What should we build next?
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we continue on this transistor dot f m journey. How's it going, John?
Jon:It's going alright.
Justin:How was your weekend? It
Jon:was alright. It's good, I guess. You know, sun was out. I got some sun, made some bread.
Justin:Nice. What kind of bread do you can you still get bread supplies in America?
Jon:Yeah. You can. I've it's a little tough, I think, at the grocery store. I think yeast is still a problem to get and some flour, but I do sourdough, so it's not a not an issue. I already had a starter and then ordered some ordered some flour from a a mill that is in Illinois.
Justin:Wow. Wait a second. So sourdough, you don't need to have yeast.
Jon:Use, you don't use instant or dry active yeast. You you basically make your own with flour and water.
Justin:That's what the starter is. The starter is
Jon:just a The starter is it is I mean, it is yeast, but it's not it's not store bought like, I don't know. Whatever. It
Justin:doesn't come with those little those little dry, yeah, dry granules. Nope. Got it. Wow. Weird, man.
Jon:It's science.
Justin:Whenever I bake bread. Yeah. Is that the part you like? Is is, like, just that all that stuff, like, taking care of the starter and figuring all that stuff out?
Jon:Yeah. It's just, it's a relaxing thing to do is to make make some dough. And then every time you bake it, it usually works out pretty well. And it's like every time it's just sort of amazing that it actually worked and you made bread and then you can eat it, and it's delicious. I mean, it it just tastes way better than other bread too.
Jon:Yeah. It's just kind of, I don't know, cool that it works, and it's, like, 3 ingredients.
Justin:Now how much restraint do you have after you've baked something? Depends.
Jon:Like Depends how Like, do you eat
Justin:it right away?
Jon:Sometimes. Depends how hungry I am. Yeah. Yeah. The I the first loaf I made years ago that was really good, I ate, I think, more than half of it, and that was basically dinner.
Jon:With, like, butter.
Justin:That's incredible.
Jon:That's good. That's good.
Justin:That that is living the quarantine high life right there. So over the weekend, I read this this Andreessen post that everyone's talking about. Do you know which one I'm I'm talking about?
Jon:It's a references to it. Yeah.
Justin:It's time to build. And, Uh-huh.
Jon:Sounds like some sounds like some venture capital bullshit.
Justin:I mean, so it's pretty easy to be cynical about it because it's coming from Andreessen, and there's certainly parts of it that are we should be cynical about. But I read it, and, you know, I've one thing that I try I'm trying to do is just be open and conducive to good ideas even when, you know, maybe people's past behavior, whatever, you know. And, honestly, I think the post does have some good ideas. And, again, it's easy to be cynical about it because part of what he's saying is, hey. We need to build how come we can't how come we can't build factories where we can make these, you know, medical supplies and devices and things?
Justin:And the cynical part is you go, well, Mark, how come you were investing in, CryptoKitties instead of,
Jon:Right.
Justin:Instead of these. Yeah. But, you know, I good ideas are what we need. Or at least ideas, and then we can build on those ideas. Right?
Justin:And, you know, certainly, a lot of people found it, encouraging as well. So, I've been on social media all weekend. I'm the opposite of you. I Yeah. I went for a walk.
Jon:I I I refer to it as the other disease. That is probably a little more
Justin:harmful to society. Social media. Yeah. Except I love it. I'm I'm, like, fully I'm fully taking a drag every day.
Justin:And so I I went to my office, which is empty right now, and I just you know, I'm just gonna go live on Periscope and talk about this article. And I'm, you know, I'm live, and I'm just talking the way I the way I do. And this guy this guy with the handle, I'm for USA, kept, like, say kept at asking to like, there's an invite button where they wanna, like, come live on the screen and, like, talk. And so he kept in you know, he kept asking, and, I was like, I don't know. I was, like, talking to him on the live stream, like, I don't know, man.
Justin:Like, your handle and you have no avatar, it just seems like this is too risky. And he's like, no, no. I'm a good person. I'm like, okay. Let's do it.
Justin:So he came on and I sent you a little clip. Did you listen to that? Yeah. Yeah. It, we can listen to it right now, Chris.
Speaker 3:For business leaders, you know, if you're you got quarterly reports, you got, immediate stock price. And even if you're a private business, you got you know, you're trying to make money now. You're trying to win customers' market share penetration now. So are you you're only gonna do what you have to for that kinda, like, emergency prep stuff. You're not gonna go overboard with that.
Justin:Yeah. So how do how do we incentivize long term thinking?
Speaker 3:How do we incentivize long term thinking? Let's say for what? For business people?
