Some people may feel like they're in a rat race, some people may be okay with being in a rat race, being totally honest. Some people may actually be happy where they are.
I'm making it worse, okay. Rap at a... TUI is a Turkish travel company.
Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to episode 31 of the Metacast podcast with Ilya and Arnab. And Ilya, are we kind of like back to our regular programming, recording remote?
Yeah, we are recording remote and for those who have missed the last two episodes, we were recording side by side and it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the dynamic. Actually, one of the episodes, episode 29, it was just you and me, which was pretty cool because there was no online delays and lags and all that.
And episode 30 was with the startups.com founders Will and Ryan. They were both remote, but we were standing next to each other and I think it helped us to interrupt each other less, so it was good.
Yeah, I think the video though was a bit weird like when I looked at the shorts that we created because I'm looking like sideways at you like this and not at you like this.
So this time I would like to control the conversation a little bit and go to the checklist, right? And for those of you who listened to the last episode, you know exactly why I'm making this comment.
So what are we talking about today?
Thank you for putting me on the spot because...
I thought you wanted to go to the checklist and like yeah let's do it!
No, no, because you wrote what are we going to talk about today. I didn't realize it was a question for me. Yeah, but I can do it. I can do it. That's fine. Taking the reins. So today, we're going to talk about a few changes that we're making to the podcast. They aren't going to be big changes, but pretty significant in terms of how we approach it.
And it's still going to be weekly, don't worry. You'll still get your regular dos.
Exactly. So then we want to talk about our off-site that we had. All hands. All hands, yes. When I was in Vancouver, so if you don't know what we're talking about, listen to episode 29 because we touched on that a little bit. But yeah, we spent some time working in person. We want to talk about that. And last but not least, not at least in terms of money,
we want to talk about the book that we've just published. And yeah, we'll talk a bit about what the book is about and where you can buy it if you want to start a podcast or if you want to support us.
Alright, so let's get started. So can you believe that we're 30 episodes in? This is episode 31.
It's actually 33, right? Because one of the episodes was two-part, episode 24, where we talked about living our jobs, was episode 24 1 and 24 2, and also we had a bonus episode 7.5 yes prime-isode we have a consistent our name is
Thank you for watching!
Yeah, exactly. So in this episode, if we didn't cut the topics in half, it would have been a two-part episode or a very long episode, which we were asked not to do anymore.
So yeah, I guess episode 31 kind of turning over a leaf after 30 plus 3 episodes, 33 episodes into episode 31. So officially or unofficially we are into season 2 of the podcast. And with that we are doing a few subtle changes to what is the focus of the podcast and what are we going to talk about it.
To be honest, I think it's not that we are doing a change to the podcast. We are just formalizing what we had already been doing.
since like episode 24 or so.
Yes, so let's first actually tell the listeners what we are changing and then I want to bring up the other point. So the podcast today is called Metacast the podcast about podcasting. Actually, no, that's what it was called last episode. So starting from this episode, it's called Metacast behind the scenes Which is kind of meta, but it also reflects what we have been doing all this time.
We have been talking about us starting a company, how we got there, why we are doing this, talking about processes, talking about all sorts of things that are related to our company. The reason why we started as a podcast about podcasting tagline is our initial hypothesis was that we will talk about all things podcasting. Podcasters will love it. They will listen to it and they will have a lot of connections with podcasters who can then advertise our app.
So we're building a podcast app in case if you missed that. We're building a podcast app, which will be awesome and will come out later this year. So that was the hypothesis, right? And I was still having a full-time job at Google. So we were kind of thinking about that, but we weren't building anything yet, but we started a podcast.
We weren't ready to talk about the app and the platform and all that too. I mean, if you think about it, we started recording those first few episodes in October in 2022. And I actually, you and I talked about the app and the platform and all that like maybe in March or so, like seriously. We kind of had an idea that we want to work on something like this, but we definitely weren't ready.
Exactly, yes. So that whole thing of podcasters listening to us didn't happen. And maybe one of the reasons is that we aren't really going too much into technical stuff. Like, let's say the podcast, Junkie's podcast goes. And yeah, if actually any of you listening know how Redoran introduced us to him, we would like to get him on the podcast. We will get him, I think, at some point.
That didn't happen, but what did happen was...
We met a lot of cool podcasters and we interviewed them, but we always, always ended up talking about careers, entrepreneurship, and a bunch of other stuff. But the common thread there is podcasting anyway, because we are building a podcast app and people we invite to the show, all of them,
have some kind of connection with other podcasting or audio. So what we are going to change about the podcast is that I think we will continue inviting the same kinds of guests, but we will talk more about building a business and how, in case there are podcasters, how podcasts help that, how they build their social persona, their podcasting persona, how they promote it, all of that.
But podcasting is no longer the primary topic of it. And I think the Jason Fried episode, episode 28, was the turning point because we wanted to talk about their podcast, but we ran out of time and we never did. Yeah.
But it was such a great episode regardless, yeah.
It was probably our best episode so far, in terms of how much we personally learned from that. And also in terms of popularity-wise, it's not the most popular episode.
But it is up there, it's like in the top 5.
Take a look at the exposure from that episode too.
