Builders Gonna Build

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Business

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Interviews with people who build awesome products. Hosted by Metacast co-founders Ilya Bezdelev and Arnab Deka.

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Episodes

Moment: It took us two years before we switched to our business full-time with Honeybadger co-founder Ben Curtis (ep. 9)

Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood discuss getting the very first customers and making first sales for their app and error monitoring SaaS Honeybadger . Full episode: 9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood Do you love audio podcasts? Metacast is our podcast app with transcripts for iOS and Android - get it at metacast.app . Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp . Where to find the badgers Honeybadger FounderQuest podcast Ben: Bluesky , LinkedIn Jos...

Mar 25, 2025•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Moment: How we got first customers for our SaaS with Honeybadger co-founders (ep. 9)

Mar 22, 2025•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast

9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood

Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood discuss the origins and growth of their app monitoring product, challenges of bootstrapping, calm work environment, evolution of co-founder relationships, and buying out a departing co-founder. Do you love audio podcasts? Metacast is our podcast app with transcripts for iOS and Android - get it at metacast.app . Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp . Segments [01:27] Introduction of Honeybadger [03:50] The genesis of the company [10:40] Th...

Mar 19, 2025•43 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast

8. Growing your LinkedIn and newsletter audience | John Crickett

John Crickett is the creator of Coding Challenges, a newsletter for engineers that has over 54k subscribers. John’s LinkedIn profile grew from 3k to 150k+ followers in a year. In this episode, we dive into the process and mindset that allowed John’s following to grow so quickly. Do you love audio podcasts? Try Metacast podcast app at metacast.app . Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp . Segments [00:58] Introduction [03:18] Spending a million Euros and a year on an MVP [05:54] Coding Chall...

May 09, 2024•54 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast

7. Jason Fried on building products, calm companies and the Jeff Bezos investment

Jason Fried is a co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY. Together with his business partner David Hannemeier Hanson, Jason co-authored seminal entrepreneurship books Rework, Remote, and It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. This episode was originally published on the Metacast podcast, episode 28 in July 2023. Do you love audio podcasts? Try Metacast podcast app at metacast.app . Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp . Segments [03:17] Introduction of Jason and ...

Apr 24, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast

6. Creating a niche of your own | Corey Quinn, The Duckbill Group

Corey Quinn is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group and a big celebrity at the AWS circles well known for his sense of humor and unrelenting focus on making some good fun of the cloud providers. In our interview, we are learning Corey’s background, how The Duckbill Group got started, and how he runs the media side of his business. As usual, we talked about bootstrapping and running consulting services while building a product. This episode was originally published on the Metacast podc...

Apr 10, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast

5. Don't do agile, be agile | Co-author of Agile Manifesto and Pragmatic Programmer | Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer and Agile Manifesto, on the true spirit of being agile (vs. "doing agile"), mistakes engineering teams make, and common practices of successful teams. Do you love audio podcasts? Try Metacast podcast app at metacast.app . Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp . Segments [10:29] The genesis of The Pragmatic Programmer [11:41] People don't know what they want, importance of feedback loops [22:17] Doing Agile vs. being agile [26:36] Practices ...

Mar 13, 2024•59 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast

4. Henry T. Kirk, entrepreneur, ex-engineer at Google & Amazon

For 10 years, Henry built mobile apps at Google and Amazon. Now he is a partner at a software development agency studio.init() . Henry shares his thoughts on using cross-platform frameworks vs. native languages, argues that Apple’s 30% cut of the in-app purchases is acceptable, and tells us how Google layoffs became a blessing in disguise. Do you love audio podcasts? Try Metacast podcast app at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://metacast.app⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Join our Reddit community at ⁠⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠⁠ . Segments [01:31] Int...

Feb 28, 2024•1 hr•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast

3. Dennis E. Taylor, author of best-selling sci-fi series Bobiverse

Dennis E. Taylor built software for 35 years before trying himself as a sci-fi author. His first novel Outland earned him some “Starbucks money” on Amazon, but his second book We Are Legion made him a best-selling author. Dennis retired as an engineer and became a full-time writer. In this episode, we talked about the parallels between writing software and writing books, Dennis’s process of coming up with ideas and turning them into reality, working with agents, and writing audio-first books. Se...

Feb 14, 2024•49 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast

2. Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp and Reaper

Justin shares how he created Winamp and sold it to AOL at age 20 and tells us about his current project, digital audio workstation (DAW) Reaper. Segments [03:16] The genesis of Winamp [11:07] Winamp whips the llama's ass [14:06] Nullsoft [16:27] Winamp as a platform [23:16] The business side of Winamp [24:11] What was it like to work at AOL? [27:06] Why Justin doesn't use streaming services [30:03] Justin's website [32:06] Why Justin created Reaper [35:48] Shipping v1 of Reaper [37:02] Reaper is...

Jan 31, 2024•55 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast

1. Christian Selig, creator of Apollo Reddit app and Pixel Pals

Christian tells a story of how Apollo got started, grew and eventually had to shut down following Reddit's API pricing decision. Segments [00:46] Introduction of Christian [01:58] How Christian got into app development [03:36] Internship at Apple [06:38] The origin of the name for Apollo [07:49] Launching v1 of Apollo [13:12] Pricing the app [17:46] Apollo t-shirts and custom app icons [21:38] Adding notifications and being rejected by Apple [26:15] Initial reception of Apollo and building a com...

Jan 30, 2024•1 hr•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast