Full Transcript for 320 - John Nunemaker of Fireside.fm, Box Out Sports and Very Good Software

00:05:14.800 I I'd be happy. 00:05:14.879 --> 00:05:16.959 We're doing a lot of stuff right now. 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:19.199 Um we just redesigned the studio. 00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:29.439 Um, so that's like gonna be probably in the next day or two, it'll be opt-in for people, and then you know, in a month or so we'll just flip the switch after we've got all the possible kinks worked out. 00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:33.120 Um so that'll be big, and then new marketing site coming after that, it's almost done. 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:45.360 And then we have a whole bunch of like little things that we've been then then we'll be able to actually work on flow, which I'm really excited about because I've got some really cool ideas about workflow after having had a like a podcast of my own, 10 episodes or so. 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:52.399 And you know, it's just there's a lot of tedious stuff around it, so I'm really excited to kind of try and programmatically make some of that stuff easier. 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:53.759 So yeah. 00:05:54.079 --> 00:06:05.279 Okay, well, this is a topic near and dear to my heart because yeah, tedium is is part of my life with the the podcast processing and stuff like that. 00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:05.759 Yeah. 00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:08.879 So that's that's something that I have opinions about. 00:06:08.959 --> 00:06:12.879 Um, but what made you want to start a podcast host in the first place? 00:06:13.439 --> 00:06:18.000 It was honestly, it was not even like uh on my radar at all. 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:22.560 I think what happened for me is um I work with Garrett Diamond a lot. 00:06:22.720 --> 00:06:28.079 Garrett uh actually worked on Fireside for Dan Benjamin, who owned it originally and created it. 00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:58.160 And because of that, uh Dan had been like, he'd had it for several years and just kind of like I think lost interest and moved on to other things, and and it was just sitting there kind of chugging along, and he was like trying to find someone to buy it, and it was like too big for some of the smaller players, and it was too small for some of the bigger players, and so it was like in this weird position where it just didn't make sense for like anyone to acquire it, and so he had reached out to Garrett, and Garrett was like, um, he was like, I don't know, I'll ask John. 00:06:58.399 --> 00:07:03.120 John knows some people, maybe he would, and then I was like, I I that actually sounds kind of interesting. 00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:13.199 I was really I'm a huge podcast like consumer and fan of the format, and like had been wanting to kind of start my own, and so then I was like, Oh, this this seems like an interesting way. 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:25.839 So we got it for you know a decent multiple, and um I so I felt good with that, and so went down that whole path of acquiring it and um yeah, all of that. 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:29.839 So it was uh and so really like complete happenstance. 00:07:29.920

--> 00:07:32.720 It just was like, oh, it's making money, it's profitable. 00:07:32.879 --> 00:07:37.040 Um we can we're at a si like a size where we could do it, so let's just do it. 00:07:37.199 --> 00:07:38.000 Um so yeah. 00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:46.399 And and were you seeking a business to buy or or how did that because not everybody you know would find that a natural move? 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:47.920 We weren't. 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:57.120 Uh like I was I was actually paying Garrett to work on Flipper because I just I was like, I need to do something on Flipper, like not doing anything just didn't feel right. 00:07:57.199 --> 00:08:05.120 Like I was working on you know on the open source gem and I was you know occasionally working on cloud, but like just not really pushing it forward, and I felt like let's just really push it forward. 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:09.759 So it was a couple years ago, and I was like, let's just um you know pay him to work on it. 00:08:09.839 --> 00:08:23.519 He was looking for stuff anyways, and so we did that for a while, um, but probably six to eight months, and then the fireside thing just kind of came up, and I was like, well, shoot, if we buy it, then you know that pays for you to work on both of them. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:25.759 Like, so why don't we just do that? 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:28.240 Um, and so that's that's kind of how it came. 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:38.320 It was it just kind of worked, and so it it made it so that I was not, you know, taking money out of my pocket every month to pay, like to, you know, to get him to work on Flipper and push that forward. 00:08:38.399 --> 00:08:46.879 Instead, it was like, well, if we just acquire this, then it can just have you know automatic income from it, um, and that can kind of pay to work on either of them. 00:08:47.039 --> 00:08:56.960 Um, and then you know, I I have I get paid from box out and stuff like that already, so I I didn't really need to have like you know a large everyday, every month thing from it. 00:08:57.039 --> 00:08:59.039 So for me, it's always like a long-term thing. 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:03.840 I'm just always pushing on like what's the long-term result of what the work on that I do right now is. 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:06.960 Like I don't care as much about trading hours for money and stuff like that. 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:11.679 And so from a long-term standpoint, I I just thought, you know, podcasts aren't going down, I don't think. 00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:17.919 I mean, they just seem like more and more people are creating them, more and more people are you know finding value in them and stuff. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:26.639 So it seemed like a good wave, and I felt like a lot of the same things that involved in a podcast, analytics, content hosting, things like that. 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:30.240 I've done them all before with gauges and harmony and things like that. 00:09:30.399 --> 00:09:32.639 So it just seemed like kind of

a natural fit. 00:09:32.799 --> 00:09:40.399 And then, you know, I I mean I had good fortunes at GitHub and things, and so there was there I was it was possible to do. 00:09:40.559 --> 00:09:42.799 Um, and so yeah, I wasn't looking for it. 00:09:42.879 --> 00:09:47.039 I would say now, like I would be I'm more kind of like looking for it. 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:50.559 Like I keep an eye out for like Rails apps that are for sale and stuff like that. 00:09:50.639 --> 00:09:54.879 I mean I haven't bought any more since, but if the right thing came along, I definitely would. 00:09:55.279 --> 00:10:04.240 So yeah, I've kept my eye out for stuff over the years just cuz um it's hard to find something that like speaks to you. 00:10:04.559 --> 00:10:10.000 Um because a lot of stuff, you know, there's like buy bizell.com or whatever it is. 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:17.039 Um and I and I look both at software so buy buy bizell, whatever it is. 00:10:17.200 --> 00:10:20.799 Um I feel like that's mainly like uh brick and mortar businesses. 00:10:21.039 --> 00:10:31.440 Um I've I've looked on there, like looked at laundromats and uh tool and die companies and whatever, and it's like, oh hey, maybe I'll buy a tool and die company. 00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:32.320 I don't know. 00:10:32.559 --> 00:10:34.720 Um I did which I did not do. 00:10:35.120 --> 00:10:36.080 That's a good call. 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:36.720 Yeah. 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:53.840 And then uh, you know, there's the more software-oriented ones, I forget the names, but I've I've looked on there, and a lot of it is like, oh, here's like a supplement uh uh e-commerce site or something like that, and it's like eh, I don't know, probably not. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:57.120 And so it's yeah, it's hard to find something that A speaks to you. 00:10:57.200 --> 00:10:59.600 It's like, why would I do this? 00:10:59.919 --> 00:11:05.919 Um and like the numbers all look right and it just looks like a good thing and all that stuff. 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:10.000 A lot of things have to come together uh in order for it to make sense. 00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:16.480 Very true, and I feel like a lot of people, I mean, I know people who have have dove into you know random businesses. 00:11:16.639 --> 00:11:21.679 I mean, my dad's a farmer, but he like randomly invested in like a machine tooling company. 00:11:21.759 --> 00:11:28.799 Um, and there was just like a ton of issues, like because things can look good on paper, but if you don't know where to look, that you know, there can be problems and stuff. 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:34.720 So I I always say like stick to what you know, and so then finding something that you know is also very hard. 00:11:34.879 --> 00:11:37.360 Um, but yeah, there's like uh Quiet Light. 00:11:37.519 --> 00:11:39.840 I get emails from them all the time and FE International. 00:11:39.919 --> 00:11:47.600 There's all you know, a whole acquisition.com or or whatever the the one by uh Gazdecki is, but

