My teenager wants to play Dungeons & Dragons
Hey. I'm John Buddha.
Jon:Hey there. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2018. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm a product and marketing guy. Follow along as we launch transistor dot f f m. So, John Yeah. Here we are.
Justin:I'm I'm actually on the road with my 3 boys, aged 12, 10, and 8. We're in Edmonton right now.
Jon:Okay. That sounds like an adventure. I think I saw some sort of photo of a a large one.
Justin:Yeah. We were in the water park. I lasted 6 hours in the World Water Park at West Edmonton Mall, which was the biggest mall in the world for a while. I think Mall of America is bigger now.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And if you can just imagine this I think it's the biggest indoor water park. So it's got I don't know. It might have, I don't know, 20 slides, something like that, and a huge wave pool. But every time you get off a slide, you they have free fountain pop. And so if you can imagine, like, the the craziest combination of sugar and excitement and people and and then me, a tired dad, and I lasted 6 hours at this place.
Jon:It's like it sounds like Vegas for kids, but instead of free alcohol, you get free sugar. That's such a great way to put it. Oh, wow. That's such a great That's evil.
Justin:Yeah. It it was really fun for them, but I got out of there, and it it almost, like, hit me all at once. It was like, wow. I am tired. I need to go home right now.
Justin:So we got to experience that and here visiting family. It was my sister Emma's birthday. I think I said I said this last time, and I was I was talking to her. I'm like, hey. I mentioned you on my podcast.
Justin:To which she replied, what? You have a podcast? And I said, Emma, I've had a podcast since 2012. And she's like, oh, I had no idea. I love podcasts.
Justin:So, Emma, if you're listening now, I'm still upset about that. Now I I also so I didn't have a way to record our episode today. I was like, what am I gonna do? Because we record this usually on Friday. It's Thursday today, but I'm gonna be traveling tomorrow.
Justin:And so you noticed I'm in a different spot. Folks at home can't see, but I'm, like, illuminated by this kind of bright video light, and then I have sound, baffling kinda all around me and this black background and this really awesome microphone.
Jon:Yeah. You sound good.
Justin:Well, it's all thanks to MTech Digital, specifically Greg at MTech Digital, MTech Digital dot CA in Edmonton because I was just calling around. The library has sound booths, but they're booked up 2 weeks in advance. And so Oh, wow. My friend Karen here said, well, why don't you give Emtek a call? They rent out, kind of like video booths and, you know, booths for doing online webinars and stuff.
Justin:And, I gave this guy a call, and he's like, you know what? Just come on down. It's on us. So here I am. I just met these folks just now, and they just closed the door.
Justin:And now I'm in this strange place
Jon:talking to you. Recording. That's great. That all happened within, like, 45 minutes.
Justin:Yes. Yeah. That yeah. That all happened within 45 minutes. That's the crazy part.
Justin:Exactly.
Jon:That's great.
Justin:This is gonna be our first kind of shucking and jiving episode because we don't have a super solid outline, but we wanted to record an episode, I think, in some ways on things that are kinda top of mind for me. Mhmm.
Jon:And there
Justin:might be some recurring themes if you've heard our other episodes, but, really, the question I get a lot is, how do you know what product idea to pursue? For you, it's probably how do I know what features we're going to build? Like, how do we prioritize? Right?
Jon:Right.
Justin:And so I think that would be a good topic for us to visit or visit again if we've already covered it because I've had a lot of people on this road trip. I've been meeting people constantly. And that's one thing that's come up is why this idea? Why now? And, you know, what makes this so compelling for us both, you know, in terms of our interest in it, but also in terms of a business idea.
Justin:How's that sound to you?
Jon:Sounds great. Let's go with it.
Justin:I think as a background, when people say, so what are you doing? What's this new thing? And I say, well, it's a podcast hosting application, and most folks, have no idea how podcast hosting works. Have you noticed that too?
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. They a lot of people assume that iTunes hosts the files. Yeah. And that you just yeah.
Jon:I mean, it's understandable. Like, why would they know that? Yeah. Why why would people assume otherwise?
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. An Apple Podcast is kind of the biggest player, and they have this big directory. But what people don't realize is you need to host the MP 3 files. You need something that can create and serve the feed.
Justin:You need something that some sort of content management system to, like, manage the show notes and the input of the show notes. You need a way of kinda organizing all the metadata. So all the show data, like, cover art, show title, author, website, and then you need metadata for the episodes. What are some of the things in episodes? Is title description.
Justin:Anything else?
Jon:There's title description. You can embed artwork into the file itself.
Justin:Okay.
Jon:Author name, date, duration, like track number or episode number.
Justin:Yeah. I've also noticed that our editor, Chris, has been putting in, m MP 3, I think this isn't the MP 3. Not not channels, seg Chapter markings? Chapter markers. Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. That's the newer thing. It's we're trying to think of a way to automate that with, transistor, but it's not super straightforward.
Justin:Yeah. It's cool, though. Some folks noticed it when they were listening to the show. I think it works on certain pod catchers. Yeah.
