This is a big step for us

Let's do the intro if we can remember how to do it.

How do we do this? Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2021. I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.

And I'm Justin Jackson, and I'm preparing for the apocalypse. Follow along as we build transistor dotfm.

You're in the middle of a bunch of fires still.

Yeah. We're a lot of fires in British Columbia this summer. This was, I mean, this is probably going to be the reality going forward. But that the how localized fires and smoke are, I think it's still gonna be kind of variable, and this was just our our unlucky summer.

Well, eventually, it'll burn everything up and just be living in a wasteland. Yeah. Desert wasteland.

Yeah. Pretty soon, it'll just be charred a charred landscape. Mad Max. British Columbia. Style, which is great. They'll coincide perfectly with the launch of the Cybertruck. You know, it'll just be it'll just be a charred landscape and people driving their Cybertrucks around.

God. The hellscape.

But let's we've got we've got we've got better news than that. We this is not a downer podcast. We have got some big news. Yeah. What's the big news, John?

We hired our 1st

full time engineer aside from me. 1st full time engineer.

Yeah.

We've gone from a company of 3 full time people, you, myself, and Helen, to 4 Four. Full time people, you, myself, Helen, and Jason Pearl.

Yep. Jason is a old friend from Chicago who no longer lives there. We worked together for a little bit, worked in the same office for a while, coworking, have a bunch, you know, bunch of the same friends, stayed in touch, obviously. And, Yeah. We were looking to hire someone. He was looking to get out, and it just kinda made sense.

Yeah. Now the the this was we gotta take people through the range of emotions.

Yeah.

I, yeah, I I tweeted this morning, you know, that's basically my full time job now as I'm just starting, controversy on Twitter. But, so yesterday, I had this I had this this thread that really went went, wild, talking about how in a world that idolizes billionaires, I'm cheering for indie creators who are building small, profitable, calm companies. And and that one really resonated. This morning, this one did not resonate as much. Nobody's more capital efficient than a bootstrapped founder.

Yeah. It's also hedging against potential future downturns. Right? Like, we've had this discussion before where I'm pretty frugal in what we spend our money on. Like, we run we run this pretty cheap.

Yeah.

I don't know what other podcast hosts are paying for, you know, all their infrastructure, but this it we're we're running pretty lean. But it it's easy to just throw money at the problem and buy servers and services and sign up for things, but then, you know, you become dependent on those. It gets out of control, and then if you have a downturn, now you gotta still pay those.

Yes. Yeah. There's a threshold here that's that's interesting. We we've definitely had from the beginning. We've been we've been, you're right, fairly frugal.

Yeah.

Except in the sense that once we hit a certain, revenue mark, we started paying ourselves, you know, in quite well. You know? We're we're still not quite making the the that, FANG money. You know? But, we're we're doing fairly well. Still not paying ourselves as well as the Lipson CEO, but pretty do still doing fairly well.

Yeah. Doing well. Hiring a full time engineer is obviously a huge expense, and I it I don't think it was ever a matter of, like, did we not wanna have another engineer for, you know, my sanity and just for helping out with features and building things a little faster? Yeah. It was more, is this the right time and can we afford it? And are we gonna regret this if we do it? Because it's a I mean, arguably, the probably the biggest change we've had yet

since we started this

in terms of biggest new expense, biggest change to how we work.

Yeah. And there's a there's a there is an ongoing debate in our circles. Like, for example, one critique of Transistor would be we a lot of folks would say we have not hired enough and that we should have hired sooner.

Right.

On the flip side, I guess, it's just it's always difficult to know whenever you make a decision in business, whether you're making the right decision. I think a lot of business owners delude themselves with the decisions they make. Meaning, let's say that we were looking to hire a salesperson. You know, I I don't like doing all these enterprise conversations. I don't like going through the enterprise sales process.

Right.

2 difficult things. 1 is knowing truly knowing your company's baseline. For example, our baseline before COVID was much different than after COVID.

Mhmm.