Justin:We did have a society. At one point, businesses invested most of their profits back into r and d, back into hiring more people, and that trend seems to have stopped. Is there any way we can incentivize that on a systemic level?
Speaker 3:Well, I I I love the question, and that's what I think was missing from Andreas' article. That was why I jumped on, and that's my beef. Because he wasn't asking that question. He wasn't asking where where did we go wrong or systemically how we we're not aligned to kinda these objectives.
Jon:So I
Speaker 3:so I don't wanna pretend like I have all the answers I could spout, but probably nothing smart that you can't think of on your own. I'm happy to spout, but I don't know that I'm gonna really kinda add a lot of value if I just start spouting.
Justin:Yeah. Well, this is good. I really enjoyed this. I'm glad I took the rest. Cool.
Speaker 3:I anyway, I I like the thoughtful conversation. It's it's definitely kind of, not common, let's say, on Periscope. So keep at it, and thanks for having me. And stay healthy.
Justin:Cool. Yeah. It it actually turned out to be a really good conversation. And I, you know, I definitely got the sense that him and I might not agree on everything, but it was interesting as soon as we were in the space of him and I both talking and kind of going back and forth, you know, by the end of the conversation, we're like, you know what? That was that was a good that was a good chat.
Justin:That conversation led to this tweet that I'll link to in the show notes. Someone asked me how we can promote long term thinking in our society. Like, that's kind of the question. Like, how can we quit being so reactive and actually promote longer term thinking? And I was thinking about this for myself, especially when we were building Transistor.
Justin:And when I the the times where I couldn't think long term when I was just kind of, like, going panicky. I I don't know if you remember that when I was, like, trying to, like, get us to raise money and
Gavin:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
Jon:You had other ideas or other things you wanted to start.
Justin:Yeah. But but it was kinda manic. You know? And as soon as we were making money and I was getting paid regularly, it was just like all those that that immediate kinda manic reactionary stuff went away. And so I think part of the the part of the the thing that came to my head was to promote long term thinking, we need to provide for people's basic needs first.
Justin:And so I tweeted this out, and it's since generated a ton of conversation. It's probably the most talked about tweet I've had in a while.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:And there's something about that whole experience that just fired me up.
Gavin:I read a little bit of thread.
Jon:Yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's, like, natural for humans to really plan long term. I I mean, maybe not until lately. It's like a a very modern thing, it seems like.
Justin:Right? Like Yeah.
Jon:And we haven't been good at it. Obviously, look at climate climate stuff. Not great at that. Even even planning for this whole pandemic, we knew it would happen at some point. Maybe 1 or 2 countries actually planned for it.
Jon:But, I mean, historically, it seems like, you know, how are you gonna how are you gonna think long term when you're worried about where you're gonna get your next meal or where are you gonna sleep that night or whatever. Like, if you're worried about that stuff, you're not you don't care about the long term. It doesn't matter.
Justin:Yeah. But let me push back on that a little bit. So, like, hunting gatherer societies and even the First Nations people in North America, they had a long term plan that they use all the time. You know, like, especially up north here, they they would say, okay. In the winter, we're gonna go down south here.
Justin:We're going to camp here. We're going to hunt here. And then the summer will move back up here, and then we'll collect enough food for the winter. There was a lot of long term planning and long term kind of you know, they had some cycles that they they used. And over over the time, you know, these became, like, just regular parts of their life.
Justin:But it wasn't like they were, like, they were able to engage in long term thinking. There's a I think there's even a an argument that, this this is how, homo sapiens made the jump from from, you know, just being scavengers with no consciousness to the point where we could imagine the future. We could imagine if hey, if we all band together and bring this buffalo down, and here's how it might be able to work, and here's how you know, and if we get all the buffalo over to this this cliff, maybe we can, you know, chase them off the cliff. And they all of that is a form of longer term thinking. I mean, I definitely got some pushback in this in this, thread.
Justin:I'll I'll let people read it and get back to us, because I know some people want us to get into Mhmm. Sass stuff. But, anyway, I the I think the the bigger point for me is it was this was just fun to get fired up about something. And I think that's just part of what, for me, I was starting to feel creatively dry. And just running into this guy on Periscope and putting myself in this place where I collided with another human being, all of a sudden, like, unleashed all of this thinking that was helpful for me, you know, creatively.
Gavin:Yeah. I'm sure there's I'm sure there's plenty
Jon:of research and books and papers that have been written about this stuff throughout the years, I would I would guess.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Jon:But again, in this current situation, it is really hard to think long term when we have no idea when this is even gonna start to begin to be over. Yes. Right? It's like so, I mean, for me, I'm like, it's the not knowing that really sucks. Day to day, I'm okay, but if I think, oh, into the future, it's like, I what's the point?