Justin:So I you know, for a long time, I started my podcast in 2012. And when folks ask me, you know, for advice on starting products or building startups or whatever, and they say, what about podcasting? You know, maybe I should make something for podcasters. And I always said no. Yeah.
Justin:And the reason was, in my experience, podcasters were cheap. They were kinda DIY. They like to roll their own feed. They if they were going to pay for a service, you know, they wanted to pay the least amount possible. And, I just felt like there's this market is kinda full of hobbyists, and I love podcasting.
Justin:I think it's amazing, but it felt like a hard market to build a business on, kind of in the same way that maybe it would be hard to build a business on, like, Dungeons and Dragons or something. Although now
Jon:Right.
Justin:I've noticed a lot of people playing Dungeons and Dragons like, that
Jon:Yeah. It's it's picking up again.
Justin:Have you noticed that too? I wonder if it's because Yeah. Stranger Things. Do you think that's why?
Jon:I don't know. I don't know. It happens a lot in our office. We actually have, like, an office dungeon master
Justin:What?
Jon:Who's, like, a really good writer and storyteller, which is important. Yeah. There's people yeah. It's I I sort of I never really grew up playing it, but, I knew a lot of people that did, and it's, you know, there's 30 year old 30, 25 year old people in the office playing it pretty regularly.
Justin:Yeah. Well, actually, this is a good time to bring this up because, you know, when you're answering that question, how do you choose a product? How do you know if your timing is right? That's the big one because we know that timing, really plays into kind of business success and product success. So Bill Gates had introduced touch screen computing way before Steve Jobs, but Steve always seemed to have this way about him.
Justin:He always knew when the timing was right. Do you would you agree with that?
Jon:Yeah. Definitely.
Justin:What one of the ways you figure out if the timing is right is you've got to be listening and observing for trends. And so we were just talking about D and D, and we observed 1 right away. And I'm gonna add to that. This is the kind of qualitative observations I'm talking about. So on Instagram stories, as I'm going through, I just starting I'm starting to notice a lot more people playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Justin:It's, like, coming up at my feed, just random people playing more often. And there's something about that, and it it seems to coincide with Stranger Things. Then I get a text message from my 15 year old daughter. Hey, dad. Is it okay if I stay out late tonight?
Justin:We wanna play Dungeons and Dragons. Now I I'm I'm really hoping they actually play Dungeons and Dragons. But Right. If my 15 year old daughter is text messaging me about Dungeons and Dragons, there's something going on. You know, there's there's something going on here where her and her friends are getting together and wanting to play.
Jon:Right.
Justin:And then we have, kind of a Geek Beers here in Vernon last Thursday of every month. It's actually tonight. I'm gonna miss it. But you you start to, you know, bring up conversation or hear conversation come up. Someone brings up D and D.
Justin:Half the room kind of comes alive. What? Oh, yeah. I've been playing lately.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:You know, people talking about it. Oh, this you know, we played last night. Those are really good signals that something's going on. Now the fact that you over in Chicago, a completely different country, completely different government, completely different everything, you're saying, you know what? This is happening here too.
Justin:We've got grown ass adults that are calling themselves dungeon masters and playing in the office. Right?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And so there's kinda something there. Right? Like, maybe now's a good time. If you've been sitting on a great D and D idea, maybe now's the time to to launch something. And we've already observed a few things.
Justin:For example, I've observe observed that a lot of these folks are brand new players, so they're playing for the first time. They weren't playing in the seventies and the eighties. They've probably seen Stranger Things. It ignited some curiosity, and now they wanna play.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And so if you're gonna build a product for that niche, you would probably want to focus on beginners. Right?
Jon:Yeah. Sounds fair.
Justin:Yeah. And even like so have you played D and D before?
Jon:I didn't really grow up playing it frequently. I have played it, but never really got into it.
Justin:Yeah. I I mean, I don't wanna get you in trouble with your Cards Against Humanity homies here, but, what what kinds of things like, when you were when you were learning or wanting when you're first playing, did you notice any kind of, like, anxiety or discomfort or struggle? Like, what were some of the things going through your mind? Did you play in the office?
Jon:No. I I mean, I haven't.
Justin:Okay. So you played somewhere else, like, with some friends or something?
Jon:Yeah. It's been I mean, it's been a year. Like, this is when I was younger. I haven't played recently. Okay.
Jon:Although although I I will admit, like, I'm interested. I would.
Justin:Yeah. Okay. And so and so what kind of thoughts would you have now as someone who's thinking, oh, maybe I should get back into it again? What are some of the things, you know, maybe the what are some of the obstacles in your way?
Jon:It seems like choosing a character, choosing a a name of a character.
Justin:Yeah. One thing for me is it always D and D people speak a different language, and that intimidates me a little bit. Like, I don't exactly know what they're talking about.
Jon:Yeah. There's a vocabulary to that. I mean, it's it's storytelling, essentially, interactive storytelling. Yeah. The the time that it might take to do it, I'm, like, not certain I would have the time to finish a campaign.