yeah, there's a bunch of them that are out there. 00:11:47.759 --> 00:11:50.399 I feel like those are not usually where you want to go to find them. 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:54.159 Like the the way to find something like this is is network. 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:58.639 It's like people that you know that know somebody that you know they're throwing it up for sale. 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:03.200 And that's I I would say from the ones that I've seen, those have worked a lot better. 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:08.080 Because, you know, you the people that throw them on those sites, they're like they expect ridiculous multiples. 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:17.840 It's like, you know, you have whatever, you have a dying SaaS and you think you're gonna get four to eight times profit or revenue, and it's just like sorry, that's not it's not gonna work that way, you know. 00:12:17.919 --> 00:12:25.440 Like if you have a SaaS that's going down, you're probably 1.5 to 2, or maybe 2 and a quarter, or like it's not gonna, it's not gonna be that high. 00:12:25.519 --> 00:12:36.960 So yeah, finding that I think it's more just about like reaching out and talking to people a lot more and going to conferences and talking to people there, uh, you know, in various communities online and stuff, than actually on those sites. 00:12:37.039 --> 00:12:50.799 It's possible on those sites, but usually you're you're getting more of a job than just um you know, than than what you probably are looking for if you're do if you have a regular job and you're just looking to buy something on the side to maybe switch to it or whatever. 00:12:50.960 --> 00:13:03.759 So I will say the one thing I have learned is they all take the same amount of work, so make sure that it's big enough that you know, like all the paperwork and all that stuff is the same for something that makes fifty thousand or five hundred thousand or five million, like there's no difference. 00:13:04.159 --> 00:13:06.480 And so you might as well go for a bigger swing. 00:13:06.559 --> 00:13:13.440 Um, as long as you know, that's I think that's the one thing that I looking back, maybe I would point as like a learning experience. 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:19.679 And I used to think that in order to buy a business you had to have like a bunch of money, like just a bunch of cash. 00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:22.480 Um but I found that that's not really the case. 00:13:22.799 --> 00:13:32.879 You can it it seems counterintuitive, but it's like you can get a loan to buy a business that makes money and then pay back the loan with the money that the business makes. 00:13:33.039 --> 00:13:38.879 It doesn't seem like it should be possible, but I understand that is a way you can do it. 00:13:39.279 --> 00:13:40.720 Yeah, we kind of did that. 00:13:40.879 --> 00:13:45.759 Um, like we it's funny because we were not like you when you were like, hey, do you want to come on and talk? 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:49.919 We were not gonna talk about this at all, but like I love this stuff too, so I'm happy to go as far as you want. 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:59.600 So yeah, we what we did is we I ended up um I my house was paid off, and so I had a bunch of equity, and I was like, I've never done a loan for stuff like this. 00:13:59.679 --> 00:14:02.480 So I was like, let's let's see what what you can do, you know. 00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:16.480 So I looked at like small business loans, but honestly, like that's to me, that would be like if I have no equity to use anywhere, that's what I would do because um it's basically I would say for that, it's like a 70, 30, 80, 20 thing. 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:21.360 So like you can get a loan up to like 70 or 80% of it, but you need like 10% down. 00:14:21.519 --> 00:14:34.559 You need like they typically want the seller to have like a 10% seller note or or 15% seller note or something where like they're invested in in it succeeding still as well, you know, from from like a getting paid back standpoint. 00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:41.679 So you have to find the right person who's okay with not getting all the cash up front um and having some kind of like an earnout or buyout or something. 00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:48.960 So it's a little more complicated from that standpoint, and then and then the additional thing that makes it hard is the interest rate is so high. 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:57.679 Like, I mean, I was looking, you know, so when we got fireside, that would have been like end of 24, September 24, um, October, right around that range. 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:10.720 And the interest rates then, you know, for like a bank loan, I think we're in the fives or like low sixes, and like an SBA loan would have been like I want to say it was like 10% or 12%, like it's significantly higher. 00:15:10.879 --> 00:15:11.200 Yeah. 00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:17.840 So you want to have make you want to make sure you have like lots of a very healthy profit margin um to be able to handle that. 00:15:17.919 --> 00:15:24.639 And the loan payback period is like five years, or maybe like you know, six, seven, eight years. 00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:38.399 I think it's theoretically possible in some sense, you know, instances, but like with the what I did, um I was like, well, I have a couple different routes because I have some farmland and I have um my house, and I was like, so I just talked to the banker like straight up. 00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:41.600 I was like, well, what's you know, what can I do with either of these? 00:15:41.759 --> 00:15:49.039 And they were like, well, for farmland, we would do like 50%, like up to 50% of the equity that you have, we'll give you a loan for it, you know. 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:49.519 So whatever. 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:52.720 If your land's worth$100,000, they'll give you$50,000, kind of a thing. 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:55.279 Um, and with a house, they'll do like 80%. 00:15:55.919 --> 00:15:57.919 Like, because they know houses really well. 00:15:58.080

--> 00:16:07.039 So they're like, if you want to use, you know, your your house as the leverage, then they'll give you you know up to 80% of whatever equity you have in your house. 00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:08.159 So same, same math. 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:10.720 So if you have a hundred thousand dollar house, it's eighty thousand. 00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:11.840 They'll give you as a loan. 00:16:11.919 --> 00:16:16.080 Like the next day, no questions asked, like sign some paperwork, it's done. 00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:19.440 Um, it's they're very good at you know dealing with houses. 00:16:19.519 --> 00:16:20.639 They know exactly what they can do. 00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:23.519 It's an established, you know, houses move a lot more. 00:16:23.600 --> 00:16:35.200 They, I mean, they they uh you know change hands a lot more, so they have more updated value on them, uh, versus like land might sell every 10 years, a house might sell every two years or five years. 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.720 So they get a lot more, I think, accurate numbers on what it's worth. 00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:42.480 And it's just easier for them to like you know, rent or sell or things like that. 00:16:42.559 --> 00:16:43.919 They just uh better burst. 00:16:44.080 --> 00:16:45.840 So I ended up doing the house route. 00:16:45.919 --> 00:16:55.840 Um I didn't do 80% of my house, but I did some percentage of my house, and um, and it was super easy, and I was able to get 15 years instead of you know five years or something like that. 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:58.240 And that doesn't mean I'm gonna pay it back in 15 years. 00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:01.600 I mean, I would certainly hope to pay it back in five, six, seven, eight. 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:02.799 That's the plan. 00:17:03.039 --> 00:17:06.960 Um, but it's nice to have the lower payment just in case, you know. 00:17:07.119 --> 00:17:10.880 Um, so yeah, that's kind of how I went about it and definitely learned a lot doing it. 00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:11.519 I'm glad I did. 00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:16.640 There's times where I'm like, I wish I didn't have this stupid bank loan, like I should just pay it off and like move on with my life. 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:22.480 But I feel like it's it's kind of good to force the business to have at least at a minimum that much profit. 00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:28.079 And then it's also interesting because, like, you know, like we said earlier, like the business is just paying for itself. 00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:38.000 So as long as I never the business doesn't go straight to zero and I have to start paying this, like um, it's literally like I I did nothing. 00:17:38.079 --> 00:17:46.240 I stapped my fingers and and acquired, you know, like a a good chunk of uh profit cash flow automatic every month. 00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:47.519 And that's kind of neat. 00:17:47.920 --> 00:17:54.240 And when you bought Fireside, what exactly did you buy and how did you approach that whole thing? 00:17:54.400 --> 00:18:02.400 Like, did you buy it and kind of assess the product and the business and stuff like that and say, okay, here's where I want to take it from here. 00:18:02.559 --> 00:18:04.160 How did you approach that whole thing? 00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:08.640 Yeah, it was pretty, I mean, probably more nonchalant than it should have been. 00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:17.119 Um, like I think because I knew Dan and I uh a little bit and I knew Garrett, who knew Dan a lot, I knew the business and I knew what you know what the story was. 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:24.240 Like that it's basically, you know, it was it was going down, it was um you know not being as actively maintained and things like that. 00:18:24.319 --> 00:18:26.240 So there's not a lot of changes going on. 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:32.880 And so because of that, I thought, well, okay, I can look at the trajectory that it's on, I can kind of estimate what it's worth to me. 00:18:33.279 --> 00:18:36.640 So just from a cash flow standpoint, you know, it made sense. 00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:41.440 I was like, you know, if I if we just didn't pay ourselves at all, like it would pay itself back in like two years. 00:18:41.599 --> 00:18:43.839 So like I was like, that's that's fine. 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:57.039 You know, I know that it's not gonna go to zero in two years, and we can pay ourselves, and then ideally we add new things to it, we work on it, and then we change the trajectory so that no longer is it going down, but now it's flat, and then eventually it's going up and all that kind of stuff. 00:18:57.200 --> 00:19:05.039 So that was kind of the one of the main things, and then you know, just looking at from a cash flow standpoint, I was like, it won't be a poor investment from that standpoint. 00:19:05.359 --> 00:19:09.920 So then it was like, okay, well, what can we do and can we turn around? 00:19:10.079 --> 00:19:12.640 Can it be a you know a a really nice business? 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:13.839 And like, I don't know. 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:29.200 I mean, I I just felt like with podcasting going the way that it is, the the only threat to that would be Apple and Spotify get in some kind of big fight and like decide that they're gonna try and take over the whole market, which Spotify is kind of trying to do. 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:34.960 Um, and that's really like what do you mean by podcasting going the way that it is? 00:19:35.440 --> 00:19:39.759 Oh, I just mean uh like there's always more podcasts, they're getting more popular. 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:42.480 It just seems like a trend that's increasing, not decreasing. 00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:58.720 Um, so looking at the trend overall of podcasting, seeming like it's on the uptake still, um, you know, the it was meteoric, you know, around COVID and all that kind of stuff, but it's still, you know, uh I feel like a very hot or warm trend. 00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:00.640 Everybody wants to have a podcast these days. 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:02.240