Jon:Because how do we know how do we know where this is gonna end up or what it's gonna be like? It's like, yeah, we have some we have some ability to sort of some ability to, like, shape that for ourselves, I guess. But, like, as a society, I don't know, individually, it's hard to hard to know that we have much of an ability to really make this thing end. I mean, we're doing our part by staying inside. Mhmm.
Jon:Right? Ultimately, it's not up to us. I mean, we can vote eventually. But Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's the not knowing that is
Justin:That's yeah. So I think
Jon:you sort of revert you revert back to, like, short term thinking of, like, alright. What do I need to do today to be okay? And that's enough.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Justin:I I I mean yeah. That that's different. The coping is is definitely like, right now, you're right. In some ways, all we can do is cope one day at a time. Right.
Jon:Which is why my my, like, creative center is not exactly, like, brimming with ideas. Mhmm. Because I get as far as, like, bake some bread today. I have I have to start that the day before I bake it, and maybe that's about as long term as I get. Yeah.
Jon:But, yeah, it's tough.
Justin:Yeah. And I think, you
Jon:know, I think there's a
Gavin:lot of people going through that, and
Jon:it's certainly an interesting moment to be in. I I hope I hope there's something good that comes out of this.
Justin:Yeah. I think there will be. I mean, if we look at the the history, this this fellow Dan Price on Twitter, he tweeted, after the most fifteen recent deadly outbreaks, wages grew over the ensuing 3 decades by a lot. So and he's linking to this Wall Street Journal article. So I think yeah.
Justin:I think there's there is hope. Right? Like, after a big shock to the system like this, society wakes up. And, over the long term, I think that could be interesting. The the the thing that got me the thing that kept me up this morning is, you know, I wrote this article for Saturday called, Main Street Fights Back.
Justin:And I'm just getting excited about the opportunities for making our Main Street local, economies and and, towns better in the long term.
Jon:Right.
Justin:And every time I put this out there, I get DMs from other, especially, other technical people going, listen. If you hear of an opportunity where I can help out with this, let me know. Like, there's this appetite for, you know, those of us in tech to help out. And it kinda fires me up because there are there's just some examples, tons of examples, of meaningful ways we could make a difference for our local economies, whether it's, like, helping them set up their own delivery systems that don't rely on DoorDash who takes, like, 30%, Whether it's even just helping them get a website and store up that, you know, is a good store. Jamie Jamie Lawrence had this tweet thread where he says, what I'd like to see small businesses come out of the crisis with a functioning website, an email newsletter, an online ordering system, and a stock management system connected to their online shop.
Justin:And this is something that technical people can make a meaningful change on. Right? Like, it's it's it's not as difficult for us to help folks with those things. And just even that list he gave could really help local shops be more resilient. And, you know, the folks I've already helped locally here have already, you know, benefited from it.
Justin:Like, now they're getting online orders. They're doing local deliveries. And so that part, I think, is exciting and makes me and that that was what was keeping me up.
Jon:Yeah. There's a there is a cynical part of me that is like it just seems like a lot of hubris on the part of people that can code by thinking that, like, code can fix everything in the world.
Justin:Yeah. But in some ways I I mean, I I totally understand that hubris. But there on the other hand, the the Internet and the network effects you can achieve with technology, that you and I have benefited from massively.
Jon:Yeah. That's true.
Justin:It feels like we could apply that same network effect for local businesses who really need it, whose margins, if they're lucky, are 5 to 10%. They have such low margins, and they're they're they're like my friend, Andrew, who owns this coffee shop, he's like, hey, man. Like, there's this this this site that's pitching me that will make my store an app, and it costs $200 American a month. And I was just like, man, I was like, that is so expensive for a little cafe. And, technically, I just know that's a bad deal.
Justin:It's not going to be great, and it's not going to move them ahead, in any sort of meaningful way.
Jon:No. Not more than $200 a month. I mean
Justin:So the I think we do have a place here where, instead of us with Hubris maybe going, I'm gonna make, a product for restaurant owners that they're gonna pay $39 a month for. I think there's a space for us to go, you know what? We can help these stores out without trying to without trying to, like, make it into another startup. Like, let's just help these people for free or for low cost or whatever and and have it be that for now.
Jon:That sounds great. I think there's so much more that has to happen higher up at a governmental level to support people being able to do this stuff. Like like you said, being able for people to for people to have their basic needs met and still feel like they can make a meaningful impact on society. Right? Mhmm.