Justin:How long does that take, actually?
Jon:Is it I have no idea. I think they can be really long. Yeah. Depends.
Justin:So those kinds of questions that we're just talking about right now, I think those are the kinds of things that you would wanna observe if you were in the D and D space and you're thinking, okay. Is the timing right? Well, the timing does seem to be right. There's some things in pop culture. There's some real, evidence.
Justin:This is what I was trying to say before. You want some real evidence that this is really happening, that it's really hit. And there is quantitative ways to get this data, but it's gonna probably be a lagging indicator. So, eventually, you know, some game gaming database or gaming rating system is going to come out with some rankings, and it's gonna say, woah. D and D seems to be up.
Justin:Like, D and D sales are up. Or maybe, what there's a conference called Gary's Con, I think. That's all, like, D and D stuff, and maybe they're like, you know what? Year over year growth is, like, 30% for attendees. Well, those are quantitative metrics, but they're always kind of lagging.
Justin:You get that data later. Right?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:I knew cards against me humanity was going to be a hit before I saw any newspaper articles on it before anything because I heard people were playing it. And it's it's kind of the same with D and D. We're saying we're we're observing. There's some evidence that this is a real thing. Right?
Justin:Yep. So now let's bring this into podcasting.
Jon:I'm assuming you've you've noticed similar trends.
Justin:Yeah. So what have you noticed, actually, that let's start there.
Jon:I mean, there's a couple of things. I've heard, you know, friends and family who are not necessarily big into tech Mhmm. Have really gotten into podcasts recently. You know, I've been at at parties and, like, dinner gatherings and dinner parties and, you know, oftentimes people will ask each other, oh, what are you, what are you watching these days? What are you reading?
Jon:But more recently, it, a lot of times it's like, are you, what are you listening to any podcasts? And then everyone gets like, really excited and starts rattling off, like, you know, a handful of random ones I've never heard of or, like, super popular ones like Cereal or, you know, hardcore history, stuff like that. Yeah. And it's just like, you know, normal friends who aren't into technology or necessarily on the cutting edge of things. I mean, you know, podcast has been around a while, but Yeah.
Jon:They were never mainstream until recently.
Justin:It was geeky for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. And even what you just said, like, the intonation, I think that's the right word. When you notice people talking about it, you say people really light up and they get excited.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:That is such, important signal because if it's something people get excited about, you know, wow, there's something going on here. In the same way that you bring up D and D now at a party, and folks are like, oh, yeah. I've been playing. Like, you can tell there's there's some momentum there. And Yeah.
Justin:That that makes a big difference. Is there anything else you've noticed that you can think of? Any other kind of trends or observations you've made? Or maybe even things that have changed in the last 5 years?
Jon:I mean, obviously, there's a TV show now about podcast, but
Justin:Oh, yeah.
Jon:There's the one about yeah. This, startup, the Gimlet Show. Kinda came out with a TV show, which apparently is not very good, but kind of speaks to its its popularity.
Justin:Yeah. This is going to be and this could bring podcasting even more into the main sphere. Right?
Jon:It's a lot easier to find shows. You have, radio stations like NPR. You know, I listen to the radio occasionally in the morning, like the actual FM radio, and they're always talking talking about, well, and then you can listen more on on our podcast on Itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And that's like Yeah. But this is a normal thing now.
Justin:Similarly, one of the things that really so these are some of the things I noticed that I was like, I think podcasting has changed, and I think the time is right now, or at least there's a bigger opportunity than there was before. Right. So number 1, in coffee shops, I started hear overhearing people say, hey. I'm listening to the Tim Ferris show. You're listening to the Tim Ferris show?
Justin:Like, what? Or, hey. Have you heard Gary vay Vaynerchuk's podcast? Yeah. Like, okay.
Justin:What what is going on here that normal people outside of the technology world would even know who those people are? And Yeah. And maybe, like, I would I wouldn't have been surprised if they said I read Tim's book. But the fact that they're they say, I've listened to Tim's podcast, and I'm like, have you heard of his book? Oh, no.
Justin:I don't I just know about his podcast. It's like, okay. Something is going on here. Yeah. There is a new kind of wave of people who are getting into shows.
Justin:Quantitatively, the growth has been quite linear and organic. There's no hockey stick, but I can just tell that there's more interest just in the folks around me. So that that's one signal. And when they talk about shows, they they get excited. So a common conversation I have these days, what is folks go, you know, Justin, when you were doing a podcast back in 2012, I was, like, whatever.
Justin:But now they're, like, I get it. Like, I've just started listening in the last 6 months or the last year. Yeah. I get it. I love This American Life, or I love Joe Rogan, or, you know, they all have their show that they like.
Justin:And, I mean, the biggest one, actually like, my wife hardly ever listened to podcasts, and she's gotten really into The Minimalists. And so Yeah. It's almost like people will get a show, and then they get it. Like, once they find a show that they really like, it's they're in it, and then they are really in it. Like, they listen to hours and hours of audio.