The baseline changed, and and that was irrespective of anything we did. That was the environment, you know, creating different momentum. And so we could be we could have been testing something. Like, maybe we we hired a salesperson before COVID. And then all of a sudden, April, May hits, and our numbers are up way up. And we could end the year and go, wow. That that decision to hire that salesperson was a good idea. Our numbers are way up.

Yeah. And it would have been the same regardless.

It would have been the same regardless. The other the other, critique I'll have here, an argument in favor of being careful and not rocking the boat too much, is that I think business owners, when they make decisions, are incredibly hesitant to reverse decisions, especially hiring decisions once they're made.

Yeah. So

you could have a hypothesis that you're gonna hire a salesperson. And in 12 months, if if that has not given you the results that you want, how likely is it that you're actually going to fire that person?

Right. It's just Oh, firing people sucks.

It's it's sucks. It's it's just incredibly unlikely that you're going to even revisit the decision. You you you will have a new baseline. You will have a new norm. And, and, you know, it's it's it's it's very unlikely. And it's very unlikely that you'll admit to yourself that you were wrong.

Mhmm.

The the one thing about this decision to hire another engineer was, I think, at least on my side, this was mostly motivated by a few things. 1, quality of life. Just meaning even if, we're hoping that Jason helps us build features that attract more customers, he certainly wants that, which is amazing. That's that's a kinda Yeah. That's the kinda team member you want.

Mhmm.

The one thing that actually keeps me up at night is like, how's John doing? How's, you know, how's he feeling? How stressed out is he? Is he is he gonna be okay? What happens if he goes on a, you know, a snowboard trip and, gets a concussion and is in the hospital for 2 weeks? Right. There's no backup.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a it's a concern.

So that was that was a big part for me. It was just, I, and also knowing that you'd worked with Jason before

Mhmm.

And enjoyed working. I think you like, you've missed working with people.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously I work with I work with you, but we don't we don't work together every day. We don't even talk every day

like this.

So, yeah, to have someone yeah. It's an interesting it's a fine line. It's like, I love working with other people and and Jason's a good friend. So, obviously, I I really enjoy working with him, but it also does change my day a little bit. Like, this is one of the apparent hinges I had is, like, my day is pretty much open. Right? It's pretty flexible. I don't necessarily have to work all day,

sit in

an office from 9 to 5. I still don't need to do that, but I think bringing on, you know, another full time engineer, especially when they're starting out learning the system, I kind of do need to be around more. Yeah. Which is a big change. Yeah. On the flip side, it's great working with a friend and, you know, you can talk about work and then have a tangent and talk about other stuff and joke around and it makes, you know, makes the day much more enjoyable.

I I I'm actually not very good at forecasting how I'll feel after a decision is made. So I was quite apprehensive right up until we hired Jason and made the decision. And then after he he came on and we had someone else in Slack, and we had someone else on Zoom calls, and we had someone else giving ideas and suggesting things. It's like now we have Jason and Helen contributing and participating Yeah. And, giving ideas and giving feedback and pushing back on us Yeah. And our grumpy attitude.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a bunch of code stuff that's been sitting around forever that I know how it works. Yeah. And it's fine, but it's not great. And there's you know, Jason pushes back. He's like, how do I change this? I'm like, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, now I'm a believer. It just feels like this has been great. And, and it it was a it was a big financial decision. Yeah. Both Helen and Jason, I I remember before we brought Helen on, it was like, oh, man. Like, it was like, you have to take some deep breaths. And Yeah. I I still think I still think there is and I think this is where people will disagree with us.

Yeah.

And that the timing was right. And in terms of safety margin, there's enough safety margin in the business that we could do that.

Right. Yeah. It it was a it was a good time to do it. I think we could have not we could have easily not and discontinued on like we are, and we probably would have been fine. I mean, we haven't had too many problems lately where would that keeps me up at night or anything like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And and like any decision, it's not the data the single data point that, matters. It's the trend. And so, of course, we don't really know how this is gonna turn out in the long run.

Right.