Jon:I mean, you get it you can get in these arguments of, like, oh, if everyone just if everyone gets money and health care is free and education is free, then they have no incentive to work. It's like, I don't I don't buy that.
Justin:Yeah. That
Jon:because I think people still have a desire to, like, work and contribute. Like, that's yeah. I think there's a lot that really needs to happen and hopefully will happen based on what we're seeing, in the near future from governments around the world. Like, I there's just I don't see a way to get out of this current situation without massive help from the government. Like, it's gonna be a just a disaster.
Justin:Yes.
Jon:There's probably gonna be a second wave of infections. It's gonna be more people who lose their jobs, and it's gonna be so catastrophic that, like, there has to be some safety net.
Justin:Absolutely.
Jon:So and and the US just doesn't have that.
Justin:Yes. And this is part of what And we're
Jon:seeing that. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. This is part of what people some people were arguing with me in the in the this tweet thread that people can look at. Because there's some there's some folks that are cynical about well, if you give people what they need, there's no evidence that they start to what my point was, I I think they they do start to think long term. And they said, well, there's no evidence of that. And there is lots of studies that show that, that poor people become overwhelmed by their desperation for sustenance, for, you know, enough money to live on.
Justin:And that that that overwhelm disables them from thinking long term, thinking cognitively Yeah. Etcetera. Absolutely.
Jon:I mean, yeah. Everyone's like, oh, you just gotta pull yourself up, bare bootstraps. Well, you can't do that if you're working 3 jobs and you don't have health care and you have to basically, all your money goes towards food and rent. Like, you don't there's no freedom to do that Exactly. At all.
Justin:But the the cynical folks and maybe this is fair. They're saying, well, but there's no proof that once you give those people the, you know, the basic needs that they will automatically start thinking long term. Right. And, I'm still digging into that. I think there's I think there's some, evidence of this, especially in my own life.
Justin:I've I've felt this over and over again. But even if it's not, like, a 100% for sure thing, just knowing that people will always be dis they they won't have the ability to think long term as long as their basic needs aren't being met. Let's at least give them the opportunity. You know what I mean? Mhmm.
Justin:Let's at least give them the opportunity. And one of my points in the in the livestream, And I I said, okay. I might get in trouble for this. But Canadians seem to over index in so many things, entrepreneurship, the arts. Like, the the fact that at Laracon, I think a third or even up to a half of the speakers were Canadian.
Justin:And this has happened to me on a lot of panels. Like, we have, you know, or or, speaking gigs. I'll go there. And, like, a big percentage of us are are Canadian. And we we have the population of California.
Justin:Like, like, if if there's 10 speakers, maybe there should be one Canadian speaker. But look at look at conference lineups and look at the people who are making an impact in the world of tech and the world of art and the world of entrepreneurship, Canadians way over index on these things. And why is that? Well, my theory is that it's because we have a social social safety net. I could I couldn't have done transistor if on top of worrying about, you know, money, which is everyone worries about.
Justin:If on top of that, I was worried. I have 4 kids who, like, you know, they're mountain biking. They're out in the backyard doing stuff. If I had to worry that one day I was gonna come home and my kid was gonna have a broken leg, and that would be a, you know, whatever, a $10,000 bill or how much it costs.
Gavin:Yeah.
Justin:I that would be that would completely, be that'd be debilitating. Yeah. And this is important. So for those of you that are rolling your eyes about, hey. Come on.
Justin:Talk about the build your SaaS part. I think this is important because if you are in the US or another state that doesn't have any sort of safety net, it's just harder to build a business.
Gavin:I I have hung on to
Jon:jobs longer than I would have wanted to because of things like health insurance. Yep. Absolutely.
Justin:And even now even now, you and I are trying to are because because your health insurance is is always a big question for us as a 2 person Right. Company.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. For those, yeah, for those listening, I pay $700 a month for my health insurance, and I'm a healthy adult male. Yeah. I don't know if that's I don't know I don't know if it's a lot or not.
Jon:I mean, it's a lot of money, but, like, yeah, it it'll probably go up next year because the insurance company in the US are gonna raise their rates because of COVID 19, which is ridiculous, but that's what it is. So, like, yeah, it's it's going to in a in a economic crisis like this, you want people to eventually be able to start businesses, but, like, there's only gonna be a certain amount of people who can, and those people are probably already the people that have money and have the freedom to do it.
Justin:Exactly. So I, yeah, I think if I was a citizen of the USA, I'd I would be thinking about this the next time you go to vote. Like, if you are an entrepreneur, these are the kinds of things you should be thinking about. And honestly, like, maybe I'm wrong. Prove me wrong.