So that's what I mean by that. 00:20:02.319 --> 00:20:10.000 And then, you know, on the Spotify front or the Apple front, like Apple just wants to be the directory and they just want people to buy iPhones and use more things. 00:20:10.079 --> 00:20:13.359 They're not trying to like dominate podcasting or anything like that. 00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:27.519 Spotify, I think, kind of is, and so they're buying up, you know, they bought uh Anchor, they bought like a bunch of different um megaphone, like different podcasting companies immediately kind of internalize them into Spotify. 00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:38.880 Um, so they're I think they're probably the maybe the I don't know if I'm accurate, but um, I feel like they're kind of the biggest threat because they could, you know, be like, well, we're not gonna like distribute indie podcasts anymore. 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:40.400 So like RSS doesn't matter. 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:42.160 You have to be on Spotify's platform. 00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:45.759 If they got to that size, that could be, you know, an issue. 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:55.200 Um, but I think there's a lot of the indie, you know, transistor, buzzsprout, like, um, and there's several more of them that are not um in that ecosystem. 00:20:55.279 --> 00:20:59.920 There's hopefully enough and they provide enough value that people will keep using it and and that won't happen. 00:21:00.079 --> 00:21:06.319 That's really the only threat that I saw would be like, you know, horrific or would maybe really be a problem for me. 00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:10.559 Um but for the rest of it, you know, I was like, uh it's just a good business and it's fun. 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:13.119 Uh it's like fun people to serve. 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:22.640 Like I think that's the thing that's you always want to think about when you have a business is like who are you serving, who are your customers, and are they, you know, is it fun to do things for them? 00:21:22.799 --> 00:21:23.440 Yeah, yeah. 00:21:23.599 --> 00:21:29.839 So I talk about this sometimes um with a business I used to have, scheduling software for hair salons. 00:21:30.319 --> 00:21:35.359 It's I mean, those people are fine people, but they're like not my people, you know? 00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:42.079 Um and now I'm building this CI platform and developers are my people. 00:21:42.400 --> 00:21:46.960 It's like who I'm talking to all the time on my podcast, and I already go to conferences and stuff like that. 00:21:47.279 --> 00:21:52.960 Makes so much more sense for me to do this than than to do scheduling software for hair salons. 00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:54.799 Uh so I totally get that. 00:21:55.279 --> 00:21:57.920 Um what is the scope of the product? 00:21:58.160 --> 00:22:08.079 Because like I use for Hosting, I use Buzz Sprout, I have for some number of years, um and and it's fine and good for that. 00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:25.440 Um I recently started using Riverside because a couple people pointed

out that when we use Google Hangouts for the recording part of it, um the the connection can drop and really negatively impact the audio quality and the listening experience and stuff like that. 00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:36.160 So I'm like, okay, I gotta switch to something that that gets around that and you know this product records locally so that connectivity issues don't have that effect. 00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:40.960 Um and once I got into Riverside, I'm like, okay, this is interesting. 00:22:41.119 --> 00:22:45.839 The the like topography of this is much different from Buzz Sprout. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.039 They're like not trying to do exactly the same stuff. 00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:54.720 It's not exactly that it does the same stuff and more, it's that it does overlapping but kind of different stuff. 00:22:54.880 --> 00:23:02.240 It looks like they do hosting too, but the whole thing is just the like conceptual model of it is totally different. 00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:04.960 And so I'm curious about Fireside. 00:23:05.039 --> 00:23:06.880 What is what's the scope of that? 00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:09.039 Yeah, we would be more akin to Buzzsprout. 00:23:09.119 --> 00:23:13.440 So like the record we're not doing we're not helping with the recording or like any of that kind of stuff. 00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:25.839 It's just like make it easy to get a website, to get an RSS feed, to upload your things, put in details, you know, submit to Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, make make all those connections and things like that. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:30.079 So it's it's just and and also like workflow, I guess, you know, beyond that. 00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:39.359 Like, I mean, anyone could just make an RSS feed manually by hand and put you know audio files on S3 or R2 or whatever, and it would work. 00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:40.880 I mean, that would totally work. 00:23:41.039 --> 00:23:43.119 That just doesn't work for like non-technical people. 00:23:43.279 --> 00:23:50.400 So, you know, you're you're typically it's like non-technical people or technical people who aren't interested in uh doing all that stuff by hand. 00:23:50.559 --> 00:23:59.839 Um, and so like our our you know Riverside, I mean we used Riverside for quite a while for like first like seven or eight episodes, I think, to record. 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:03.440 Um now we have um an entrepreneurship thing that I'm involved in here. 00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:15.599 We have like a co-working space and offices and all that kind of stuff, and part of it is a fireside podcast studio, and so we have a studio with a couple mics, and so now we've started using that instead, and that's definitely up. 00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:20.640 I'm actually not in that right now, and so like my mic is not gonna sound as good, and it's killing me on the inside. 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:22.000 I need to get a good mic at home. 00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:24.000 I just have like a Yeti or whatever. 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:35.200

Um, but um, yeah, so I would say we are not involved in that, so Riverside would have overlap in that they do hosting also, but that's just something new, and I think they basically just did it because like why not? 00:24:35.279 --> 00:24:40.799 Like, we're already producing all the things, let's just make it easy to like export it to our own platform. 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:45.119 Um, and and probably a bunch of definition of easy, yes, yeah. 00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:47.279 Yeah, and probably people ask it for themselves. 00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:57.440 Yeah, no offense to Riverside, but like now that you say that, it makes sense because like I haven't seen it before like a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, okay, well, what if I just want to have one platform right now? 00:24:57.519 --> 00:25:01.440 I'm like recording on Riverside, yeah, and then uploading to Buzz Sprout. 00:25:01.519 --> 00:25:02.960 Can I just do it all in one? 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:08.400 And it's like there's not really an easy path from recording to publishing it. 00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:16.400 Like, why can't I just like hit publish on the recording and like that's it, it doesn't seem like all integrated with itself yet. 00:25:16.559 --> 00:25:19.119 Maybe they're working on that, but it doesn't seem quite there yet. 00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:20.240 You would hope so, yeah. 00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:20.880 You would hope so. 00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:27.519 Like, that's what I assumed when I heard that they had hosting as well, because they didn't, I don't think they did when I first started using them like a year ago. 00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:29.440 Maybe they did, but it was just really not obvious. 00:25:29.599 --> 00:25:34.480 But when I first started using them, they had like export to transistor and export to captivate and other things. 00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:35.519 I don't know how those worked. 00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:37.839 I didn't look at that, but like they had some of that functionality. 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:48.640 But like it makes sense if you're if you have like a recording thing, like and you have an editing thing, you know, the next step is the finalized, you know, distribute distribution of the end product. 00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:54.319 So it makes sense from like a thing, but it's also like a large surface area to solve. 00:25:54.480 --> 00:26:00.160 Like I think it's okay if there's just some tools that are recording, some tools that are editing, some tools that are hosting. 00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:08.960 I don't think that you have to do all of them, and if you do all of them, it's kind of like the PDA of old, uh, where like it doesn't do anything great, but it does everything kind of. 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:13.119 Um so yeah, I I mean it's possible, I think, with the right team to do them all. 00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:25.279 I don't I don't we've talked about some of that kind of stuff, but I'm like right now, you know, we had a lot of tech debt, we had a lot of like,