Even, like, if you go back to the beginning of this podcast and you listen to you and I talking at the beginning, when we first decided to partner up, there is this apprehension of, like, well, I kinda know this guy. Like, I've Yeah. I've hung out with him at events, and I've chatted with him in Slack. And, you know, we've shared some personal things to each other, and we've been vulnerable. But there's still there's still, like, this idea of, like, these are still just a few data points, and it it's the trend that will matter.

Right. Yeah. You can't really predict that.

It's very difficult to predict. Yeah. And, we we see human beings making these mistakes all the time.

Change is change is hard for humans. It's a really hard thing to adapt to. It's I don't know. It kind of it's similar to I think the more you get used to, you know, how we work and how we have worked over the last 3 years, it's kind of similar to the actual code base in a way like changing changing something now in our code base is much, much harder, which I think because it can affect so many more people

and you're

used to how it works. Yeah. So I think, yeah, for me having someone new in there kind of

who

who

doesn't have all that baggage, I guess

Yeah.

Things can probably happen quicker.

Yes. Yes. And the other thing that helped me was that we've we've spent some time writing down our values. And I can link this in the in the show notes. We have this on GitHub. And it was in our initial conversations with Jason, we were able to kinda look over these values. And I think it was just clear that, hiring Helen and then hiring Jason, those two hires aligned with our values.

Yeah.

Meaning Yeah. Our emotional and physical well-being is priority number 1. It's worth investing money and time to take care of ourselves.

That's I mean yeah. I mean, hire hiring Helen was, like, looking back in it now was it was such a good idea.

Oh, yeah. It took

it took so much stress and just, like yeah. It was Yeah. That was a good decision. So if if Jason's anything like that, I think it'll be fine.

Yes. And well and then we have questions to ask when making decisions. So first question, does this decision match up with our values? Number 2, is this decision gonna make our life more busy and more complicated? Is this decision going to make the company or heavier or slower? In 6 to 12 months, will this decision cause us to feel less excited about building transistor?

Mhmm.

And I think, of course, you don't know until you make the decision. But with Helen and Jason, it was just it it felt at the time, like, you know what? This is gonna actually make our lives it might make our lives busier and more complicated in the short term. But in the long term, this decision is gonna allow Jace John to, you know, go to Iceland and go on a meditation retreat for a month and not worry about the the tech stuff. Right?

Once once he gets there, I'm I'm disappearing for a month. I'm gonna go go on my vision quest, disappear into the wilderness.

You're just gonna ghost us? It's just you're just gonna leave a cryptic message in Slack. It's just like a mushroom emoji.

Yeah. And then I'll be back in a month. See what happens.

That's a great I'd love us for to have a team of 10 eventually, and it's just like, yeah. Like, John just every once in a while, he'll just post a mushroom emoji and then disappear for

He comes back with great ideas or crazy ideas. I don't know.

Yeah. He's a he it's the the mythical like, the idea that we could have hired employees and they've never seen you. The all they they see is your last status as the mushroom.

So mysterious.

I'll be like, sorry, John. I had to keep hiring. I didn't know when you were gonna be back. It was 3 months. I didn't hear from you. Yeah. So I'm really excited about Jason, being here. He is definitely the other interesting thing is that we opted for somebody who is very senior.

Yeah.

Not junior level, not mid level, not like

Yeah. Also, not necessarily full stat. Like, he's not so much a front end guy, which gives me, I think, a little bit more energy to focus on the front end stuff, which I think would be really fun. But he is a very good engineer and good with infrastructure and just has a lot of good ideas even outside of engineering, marketing, and product stuff. And he just yeah. He thinks about all that stuff, which is great.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's and if product wise yeah. That's another thing that got me excited is just, well, having someone else in product meetings and helping us shape ideas is obviously awesome.

Mhmm.

And we're in the midst of that right now. But the eventually, having the freedom to spend time being creative Yeah. And spend time thinking and spend time wasting time.

Yeah. There's much less of that than there was early on just because I think we have, like I said, a bigger code base, a bigger customer base, and you kinda have to think about those changes before you make them. And

Yeah.

A lot some some of my days are just, you know, fixing little bugs here and there instead of thinking about bigger bigger ideas.