Justin:But I think my point about Canadians over indexing on, in, like, entrepreneurship, in even our profile. Like, how was how did I manage I mean, there's some privilege here, but how did I manage to carve out this profile I have? Like, I'm I'm just a jackass from Stony Plain, Alberta. I'm from nowhere. And the the idea that I would eventually be speaking at these conferences and would have people interested in what I had to say.
Justin:I mean, it's kind of ridiculous in a lot of ways. So what gave me the freedom? What freed me up to be able to do that stuff? And part of it is, university is not as expensive here, so I was able to I was able to pay off my university right away. Part of it is health care.
Justin:So even even like, when I have things to worry about, that's one less thing I have to worry about. And so I just had more time to invest in, you know, writing things on the Internet and building an audience and making connections. And, eventually, you know, got to the point where, I had a profile. And I'm not even saying that's right for everybody. But do you understand what I'm saying?
Justin:Like, it's just Wes Bos, Adam Wathan, Steve Schoegar, Shopify, Andrew Wilkinson from tiny. Like, there's all of these names over and over and over again. Mary Marie Poulin. Like, these are these are names people know, and they're Canadian. And we our population is tiny.
Justin:It's we're we're 36,000,000 people. I mean, I'm sure there's a a variety of factors there. But when I talk to Canadians about this stuff, all of us are like, yeah. If if we didn't have public health care, we wouldn't be we wouldn't be able to do this. There's just no way.
Jon:Yeah. It affects things. Yeah. I it's it's a big topic. I mean, I've I have some friends that are a little more right leaning, I would say politically.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:And they're they're of the opinion of like, well, you shouldn't have gone to university if you knew you were gonna you were gonna be in debt or you should have gotten a degree that you was, like, more worthwhile. Like, don't go into, like, get a music degree or something like that. It's like, well, sure. But there's quite a bit of importance, you know, having an arts an arts program in the country that is like
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:Like, what kind of society do you wanna live in? There's, like, there's no art. There's no music. There's no painting. Or there's no, like,
Justin:Well, that that's the exact question that's the exact that question you just asked. What kind of society do you want to live in?
Jon:Right. Do you
Justin:just wanna live in listen, like, I'm all for business. In Canada, I am more right of center than, left of center, probably. Like, I I well, actually, I'm probably more center, but, like, I'm not in Canada, I'm not far left at all in in, you know, I mean, there's there's the far right and the I'm probably right in the middle. I'm probably, you know, center. And depending on the issue, I'm, you know, a little bit left left, a little bit right.
Justin:I'm not a super hippie dippy, like, socialist person. I still think markets are important. I still think there's a role to play with at least now, maybe I'll change my mind with capitalism. But, you know, like, I was I was thinking about this the other day. In in school growing up, Canadian kids I'm not sure if we're still taught this, but we're taught we have a mixed economy.
Justin:And a mixed economy is taking parts of capitalism and taking parts of socialism and mixing them together. And the criticism of mixed economies is that they don't work. I just it's hard to convince a bunch of Canadians that because we're just like, well, but it does work. We're thriving in a lot of ways. We still have problems, but, you know, honestly, I think a lot of our problems are when we veer too much toward the kind of American, like, neoliberal.
Justin:Like, come on. It's the economy.
Speaker 5:The only thing that matters is the economy. You just gotta work.
Jon:Yeah. The only
Speaker 5:thing that matters is work and get back to work.
Jon:Growth growth at all costs.
Justin:Yeah. Come on. It's like, no. We life's life life is about not just about that stuff. And Right.
Justin:And anybody who wants to have a life, like, even people who love work, hopefully, they like something else like mountain biking or, you know, going to their kids play, seeing their kids dance recital. Like, those are the arts. Those are things that matter too. What kind of society do we we wanna live in? And this is a great time to ask that question.
Justin:Well, it and you can still love business, and you can still love work. I love work. You can still love those things and ask the the other question, which is
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Maybe I think maybe life could be better.
Jon:Yeah. I think they can I think they can
Gavin:work well together? I'm sure we'll be I'm sure we'll
Jon:be learning more about that in the coming months years.
Justin:Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure I'm sure we're gonna hear from listeners on this one.
Jon:Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Justin:Let's jump to the third thing here. Thinking about what we're working on right now. We're you're Yeah. You're still working on Tailwind.
Jon:Yeah. I'm still I'm still redoing our dashboard. It's coming along fairly well. I keep saying that every time. But, it's it's I mean, it's I'll be honest.