Yeah, and what we heard back from people is also similar. Our episodes where we talked about building the new startup, taking the, like, basically the leap of faith to jump out of like career jobs and do something like that, where we talk to other people about their journeys building things, those seem to resonate a lot with our listeners. I mean, of the four or five really like touching experiences, emails, people that we've met, that we
have had everybody said the same thing, right? Those are the episodes that they love the most. And so we're like, okay, so that's the second topic. The second part. The third part is that we are also now more and more open about what we're building, right? It's becoming real. We're launching our alpha this week. And so alpha is in like closed beta. We don't have to, we'll talk about it in the next episode or so anyway. So we
This week meaning last week because this episode comes out next week so for the record we're recording this on August 9th. This episode will come out actually next Wednesday, right? August 16th is when it's gonna come out.
They're recording this on August 9th. So essentially our app is now there. It's invite only for now, but it is there. We're experimenting with it. So this means that we are ready to talk more and more about it and about our journey. So all of these things combined, like you said, like are naturally converging towards like entrepreneurship and starting that. People telling us that that's what they want to hear and us being ready.
I think that all kind of jives well into this moment where we turn the page and say season 2, unofficially, and we go with this Metacast behind the scenes.
Yes, we were talking a lot more, because now we almost sort of gave ourselves a license to be more... less about podcasts and more about other things. And what we've heard from people is that the stuff that resonated with them is not like, oh, now I know how to do this podcast stuff or something like that.
It was all about, like we were talking to one person and she said that she's still coming to terms with leaving her high-paid job and all, and she's like, I need to listen to you a second, episode 24, a second time. And actually the other person who wrote an email to us, he also listened to that episode twice, because those are the things that really struck the chord with people and not any of the stuff, you know, where you talk about Descript and all that.
Which, you know, I would say is good and useful enough, I would say in those episodes, because we would always go on dungeons. I would say some of these bits are probably useful. But like, if you take this whole thing, this whole thing, right, listen for one hour of that, there is probably 10 minutes of really good useful info for podcasters, but the rest only matters for people who have built or are in the market for an emotional connection with us.
And I'm saying being in the market for emotional connection with us, meaning that people are looking for podcasters, for podcasts, and they somehow discover us and they connect with us. The people who reached out to us, none of them were podcasters, but they were all mostly actually software engineers or people in other places. Some related kind of area. I have to call this out. Is it OK if I name that person who approached us for dinner?
I think so. We asked her and she said it's fine.
Yes, so first of all, hi Pinky, thank you for listening. So we were visiting your friends in Vancouver for dinner. It was a few families there and I just tagged along because I was with you. And so one person comes in and she's like, oh my god, you're Ilya! I'm like, you guys discussed this in WhatsApp that I'm coming and all. You didn't know that. Yeah. Nobody else was so excited about seeing me. I mean, they were glad to see me, but they were not excited to see me. And she was just
so excited. And then I found out that she actually has been a fan of ours. She's been listening to all of the episodes and I think she's a designer. Is that right? Yeah. So nothing to do with podcasting, but she just connects. I mean, she's your friend. So obviously she connects with you, but she also, I guess, built a connection with me as well through the podcast. That was very exciting. And I think this is the kind of connection that I would like to build with people more.
So if our podcast resonates with you, you know where to find us. I think we've been talking about this at Nozom. Hello at metacastpodcast.com. So one other thing that we have been talking a lot about, and I guess what about that is to be more deliberate about how we do our podcast. We don't want to be like step by step kind of how to kind of show. We want to be very lively and engaging, but at the same time, previously we would prepare really well with our guests because we don't want
to make the wrong impression. We want to make sure that we are just these kinds of people. But when it came to our own podcasts, we would just go on a whim and just talk about whatever, which I think the more episodes we record, the more jarring it might become because the more relaxed we have become. But if somebody listens to just this episode and not the previous 30, they might not get some of the things that we're talking about. So yeah, I want to be more
deliberate about the length. First of all, say 45 minutes, probably a sweet spot.
I would say between 30 and 45 minutes because that's what people have been telling us to. We'll see. We're halfway there, by the way.
Are we? Because I have my camera in obstructing the timer so... Me too, me too, yeah. I can go on like forever in this. Yeah, so being shorter I think is one of the things. And second, in one of the episodes we were talking about how we want to make one improvement every episode and I think you've been working on this improvement and you've been pushing both of us for the last few weeks is announce what we are going to be talking about in this episode.
So today we almost derailed this but we are trying, we are trying. Yeah, yeah. And then for me personally I'm trying to speak slower and just be more deliberate so I have less to edit later on but also I think it's just a good habit to build because it will serve me well everywhere.
Right. So when I listen to our podcast, I don't feel like you're going too fast. You're almost always way slower and more deliberate than I am.
I think it's not about just the speech, the actual pronunciation of syllables, even though that as well. It's also about stutter. Stutter and false starts, which you don't hear for most part when you listen to our podcast, because they're all cut out.
You're trying to reduce that work for a second.