Justin:So that's a good sign.
Jon:And I think the the incredible thing is still that it's easy to it's easy to get into podcasting, but it's still really not very easy to Mhmm. Discover new podcasts. So everything is still really organic. Like you said, it's word-of-mouth. It's not Mhmm.
Jon:It's not like you're not on you're not on Spotify. Like, when you listen to music, it's like, hey, you like this guy. These these other bands are related. You might really like this. We're gonna build a playlist for you based on stuff you might like.
Jon:Like, there's not. That doesn't really exist. I think people are trying to tackle that problem. But Yeah. I think it's still just word-of-mouth people talking about it and recommending things in person or.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:And, actually, that brings up a good point. I hadn't even thought of this, but I think if you're the thing you're pursuing, the idea you're pursuing, or the the the topic or the the niche that you're thinking of going after, If people aren't talking about it, if there's no word-of-mouth, I don't know if I would go after it. Right. Because it it it's almost everything, like, every single product. I mean, there's some search products that probably don't need word-of-mouth, but word-of-mouth is kinda like the baseline.
Justin:That's how you know, you know, is this is this worth like, are people excited about this? Is there momentum? Is there, like, a high motivation? And, I've brought up the I the the example of buying flowers on Valentine's Day before. Well, people talk about that.
Justin:Like, men talk about, like, have you got your wife flowers yet? Where'd you go? Like, you know, that's there's there's word-of-mouth around that, and you can see the momentum behind it. There's this new game called HQ. Have you played that yet?
Justin:Have you heard about it?
Jon:Have not. No. I've heard about it, though. Yeah.
Justin:Okay. So you've heard about it. Someone told you about it? Uh-huh. See, they don't do any advertising, and I'm getting a tour.
Justin:Last night, my friend Garner and his wife Kelsey own this amazing restaurant in Edmonton called Cafe Linne, and he's touring me around. But one of his staff come up to him and say, hey. Have you played HQ tonight? So it's a part of the the dialogue. You know?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And they're not advertising. They're not in technology. These folks, you know, they they make pastries. They like, it's that is incredible to me, and it shows, like, when you've got that kind of momentum, there's something behind it. So I think that word-of-mouth thing that you brought up is huge.
Justin:That's, if if if something if you can't observe people talking about it, maybe there's no momentum there. Maybe there's not enough, you know, kinda going on.
Jon:Right.
Justin:Here's another thing I've been thinking about. We've touched on this a little bit, but you and I haven't actually really talked about it. But the other trend that made me feel like podcasting might be this might be a time for podcasting is how many folks have Alexa and Google Home in their house? Do do you have one right now?
Jon:Yeah. One of those Alexa dots or something like that.
Justin:Okay. Small
Jon:one. Haven't really used it too much. But
Justin:Yeah. I think what you need to observe there is kids interacting with it. Because when you see a kid interacting with these things, you start to see the future. We don't have one in our house. I think I might have to get one just because of Transistor now, but we don't exactly like the idea of Amazon and Google listening to Yeah.
Justin:Putting that goes on in our house. Yeah. Amazon now is building this app ecosystem on top of voice, on top of audible kind of things and they're basically interactive podcasts. And big companies are now trying to figure out how do we get our Nike's Sports Fitness app on the, you know, on Alexa because we want to you know, some people go, Alexa, tell me what I should do for my run today. And then it goes, you know, the Nike thing comes on and says, well, you lace up your Nikes and go for a 3 mile run today.
Justin:You know? Like, I don't know what the the interactivity part of it is gonna be. But Right. But some of these are gonna be longer. Like, there's quiz based ones.
Justin:There's history based ones, and it's almost going you could make a choose your own adventure podcast. So in terms of, like, the actual player, the player technology hasn't changed that much because of the limitations in RSS. RSS is a blessing and a curse, but, this idea that now there's this new ecosystem is interesting to me. Have you thought it all about that? Is that kind of interest you at all?
Jon:I haven't. No. I haven't. Well, it's it's interesting to me, definitely, but I haven't really looked into it too deeply. There were some people who wanted to build an Alexa skill.
Jon:I think that's what they call them. A an Alexa skill for the good news podcast, which is cardigans humanity show.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:But I I didn't quite I didn't really dive deep into enough deep into it enough to understand, like, why that would be Yeah. I mean, because all all it is now is its episodes, and that's it. And it would, I think, just basically play you, like, news in the morning.
Justin:Yeah. Yep. And some of them are really simple. And, actually, I maybe we'll do an episode or a YouTube video on this, but, apparently, you can get started with just an RSS feed and then the the whole Alexa app is just saying, hey, play me some good news today, And then it plays them the good news. Yeah.
Justin:So even in simple implementations, the fact that you have this new distribution channel is really interesting. And and so I think there might be something there. The the other big thing was how much money certain companies were investing in podcast ads. So, you know, we've all it's almost become a meme. Right?