Well yeah. And, again, in terms of the calm and margin that I've wanted and that I've enjoyed as a founder, Part of where I wanted to get myself to was the place where I could, waste time.

Yeah.

Where I could just be out in the field gathering insights and thoughts and pushing back on things and observing what's happening, you know, in the market.

Yeah. That that mental that mental downtime is good.

It's very good.

It's productive. It's productive in a way that doesn't seem productive.

I mean, the the the I'm not sure who said this, but there's that that idea that the the CEO's primary job is thinking. And, as cofounders, I think I mean, that's just again, part of that's one of the things I've enjoyed about this business we've built is that there's enough margin that it's not like we're running around putting out fires. It's not like we're running around worried that, you know, we gotta sign these next three enterprise contracts or we're not gonna be able to meet payroll next month. We have we can and COVID proved this. We can actually shift down a few gears and really relax in the best sense.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Why don't we talk a little bit about the great summer SaaS slowdown?

So hiring so, yeah, adding our biggest expense ever coincides with

Yes. It is.

The slowest couple of months we've had so far.

Yes. Yeah. And so this has been interesting. One of the benefits of having this community of self funded startups and building relationships with so many other founders is my DMs are always pretty interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting because I I look at that and I'm like, oh, the podcast market is slowing down, which may might be true. I don't know. It's possible. But turns out that's maybe not the case.

No. No. And I've got a bunch of tweets I'll link to in the show notes where this has been a public discussion. So, yeah, there's there is a noticeable slowdown, not for everybody, but, especially those of us that were in the the creator economy, I think. And so podcasting, email newsletters, blogging, membership software, course software.

Yeah.

During that time. And, my theory is that during these during the lockdown, a lot of companies were investing in digital products. Right? We saw a lot of companies adopting Zoom for the first time and Slack and all these digital tools. With so a lot of us benefited from that.

Yeah. It's summer. Things have opened up. People are vaccinated. I think that's probably correct in that. People are taking time off. Their kids aren't quite back in school yet if they have kids. Mhmm. And, spending time with family and friends and not signing up for new online services. I think that's probably exactly what's happening.

Yeah. Exactly. And it it also is an interesting there's an interesting thought, which is if COVID accelerated trends, there's this idea that growth can accelerate. But, eventually, the market just catches up with that acceleration and then compensates for it. You know what I mean?

We'll

probably see another slowdown in January, February. And then, you know, hopefully, January so March, April, May is usually pretty good for us. Yeah.

It's concerning to see, but we still we still have yet to have a negative month

Yes.

Which is good. Yeah. It's just very slow growth.

I gotta I I should actually look at our numbers, but there's even a hesitancy right now. I I know I I'm just gonna say it because I know people think about it. But, you know, I know that if I send out an email newsletter to our customers, that could accelerate people canceling.

Right.

And so there's this, there's part of me that's like, like, I don't wanna I don't know if I wanna I don't know if I wanna do that. But which is incredibly short term thinking, like, who cares? And also difficult to know how it affects things one way or the other. Right? Like, it could it could help

or

it could not help. Right. That's the kind of thinking you get into when it's like when you're looking at your numbers and you're going, oh, man. Like, it'd be really nice if, you know, churn wasn't that high.

Yeah. And

I was looking at ConvertKit's numbers because they're still open. And, yeah, churn definitely goes up. You know? Like, your growth their growth rate is gone down quite a bit. Mhmm.

Yeah.

Because there's gonna be a baseline of churn every month. Like, if you look at ConvertKit's numbers, you know, every month, there's there's just going to be a a bunch of folks canceling. Like, that's just the the nature of the category.

Yeah. For us too, we could, yeah, probably focus on preventing other people from leaving, what what we can do, or switching. Right?

Yeah. Like, we had that one idea that I actually I like, which is when people go to cancel right now, we give them a warning. Hey. If you cancel your account, we're gonna be removing all your files and your feed and everything on this date. It'd be interesting to experiment with people go to cancel, and then we show them a warning.

Yep. That could that could work.

And be interesting because then we're at least we do have people come back.