you know, just um things to fix and get better and improve and stuff like that. 00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:28.880 And because of that, we've just spent a lot of time on on that. 00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:34.000 And and so like now we're kind of coming out of that and we're starting to put our own touch on it and and things like that. 00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:36.799 So maybe I wouldn't say we're never gonna do those things. 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:42.960 It's mostly just like um I haven't considered it to this point because we had enough on our plate. 00:26:43.039 --> 00:26:45.759 Um, the editing is that would be insane. 00:26:45.920 --> 00:27:10.160 I've thought about it a lot, like how I would build that and do it, because it, you know, you end up with Riverside, and when I first started using it, I had a lot of performance issues using it in the web and editing, like where you, you know, you'd be editing, you trim it and do some things, and you get part way through the podcast, and then you'd like come back in later, like leave, you know, get distracted, and then come back in, and then it would just I would have a horrible time with buffering and out of sync and all this kind of stuff. 00:27:10.240 --> 00:27:12.079 It's I so I'm sure it's gotten better. 00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:25.839 Um, but I did switch to when we started doing in our podcast um room at Momentum, when I started doing that, um, we switched to descript because I was like, I just need the editing, I don't need the recording anymore. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:31.200 And the only reason I was using Riverside's editing was because they had it and I had just recorded there, so why not? 00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:42.799 Um but then I switched to descript and I actually uh descript I think is a lot more powerful and performant um in my experience for the editing, but I don't think they have the recording, or maybe they do, and I just didn't notice it. 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:50.799 Um so yeah, but there's it's interesting how those tools all kind of like some of them overlap, some of them don't, and they all have their you know special sauce. 00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:56.799 So yeah, and uh what is kind of the value proposition of Fireside? 00:27:57.039 --> 00:28:01.839 Why would somebody use that instead of some other product that does roughly the same thing? 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:06.559 Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things I feel like uh it's a like a great question. 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:08.640 Like, do I have like an exact answer right now? 00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:09.119 Like, no. 00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:16.880 Honestly, like I feel like for me, a lot of it is just like, well, people buy from people, and that's what I even think about with AI and all that kind of stuff. 00:28:17.039 --> 00:28:21.039 Like, in the end, you know, they're gonna trust a certain person and that's who they're gonna end up buying with. 00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:31.920 They might go with you know some other random thing for like

a little while, and then that'll have scaling issues or it'll have something else, and and you know, so like a lot of it is just like, well, what is the experience you want to have? 00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:34.480 Like, how fast do you want people to respond to support? 00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:38.079 You know, do you want them to actually implement you know things that you ask for? 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:40.160 Like, because that's kind of the state that we're in right now. 00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:44.079 We're like, hey, we don't claim to know everything about podcasting or have strong opinions. 00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:55.119 So if somebody wants a way to easily duplicate episodes, like because they do the same ones every year and they just run them on a loop, okay, we'll build a feature for that and we'll literally turn it on for just them. 00:28:55.279 --> 00:28:58.079 Um, you know, if they're a big enough customer and stuff like that. 00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:12.160 So I I mean, right now I would say like the biggest difference between you know us and um the bigger companies would just be uh the personal touch of like you're literally like I'm doing the support and I'm also the person who's building it. 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:17.440 And so like if you send the right thing and I think I can just do this quick, I just do it before I even respond. 00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:22.400 I like I'll do the fix and then I'll reply and I'll be like, here's the new feature, it's out. 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:23.359 You just use it. 00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:26.640 Um so that's kind of what I would say is maybe the difference right now. 00:29:26.799 --> 00:29:30.799 I mean, long term I have some really uh big ideas, and I know Garrett does too. 00:29:30.960 --> 00:29:34.319 Um and by long term I mean like this year kind of a thing. 00:29:34.559 --> 00:29:42.640 But right now, in this very moment, um, it's probably more just like, hey, you're just gonna maybe you have a better chance of actually getting something that you want built, built. 00:29:42.880 --> 00:29:50.480 Um so yeah, yeah, I think there's something to that idea of uh people buy from people and and taking that mentality. 00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:52.000 That's that's what I'm doing. 00:29:52.160 --> 00:30:06.000 Like if you look around at certain people in in the Ruby uh ecosystem community, whatever, um you know, it's not it's not exactly a meritocracy, you know. 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:12.400 Um there's a lot of uh cronyism, but i I I don't mean those in a bad way at all. 00:30:12.880 --> 00:30:15.680 Like it's like a benign cronyism. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:26.559 Like in order for somebody to do business with you, like they have to know you exist, and there has to be some amount of trust there because there's risk involved. 00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:39.599 And you know, if I hire somebody to uh put a new roof on my house, uh I'd rather use somebody who did my friend's roof already, somebody I have a relationship with because that's less risk. 00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:46.640 And I think I knew Tom Rossi for some amount of time, the Buzz Sprout guy before I started using Buzz Sprout. 00:30:47.279 --> 00:30:50.000 Um and honestly, that's the only reason I chose that. 00:30:50.079 --> 00:30:56.480 Like I didn't pick it because like I did a thorough evaluation of the options and I decided that was best. 00:30:56.640 --> 00:31:02.240 For all I know, there was something better available at that time that I chose that, but I I picked it because of Tom. 00:31:02.480 --> 00:31:12.960 Yeah, and I look at like um Avo and Adrian Morin, and he's very active in the Ruby community, and it seems to me that that's that's part of it for him. 00:31:13.039 --> 00:31:20.079 You know, people use Avo because they know Adrian, and Adrian is an extremely likable guy, yeah. 00:31:20.319 --> 00:31:31.920 And so that they're they're probably not gonna do it just as a favor for him if they don't need it, but that sure like greases the wheels and and makes that a lot easier. 00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:32.880 Agreed. 00:31:33.119 --> 00:31:36.319 So it sounds like you you are thinking about that in similar ways. 00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:46.000 Yeah, yeah, I've definitely I mean I've thought about even just like uh you know, for like doing big discounts for Ruby people, or I don't know, I don't know what the right thing is. 00:31:46.079 --> 00:31:50.400 I mean, podcasting's not super expensive anyway, so it's not really a a big thing. 00:31:50.480 --> 00:31:54.000 But I I mean honestly, it's more just something that I'm like, I just really like doing this. 00:31:54.079 --> 00:32:07.359 It's fun problems to work on, and it's a nice little app, and the customers really appreciate most of them are not technical, and so they really appreciate like the you know the support that's like a real person that can help them. 00:32:07.440 --> 00:32:16.799 And I mean, I how many times I've hopped on Zooms and basically helped grandmas get their podcast going and stuff, you know, um, or get their DNS correct because that you know, stuff like that's hard. 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:19.599 It's it's not stuff that's easy for if you're not technical. 00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:22.799 Like, I don't know how they expect people to to do that, you know. 00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:27.200 So sometimes it's like I literally have to just be like, look, just here's a zoom link. 00:32:27.359 --> 00:32:36.400 Like if you're around, like let me know, and I will just hop on and on screen, you know, share your screen, click this button, and I'll tell you where to click and we'll get it right, you know, and whatever you use. 00:32:36.559 --> 00:32:39.519 Um, so there's yeah, I think you know, people buy from people. 00:32:39.599 --> 00:32:41.039 I I know Tom, Tom's great. 00:32:41.119 --> 00:32:46.400 Like, I I've got nothing against Tom at all or or um uh transistor either. 00:32:46.480 --> 00:32:47.839 Like I think they're awesome.

