Metacast is a podcast app for podcast lovers. We are building a powerful tool that helps you get the most out of podcasts. Auto-generated transcripts and chapters allow you to quickly skim episodes, search for content, and bookmark segments. Chapters, automated playlists, listening history & stats, and much more is coming. On this podcast, co-founders of Metacast talk about building the company and the product.
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We took a break from the startup for the holiday season and were welcomed back to work by a warm embrace of guilt. Should we feel guilt when building a startup? Today we also discuss the launch of our new podcast Builders Gonna Build and how we made the decision to start it. We talk about writing a doc, just like in the good ol’ days at Amazon. Listen to Builders Gonna Build - Apple Podcasts - Spotify - YouTube - Substack Chapters 02:57 - Snowmaggedon in Vancouver 09:04 - Post-vacation guilt 21:...
Important update! Metacast Behind the Scenes is splitting into two podcasts. This feed will now focus solely on how the company is built, while all future guest interviews will be moved to a new podcast called Builders Gonna Build, dedicated to interviewing 'builders' about their process.
What was 2023 like to Metacast, what's ahead for us in 2024, and our favorite podcast recordings of 2023. Chapters 02:39 - Year 2023 in review 18:59 - Could we have shipped Metacast faster? 23:45 - Our plan for 2024 31:36 - Our favorite behind the scenes episodes of 2023 39:04 - Books and podcasts recommendations Download the Metacast podcast app for free iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/metacast/id6462012536 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.metacast.podcast.player Get i...
To close off 2023, Arnab and Ilya sat down for a lighthearted review of our favorite books, podcasts, products and experiences of 2023. Chapters 01:51 - A lesson in geology 03:16 - Our top books of 2023 23:46 - Our favorite podcasts of 2023 41:04 - Our favorite products 49:34 - Experiences of the year 2023 Show notes Books Arnab’s The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi The Mom Test: How to talk t...
This episode features Alex Rechevskiy, a former Google PM and current career coach, who offers an unfiltered perspective on product management and Big Tech. He shares insights into the difficulties of PM roles, the separate skill of interviewing, and his journey building a solopreneur coaching practice. Alex also recounts his experiences at Google, critiquing the perceived lack of innovation and the impact of corporate culture. Finally, he details his startup, Comment Armor, addressing YouTube spam, and reflects on the exploitative nature of social media, concluding with practical advice and book recommendations.
This is a re-run of our "very second episode" originally published on Jan 11, 2023. For our second episode (and the very first one with a guest!), we sat down with Brian McCullough, creator of the Internet History Podcast , one of Ilya’s all-time favorite podcasts. Brian’s current podcast is Techmeme Ride Home , a popular daily summary of tech news that has over a million downloads every month. Brian is also an investor running the Ride Home Fund and a resident at TED (check out Brian’s t...
In this episode, Geoff Roberts, co-founder of Outseta, shares insights into their unique compensation model where employees can earn founder-level equity with flexible work arrangements. He also details Outseta's bootstrapped journey, the development of their all-in-one SaaS platform, and their lean operational approach, including customer acquisition through authentic content marketing and strategic partnerships. The discussion highlights the challenges of building a company against conventional wisdom, the importance of financial transparency, and a democratic governance structure. Ultimately, Outseta aims to build a successful company by prioritizing fair compensation and shared success among a high-caliber team.
Metacast co-founders discuss benefits and risks of building a startup in public. Chapters 02:06 - The "build in public" movement 08:46 - Why we share what we do? 22:59 - Downsides of building in public 33:49 - Book and podcast recommendations Download the Metacast podcast app for free iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/metacast/id6462012536 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.metacast.podcast.player Get in touch Contact us: hello@metacastpodcast.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's Li...
Arnab and Ilya delve into software product development, comparing "Lego block" platforms that offer extensive configurability (like Android, AWS) with "model airplane" products that provide opinionated, simpler experiences (like iPhone). They discuss the challenges of balancing user customization with product simplicity, drawing lessons from AWS's evolution and Apple's ecosystem. The conversation extends to startup growth, the pitfalls of rapid expansion, and personal media recommendations on history and societal polarization.
In this episode, Dave Thomas, renowned co-author of "The Pragmatic Programmer" and the Agile Manifesto, delves into the misconceptions of "doing Agile" and advocates for genuine agility driven by continuous feedback. He shares invaluable insights from his experience, highlighting common pitfalls in software development and revealing effective practices observed in successful engineering teams. Thomas also offers pragmatic advice for early-stage startups and reflects on the enduring relevance of his book's core principles decades later.
Arnab and Ilya reminisce about their first social media experiences with ICQ and Orkut, discuss fixing X-Twitter, read an eulogy for Threads, and strategize about becoming social media influencers. Chapters 03:12 - First experiences with social media 10:52 - Reddit 16:19 - Threads 18:35 - Misuse of Instagram as a text blogging platform 21:25 - Can existing social networks be replaced? 23:47 - The hard life of a social media influencer 25:28 - X / Twitter 29:04 - AI content creation 32:23 - Value...
Jennie Buechner is a Senior Software Engineer and the first hire at Metacast. We discussed leaving Amazon to join an early stage startup and how we thought about equity compensation when we can't afford to pay a salary yet. Chapters 02:04 - Jennie introduces herself 03:57 - ChatGPT introduces Jennie, Ilya and Arnab 07:29 - Explaining the number 42 10:38 - Leaving Amazon 20:46 - Joining Metacast 28:08 - Working for equity without a salary component 45:57 - Living off savings 49:29 - Jennie's role...
What features do you build first - table stakes or what makes you differentiated? What's the difference between an MVP and an MLP? Is it worth applying to YC? ...and a few recommendations of books and podcasts that we're into these days. Chapters 03:40 - Differentiating features vs. table stakes features 06:58 - MVP vs. MLP 14:00 - The MAYA principle 16:57 - We applied to YC 23:31 - Building a landing page with Carrd 26:22 - Chaos engineering for customer empathy 31:56 - The Three-Body Problem t...
The founders of Tramline, a mobile CI/CD platform, share their journey from identifying the chaotic reality of manual mobile app releases to building an automated solution. They discuss the challenges of acquiring early customers, their unique "slow VC" fundraising strategy, and the philosophical reasons behind open-sourcing their platform. The conversation also provides insights into the competitive landscape of mobile release automation and advice on leveraging development agencies.
How living on a work visa affects your risk appetite? How does immigration change you? What are some gotchas? Today, we talk about our immigration journeys and discuss these important questions. Chapters 03:42 - Musings about languages and automatic translations 08:48 - Our immigration journeys 15:52 - US immigration challenges for Indians and Chinese 17:52 - How living on a work visa affects your risk appetite 31:38 - Immigration changes your perspective on life 34:43 - What we're reading and l...
This episode features Wharton Professor Karl Ulrich sharing his unconventional path, including early work at the MIT AI Lab and founding multiple companies. He delves into how entrepreneurship is taught, the concept of innovation tournaments, and the changing landscape and benefits of pursuing an MBA today. The conversation also explores the fascinating origin story of his Xootr scooter and offers encouraging advice for aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages.
Today we're reflecting on our previous episode (ep. 36 with Melissa Kwan) and are talking about the collaboration between business and technical functions in a company - both in our startup as well as reminiscing about our days in AWS. Chapters 00:33 - Teaser of the next episode 02:45 - Update on the podcast 10:38 - Reflection on the latest episode with Melissa 15:55 - CEO vs. CTO role a.k.a. Product vs. Engineering 27:16 - Book and podcast recommendations Show notes Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson...
Melissa Kwan, a three-time bootstrapper and CEO of eWebinar, discusses her extensive entrepreneurial journey, including the challenges and triumphs of starting and scaling businesses with contractors. She shares insights on equity splits, motivating remote teams, and developing a product customers truly need. The conversation also covers her successful strategies for marketing through social media and podcasts, along with personal anecdotes about her digital nomad lifestyle and Burning Man experience.
Today, we discuss positioning the startup to the outside world in social media and software that we use to build our software. We go into detail of our CI/CD pipeline for the mobile app and our project management practices. As usual, brace yourself for a lot of tangents! Chapters 02:53 - Positioning ourselves into the outside world 23:01 - Processes in our startup Show notes https://tramline.app - a CI/CD orchestration tool for mobile app development https://bitrise.io - a tool for building mobi...
In this episode, we break down the process of how we wrote The Pragmatic Podcaster book, discuss how writing is similar to programming, talk about tools (Adobe InDesign, Kindle Create), describe the process of getting an e-book and a print version on Amazon, and muse about Google Ads that didn't generate any sales for us. Chapters 02:38 - How did the book start 04:57 - "Day 0 - Day 1 - Day 2" framework for creating software and podcasts 08:00 - The process 12:14 - ChatGPT for writing a book?? 13...