Yes, but also I'm realizing this is how people hear me and even if they don't pay so much conscious attention in regular conversations Still when somebody sounds much more deliberate and precise, especially professional setting, I think it helps a lot It just builds your credibility You sound more confident and you sound more confident. Even if you like know shit about you are talking about Okay, let's go to the next topic
So very quickly, the punchline of that whole thread. What is the value that we're hoping to bring with the new format of Metacast behind the scenes?
Is the question for me again? Okay, so...
Okay, so first... I always ask the hard questions, Ilya.
Yeah, I should have been used to that after eight years working with you. So we want to encourage people who are either working on their business or are as early as us, or even earlier if that's even possible. But primarily, I guess, people who are in that journey where maybe they are employed or they're doing something that they don't like or they're lost or all of the above. And we've been there. We've been there. I mean, we've been there not
in the last two months. We've been there for the last years. And we talk about that some insights come out of how we got out of that rat race into what we're doing right now. We don't know if it's going to work out. So there's a lot of vulnerability, I guess, that goes on into making this podcast, especially if it doesn't work out. Because then we would look back at this and we're like,
okay. But at the same time, it's a great diary even for us to go back and listen to this. But I think for people who are going through this, a little bit behind us, I think that will be very helpful.
One quick note I'll add there, Ilya, is you said rat race. I just have a kind of like negative reaction to that because it may not necessarily be a rat race. Certainly some people are in there just for like the race and the ego and the status that comes with all of that, but a lot of people actually like doing that and you and I were like that.
Then they are not in the right place. They are doing what they want. But...
I think even with that, you and I were happy, but we knew that we want to, if we had the chance, we want to do something on ours.
of our own. Please subscribe to our channel.
Yeah, like some people may feel like they're in a rat race, some people may be okay with being in a rat race, being totally honest. Some people may actually be happy where they are, but they may start to be inspired. So they are ratatouille. I'm making it worse, okay. Rat at, yeah, anyway.
I'm making it worse, okay. Actually, TUI is a Turkish travel company. So, rat-hat TUI.
Thanks for watching! rat at... anyway, but I think it's also to inspire people who are thinking like, hey, maybe I want to do this someday. And also being totally honest, like you said, we are... I do feel very vulnerable about documenting these things on the internet.
In case it doesn't work out. The good thing about audio is it cannot be easily copied and distributed. Yeah, of course. Sure, sure. No, I mean like text can just go viral. Audio just doesn't go viral. Well, that's it for today. See you in the next video.
Unless the thing that we're making makes it possible, ironically. We are very far away from where we need to be, so let's head back towards the railway track, the rap track.
Yes. So next thing we want to talk about is working in person and what kind of value we got out of it. Because for the last three years, I've been working remotely for the last three years, you've been working remotely for even longer. And I think we kind of got used to being remote. But I didn't realize actually how lonely I would feel this summer. I worked at Google for three years, visited the office twice in those three years, and also only the tail end of my time
there. But it was fine. Every day I was talking to a lot of people, because I had a lot of meetings. So that was part of the rat race, right? It's like getting out of that thing where you can control your schedule. But while doing that, it was like I would be in meetings back to back all day talking to people, great people, lovely people, love them all, just I guess didn't want so much of it. But it kept me busy. And then I would have my family in the evening and then obviously for the
weekend. But now my family is out of town. They've been out of town since late June, and they're only coming back in August. So I've been by myself for actually exactly a month when I came to visit you. And that month was very, very lonely. Because like sometimes I wouldn't speak much to a person, right?
Because you've also moved to Florida last year, so you haven't made a lot of social connections yet in that area.
Exactly, yes. And also, it is crazy hot here. In June it was just hot, right? At least in the evening I would go for a run or just take a walk. Now, like I came back from Vancouver in early August and I keep getting these messages from, I think it was on the Ring app. It's like heat wave, like 150 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't even know how much it is. I never had to convert more than 90 to Celsius, but it's like, I think getting closer to 40 degrees Celsius.
So today I walked from a car to a shopping mall for maybe 200 meters, so it's like 200 yards in American imperial system. So I went back and forth within an hour. I had a terrible headache when I got to my car. It was just incredible how this excessive heat can make you feel. So yeah, that didn't help my loneliness. That's a very long way to say that I got really lonely here.
So actually, I won't go too far on this thread, but I will point out that one of our listeners, actually, I won't name them. I don't know if they want to be named or not, but I started following them. We had a meeting with them like last week, and then I started following them on Instagram, and they published like a really good book that I started listening to. Why I'm saying that? It's
called Ministry of Future, and it's about the climate crisis. It's the AI ministry. No? Yeah, not yet, but it might turn into, who knows, like I'm about maybe 20% into the book, but it starts with exactly that. There's a huge disaster with the climate crisis and about 40 degrees temperature, but also high humidity at the same time, and how like millions of people died. Yeah, and as we speak, actually, I don't know if you've heard or not, there was a fire caused by some sort of a
heat thing in Hawaii, in Maui. I might be wrong, but I believe some lives were lost there, and there are like crazy videos out there right now of the fire. It's in Maui. Anyway, yeah, coming back to topic, I think, yeah, a month of being on your own without talking to a person, I can imagine, because I was going to...
I went to coffee shops just to talk to the baristas. That's just how long there was.