00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:55.440 Um I'm in uh chat room with those those people and I've talked with um you know uh a few of them from there. 00:32:55.519 --> 00:32:57.680 We've had you know um chats and stuff. 00:32:57.839 --> 00:33:04.640 So and I mostly just from like uh they're like well, they're the ahead of us and like a lot of the difficult features like dynamic content and stuff like that. 00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:14.400 And so you know, having a conversation with them, and then you get like this proud smile, like, yeah, uh well, enjoy when you work on that, you know, because like they've they've gone through it, they've been there, you know. 00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:33.839 Um I I mean it there's a bunch of really cool people in the Rails community that have this, like have platforms like this, and so um, and I don't think anybody really I mean we I'm sure we compete at some level, but like it doesn't really seem more it doesn't seem like a a hard competition, it's more just like you know, what are you doing, what are you doing, and and that kind of thing. 00:33:33.920 --> 00:33:36.400 So yeah, it's pretty I would say very friendly overall. 00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:41.359 Yeah, it's interesting being friends with your competitors or or whatever. 00:33:41.519 --> 00:33:49.359 Like I'm friends with uh some of the RWX guys, and they're way ahead of me in terms of product maturity and stuff like that. 00:33:49.920 --> 00:33:54.000 Um and I find myself like getting ideas from them. 00:33:54.160 --> 00:34:05.359 They're like, oh, the the the the um test execution workflow is a directed acyclic graph. 00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:06.880 That actually makes a lot of sense. 00:34:07.039 --> 00:34:08.719 Maybe I should use that idea. 00:34:09.039 --> 00:34:10.159 Then I feel a little bit weird. 00:34:10.239 --> 00:34:13.199 I'm like, am I like stealing their ideas? 00:34:13.280 --> 00:34:14.960 But everybody's stealing. 00:34:15.360 --> 00:34:16.400 Yeah, yeah. 00:34:17.599 --> 00:34:19.199 Um so that's interesting. 00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:33.440 And and it makes yeah, it's it's and and with a lot of this stuff, it's not exactly a zero-sum game, like the pool is big enough that you're not really fighting over the same people and and stuff like that. 00:34:34.159 --> 00:34:39.119 Um what is your like what do you do for marketing? 00:34:39.199 --> 00:34:42.880 Because you're not like targeting specifically programmers or something like that. 00:34:43.039 --> 00:34:47.119 Do you go to like podcasting conferences or like try to connect with those people somehow? 00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:50.000 Yeah, so I mean right now we've been no, we haven't. 00:34:50.239 --> 00:35:06.000 Um I would say the biggest thing we've focused on right now marketing is just um marketing to our current customers that we are doing things and that things are different and that we're listening to them, we're making new improvements, and so it's a lot of like honestly, it's a lot of marketing emails and things like that. 00:35:06.159 --> 00:35:12.400 So it's like, hey, we did a thing, here's the new thing, try it out, let us know what works, what doesn't, and we've try and fix it as fast as we can. 00:35:12.559 --> 00:35:22.559 And just um, you know, our our goal right now is reduce churn, you know, keep uh I mean not churn's not bad, it's like super low, it's like 2% or something like that. 00:35:22.639 --> 00:35:26.559 But it's like we want people to stay, be happy, you know, that that kind of thing. 00:35:26.719 --> 00:35:32.159 And then the next wave I think will be um a little more aggressive on the marketing front. 00:35:32.239 --> 00:35:47.039 So it might be going to those conferences, it might be, you know, I yeah, I've got some some other ideas for like niches that might work really well, um, that could be easier to grow in, that maybe are underserved, you know, by some of the bigger uh current players in the space. 00:35:47.199 --> 00:35:53.840 Um but I mean right now I would say like tech and religious is probably like those are probably the top two categories, you know. 00:35:53.920 --> 00:36:06.559 There's a lot of like Linux shows, uh big Linux shows that use us and and then a lot of uh religious organizations, uh either posting sermons on Sunday or you know, Bible in a year or all kinds of different things like that. 00:36:06.639 --> 00:36:08.639 Um those are probably the two biggest right now. 00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:18.639 So um something you said I thought oh yeah, I I think you're taking a really smart approach with the kind of marketing to the existing customers. 00:36:19.119 --> 00:36:23.679 Um because churn is a trailing indicator, you know? 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:24.159 Yeah. 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:30.719 Um people churn only after they have like decided to churn. 00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:34.639 And then you find out that they left and it's too late to do anything about it. 00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:48.159 So like getting ahead of that and uh you know, maybe there's a certain rate of potential churn that exists, and you're like dialing down that potential churn so that it doesn't happen. 00:36:48.639 --> 00:36:58.960 Um I'm I'm doing an approach, and I'm actually curious to hear your thoughts on the approach that I'm taking with how I'm how I'm treating my funnel. 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:07.280 So I'm I'm taking like a I call it a back-to-front approach, or you could call it a bottom to top approach. 00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:12.800 Um I'm focusing first like on the end of the funnel. 00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:22.000 So like when somebody is using Saturn CI, uh my my primary focus is like let's get this person to not leave. 00:37:22.559 --> 00:37:27.840 Um and then only once it's working for them do I try to get more customers. 00:37:28.320 --> 00:37:33.760 Um and I'm doing nothing so far to like make the onboarding process easy. 00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:46.800 I of course want that ultimately, but I'm not bothering that with

that now because I can just manually onboard everybody and I'm gonna have a personal relationship with every single customer who comes in at this point. 00:37:47.119 --> 00:37:53.119 So investing in making that easy is like not where I want to invest first. 00:37:53.760 --> 00:38:04.960 Um and also the investments in my sales and marketing activities, like right now, all that is highly manual and labor intensive. 00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:10.159 I'm a I'm a big believer in the Paul Gram, do things that don't scale idea. 00:38:10.639 --> 00:38:34.639 And so like if if in order to keep you as a customer, I have to, you know, do 10 hours of calls with you and build special features and all that, like sure, I'll do whatever it takes to get each customer because there's more value than just that customer, it's yeah, adding value to the product and like all this stuff I'm learning, blah blah blah. 00:38:34.880 --> 00:38:42.960 Um and then I I'll try to get more efficient with my sales and marketing and cast a wider net and stuff like that. 00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:44.880 What do you think of that approach? 00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:47.440 Yeah, I mean I I think I agree with that as well. 00:38:47.599 --> 00:38:54.800 So I I would agree on going to whatever length, like I'm filling out stupid government forms that I always told my like I would never fill these out, you know. 00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:12.719 But it's like if somebody wants to use Flipper, and the only way they can is if I fill out these forms, then I'm like, okay, I'm I'll hop on a call, I'll listen to somebody talk about some you know dumb government thing that's unrelated to the customer, it's a middle mid middle person that I have to go through in order for that customer to pay me, I will do that, you know. 00:39:12.800 --> 00:39:15.039 So like I definitely will do those kinds of things. 00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:32.320 But I also believe very highly in like the most frictionless onboarding that's possible because it not only helps you know people who do just want to jump on by themselves without being handheld, it also helps everybody who does want to be handheld because you know now it's more of what you're doing. 00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:43.920 I think every time you onboard someone like that manually, you should spend a little bit of time to try and automate the bits that were not automated so that each one gets easier so that you can do that with more people, you know. 00:39:44.079 --> 00:39:45.519 So I've actually been doing that. 00:39:45.599 --> 00:40:02.079 Um so like flippers just about I've I like the the way you migrate currently from like flipper open source to you know the flipper, like one of the commercial versions, is basically like you click a button to export, and then you know, you click a button to import the file. 00:40:02.159 --> 00:40:04.159 So it creates an export and then you import it. 00:40:04.239 --> 00:40:04.960 So that's one way. 00:40:05.119 --> 00:40:07.119 The other