This week, we are discussing The Pragmatic Podcaster book that we’ve just self-published on Kindle and in paperback and hardcover formats on Amazon. Chapters 00:00 - Cold open 00:20 - Welcome to episode 33 01:01 - Weekly updates and private beta launch 04:26 - Newsletter strategy and social media 07:05 - Perception vs. reality of our product 09:36 - Introducing The Pragmatic Podcaster 12:51 - Why write a book while building an app 15:54 - Perfect is the enemy of done 20:08 - Technical half of th...
Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, shares his unconventional path, highlighting how his unfiltered personality became a business asset. He delves into the psychological aspects of cloud cost optimization, the challenges of bootstrapping a consulting and media company, and the importance of finding a niche. The episode also explores the evolution of his content, podcast production strategies, and candid views on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.
We’re starting season 2! Going forward, most of our episodes will be conversations about how we’re building our business. We’ll keep doing guest episodes as well, mostly with people who we and other entrepreneurs get to learn from. Listen on to follow our journey. Chapters 03:10 - Season 2 and the changes we're making to the podcast 13:22 - Rat race 17:15 - Working in-person in Vancouver 29:08 - Long-term vs. short-term thinking in a startup 33:26 - Ilya is starting to code again 42:58 - ChatGPT...
This episode features Startups.com founders, Will Schroter and Ryan Rutan, who share their extensive experience in the startup world, contrasting bootstrapping with venture capital and highlighting the often-overlooked emotional challenges founders face. They delve into how their "Startup Therapy" podcast evolved into a deeply personal platform, fostering strong connections with listeners by discussing the realities of startup life rather than just "how-to" advice. The conversation also covers their strategy of funding businesses through services and the deliberate choices made in building Startups.com to align with personal values.
In this episode, we cover the topic we wanted to cover for the last few weeks but always ran out of time. It’s the topic of SaaS subscriptions. As a business that doesn’t yet make any revenue, we pay quite a bit in subscription fees because these days everything is a subscription. Apparently, soon we’ll be paying a subscription to heat our butts in cars — Arnab tells a story of a car manufacturer that will ship cars with all the hardware, but will disable “premium” features unless you pay a mont...
Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals (Basecamp, HEY), shares insights on running a bootstrapped, profitable business. He delves into the distinct roles of founder and CEO, the dynamics of a 24-year co-founder relationship, and their strategy of intentionally staying small. Fried also explains their "calm company" approach, focusing on qualitative customer feedback, avoiding ruin, and making principled stands, including their unique approach to team structure and product development cycles.
We are starting to share bits of what we’re working on — a podcast app! The main topic of today’s episode is podcast listening apps and the things they suck at. Also in the episode: some backstory of how we decided to work together, golden handcuffs of a big tech, the working backwards approach, and importance of checklists. Chapters 01:34 - RSS feeds, the backbone of podcasting 04:37 - Why are we doing a podcast about podcasting? 06:28 - Why are we building yet another podcast app? 10:56 - Podc...
We’ve heard feedback that listeners really love our metasodes — the episodes where Arnab and I chat about all things podcasting, careers, books, etc. We also heard feedback loud and clear that our episodes are too long… On today’s episode, we chat about these changes, producing a video episode in Descript, Conway’s law, our new merch store, our upcoming book, and a few more things. 👉 Book on starting a podcast: https://bit.ly/metacast-book 👉 Metacast merch: https://metacast.creator-spring.com/...
Starting a podcast can feel daunting but it need not be. In this episode, we've put together insights from our interviews with podcasters, creators of tech for podcasters, and radio hosts. 👉 Get our book on podcasting here: https://bit.ly/metacast-book Chapters 01:03 - Starting a podcast can be daunting 02:08 - Microphones for podcasting 06:35 - Headphones for podcasting and post-production 08:23 - Recording on an iPhone 09:28 - Pop filter 10:20 - Preparing the space for recording a podcast 12:...
Hosts Ilya and Arnab share insights on transitioning from corporate careers to entrepreneurship. They provide a detailed comparison of Amazon's document-driven, deliberative culture versus Google's more pragmatic, presentation-heavy approach, highlighting their impact on product development. The discussion extends to their personal motivations for leaving big tech, taking calculated career risks, and their vision for building a lean, creative startup focusing on amplifying voices.