And they're maybe like, why is this person like talking to like, just get your coffee and go sit and work? I learned all the names. Right, right. But I think it's a very valid point because even though I left my job, it's been actually just shy of a year now that I left my job. I did spend the first three months like no connections at all, except for my family, but I did have my family. But since then, I have been going to a lot of like tech meetups and social connection.
Like you saw how much of social connection there was when you came to Vancouver. Like we went to people's houses and all that. So I haven't felt too much of that. And I have been coding way more than I was and I think that's maybe why that's making me happy or keeping me happy.
Yeah, cool. So this brings us to the value of in-person communication. And it's a fundamental human level. We need that. We are social creatures. We just need people to stay sane, I think. I mean, some deep introverts might disagree with me right now. I don't know, but I think for the majority of people, even for introverts, I am actually still meaningful connections are important.
It reminds me that a podcast that I've previously talked about, so Paul Rosalie, a conservationist working at Amazon, was on Lex Friedman's podcast. And he was talking about those solo trips he does in the jungle, where he basically only sees nature and animals. And he said he brings photographs and National Geographic magazines with him because you just start to get a little cuckooed on the fifth day. You just need that connection.
Yeah, we're like hardwired to be social at this point.
Exactly, yes. But also, the other thing is, there are some conversations that we had while driving, for example, or while taking a walk, that we did not have during video conferences.
We do long and lengthy video calls but I think it was way easier maybe because of the in-person like body language dynamic but it's almost like I don't even have to say it you know what I'm going to say already.
Yeah, but also sometimes one of the hard conversations we had, I think it was about our approaches to schedules and to shipping too early, or shipping something that may not be reliable, where we had a slightly differing opinions or levels of comfort, I guess. These kind of topics are harder to bring up when you don't see the person.
Just because you don't know how they're going to react, and you don't know if what you're seeing in terms of their reaction is their true reaction if you do it over video. But if you are looking at them, it's just much easier to navigate a discussion that might turn, I don't know the right word for that, but it's like, it might be a bit hard to talk about these things because it's a bit like challenging each other, and I feel like challenging each other is easier in person.
When I say this, my personal experience with this is if I haven't met a person at all, like in real life, I've only seen them on video, then it's hard to have these kinds of conversations. But for example, you and me, I have no trouble having hard conversations with you on video because I have worked with you quite a lot. And I think that personal respect and trust, it's there where I know I can be totally upfront and honest with you and you will be honest with me.
But let's say I start working at a place where I haven't met most of the people. It's of course going to be very hard and it's going to be way easier to meet them, work with them maybe a few times in person, and then the relationship gets way smoother when you're back to remote.
Yeah, maybe we differ in this a little bit, but I fully agree with you that the level of previous respect and background really matters a lot. I guess I'm focusing more on that kind of last 5% of...
Like looking at the eyes and getting those cues and all that.
Yeah, because I'm very sensitive. I sometimes say stupid stuff or stuff that people might be offended by but then I immediately recognize it when they're in person because I see those micro reactions, but on video I don't. You see what I mean? Because you are more politically correct than me just in general. So you generally don't blurt out things like I do and then regret it, right? So maybe this is very different.
I mean, I do say my fair share of stupid things. I just don't even realize it. I'm like you! So yeah, but that's true. I do say my fair share, maybe more than that of stupid stuff, but it's okay. At least people like you, or like people that I work or live with, I know that they get me.
One thing I also noticed actually about myself, let's just get vulnerable, right? So we stayed, I mean, I stayed in your house for, I think it's about 12 days. And we worked a lot. Then we also had this trip to Vancouver Island for three days. And we also did this Whistler trip. We went to that gathering of multiple families. So all of that was very tiring for me. Also, like I was out of my comfort routines. I wasn't doing any exercising, except for walking. I was drinking too much.
I'll say one thing that you mentioned, I think on the second or third day that you felt like you were almost like a toddler. That others were making decisions about where to go, when to go, what to do and all that. And you were just tagging along. And you completely bought into that role.
The podcast is so comfortable.
But I think eventually it is significantly different from like, especially after a month of being completely alone. I think it was a bit different.
What was the most interesting change? I think I was very energetic inside, but physically I think I was very trained. And then I think the last few days it started to get to me. I think I became just irritated for no reason. On some occasions, and then I would drink a coffee and eat a muffin, and that would make me feel good again, which is not the right way to approach this. You just sleep. But in any case, my point is that could also be too much in person to work.
If you are outside of your common environment, and I was tagging along everywhere, which was great, but at the same time, I think next time we should probably limit this to a week, and maybe with one weekend.
I might also take away was that this was our first All Hands, right? And I think in this All Hands, if you look back at it, we did two things, social things, like we went on trips or something like that. And All Hands was four hands and two paws. Well, six with our CDO Boomer.
Yeah, two hands and two paws.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. We did two things. One is we had some social trips and we went to people, meet people and all that. And every other moment that we weren't doing that, we were working and it was intense. And I think we got a lot of stuff done. It was at the right time for our nascent company to have this kind of a thing. But I feel like at least me, I burnt myself out in like seven or eight days.