way you can do it is like from your console. 00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:13.679 You can just, you know, flipper cloud.new, you know, your your token dot import and then like your current flipper adapter. 00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:14.559 Either of those work. 00:40:14.719 --> 00:40:17.119 But I was like, you know what, it just needs to be more seamless. 00:40:17.199 --> 00:40:19.119 Like a lot of people use the flipper UI. 00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:26.880 And so uh like two days ago, I was like, I'm gonna make everything like just completely seamless, like one click, automatic. 00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:33.920 Like it's it's like almost so slippery that you just went right down the waterfall and didn't realize it, and you're like pulling out your credit card and you're like, wait a second, what happened? 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:46.480 You know, like that's that's what I've been obsessed with the last little bit, is because I've seen on Box Out, which is you know uh my my largest comp uh company that I'm involved in, is like the the better you make the onboarding, like the better everything is. 00:40:46.639 --> 00:40:51.199 Retention's better, everything kind of feeds, they're the same thing from two different sides. 00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:57.840 Like, if it's really easy to get into your product and use it and see value, then you're probably also not gonna leave because you see the value. 00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:04.800 So I feel like the two they're kind of two sides of the same coin, and so I've been really the last like six months super focused on onboarding. 00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:10.639 So with flipper, I basically did um I have a like CLI that's about to go out. 00:41:10.719 --> 00:41:20.000 So you could if you're in your app and you have the flipper gem, it's basically add the flipper gem, and then it's like you know, bundle exact flipper setup, uh, or you know, migrate. 00:41:20.159 --> 00:41:31.280 And so like if you're you're you can just be on a console in production, or you can be you know bash in production or whatever, or you can be in the flipper UI open source, and there's just a button. 00:41:31.360 --> 00:41:49.039 You just click the button, it creates a a stash of your features, gives you, redirects you to the flipper signup, and that stash you know has a code that goes into your session, and then when you sign up, it takes you to a page where it's like, would you like us to make you know this project from your Rails app name automatically and import all your features? 00:41:49.199 --> 00:42:01.840 Or do you want to make a new one or import into one of your you know, it does everything is just like this complete automatic flow of like just click a button and boom, your features are just magically all imported, or you can do it from the CLI or you can do it from the console. 00:42:02.159 --> 00:42:05.119 Whatever you want, choose your own adventure, kind of a thing. 00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:11.440 And then the same thing, I've I'm building um an just a like a really lightweight, cheap APM. 00:42:11.599 --> 00:42:23.039 Um, got some really cool ideas based on like there's just so much new technology that's out, and there's some I think some opinionated ways you can do things that will dramatically reduce the amount of data, and that's what makes those expensive. 00:42:23.199 --> 00:42:26.639 But no one who's doing it has an incentive to do that because they're making money on it. 00:42:26.719 --> 00:42:28.239 So why would they stop, you know? 00:42:28.480 --> 00:42:33.760 So my thing is like I'm gonna make you know this super, super uh affordable version. 00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:37.679 Cheap is probably like a horrible horrible word, scrappy and affordable, let's call it that. 00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:42.400 Um, and it it's like so I've been working on that as well, and it's just about ready. 00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:43.679 And it the whole thing is the same. 00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:49.199 It's like you know, it's gonna be probably called caboose, and like you just caboose setup and you're done. 00:42:49.360 --> 00:42:56.239 And that will automatically you know redirect you to a browser, and then you authorize, you're back, and you've got a token in there. 00:42:56.320 --> 00:43:04.480 It automatically from that one token, you can put it in all of your apps, or each app can have its own, whatever, and it just sets everything up and you're done. 00:43:04.559 --> 00:43:10.400 Like, you don't it's literally add a gem, add a token, and it guides you through the whole flow, and you have APM and you don't have to think about it. 00:43:10.559 --> 00:43:11.679 And so that's great. 00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:12.239 Yeah, go ahead. 00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:14.239 You're gonna yeah, you look like you got thoughts. 00:43:14.480 --> 00:43:15.519 Oh, yeah, yeah. 00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:24.400 So I I I have all kinds of daydreams of like products I could build after Saturn CI takes over the world and stuff like that. 00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:38.480 Um, one is hosting, because like I feel like the demise of Heroku is leaving a gap in the world, and nobody has really stepped in to fill it as well as it could be filled. 00:43:38.639 --> 00:43:41.039 Um, and so that's an opportunity. 00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:42.320 Have you used Railway? 00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:43.760 Just side side note or not? 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:44.320 No, no. 00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:47.679 Okay, I'm obsessed with Railway right now, highly impressed by it. 00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:56.960 Um, there's a little bit of like mental learning curve just because they do things differently than Heroku, but like it's uh as good better than Heroku once you get in it. 00:43:57.039 --> 00:43:58.639 Like it's it's legit, really good. 00:43:58.719 --> 00:43:59.760 Um, and they ship they're shipping. 00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:01.360 Cadence is just unreal. 00:44:01.519 --> 00:44:03.599 I mean, they're just putting stuff out like crazy. 00:44:03.840 --> 00:44:05.360 So