Justin:Like, everyone can list, like, Mailchimp, Casper,
Jon:LegalView. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep.
Justin:Yeah. I wish we could just send them a bill every time we mention their name.
Jon:We could try.
Justin:We could try. We should. Hey. They're listening to us right now. But, you know, all this money was being put in, and, podcasting right now has the highest CPMs in the ad business.
Justin:And the what people were wondering and almost fearful of is when Apple opens up their their, analytics, folks were like, what's gonna happen? Is it is are people listening to the end? You know, what what are the stats going to tell us? And the results are in, the initial results are in, and the news is almost better what than what people expected. Most shows, people are listening all the way through.
Justin:Most shows have a very high, what do you call it? Like, we know that they're not just downloading episodes. We know that they're actually listening, which was one of the questions we had. And so the fact that that's true and then right after that, there's and, again, folks at home, listen to all the evidence we're providing. Right now, we're just we're kind of we're trying to almost create a case.
Justin:Like, if we were raising money and the the VC is like, okay. Tell us why we should even invest in this. And we'd be like, well, here's all of our evidence. Right?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:So right after that, all these articles came out in, like, Fast Company and stuff saying, you know what? This advertising thing is podcasts are better than we expected. And that leads into kind of the final piece of evidence that I could think of, and that is the investment in branded podcasts.
Jon:Yep.
Justin:And I think there's something about what's going on there that's very interesting to me. The fact that brands are not only saying, you know what? We're gonna put ads out, but we're actually gonna create really good original content like Start Up, which was a Gimlet podcast that is now a TV show, and it's all branded content. It's good branded content. It's not, like, just an infomercial.
Justin:And, you know, Cards Against Humanity has the good news podcast. It's doing really well. Basecamp has invested. I'm guessing because they have 2 full time people and a podcast studio. So I'm guessing that might cost them $200 a year.
Justin:So companies are investing $200 a year in making their own show. Like, there there's something going on there.
Jon:Even that is a minimal amount of money for some of these companies.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, it's
Jon:it's a it's an effort. It's a marketing budget, but it's probably probably a drop in the bucket to what they would normally spend.
Justin:Yeah. Well, especially mass Mastercard. Like, they have their own show. And Right. I mean, who knows how much that cost because they had I think they had Gimlet Creative make that.
Jon:Okay.
Justin:I wonder how much a Gimlet Creative show costs. That would be interesting. But, I mean, we're talking about I I think it's not unfair to say that, you know, some companies, even smaller companies, are investing, you know, 100 of 1,000 of dollars in in the podcasting ecosystem and really liking what they're getting out of it.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. I do you have any thoughts on that? Like, the because you you get to see it at because you guys you guys have a studio there too. Right?
Jon:We do. Yeah. We have 2 studios. We have a small one, smaller one that can fit maybe 5 people, and then a bigger one that is, like, a legitimate recording studio that you would almost go to if, you know, you were a radio show. Like, it's it's got a it's got a sound booth with controls and then a big table for probably 8 8 or more people with a bunch of professional equipment.
Jon:But we have we have shows recorded here all the time, just various shows from around the city. Yeah. I think WBEZ WBEZ, which is, the local, NPR station was they were here today recording a show. Mhmm. I don't know how many of them are necessarily branded content.
Jon:But
Justin:I mean and that's the other thing too is now that we've launched early access, we also have some evidence from the folks that are signing up, and, I'll talk about that in a minute. I just before we leave this, just here's The Wall Street Journal. I'll put this in the show notes. They're talking about these Gimlet Creative and other kind of, you know, as branded podcasts. It says, these podcasts, which can cost a marketer in the mid 6 figures so that's Yeah.
Justin:500,000, are emerging as new form of revenue as more people tune in to on demand audio shows. So, you know, we've got all of these articles now that are starting to pay attention as well. I guess the flip side to this is there there might be a lot of smoke and no fire, and maybe, you know, Basecamp and Cards Against Humanity are the exception to the rule. You know, maybe there's not that many companies like that out there that wanna produce shows like that or wanna invest that much money. So I think if we talk about the fear part, you know Mhmm.
Justin:That's one of them, right, is that maybe there's not that big of a market. And, you know, one thing I have told folks when they're saying, you know, how big do you think this company could be? I I say, well, I think podcasting is not as important as a website. It's not as important as email marketing, but maybe it's somewhere kinda down the list. Like, it's after Yeah.
Justin:Get a website, after you get email marketing, maybe after you've you've got social media going, then you might start a podcast. And maybe it's competing with things like a YouTube channel, you know, maybe it is competing with things like writing blog posts. But it there's definitely, more important things on some folks' list, but maybe there's enough folks that want, you know, that channel and, you know, that's what we gotta find out. Right?
Jon:Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is all an experiment. We'll see.
Jon:I guess that that goes back into, like, why we chose this now and why we wanted to focus on what we did.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I so for folks at home that are that are thinking, okay. Well, how does this relate to me and my idea?