Yeah, I would second that. I actually enjoyed working like that for a little bit. When I came back home yesterday, I just realized, actually yesterday was easy because I just went to bed and I didn't do much. But today I had to make my own breakfast. And I'm like, okay, so they're actually benefits to live in your house, not my place. Yeah, I agree with you. And in terms of getting things done, we didn't do much coding in those two weeks, but we hashed out what exactly we're
launching. What is the priority of those features? Yeah, pricing strategy. Pricing strategy. Yeah, because we had, I think, two or three iterations on that because it's not straightforward for how you price a podcast app. Even though our app will be the best podcast app ever created by mankind, if you price it wrong, nobody will use it, right? And if you price it too low, we may not break even because we have costs. There's a bunch of that stuff.
Yeah, and you and I, we come from like a big tech product development background. So, we just have this inherent tendency of looking very forward, right? The vision, and trying to like break down things into smaller chunks, prioritize it, which I feel like we're doing a good job. We're not thinking like five years down the line, what are we? We're not writing a plan for five years down the line, because everything is a guess at this point.
If you're on either of those extremes, you can be in really bad shape. If you're too big company focused, where you actually write all those strategies and all that, well, all you do is you're just planning and you're doing nothing. You're guessing, not even planning. Yes, you're guessing instead of doing the work, right? Yes. So it's kind of one-up entrepreneurship at its worst.
Right, but also the other spectrum, like other end of the spectrum like you said.
The other end of the spectrum, you can be just so myopic that you work on something and you think of a feature that you should have thought a month ago.
or a customer says, hey wouldn't it be nice to have this and you immediately go and build.
And now, such that those elements could be easily added and we don't break any patterns. Because most of the software becomes bloatware when people add features that they didn't think about upfront. And it's just left and right. Worst case scenario, it's also done by different teams in some kind of like a shared framework where nobody has a centralized control. And then you end up with the frunkin', frankenware? Frankenstein, yeah!
Frankenstein, yeah! So, and we try to avoid that. So we are trying to balance that middle, which means sometimes we may spend a bit more time than, let's say, hungry startup would on deliberation. But at the same time, we know exactly where we're going. Well, exactly as in, we know what will be the other things in here. And we just, not building it right now. Yeah, we just don't architect ourselves in the corner. Because that could be an easy
thing. Just for example, right? There are 4 million podcasts. It is very hard to build infrastructure for 4 million podcasts, even an app. It's very hard. And it requires very different approaches from building something for a thousand podcasts, or even 10,000 podcasts.
and 4 million podcasts and like 70-80 million episodes total, I think. And multiplied by we operate at not the audio. What sets us apart is not the audio, right? For most podcast apps, a podcast and an episode is a URL to an audio file. We operate at like a thousand or maybe ten thousand level deeper because we're operating at almost every sentence or word level.
Mmm, so we are not doing the bird's eye view, right? Like other apps, we are doing an octopus-level view. A giant squid view.
Right, so the amount of data that we are talking about is like humongous already for a two-person startup.
Yes, and you can easily design yourself into a corner if you do it for a thousand podcasts, because then very soon you will start hitting scaling issues. And then what do you do? It's not like you can just work your way around it. You will have to re-architect the whole thing. And then while it is being re-architected, you will either not onboard the users, or you like have to limit the data that you work with, or the thing is just plain broken for a while.
And we won't name apps, but one of your favorite apps, Ilya, that you used to listen to podcasts with is unfortunately in a state like that right now where the notifications are generic because Well, I won't go into why it's generic. But yeah anyway
Yeah, our hypothesis is that they actually don't know how to handle all the data, or they don't have the right infrastructure. And that's why at certain point the experience really hit the bottom. Yeah, I'll just let my subscription lapse, which is a good thing, I guess, because now I can subscribe to our app.
We are not paying for it anymore. Yeah. Okay. But one more, I think, super fun thing out of this was that you came back to software development, like guns. I don't want to talk about guns swinging and swords and all that. Going on a tangent again. Sorry, we'll try to keep it into one minute. Recently, maybe a few months ago, I realized, not realized, I read somewhere and then introspected and felt how much of the words that we use.
In software, the industry are about wars and fights. I'll give you more and more examples, but there's a lot of like deadline and so many things. If you just take a moment and when you say things, think about it. It's all like coming from the military. And I'm trying to actively trying to like not say things that are like inherently tied to wars and violence.
Yes, you're playing some gun control.
So you didn't come out swinging your guns, but you did come out building out our app for Android, which was awesome.
Yeah, so I guess those people... I don't know if you discussed it before or not. So my training, unlike yours, was actually computer science.
Which one of us? The CTO or the CEO? Who had the education?
Education in computer science. Exactly. Yes. I used to really love and enjoy programming when I started coding when I was a teenager. But it unfortunately for me, I guess, happened at the time when tooling was so bad. And also I was in a fairly remote place. I didn't really have good role models of coders, because I was doing my own thing working as a freelancer. So I was just figuring stuff on my own. And it was like early 2000s, late 90s. There was no Stack Overflow. There were no developer tools in browsers.
There was no EWS or Firebase.
The browser was like Netscape and Internet Explorer. Yeah, there was no cloud. None of that existed. So it was very hard. Well, it was easier in some way to just get started, like build an app, I mean, like a program for Windows or a website, right? But it was very difficult to debug. It was very difficult to work with other people. So if I had a mentor like you, I actually might have stayed in coding, I think, but I didn't.
