yeah. It was I stayed I hadn't stayed late at the office for a long time. And that whole Couple of weeks leading up to Black Friday, I was, like, constantly, like, late for dinner and, like, working after dinner. It was just, Yeah.
Justin:Not worth it. But it's good to push ourselves like that every once in a while. That was the idea. Let's do the experiment, see how it goes. So we did that.
Justin:And we have a Riverside integration coming out soon too.
Jon:We do. Yeah. Similar to the The Descript
Justin:Yeah. Permission. That's actually the one thing that I might need to reschedule our snowboarding week is I'm supposed to do a livestream with Descript Uh-huh. On 11th. So we'll we'll have to see what we what we do there.
Justin:May maybe we'll snowboard locally on 10th, work from my coworking place on 11th, and then that afternoon, leave and go to Revelstoke and then Yeah. Ride for 2, 3 days there.
Jon:Could work.
Justin:Yeah. Sounds fun. Alright. Well, we still we actually have a new Patreon. Why don't you, close this out with our Classic Patreon shoutouts.
Jon:Alright. Thanks as always to everyone who supports us on Patreon. We have Marcel Fale? Fale?
Justin:Yeah. It's pretty good. He's got a website called wearebold.af.
Jon:Oh, nice. I didn't realize that a dotaf was a That's domain you could use.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I thought you just you were gonna say you didn't know what AF stand for. No. No.
Justin:I Yeah. We we really are. We gotta we gotta hire some Gen Z people just to Right.
Jon:Just to Totally out of it.
Justin:Hey. Hey.
Jon:And we have Anton Zoren from Prodcamp .com, Mitch, Harris Kenny from the intro to CRM podcast, Oleg Kulik, Violette Duggenevie, Take It EV podcast, Ethan Gunderson, Diogo, Chris Willow, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler from MemberSpace.
Justin:Listen to you go you're you're in the pocket now. Now using the names, you you you know these names.
Jon:It's like yeah. Just flowing through it. Yeah. Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Prada Yumna Schenbecker, Noah Praill, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitfer, 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 Giunta. Giunta.
Justin:Thanks, everybody. We will see you in 2022. Have a great holiday, and, hope you have a great New Year. Yeah.
Jon:Happy New Year, everyone.
Justin:Talk to you later. Bye.