highly recommend them. 00:44:05.760 --> 00:44:09.039 They just got like a hundred million dollar funding series, whatever, A or B. 00:44:09.119 --> 00:44:10.079 So they're like, they're legit. 00:44:10.159 --> 00:44:11.280 They're going to be around. 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:14.000 Yeah, they're they're super impressive. 00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:15.760 I'm all on them. 00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:19.119 Well, yeah, our I mean, Boxout's core rendering infrastructure is all on Railway. 00:44:19.199 --> 00:44:24.000 We haven't moved the Rails app yet because the database and the database is state and state's hard to move. 00:44:24.079 --> 00:44:27.440 But anything that's stateless, I've already moved over there on all my apps. 00:44:27.519 --> 00:44:28.639 So interesting. 00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:30.079 Okay, I'll check that out. 00:44:30.639 --> 00:44:31.360 Sorry, keep going. 00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:32.320 Hosting, what's next? 00:44:32.559 --> 00:44:33.039 Yeah, yeah. 00:44:33.199 --> 00:44:33.840 Hosting. 00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:41.920 Um and you know, okay, so I run CI that requires like compute resources and stuff like that. 00:44:42.159 --> 00:44:47.599 Right now I'm like running a Hetzner uh dedicated dedicated box. 00:44:47.840 --> 00:44:52.639 And I'm like, well, eventually I'll want my own physical data centers. 00:44:52.880 --> 00:45:01.679 And then once I have that at scale, then I can start reselling uh some of my capacity and be like an AWS killer. 00:45:02.239 --> 00:45:03.760 Um so that's another idea. 00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:08.639 You know, crazy scope and all that stuff, but I'm I'm just Adrian. 00:45:09.440 --> 00:45:09.760 Yeah. 00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:13.280 And then uh an APM was was the other thing. 00:45:13.440 --> 00:45:19.760 Because like I use New Relic and it's like fine, it's useful. 00:45:20.079 --> 00:45:20.960 As long as you're by yourself. 00:45:21.119 --> 00:45:21.280 Yeah. 00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:23.679 If you add a second person, it's ten times more expensive. 00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:25.599 You know, if you add a third person, yeah. 00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:30.800 It's like for ten, it's ten bucks a month, you know, to get going, but as soon as you add a second person, it's a hundred bucks a month. 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:34.159 And then if you want to add more people, it's a hundred bucks for like every person. 00:45:34.320 --> 00:45:35.280 It's it's insane. 00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:35.519 Yeah. 00:45:35.599 --> 00:45:38.800 So like if you have a team, it gets really expensive really quick. 00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:41.519 Yeah, and the the price isn't even the whole thing. 00:45:41.679 --> 00:45:47.519 It's like it's built for the enterprise and it really shows when you get into the UI. 00:45:47.599 --> 00:45:49.920 And it's like I don't know what to do in here. 00:45:50.159 --> 00:46:06.320 And I think probably um, you know, for people like you and me, um, who I mean I I don't have a deep understanding of your background, so maybe I'm making bad assumptions, but like I don't have like a deep history in application performance. 00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:12.960 Like I can performance optimize something, but like this is this is not what I do all day, every day. 00:46:13.119 --> 00:46:16.719 And I'm just trying to build a new product as quickly as I possibly can. 00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:16.960 Yeah. 00:46:17.119 --> 00:46:20.320 And I don't want to like futz around with my APM a whole bunch. 00:46:20.559 --> 00:46:31.440 What I what I wish I could have is just a product that I spin up, and it's like, okay, here are like the top three things you should pay attention to, and here's those. 00:46:31.599 --> 00:46:33.599 And it kind of like shows you what to do. 00:46:33.679 --> 00:46:37.440 Like the the interface suggests certain paths through it. 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:38.800 Speak of my language. 00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:39.280 Yeah. 00:46:39.599 --> 00:46:40.559 Breach on. 00:46:41.920 --> 00:46:44.639 So it sounds like we're thinking about that in similar ways. 00:46:44.960 --> 00:46:51.039 Yeah, I so I have a lot of experience because that's what I did at GitHub for, you know, I mean, most of the years that I was there. 00:46:51.199 --> 00:46:57.599 Like the analytics team was like the first couple years, which is you know, store sending, receiving, processing a bunch of data. 00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:05.519 And then it was like, you know, I did a lot of the first dashboards and stats D stuff that we had, like just getting it organized, you know, and stuff like that. 00:47:05.679 --> 00:47:11.360 And then eventually, after like four years of that, we moved to Datadog, and I did the migration for that. 00:47:11.599 --> 00:47:19.199 So like I have a lot of strong opinions on like what do you need when like how what how can you build an opinionated APM? 00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:26.639 And if it's opinionated, then it's cheap to host, you know, because you're not storing everything so that you can ask any question you want. 00:47:26.719 --> 00:47:37.679 You're building pre-computed reports, which is like, I mean, that's there's no better way to build something performant than to say, I know the questions that you're gonna ask, so here's the answers to them, you know, automatically um on repeat. 00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:39.920 So yeah, I I could talk about this forever. 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:42.400 Um, so I I'll let you choose your own adventure on that. 00:47:42.559 --> 00:47:51.920 But like um, I've got some very strong opinions, I've got some really good ideas, and I have some some friends who had built like um APMs in the past, and so I've talked to them and learned from it. 00:47:52.079 --> 00:48:00.159 Um I've been talking with you know Ben from Honey Badger because they do they kind of ingest everything, you know, especially with insights and all that. 00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:07.599 And so they have, you know, their problem is like, well, then how do we make it fast to query all this

stuff when you're just receiving it all and you want to search through all of it? 00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:12.880 And you know, so like I'm kind of gonna go the opposite route where I'm just like, look, I know what it is. 00:48:13.039 --> 00:48:20.880 You want to know when something is slow, uh, when your app is slow or something is wrong, you want to know why is it slow? 00:48:21.039 --> 00:48:23.920 Did I get more requests or did the requests get slower? 00:48:24.079 --> 00:48:26.239 Like those are the two things you generally want to know. 00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:30.880 And if it got if you got more requests, which endpoints getting more requests, you know? 00:48:31.039 --> 00:48:33.920 And if it got slower, which endpoints got slower. 00:48:34.079 --> 00:48:40.719 Um, and if you know that at a at like a deeper level, then like you can you can do a lot of stuff with that. 00:48:40.800 --> 00:48:43.119 Um and that's very cheap and easy to store those things. 00:48:43.199 --> 00:48:45.199 So count sum and like error count. 00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:47.679 Um, so that's kind of like the first thing. 00:48:47.760 --> 00:48:54.719 And then you do the same thing for jobs, because those are like uh like what I would consider like an independent you know transaction type thing that's happening. 00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:57.760 And then inside of there, you just need to know the network stuff usually. 00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:08.000 So it's MySQL, Postgres, it's memcache, it's you know, HTTP requests, it's like all those kinds of things, view, cache, so view rendering, you know, uh cache stuff. 00:49:08.159 --> 00:49:15.920 So if you have like db, view, cache, and like some high level of those things, then you can usually you have almost everything you need. 00:49:16.079 --> 00:49:18.719 The last thing you need is like a couple of samples to look at. 00:49:18.880 --> 00:49:22.000 So you just need a couple of like slow requests. 00:49:22.239 --> 00:49:47.840 Um and if you have that, you have the whole picture, and especially in the AI world, you know, what you want is basically something that is API first that you can just point your you know, Claude or Codecs at and be like, here's here's how you get data, tell me what's slow, and then once it figures out what's slow, okay, now tell me, you know, get some of the samples, pull them straight from object storage, which is insanely cheap to store. 00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:50.400 They don't have to be indexed, they don't have to be any of that kind of stuff. 00:49:50.559 --> 00:49:55.440 All it is is just like user controller index, you know, and like you just need some of those samples. 00:49:55.519 --> 00:50:04.719 They can I I don't know anybody that I've talked to who's like, I want to see a span, an entire you know, span tree of a single request from like a month ago. 00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:05.679 Nobody says that. 00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:08.559 It's like let's not store that, let's just store it for like a day. 00:50:08.719 --> 00:50:16.880 Uh and so like, or like, you know, store the last five, whatever, whatever it is, um, something that's insanely cheap and easy like that. 00:50:17.039 --> 00:50:40.719 And that if you have, you know, these are uh over time the total count of requests and the total sum of compute that you're using and how many errors happened for every single endpoint and job, and you know, all the number of queries per table, like user selects and user inserts and all that stuff, and the same for every other network call, and you have all of that data and you have a few samples of each endpoint, like you can solve any performance problem, is my opinion. 00:50:40.880 --> 00:50:44.639 And so, or like any one, you can solve 80 to 90 percent of them. 00:50:44.800 --> 00:50:51.199 So, like for the people who really need everything, they can pay you know six figures and for their APM and they can do that. 00:50:51.360 --> 00:51:00.400 But for most people, I think you know that kind of a system is 10 to 50 bucks a month, maybe a hundred bucks for like some people who have like hundreds of servers or something like that. 00:51:00.559 --> 00:51:02.800 But for most people, it can be insanely cheap. 00:51:02.960 --> 00:51:14.559 And then you can focus on the thing that really matters, which is telling people when things get slow automatically instead of making them wait, you know, or suggesting SLAs or budgets or whatever, you know, however people want to think through that stuff. 00:51:14.719 --> 00:51:16.639 Um, so yeah, I started like a week ago. 00:51:16.719 --> 00:51:22.880 I'm almost ready to put my own apps in it because I've been going down the claw train pretty hard. 00:51:23.039 --> 00:51:24.159 And I feel pretty good about it. 00:51:24.239 --> 00:51:30.480 I just wrote it for Flipper, so it's it's running smooth already in production for you know all the flipper checks and stuff like that. 00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:43.840 So it's the same premise, you know, of like aggregating on the client per minute and shipping the telemetry up, you know, batching that, inserting it, partitioning it, pruning it, creating aggregates, like all the stuff that you would do to build an APM. 00:51:43.920 --> 00:51:47.920 Like I've already built it like on Fireside, on Flipper, on all the things. 00:51:48.079 --> 00:51:50.880 So um it's just building it one more time for this use case. 00:51:50.960 --> 00:52:03.119 So do you think eventually it might be the case that you use not just the APM tool on Flipper, but you use Flipper on the APM tool and you use the APM tool on the APM tool itself? 00:52:03.360 --> 00:52:03.599 Yep. 00:52:03.760 --> 00:52:05.519 Yeah, I'm uh definitely gonna do both. 00:52:05.599 --> 00:52:05.840 Yeah. 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:15.199 I mean, I already have Flipper in the APM tool, and I was starting to think like, why am I building all this metric aggregation roll-up buffering and stuff like the eighth time? 00:52:15.280 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00:52:23.599 Like, why don't I just switch all the other products to just use, you know, the because this set this system has like four levels of like aggregation that you can kind of slice and dice in. 00:52:23.679 --> 00:52:33.679 And I'm like, if I just sent all the flipper telemetry here and then you know, queried it from an API, and I just sent all the download stuff for fireside here and queried it via an API. 00:52:33.760 --> 00:52:41.599 Like, it'd be way easier to just write this system once that can like aggregate and store all these things um and not have to keep rewriting it in every app that I do. 00:52:41.679 --> 00:52:42.639 It's really annoying. 00:52:42.800 --> 00:52:51.119 Um, especially then I would have enough throughput that I could use, I could justify using click house or something that is even better at doing those kinds of things. 00:52:51.280 --> 00:53:00.559 To date, I've you know, my little aggregations and buffers has been enough that I'm even with hundreds and hundreds of second or thousands of second, it's not a problem in you know my SQL. 00:53:00.639 --> 00:53:04.559 Um, or you could do it in Postgres, but I think it's better in MySQL for this kind of stuff. 00:53:04.719 --> 00:53:06.719 Um, but yeah, so I don't know. 00:53:06.800 --> 00:53:16.480 I I might it's definitely like this, you know, and it's not just cross from the standpoint of like they're both dev tools and stuff, it's also cross from the standpoint of like what do I think about? 00:53:16.559 --> 00:53:32.639 And what I think about is like how what's gonna be true in the future with AI, like you know, knowing what is happening in production and safely getting code out is gonna be more important over like the next year than it has been historically. 00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:40.800 And it was important historically, but like now with people looking at the code less or you know, any of that kind of stuff, I feel like it's just gonna be more important. 00:53:40.960 --> 00:53:56.000 So I feel like APM and resiliency, running you know, GitHub scientist type stuff, running two code paths at once and comparing mismatches and comparing performance, all that kind of stuff is I think the stuff that's that I'm super pumped about right now, and that's on my radar. 00:53:56.320 --> 00:53:58.000 Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. 00:53:58.239 --> 00:54:01.440 Like the possibilities are so enticing. 00:54:01.599 --> 00:54:16.000 Like uh right now I get an alert when my um server health is poor for whatever reason, and then I just take the alert and paste it into claud code and I'm like, hey, uh diagnose this and suggest a fix. 00:54:16.400 --> 00:54:20.400 And then if it suggests something that seems good, I'm like, alright, go ahead and do that. 00:54:20.639 --> 00:54:24.800 And wouldn't it be great if I just get like a text message or something? 00:54:24.960 --> 00:54:32.880 I'm out and about, and it's like, hey, your server is unhealthy in this way, it seems to be this, and I