So I decided to do something where I don't get stuck as often and use my soft skills as opposed to hard skills. But during this trip, I guess for the last few months, I've really been feeling like I do want to go back to coding at least a little bit. And I've been doing a bunch of scripts and proof of concepts and analytic scripts in the last few years, but I really wanted to get back to application code. To actually, when you write something that you can see direct effect of.
I think one of the things that I did, I fixed a bug.
Yeah, you fixed the date. So if an episode was less than one minute long, we wouldn't show the length.
you will just show an empty place with a border which doesn't make sense. So I looked into the code, what code? It is Dart, right? In the app. So because it was flutter, dark flutter. Yeah, yeah, and you help me find where it was. And then I did those four lines of code I mean with your help and then bingo! It was fixed and that's the kind of things that I want to deep myself a little bit. Of course, I will be able to
I guess maybe not right now, maybe eventually, to write the same quality as you do. But I really love that thing where I do something and it changes the experience and it makes me feel very satisfied. And also hopefully take some stuff off your plate.
Yeah, we definitely need that, right? As we are seeing what we're building. I mean, so first of all, without, like you said, without the tooling and the technology we have right now, building something like this, even like, say, 10 years ago, by one person or two people would have been impossible. Yeah.
Because we are doing a lot of like server side stuff that a lot of like podcast apps don't do. It's almost always client side. So they help like with costs and infrastructure and all that, but also like you're limited in how much you can do.
But yeah, I think coming back to this on, I think the third day or fourth day, feel free to cut this out if you don't like it, but I'll say it honestly. On the third day or fourth day, you mentioned like, you want to get back, like do some more like hands on stuff. And I suggested, maybe analytics. Right? And you were like, you didn't say it immediately, but I got the vibe that, okay, you're not going to be happy with analytics.
And I was actually personally happy to see you like jump into it. Coincidentally, we had a chat with one of our super fans, Jenny, last week. And we also came to know that Stitcher, one of the popular like Android podcast apps is shutting down and she's starting to look for a new app. And we're like, okay, we got to like shape our alpha, even if it's half broken. A lot of features are not there yet into her hands.
And so you, with my help, of course, but you cranked out the ability for the app to be built on Android and like basically on the emulator and all that. So that was amazing. Yeah.
Yeah, we had a bunch of stuff that we had to troubleshoot for the app to work on Android, but none of that stuff was in code. It was all in configuration. Configurations and security policies, all that stuff. But it took us maybe, I would say, cumulatively maybe half day, and that's the beauty of Flutter. We have the app now for both Android and iOS. Actually, maybe we should talk about that. We want to get a device for Android, so we are able to test on Android.
Yeah, because you and I are completely on like Apple ecosystem.
Yes, entirely. You found somebody on one of the marketplaces who was selling a phone.
Not related to Metacast.
Facebook Marketplace, right? Yes. And the guy really wanted to meet you in your house for some reason. And then what did he do?
I mean I kept saying let's meet at a mall and he was offering like his device for $60 right which is most other places shops and all are saying okay this is very attractive but he was very particular I can only deliver it at a personal address so I gave him an address which was a Walmart and he said oh this is a Walmart I can't meet you there and so eventually we said alright fine we're not doing this
Yeah, but I think then we looked at the I guess here's a tip for everybody if you are selling something on Facebook marketplace It will just show you then I think the name of the person probably even the first name and also Just their small very very small avatar But if you make five clicks and go to their profile you may discover some very interesting things Like we did yeah, I Think we will not share what exactly we discovered but it would not be a good idea to meet this person in person
Even at Walmart, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely not a very good fit But sometimes like if I was selling something previously when we were moving I would go to the profile I see that this person has an account since 2008 and they have pictures with their kids like five years ago That's legit. You can trust them But if somebody is like all everything is locked and there are some Sketchy things. Well 40 bucks to save it was worth it
Right, I am now connected with one more person who looks way more legit on Facebook and has like pictures and stuff. Who knows it's fake, who knows, right? But and he is not offering like the phone for like $60 also. It looks like a decent thing I'll meet on Friday and come back and talk about it, hopefully. Yeah. And we will see you.
Yeah, and we will see if this whole flutter thing actually works as expected, because right now it runs in the emulator on the computer. So let's see if we can just deploy it to that device that you... is it a Samsung or is it a Pixel?
It's a Samsung Galaxy A52.
Yeah, so let's see if it works in that mumbo-jumbo of numbers. Right. So, too much Apple fan right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing that I kind of thought about is there should be a marketplace for broken phones. I would be perfectly happy with a let's say last year's Android some phone, but the camera is broken.
Like completely not working, it doesn't matter to us.
But the device, the screen works, I can use the browser and apps and all, but the camera is completely broken. So it's completely useless to anybody, almost anybody.
for day-to-day use, but works perfectly for testing, as long as you don't need the camera.