Justin:And we didn't actually get that much into feature development, but I think that, actually, this next phase when we talk about the folks that have signed up so far, I think we can talk about that. But the what you're looking for is enough evidence and enough movement that you can at least do an initial test. And so for us, the initial test was, can Cards Against Humanity use this? Is it successful for them? Yeah.
Justin:Okay. We we're out the door. They're going great. The next test was, okay. Let's open up the doors a little bit.
Justin:Let's just let's let a few folks in. Right?
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:And first of all, you wanna see is there enough momentum when you can't show them really anything. Like, our marketing site is transistor.fm. Go there right now. Is just, email sign up form and that's it. Right?
Justin:Yeah. And, so, people have put their email in there and we sent out, an email that says, alright, we're ready for early access. If you want to try it out, we can't show you any. We don't have a video. We don't have any screenshots to show them, really.
Jon:But here's a link in putting your credit card. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. And we're asking for credit card upfront. So lots and lots of friction. And we've had, I think, at least 10 people sign up. Do you think that's right?
Jon:I would say at least that. Yeah.
Justin:So we've had 10 people put in their credit card, and we've actually also we've had, John and I behind the scenes, like, whenever because now we have folks that some of their first payments are going through, and we always do a little, fist bump kind of in Slack. It's kind of like a beer bump, but because it because it's exciting that we're starting to see some folks that are paying. And some of those folks might churn, like, they might realize it's hard to create a podcast, etcetera. But Yeah. You're kind of going step by step with the best evidence you have and doing these little tests along the way.
Justin:And so, yeah, like, I'm I'm on our payments page in in, Stripe, and we've got 8, 9 payments that have gone through so far. So that there's some evidence there that people wanna use this, people wanna pay for it. And, one of the things that surprised me it'd be interesting to hear your perspective on this too, but one of the things that I never really thought about and it's something you had brought up before and I was like, I don't know about that, John. Whatever. And this is what's great about actually doing tests because then you can get results, but, because you were like, I wonder what about podcast networks?
Justin:I was like, I don't know. Like, is there even anything there? But a lot of our the interest we've had so far is from podcast networks, and we have at least one person that signed up for a podcast network account. Right?
Jon:Yeah. Yep.
Justin:I think that's interesting too is that sometimes you put something out into the world, and you think people are only gonna use it one way. And then all of a sudden people are like, well, can I use this for this? And then you're like, okay. Like,
Jon:Yeah. Let's see where this goes. Build out a couple extra features. Yeah. I mean, you know, the network the network plan right now is really not much different than the other plans, but it will be.
Jon:I mean, it's there's not a lot of extra features yet.
Justin:I know, like, you and I are working on our process, and in some ways, we're gonna work this out. John and I were talking the other day about how we like, we never have time to meet anymore. We just have time to record a podcast. So we've just gotta get some of our meeting time done right now. So as you're looking at you know, we've got these initial customers now, and we both kind of wear the product hat here.
Justin:But you've got experience. I've got experience. I'd be interested to know from you, like, what kind of signals are you looking for in terms of what features to build next? Like, is it a similar process in terms of looking for evidence and then creating a hypothesis? What kind of what kind of flow do you go through?
Jon:Yeah. I think it's a it's a bit of both. It's sort of looking at the trends and how the other players in the space are doing things, and seeing if those are popular or taking off in any way.
Justin:We get some of that feedback from folks that are inquiring. So they're like, I'd like to pay, but do you have these features? You always gotta kinda weigh those because you never know. Like, sometimes you build it, and then people don't come. But if they're, like, pretty eager to pay and, you know, they're like, we're just waiting for these things, that's pretty good signal, I think.
Jon:And if you hear and if you hear the same or similar requests over and over, Mhmm. Then that becomes its own trend, and you're like, well, there's something here. Yeah. And it may you know, a lot of these things that people are requesting in our support channel through email are features that are already on our list. They might just be further down.
Jon:Mhmm. Right now, I think there's some friction around setting up your custom website with transistor. Mhmm. Configuring it, customizing it, like, the controls are not really finished yet. You can do a few things, but some of it, you kinda like have to hack together.
Jon:Mhmm. Setting your custom domain is still confusing for a lot of people, so we just, you know, need better instructions for that. Yeah. And also uploading your media files is just a really dumb web form right now with no progress bar. It probably times out a lot of the time.
Jon:Yeah. And that was like a thing that just was really easy to build that initial version of it. Yeah. And it worked for us and it worked for the good news podcast because all of their shows are 5 minutes, so they're not gonna time out. But, you know, you have people uploading a file that's an hour long.
Jon:Yeah. It's probably gonna time out. There's no way to resume it. So that that entails, you know, that ends up moving up the the feature to Mhmm. Build out this JavaScript based, like, file uploader with progress and stuff like that.
Justin:I like that approach, though, because, you know, some folks might freak out about that. I I think, sometimes, especially technical people, kind of freak out about that. Like, you really want things to be solid and work well and sometimes be perfected before they they go out into the world. But Yeah. Sometimes it's nice, especially if you're in early access, to actually have to see how big of a pinpoint that is.