Jon:It's slow. Like, everything with everything happening, it's just been slow. Mhmm. Like, I'm not I'm not working at a 100% efficiency here Yeah. Holding this thing.
Justin:I wonder if if if we should if we're at the point now, though, where we could set a deadline for it.
Jon:I think so. Yeah. And what and what it includes, like, it's not it it has not been a straight rescan up the dashboard. Like, I have added things. I've fixed bugs.
Jon:I've it's not necessarily like a straight. Yeah. I'm just gonna reskin this thing with the other ones. Right? So Yeah.
Jon:There's a lot that went along with it.
Justin:But I think it's gonna be I it's gonna be a big improvement in a lot of ways. Yeah. I'm just wondering now, like, you know, we've we've had some time with it, and I'm just starting to get that itch of I
Jon:mean, I I'm starting to get the itch of, like, I wanna work out some other stuff. I'm sick of working on this. I'm not sick of it, but, you know, it's like, I want this thing to be done. And as with any new feature, if we wanna call this a feature, like, it's always a little scary to put it out in the world because I know there's gonna be a percentage of people that are like, I like the old one better. This doesn't work.
Jon:There's gonna be bugs. And, obviously, that'll you know, we'll have to fix those as they come up.
Justin:But Okay. So let's let's let's try to think about when a deadline could be. One thing I think we need to do right away to alleviate some of that anxiety is email our users and just tell them what we've been working on.
Jon:Yeah. Tell tell them yeah. We should tell tell people what they're working on. What we're working on, here's a couple screenshots or a video. Here's what's here's what's changing.
Jon:Here's what's new. Here's what's fixed.
Justin:Because I think that will help with the anxiety. Because at least then a percentage of our users we won't be able to reach everybody, but a percentage of our users will have a heads up. So it won't be a shock when they log in and and things look different.
Jon:Right.
Justin:So so let's do that, like, today if we can. I could even just send you could give me one screenshot, and I could just say, okay. Here's a little heads up. And then we could have a series of emails. It doesn't have to be just 1, which might be better anyway.
Justin:It might help us, you know, hit hit more people. Yeah. Hit more people. Connect with more people. We gotta we gotta watch our language.
Justin:So if we do that, you know, today and then over the next couple weeks, what do you think would be a reasonable timeline for us getting this out?
Jon:Probably the 1st week of May, if not earlier. I mean
Justin:Oh, really? That's, like, right away.
Jon:Yeah. It's coming up.
Justin:Okay.
Jon:So, like, 2 weeks, week and a half, 2 weeks.
Justin:Okay. So 2 weeks, week and a half. I don't
Jon:know if you wanna be, like, Wednesday, but May 6th. Let's say that. I don't know.
Justin:Okay. Wednesday, May 6th.
Jon:Might might be before that.
Justin:Good. Well, I feel good. So and what what needs to happen before then? Is there some big bullet points that you think we should be thinking about before then?
Jon:The biggest ones are really, just making sure it works. I mean, most browsers now are, like, totally fine. There's not an issue except for if we wanted to actually function in I eleven. Yeah. I
Justin:don't I don't think so because we've already kind of we've already said that we're not supporting IE 11 for a lot of our
Jon:But this is one of the this is one of the things we should I know we've removed a lot of our analytics, but we do still have a sense of of who is using our dashboard and what they're using. Right?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. With with Fathom with Fathom, we get that. Right?
Justin:Yeah. So let's see here. We don't well, Mixpanel, we would be able to see what browser they use the app in.
Jon:Right. Right. Right.
Justin:I don't know if I can do that live on the on here even though that would be super interesting.
Jon:But either way either way, if if there is a significant amount of Internet Explorer 11 or whatever Mhmm. Then there's things we there's things we can do. It's mo mostly mostly, it's, the JavaScript that's gonna be the issue.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:So there's there's, like, JavaScript polyfills you can use and it'll, like, fix stuff that doesn't work in IE 11 and but it's, like, you know, just a little more work to add that stuff in and make sure it works.
Justin:We I think every startup should be able to send Microsoft a bill for that externality. That's like it's like how many little startups with no money are, like, working away so that they can, like, support this crusty browser that and even, like, Microsoft is already at least lately, they've been saying, like, they've been releasing posts that say they're not even officially supporting it for some things. But come on. Like, just help us out here. Also, like, the the goo the Googles.
Justin:The Google is is putting all of these requirements on people that use their, like, email APIs and mapping APIs. They have to go through these, like, $60,000 security audits.
Jon:Yeah. I that's why our YouTube feature doesn't work anymore.