Yeah, I would pay like $100 to get that phone versus like paying $250 to get that same device, which most places will sell for, right? Not even new, like used ones, because it's last year's phone. And all the marketplaces I looked at, I asked ChatGPT about it too, and ChatGPT pointed me at like eBay, Swappa, Gazelle, Amazon, everything. It kind of makes sense. They're giving you a guarantee that the phone works, which I don't want. I want like broken phone, but cheaper. So I think it would
be nice to have a marketplace like that if somebody is listening into it. Maybe do some market study.
Let's go to our last tangent, because you mentioned ChatGPT. When I was doing promotion for one of our videos, for one of our episodes. Oh, the LinkedIn one. I copy-pasted. I think mostly you're talking about how the social persona makes you a different person, right? How you start to look for things to shoot so that you can post them. So you basically start to look at the world through the lens of will other people on social media like it? Will it get engagement? Everything that you do.
Yeah, so I copy-pasted that transcript and paste it to ChatGPT. And I asked it to summarize it in a share-worthy LinkedIn post. ChatGPT came out with a five or six paragraph blob. I don't know if we want to use the word text, please. It's a blob of content that has a bunch of emojis, pretty much like multiple emojis per line. To be fair,
It is like a lot of LinkedIn posts that you see. No, no, I'll share some with you right after this. Like today you you commented on it too. You may not feel like that because you know the person, but that style of like using the rocket emoji and other emojis at the beginning of a paragraph, that's a LinkedIn thing.
Okay, so the thing I commented on didn't start with, hey, hashtag LinkedIn fam.
I was like, hey LinkedIn fam!
Yes, and it didn't end with, let's like live our real lives, be yourself, hashtag inspiration or something. And everything in between, I would say it actually did a very good job summarizing what was in the transcript. It also added a bunch of stuff I didn't ask to add, like encouraging people to do what we said, what we were talking about. But it was just so cringy. I forced myself to read what it output.
And I actually eventually ended up posting this, but not under my name, under my fake persona. No, I said that I put this in the chat GPT and that's what it gave me. Actually, that post, I think it actually performed, actually I don't think it performed well.
I mean, LinkedIn fam didn't like it. This whole LinkedIn fam thing. Yeah, no, I think I agree. It was too cringy.
Here's the whole thing about social media, right? I have known people who say like Instagram family or Facebook family and stuff like that. And I'm like, he's not your family. You don't even know who these people are. I was listening to a podcast today where a person who are going to interview tomorrow for our episode 32, he was saying how like up until a certain point he had 1500 subscribers on LinkedIn. Oh, sorry, on what do you call it?
Twitter X. On X. But most of those people knew him from offline, from conferences and talking and all of that. And at some point he crossed the threshold where all people knew was his Twitter persona. And then he realized that, actually forgot what the insight was, but basically for him you could say that people who knew him from other thing, you could have called them like a family. The early beginning, yeah.
But the people who are just like completely random people from Twitter, you wouldn't call them a family. X. X family. Demoted to X family. X family. Yeah, it's funny. Okay, anyway, so you wanted to go on tangent and I hope your train of thought was not derailed again.
Now we are like 56 minutes into our 30 minute recording so let's get into our final topic.
Yes, I think we'll leave most of the topic for later. What we'll say now is, I think we already said it in the last episode, but let's do it again, is that we have published a book called The Pragmatic Podcaster, which is about starting a podcast. It goes into how you choose your mic, how you set up your recording space, how you do post production, how you create a podcast cover, how you choose music, what kind of licenses exist for music, because this is important legal stuff, you don't want to get in trouble, how you choose your hosting provider and how you publish.
That's what I call a day one part of starting your podcast. It's basically like getting the first episode out, getting that MVP out. And actually I use quite a bit of analogies with the Lean Startup methodology, with MVP, getting the thing out, being a bit embarrassed about it, that's fine. Just get it out, otherwise you will spend endless weeks and months to abandon it and not even ship it, right?
It's also very concise and to the point book. If you're not even thinking about creating a podcast, but just wondering what does it take to create a podcast, I think if you read, skim it, you'll get a really good idea of how much work and money is involved.
Yeah, so if you're looking to start a podcast, you can buy it and actually you'll be equipped to start a podcast. I think it's a really good book for this use case. But if you are just interested, like you said, right, in understanding how this whole thing works, maybe our podcast inspired you to understand it a little bit more. Yeah, by all means, buy it and I would say half of the content of the book will be interesting in terms of how you should go about all that.
Because it also applies to other types of content. And finally, even if you are not interested in this at all, but you want to support us, then you can still buy the book and do not use the promo code so you can pay the full price and support us even more.
more. So what is the promo code they should not use?
So the promo code that will give you 30% off is Metacast. So you just type Metacast and it gives you 30% off. So instead of paying $15, you pay, I think it's $10.50. That's what it comes down to. USD? USD, yeah. But if you want to support us four and a half dollars more, yeah, you don't have to use the code. But by all means, I guess, use the code. You know, we don't care if you use it or not. But we do believe that this book is useful. I don't want to use like, Caulifers is good. I think,
but I think it is useful. It's a book that I wish I had when I was first starting a couple of years ago, and nobody wrote it. So I did. And
And I think we haven't yet put it up on Amazon and we'll talk about that in the next episode about why it has taken us so long to put it up on Amazon. Stay tuned for the next one.