Justin:So you might say, well, of course, you need a better, you know, uploader. But, well, let's let's just see how big of a friction that is.
Jon:And Yeah. And I was I was anticipating it. Yeah. I was anticipating it being a problem. Yeah.
Jon:And it turns out it was. It is.
Justin:Because if you if you're always guessing I mean, part of this is guessing, but you're making an educated guess based on your observations, based on this almost muscle you develop in terms of, being able to identify trends. So, you've heard John and I talk about how we've noticed these things kind of pop like D and D and then podcasting and, you know, there's always, the the, that HQ app. Those are examples of something has popped. There there's there's momentum, and you take that research, and then you need to actually apply it in a a small way. So create an initial version or initial test, and then see what results come back.
Justin:And we might have had the hypothesis that, you know what, our uploader needs some work.
Jon:You
Justin:know, even us, we've got, you know, a handful of shows now on that we produce, that, you know, we're uploading shows too, and we notice, wow. This oh, it'd be nice to have a progress bar here.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:But when a real customer complaints, someone who's really has already spent money with you, that holds a lot of weight.
Jon:Yeah. Definitely.
Justin:What else is kinda coming up? What are some other big feature requests we've had?
Jon:There's, like, there's a pretty big push these days for, like, I don't know what what they're even called. Really? Audiograms? It's like
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:The ability for you to cut a snippet of audio from a show or have anyone else cut a snippet of audio from one of your episodes and, like, repost it on Twitter or Instagram as this, like, playable video and share it that way.
Justin:Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon:Automatic automatic transcription is a big thing, which, you know, might be difficult to really automate well, but there's a few players in that space.
Justin:And and we also know that folks really want analytics. Yeah. We've got we've got really base analytics right now. If one trick for all you listeners out there is as you're asking questions so the other day, I was chatting with Corbett Barr. He runs Fizzle, and, he's a friend of ours.
Justin:Chase Reeves is a friend. We've mentioned that before. But I'm like, so who are you using? And he says who they're using, and then I say, you know, what kinds of struggles have you had? Like, what what, and that that kinda question, people get that question, and it's hard to answer.
Justin:And so, sometimes, I take it a step further, and I go, like, what are you still calculating in Excel? That's the hack. Yeah. Whatever they are still calculating in Excel is an opportunity for a future development. And so Corbett told me, I'm not gonna tell you folks because then you might steal our idea.
Justin:But, no, Corbett told me, you know, this is what I'm looking for. And, the other day, I was meeting with, a gal in here in Edmonton, Karen, who has a podcast network, the Alberta Podcast Network. And I'm, like, what are you automatically recording in Excel? Not automatically. What are you calculating in Excel?
Justin:And for her, she runs a network. She needs listen to how painful this would be. Some of the network shows are on SoundCloud. Some of them are on Libsyn. Some of them are on, you know, all these things.
Justin:She has to go email each every month, each show, and say, how many downloads did you get? And she puts that into her Excel sheet so then she can report back to their one big sponsor.
Jon:Wow.
Justin:And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, if we could get so then I start thinking, okay. Wouldn't it be amazing, Karen, if you could just get a network account and get your big sponsor to cover the cost of that network account with Transistor. And then you give all of your host shows because a lot of these shows are hobby shows or kinda DIY shows. You give them all a free hosting account on Transistor and then we just roll up all of their stats for you every month.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Maybe we even take it a step further and you can put in your contacts email address and we'll email them the report as well. Right? So now, instead of her having to do all that Excel, monkey business, she can I it's almost like a clear like, this would clearly make her life better? Right?
Jon:Oh, yeah. It would save a ton of time. It sounds like.
Justin:So if whatever folks are calculating in Excel right now, I think, is that those are, like, the the little tips, the little seeds of maybe this could be a feature, and everyone has something like this. Like, even now, everyone uses Google Analytics but almost everybody I know that really uses Google Analytics exports stuff and puts it into Excel or Google Sheets
Jon:or something.
Justin:Right? You know, what are those things? And I know people that have built products just like, Kissmetrics. Heat and Shaw built Kissmetrics because he was calculating all sorts of stuff in Excel and he's, like, why don't we just make this a web app? Right?
Jon:Right.
Justin:Lots of opportunity there.
Jon:Personally, if it's if it's something you yourself are excited about, that's a good, you know? Yeah. If you're like, if you just can't get it out of your head where you're like, man, I should really podcasting space is interesting. I really wanna do this thing or thinking about this thing. And if you keep thinking about it, then
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:That's like, I don't know, self validation of some kind. But
Justin:Yeah. And, you know, that's the other thing that's come up, especially, I think, if you're gonna raise money because, you know, I was sitting across from my friend, Tim, yesterday, and he was like, okay. Well, tell me why this is such a good idea. Like, why are you gonna invest your time your time in this? And the story I keep telling people, and maybe I've already told it, but I think it's it's another kind of way of, validating that this is a good space is I've got this rule.