Justin:Oh oh, that is what? I'm
Jon:it yeah. Because we're supposed to get we're supposed to get an approval of our of our, our, like, OAuth API integration screen that pop it's like I don't know. There's no there's no status or worth that. There's no way to contact anyone. So it's just like this black hole of, like, I don't know.
Justin:That's it's just bullshit.
Jon:Yeah. It's really frustrating.
Justin:So now we're explicit, Chris. The it's just bullshit. I I I can't stand, like this is another reason why big tech just makes me mad. It's, like, on one hand, yes. Yes.
Justin:I know. Like, we run we run Transistor on some big tech. Like, we use Amazon Web Services and all that stuff. But they they do not treat the the the little, businesses and the little people very well.
Jon:No. Right.
Justin:And it it's like why? Why are you making it so hard for just small time developers, small time Internet shops? It just it's it's super frustrating. Mhmm. And and it's like the invariably, no matter what, no matter how kind they are to, you know, independent devs and independent businesses at the beginning, invariably, they start to lock things down and, you know, put the squeeze on all these people that help build their platform.
Justin:And I used to feel like in the past, I was more like, well, you shouldn't have built on Twitter if you you know, like, I was I was one of those jackasses. And now I'm like, no. That's it's just bullshit. It's the they big tech should be held accountable for some of that stuff.
Jon:Yeah. It's just it it's just mostly just frustrating because I don't know where it stands, and I have no way to contact anyone. Yeah. Because, yeah, we're a small company. Like, they're not gonna they're not gonna, like, prioritize us.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think it's okay for, on one hand, for us to give the advice of, like, hey, folks. Like, if you're building a SaaS, be careful.
Justin:Don't build on someone else's platform, which is true. Like, I think you shouldn't build on someone else's platform if you can. But on the other hand, go like, still hold these these people to account and go, come on. Like, Google, you don't need to do that. You don't need to charge small little businesses $60,000.
Justin:And, like, in podcasting, the IAB, you don't need to be charging small little podcast hosting companies, whatever it is now, 30 to 60 grand so we can get some certification. It's basically just designed to kill small businesses. You know who doesn't do this is folks like, like, independent business folks that understand other independent businesses. Like Taylor Otwell has this product called Nova. And
Jon:Uh-huh.
Justin:The pricing for Nova let me see if I can still find it. Is if you're a solo developer, it's $99 per project. If your grossly yearly revenue is below 20,000, and if you are above $20,000 in revenue, you pay a $199 per project. Mhmm. Now those tiers might not be perfect.
Justin:There's also clearly, there's problems. Like, how do you know if they're actually 20 or a 1000 or whatever? But what I like about it is it at least recognizes that there's a difference. And and and maybe if he was gonna tweak it, I would tweak it so it's, like, $39 per project for solo and 4.99 per project if you're pro or something.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, it yeah. It's yeah. The whole YouTube thing too is just related to, like, how that this whole, like, integration integrating with other services is, like, such a blessing and a curse. Yeah.
Jon:Because now it's like we have customers that have signed up. Well, for one reason, because we had this feature to sync to YouTube. Mhmm. And now we might just have to pull it completely
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:At some point. And, like, nope. We can't we we disabled it. No one can use it. No one knew can use it.
Jon:People who already have it are fine, but, like
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:It just it just feels bad. It's like, oh, sorry. Like, when there's nothing we can do.
Justin:Yeah. But you you know what you know who we haven't had trouble with? Is all these little bootstrap company. I mean, some of them aren't little, but, you know, ConvertKit, we have an integration with them. Right.
Justin:We we didn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops. They just had some documentation that we integrated with. Mailchimp I mean, Mailchimp's huge now, but it feels like the the bootstrapped companies just get it.
Jon:Yep. I would totally agree with that.
Justin:Anyway And I don't know I don't know
Jon:if there's another way to get videos on YouTube. I mean, through Zapier. I I have no idea. Yeah. Who knows?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I mean and that's something we could start thinking about too. What do you think, just to close here, what do you think we should be kind of thinking about building next? What what what's kinda top of mind for you?
Jon:There's a couple of things that keep coming up. One is us having an API that people can actually read and write to and from, which we don't have. We haven't really needed it. I don't I mean, like, I know people wanna build they wanna build automations of their own on top of our API, which I which makes sense, and I get, it just hasn't been a huge hasn't been a huge demand really, but it's enough. And it's getting to the point where I think it would be useful even for us probably to build.
Jon:Mhmm. We could build stuff on top of our own API and, you know
Justin:Yeah. Totally.
Jon:That would be helpful. I think we still get quite a few requests for improvements in our analytics, which I think is an ongoing thing.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jon:Like, we had just hundreds of requests for different stuff, and I hope we have a list of that somewhere.