think we should do this about it. 00:54:33.039 --> 00:54:33.760 Yes, no. 00:54:34.079 --> 00:54:36.000 It's like, yeah, fix it. 00:54:36.239 --> 00:54:37.199 Uh yes. 00:54:37.360 --> 00:54:37.519 Yeah. 00:54:37.679 --> 00:54:38.880 Like you don't even need a UI. 00:54:39.039 --> 00:54:43.119 Like the UI just like honestly, it's there because why not build it because it's so easy to build. 00:54:43.199 --> 00:54:56.320 But like honestly, you just want an API with a CLI, and then you want skills, or you want, you know, um MCP or whatever on top of it so that that that you know, Claude or whoever knows how to you know speak your language and get the data out. 00:54:56.480 --> 00:54:58.159 Like I just did this with Flipper. 00:54:58.320 --> 00:55:01.519 I made a new endpoint for telemetry summary of every single flag. 00:55:01.679 --> 00:55:07.599 And so I did one curl to get all the you know gate data of like what's on, what's off, what's conditional. 00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:12.559 And then I did another curl and stored it in temp files of like here's all the telemetry data. 00:55:12.719 --> 00:55:21.039 And then I just went into Claude and I was like on Flipper Cloud itself, and I was like, hey, uh here's all the gate data and here's all the analytics over the past 30 days. 00:55:21.199 --> 00:55:22.880 Tell me which flags I can remove right now. 00:55:23.039 --> 00:55:25.119 And it was like, it did an amazing job. 00:55:25.280 --> 00:55:26.559 Like it was so good. 00:55:26.719 --> 00:55:31.039 Um, I got like, you know, here's six that like never have been checked. 00:55:31.119 --> 00:55:33.760 There's no telemetry data, so like you can delete these right away. 00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:34.320 Cool. 00:55:34.480 --> 00:55:35.119 Uh did that. 00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:36.960 Then it's like, here's another 10 or 15. 00:55:37.039 --> 00:55:42.960 And I was like, oh, four or five of these, like I still need, you know, like I can't um these are circuits. 00:55:43.039 --> 00:55:45.039 I want to leave them in, so like ignore those. 00:55:45.119 --> 00:55:47.920 Um, and you know, just like that alone. 00:55:48.159 --> 00:55:56.800 I cleared out 600 lines of code and like deleted like I don't know, 15 features that had just been kind of sitting around for too long. 00:55:56.960 --> 00:55:59.039 And I was like, this is amazing. 00:55:59.199 --> 00:56:05.360 Like I I that's what I that's when I built the APM because I did that and I was like, I want this for my APM as well. 00:56:05.519 --> 00:56:07.440 I want like I want the same thing. 00:56:07.519 --> 00:56:13.280 I want to be like in claw and just say, what you know, what's slow, or like get a text message or whatever, like you're talking about. 00:56:13.360 --> 00:56:17.360 I just want it to be more automatic, um, you know, with permission. 00:56:17.519 --> 00:56:21.840 Like I want to be like, yes, this is something I want you to act on and do your thing. 00:56:22.159 --> 00:56:23.760 Um, so yeah, totally. 00:56:23.840 --> 00:56:28.559 I I think it's gonna be really exciting the next yeah, three, six, twelve months. 00:56:28.719 --> 00:56:28.960 Yeah. 00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:29.760 Big time. 00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:32.000 It is a thrilling time to be alive. 00:56:32.239 --> 00:56:32.960 Um, all right. 00:56:33.039 --> 00:56:38.079 Well, there's about 40 different topics that I want to have an hour-long conversation with you about. 00:56:38.400 --> 00:56:39.679 Sounds like round three. 00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:40.559 Yeah. 00:56:40.880 --> 00:56:43.119 Um, but sadly we're out of time for now. 00:56:43.360 --> 00:56:50.800 But um, of your mini projects and stuff like that, um, what's what do you think is most interesting to people listening to this podcast? 00:56:50.960 --> 00:56:53.519 Where should they go online and check out your stuff? 00:56:53.840 --> 00:56:59.119 Yeah, probably I mean, probably for people on this, Flipper Cloud is the first one, and then you know, caboose when it comes out. 00:56:59.199 --> 00:57:00.159 It's it's not ready yet. 00:57:00.239 --> 00:57:00.960 I'm gonna use it on my own. 00:57:01.039 --> 00:57:04.159 I'm gonna guinea pig first, and then after that, I mean everybody will know. 00:57:04.239 --> 00:57:07.599 I'll I'll be loud about it so uh uh when it's open and stuff like that. 00:57:07.679 --> 00:57:11.519 But for now, Flipper, I mean, I I've been shipping a ton of stuff to Flipper. 00:57:11.760 --> 00:57:15.920 It's really been cool to see um it pick up and grow. 00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:23.599 I mean, it's it's like doubled almost in the last year, and I think most of that was in the last three months, so I feel really strong on it right now. 00:57:23.679 --> 00:57:27.920 Um I think it's gonna be uh I think it's gonna have a big year, especially with AI. 00:57:28.079 --> 00:57:30.480 So I'm excited about it. 00:57:30.559 --> 00:57:31.679 So all right. 00:57:31.760 --> 00:57:36.079 Well, we will put that stuff in the show notes, and John, thanks so much for coming on the show. 00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:37.599 Yeah, thank you.