Yeah. I mean, we've had yeah. People do tend to leave sometimes because they're just not podcasting right now. Yeah. Other people leave because other platforms have different features, which maybe we'll be able to mitigate some of that by adding some of the things we're working on. But

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about that, actually. So now we've got Jason. And

one

of the things Jason was excited about was he brought up the idea of us maybe looking at dynamic audio again.

Yeah.

And folks may want to go back in the archives. This is what's so great about having this podcast is that we can, like, actually go back and look at at episodes where we explore this. Because for a long time, you and I were we we've actually thought about the idea of dynamic content and dynamic, audio insertion since before we even launched officially. Like, we have notes, from before, August 1, 2018 where we were discussing this. But I that that was one of the reasons we were interested in hiring him is because he was kinda fired up about that idea.

Yeah. Yeah. We've we've been pretty hesitant about it, for various reasons, but I think, yeah, we I think we have a idea, sort of a plan in place to sort of slowly roll it out, but do it simply and not Mhmm. Some like, we're not gonna have an audio editor. It's gonna be a very simple, solution to it for now Mhmm.

That I

think will help, you know, most of the people that want it.

Yeah. And and, you know, like, I think when we initially explored dynamic audio and we mapped it out in in Portland during that retreat, it did just feel like, wow. This is gonna be a big heavy lift, and we just didn't feel ready for it. It was just

Yeah. I think it was a good decision not to do it then.

Yeah. So that's something we're exploring now is dynamic audio. We've where Jason's kind of mapped out some of that stuff, and, we're looking at at ways of doing it. Initial version will probably just be, allowing people to do pre roll. Right?

Mhmm.

Pre roll audio. Yeah. That's it it's kind of exciting, actually, to still be a small lean team, but to think, like, we could tackle this now. Yeah. Suddenly, it felt doable.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not I think yeah. After having another, you know, another person to talk through it with, it's like, yeah. This isn't you know, there's moving parts, but it's not impossible. Mhmm. It's not gonna kill us to do it. So that's it. We are looking for people to test it out. Right? Yeah. A hand a handful of people who wanna try it out early whenever that's ready. I don't know when that's gonna be. But

Yeah. Yeah. If that's if that's you, there's some ways to contact us in the show notes, and we'd love to hear from you. And then, yeah, you've you've also released some new stuff. We we did a, a transcripts feature.

That was initially and another thing I was hesitant to do is I thought it was a lot of heavy lifting, but it's not just because I wanted to kinda do it right and not just have, like, a blob of text you paste in. But, yeah, you can upload your transcript in various different ways. You can paste it in if you want, but it also will integrate with the podcasting 2 point o feature, right, where it's included in your RSS feed and some audio players will actually use that as, like closed captioning in the player. Mhmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I had a call with them, and that actually feels like this is actually one of the first times where I felt in integration is could be truly aligned, because they've got this incredible recording, editing, transcription software. I'm a big fan. I've been using it a ton to not just generate transcripts, but to, like, edit podcast episodes, to edit screen recordings.

Mhmm.

And, to have them, reach out and say, hey. Like, you know, they've they've been wanting us to integrate with them for a while. So to have, you know, that that ability to export directly to Transistor from Descript and then include, like so now the payload could be an m p 3 file that you've exported, but also your transcript. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

That's So yeah. That's dope.

One click it, yeah, one click puts in your audio file and your transcript. You have to fill out a few bits of episode details, and then you're done.

And the other thing I like about it is it gets back to the joy of podcasting and creating something, you know, like, to to feel like Transistor is a part of a process, a creative process that should be enjoyable and gratifying for the people that are doing it.

Yeah.

And, of course, we can't do everything. We can't build, Descript level, features, editing and recording and everything. And so to have folks that we can we can integrate with, and partner with and have them, you know, promote us as well. And, Yeah. It just seems like such a great fit.

Yeah.

You've also I mean, looking into our changelog, transistor.fm/changelog, we have some features I've even forgotten about. You can compare podcast episodes

Oh, yeah.

In your analytics now, which is super cool. So you can drill down into individual episodes and then say, I wonder how this the performance of this episode compares to

I forgot I added that too.