Justin:But Yeah.
Jon:I don't know if these are in any particular order, but our private podcasting feature is really popular. I think there's a number of improvements we can Mhmm. We can build on on top of that.
Justin:Yeah. And the other one that comes up quite a bit that you're you're not, like, super excited about, I think, is the podcast websites.
Jon:I yeah. I mean, I I'm excited about that. I think that's gonna be a pretty big planning shaping process for those because it could go one either one of 2 ways. We either build it, build a podcast website feature that is really customizable, or we build one where it's like, you're getting this and that's it. Mhmm.
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:I don't know which I'm leaning towards, but
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:I mean Like, you can customize some colors. Yeah. Maybe maybe add some custom pages, but beyond that, like, that's this is what you get.
Justin:Yeah. And you can I think, you can use
Jon:your old site if you want for a while, or you can upgrade to the new ones, and you don't get the old ones back?
Justin:Yeah. I think I think I'm leaning towards you know, people can still use the legacy site. But the next version of our podcast websites, I'd like to be super simple and super templated and pretty locked down.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think there's something to be said for, like, some branding and color and stuff like that that people wanna add. But
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Like, giving them the choice to choose a, you know, here's the color scheme. Here's your logo, and making it flexible enough that, you know, it meets the needs of most folks. Like, yeah, maybe we need to have a special section for who hosts the podcast with their pictures
Jon:and stuff.
Justin:Maybe we need to have a section that allows people to link to a a merch site or something. And so, like, taking all those considerations into taking all those things into consideration and then coming out with something that's like, okay, this is just the base template that will fit most people's needs, is customizable enough, looks really great.
Jon:Yeah. It might be it might be something where we hire someone to work and work with them, someone who has been involved in podcasting and knows what kind of what the site needs to have on it, but is also a really good designer. Yeah. So I don't know.
Justin:Maybe Yeah. And someone, I I mean, to be honest, I'd like if someone maybe someone well, I guess we could go 2 ways. We could go with, like, a traditional, like, design and Photoshop person, or we could hire somebody that's really good at designing in the browser with Tailwind. And Yeah. I'd prefer something like that.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. That's me too. Because that's the other advantage of us moving over to Tailwind is that once that's done, we can kinda move all of these other things over to Tailwind as well. And then we have this one design system we're using for everything. You know, even even I can can make fixes, and and I know I know how to work my way around tailwind.
Justin:So I'm I'm kind of, I think if I was gonna prioritize them, I would go API first and then a quick sprint on private podcasting just to add a few things. And then Yeah. Podcast websites would be the next thing.
Gavin:Alright.
Justin:Because API I mean, some of our biggest fans are technical people. And we've, in some ways, become the home of, like it's not a huge percentage of our customers, but it's still enough. And these folks, like, they're the ones that tell other people about transistor as programmers and, you know, startup people.
Jon:And Right.
Justin:And so it would be it would just be nice to give them the ability because it they're so hungry for it. They just wanna, like
Jon:Yeah. Build this and that. My main concern there again is, like, this is a a it would be it's gonna be a brand new thing. It's along with it is gonna come a lot of support on top of what we already have. It's just another thing to support.
Jon:Right?
Justin:Yeah.
Jon:And it's and it's I the first one the first version is not gonna have everything everybody wants. It's gonna be missing some things for sure. Yeah. And we'll hear about that.
Justin:You you had floated the idea. We should we should stop recording here, but you had floated the idea of maybe hiring somebody that's, like, excited.
Jon:I mean, it's it's a it's a one off project that I think is fairly self contained.
Justin:Yeah. Right?
Jon:Yeah. That someone could kinda pick up and run with.
Justin:And there are people like, are there people that like building APIs?
Jon:No. Probably somewhere. Or, like, you know, it's been a while since I built one and, like, there's different ways to do it and better ways and worse ways and easier ways. And, like, I I mean, there's certain people that just have a lot more experience of doing it.
Justin:Yeah. Alright. Let's end it here. John Buddha, we have 31 Patreons giving us $327 per month. Alright.
Justin:Do you wanna thank those people?
Jon:I do. Let me take a deep breath. Thanks to everyone. As always, we have Sofia Cantero, Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sauers, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Pradey Yumnesh and Becker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitber, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, Darby Frey.
Justin:I I was gonna say, your brother.
Jon:Yeah. My brother. Yeah. He is my brother. Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.
Jon:Junta. And Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.
Justin:Thanks, everyone. We'll be back next week.
Jon:Stay healthy.