Justin:Have I told you about this? I've got this rule about going for coffee?
Jon:I don't think you have. No.
Justin:Okay. So I have this rule that you can't, like, call me up. I was getting too many folks that were, like, emailing me, asking if they could pick my brain. And so, I have this rule that you can't do that. But if you make it to Vernon, British Columbia, which is in the middle of nowhere, I will take you to Ratio Coffee, and I will buy you a coffee, and we can talk.
Jon:Sounds like I'll show up there soon.
Justin:You should you should show up.
Jon:I know.
Justin:Well, I have had I've had someone from Japan come. I had someone from Vancouver fly in. I had a guy that was riding across Canada on his bike. He was from the UK.
Jon:Oh, it's amazing.
Justin:I had a a couple from Quebec that were road tripping across Canada. This is the story I tell folks when they're like, why is podcasting a big deal? Almost every time they sit down across from me and they go, Justin, this is so weird because I feel like I know you. You've been in my ears, in my head for the past 3 years, and I feel like I've had these conversations with you, but this is the first time we're meeting. And that is powerful.
Justin:Yeah. The fact that this medium, almost more than anything else, I think more than YouTube, I think more than writing, it compels people, first of all, to wanna go to the middle of nowhere to just hang out. And I love hanging out with these folks. Like, it's it's super fun. There's something compelling about it.
Justin:And, when I ask people why they've bought something from me, whether it was a WordPress plugin or, you know, a course I made or whatever, 75% of the folks said, I was listening to your podcast. And so there's enough evidence in my own life, I think, to kind of ignite that excitement or that passion to go, there is something going on here that is so unique. And we've even seen it in a little way with the way people have interacted with this show. People, you know, they tweet back at us and they're, you know, they're they're there's this connection that folks have that I think is unlike anything else. I think, for me, the the the fact that just having that experience personally, having people connect so intimately to, you know, the shows that I've done was enough to make me excited about the space.
Justin:It It doesn't always validate whether there's a market for it, but it definitely validates whether you have product founder fit. Right?
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:And whether you're personally like, because that's the other thing. Maybe we'll have to talk about that another time. But there's not just you don't just need a good market and a good product for that market, but this thing has to fit for you. And so the fact, like, that you've said this a couple times that you couldn't stop thinking about it
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Is really encouraging to me, because we're partners and
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:I want the I want the person who's with me on this to be excited. You know what I mean? Like, I want there to be, like, yeah. I I just I can't get this out of my brain.
Jon:Yeah. That something similar happened the other day, kind of it's unrelated to podcasting, really, but, it's happened a couple of times where I have, I've had a number of friends who they wanna switch careers or they're like most recently I have a friend who's gonna finish up with the military and wanted to sort of figure out what he's gonna do after that. And he's still young and he he was like kind of thinking about going to school for computer science or to computer engineering. Yeah. And I'm like, that's a that's great.
Jon:Like, obviously there's still a great market for it, but I was like, more importantly, like, don't do it because there's a good market for it. Do it because you actually like want to do it and you're excited about it. Cause I've seen a lot of people go to school and like take these classes or boot camps and they're like, oh, I'm going to get a job as a programmer, but they hate it. And they ended up being really bad at it because they just, they don't want to sit in front of a computer all day. And it does, it's not interesting to them.
Jon:So that's that's definitely important.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good place to leave it. Yeah. And may maybe we'll talk about it more in another show because I I think you've brought up a good point.
Justin:If you're gonna be working on this every single day for the rest of your life, hopefully, you like it. Folks, if you want to find the show online, we are s aas. That's sas.transistor.fm. You can find us on Twitter. We are transistorfm or on Instagram, transistor dotfm.
Justin:Where can folks find you, John?
Jon:On Twitter at Jonbuda, j o n b u d a. Instagram, same name. Website, jonbuda.com.
Justin:And And we're still waiting for you to break your vow of silence on Twitter.
Jon:I know. I know. I'll get there. I'll get there.
Justin:It it's gonna happen any moment, kids. Just keep waiting.
Jon:Any moment.
Justin:I'm the letter m, the letter I, Justin on Twitter and Instagram. And, folks, we haven't asked you yet, but one way for you to help us out right now, couple couple struggling entrepreneurs, is if you could leave a rating for the show in iTunes. Even if you're not listening in iTunes, just open up the Apple Podcasts app, search for build your sass, scroll down, click that 5 star icon, and leave us just a few words. I've noticed there's about 5, I I think, reviews from the States, 5 from Canada. We are going to I think, eventually, we'll get a feed of these in our Slack.
Justin:So, as you enter them, we will hear about them, and it's super encouraging to us, when people like the show. And we just want more folks to find it. And so, if you like the show and want more people to listen, leave us a review. It makes a big difference. Alright.
Justin:That's it for this week. Thanks. See you see you later, John.
Jon:See you. Yeah. See you later. Safe travels.