One of the reasons that we were drinking so much in Vancouver!
That's true. But there are other reasons also, we'll get into it. But once we do, I think we'll share, like announce it. And we haven't done any announcements and all that. It's more like a soft launch right now.
I feel like it's almost pointless to announce it before we have it on Amazon, because even when we were having this discussion with your friends, I forgot how the topic of the book came up. I wasn't promoting it to that group of people, but somehow came up. And the first question that the person asked was, is it on Amazon? Because it's so easy to buy it on Amazon, then to like go to Gumroad and well, it is very easy to buy it on Gumroad. So by all means, go and buy it on Gumroad.
But you don't even have to go to Gumroad, you can go to just...
PragmaticPodcastr.com
Just a few quick teaser questions for you in this episode. We'll go deeper into the next one. How long did it take you to write this book, Ilya?
I almost feel like if I say how long it took me, it will diminish the perception of its quality. I was in TikTok today. I don't know why, but I subscribed to a few pretty cool accounts. On that account, they were talking about charging per hour versus charging for the whole project for a logo. This is for a designer, right? And I will not go into the details of the whole thing.
It was very insightful. But the punchline was that if I do things faster and charge you more, because I am better and I'm also doing it faster, it feels less valuable to you as a customer than paying somebody a lower rate, but they take longer or something.
Maybe to some customers, yeah.
Yes, I guess it's one of the objections that he handled from the audience. It was a clip from training, but it made perfect sense. So I can say, yeah, I wrote it in two weeks, end to end, without formatting, just the actual content. I was amazed, by the way. But I have to qualify this, right? Because I'm very good at writing. And that's why it took me such a short amount of time. Because at Amazon, like when I got my promo to Principal and all that, like everybody commanded my writing.
And it just comes naturally to me. I mean, I'm by no means like Neil Gaiman or Stephen King or anything. I'm actually pretty bad at fiction writing. But I wouldn't say I'm pretty good, I'm too good at like inspirational writing and all that. But if you take some content that just goes straight to the point, with no fluff, but still feels kind of light, that's what I'm pretty good at.
To that point, I think crisp and clear writing, that's your strength.
It took me much longer to write to the first chapters that are about you can do it Why like what kind of audience you choose those were the hardest chapters for me to write but the more technical ones I would just write like pages and pages and pages per day pragmatic podcaster.com promo code metacast
Right, and the other teaser question that I'll have is, what was my only contribution to the book? A photograph.
Oh no, no, yes, there is one photograph.
The cover, the choice of the cover to be more correct. And you did an amazing, like I love the cover that we finally came out with. But I do think in the show notes for this episode, you should put that the hilarious one. It looks very similar, but we're kind of on the side. Oh, no, that was for the podcast, the startups.com podcast. Okay.
And I guess except one and that's the one that you said okay this actually looks better and we went with that
It actually looks amazing, if I'm saying so myself. Yeah, and the episode covers and the podcast. I think we're going to rebrand everything to use that style. It looks so good.
Yes, and with that if you liked our first behind... well, not first... our continued behind the scenes episode But this one was more shameless I guess because we gave ourselves the license to not talk about Descript and all that other stuff and actually go about the company stuff for as much as we wanted
Give us a rating, send us an email, leave a comment.
Yeah, all of that, no pressure. But send us an email. I would say if this resonates with you, send us an email at hello at metacastpodcast.com. And if you did not listen to our previous episode, episode 30 with the startups.com founders, they go into the story of how they received that email of a person who was crying while listening to their podcast and how they spoke directly to him or her, I don't know.
And they said to their partner that this is all the things that I couldn't tell you. And they just said it for me. Cry while listening to our podcast. By all means, send us a message.
We try not to make you cry, but...
If you make a laugh, which I hope we do, because when I listen to our episodes, I laugh a lot. I don't know if it's just so indulging, but...
And I mean, to be fair, the four or five outreaches that we've had over email, they've been beautiful. Stuff that just makes your day.
Yeah, absolutely. Hello at metacastpodcast.com. You know where to find us.
Alright, that was a great episode. Thank you. Tomorrow we are recording another episode 32. And then next episode we're going to talk more in detail about the book itself and some of the technical details of the book too, like how did you do it, how did you get into that mindset and yeah all that.
It will be basically behind the covers, behind the scenes, right? Behind the spline, is it called the spline? The thing in the back? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Behind the spline. Yeah, and tomorrow we are gonna be recording, well, I am gonna be recording in a car in the parking lot. So I'll have to keep my AC running because it will be crazy hot here, but I have a very important appointment I can't miss. I won't say what it is until I feel comfortable talking about it. It is not a job interview now.
Thank you! Not a job interview. It's not an investor page, but it is very important for me and we decided to reschedule the recording. But we'll have to go through some logistical hurdles tomorrow and we'll see how that comes out.
And our guest doesn't know about it too, that you'll be in a car. So it'll be fun.
One principals see next show is about a game that will field a version of the beginning of the sequel. Visit finance channel and however you do it. offers more OWL- Zam Fremont indogs.ctive as well!
No, I think it makes sense. So once it's all done, we'll let people know what that appointment was.
See you next week!