Yeah. I totally forgot about that. And then, new podcast analytics charts. So now Oh, yeah. You you can find out how many of your podcast listeners use desktop, mobile, smartwatch, or smart speaker. Yeah. There's there's some pretty cool, you can now upload an audio file via the API. Yep. So, just because we haven't released an episode in a while, there's, there's cool stuff. There's a cool stuff we released in in these months. Lots, actually. You you, shipped quite a bit in July.

Yeah. That's true. I did.

So, yeah, it feels feels good that, it feels like we continue to make great progress. I'm still convinced. And I I know some people get tired of my rhetoric here. But I am still convinced that a small, calm, profitable company and, of course, this is gonna depend on the founders. It's gonna depend on who you hire.

Right.

And I think it's okay for companies that are, small and are building great software to be proud of it. And small and giving incredible customer service 24 hour 24 hour live chat support to be proud of it. Yeah. And, I'm continually amazed by the the number of indies that are tiny compared to their competitors who are just building better products

Yeah.

Building better software.

I think people are still amazed once in a while that we're as small as we are.

Yeah. Yeah. They're continually amazed. Yeah. Every time I'm, you know, on a call, I've been doing I've still been doing a few of these enterprise, calls, experimenting. I I that would actually have been a good topic too. Just like, I think I'm gonna be done, doing these enterprise processes. But, you know, when I when I talk to enterprise potential enterprise customers, I'm very, honest. Hey. This is a 2 person company. Hey, this is a 3 person company.

You're not gonna get your own support person.

No. No. There's there's there's no ops team for you to talk to after this conversation. I am the ops team.

Yeah. There's no security team for you to have a call 3 hour call with?

No. And, and they're impressed. They're impressed with the the service we're able to provide. Of course, this is I I I wanna know what this is called. But, of course, the most exceptional examples of profitable bootstrap companies are going to be exceptional.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And also to know that you couldn't have done this without me.

It's like, what is it? Gobots? Gotron? Voltron. Voltron.

Yeah. It's it's the Voltron principle. It's the yin and the yang. It's it's, you know, it is again, people message me and say, well, that's fine for you guys that you've finding a good partner is hard. I know. Exceptional examples are going to be exceptional. The key is to cultivate a life where you can be exceptional.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look how long it took us to actually find a partner that works. Like, we built we built things before with other partners. It's been 10 you know, a decade. Took forever.

Yeah. Exactly. And and this isn't to say you shouldn't take, this isn't to say there's not a place for people to take a chance on people. Like, I think investors need to take a chance on founders. I think, employers need to take a chance on certain employees.

Yeah. So it

took me a decade.

I started I started working for myself when I was 21, 22.

So it might take a while. 2 2 decades in retrospect feels long. But the benefits, if you are one of the lucky folks that are able to cultivate this this existence and then pass the the the the this threshold of creating a business. It's such a great it's it's it's wonderful. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, that's probably a good place to leave in. Hey?

Probably. It's been a while. It's been a while since we did this.

Oh, dear listener. Thank you for sticking with us. Yeah. And, John, I think, we gotta thank the the folks on Patreon who continue to support the show. And, Yeah. Again, we we have been, we have been, donating these Patreon donations to other creators. So, yeah, let's let's thank the folks Yeah. On Patreon.

Absolutely. Thanks to everyone. We have Mitch. I think Mitch is new. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Mitch is new.

Harris Kenny, Oleg Kulik, Violette De Genevieve. Did I say that right?

Violette De Genevieve.

Alright.

Yep. Yeah. Pretty good pronunciation. You you you had the first two. Those those French classes paid off.

I took 0 French classes.

Well, you're Violette. Great.

Alright. Nice. Maybe I got it from you. I don't know. We have the Take It EV podcast, Ethan Gunderson, Diogo, Chris Willow, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Prada Yumna Schimbecker, Noah Praill, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitber, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha.

Hey, Dan.

Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Shukert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Junta.

And, finally, Kyle Fox from get reward for dot com.

Thanks, everyone. We will see you next time we drop an episode, hopefully soon.