Talking Businessly

Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler•podcast.thunk.dev

We (John and Daniel) are co-founders of a small software development agency. This is a recording of our weekly "state of the company" call where we discuss the nitty gritty details of running our business day-to-day. Want to work with us? Reach out at thunk.dev

Last refreshed: July 29th, 2025 at 10:31 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

40: Pricing saga (part 3)

We've changed our pricing model again to solve a couple important problems. So far it is going great. We also talk about movies and games. It's an un-serious podcast!

Sep 23, 2024•42 min•Ep. 40

39: Aaron said to put it out no matter what

Daniel's talk is out! Go watch it . We plan out future talks and screencasts. John talks about game projects he has in the works, and pushing Verbs to new levels of complexity. We talk about the killer future feature of Verbs: analytics.

Sep 09, 2024•50 min•Ep. 39

38: Laracon recap

We share all the gory details about shipping (and almost failing to ship) our game and Laracon talk. Here is a video of the fun we had. And here's a full blog post about it. We also go deep on game design, jiu jitsu, and more. This is an unserious episode.

Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 38

37: International man of mischief

We plan the rest of our 2024 goals / OKRs. We're making t-shirts. We're shilling Verbs. John has intrusive thoughts and a therapy moment. There's a little something for everyone in here.

Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 37

36: Thunk Pyramid Scheme (the super secret Laracon project)

We built a game for Laracon, and it rules. Also, John released his board game Colossi ! Finally, we get started on our OKRs for the second half of the year.

Aug 05, 2024•45 min•Ep. 36

35: The problems that Papercuts solves

John did a bunch of Papercuts interviews, and now has a way clearer sense of what problem we're solving. He talks about his process as a PM. And we talk through all the problems we won't solve with Papercuts. At least not yet.

Jul 17, 2024•53 min•Ep. 35

34: Go to papercuts.io

Our new Saas app Papercuts.io is up, and it is in Alpha testing. If it sounds useful to you, go sign up and we'll reach out shortly! We also talk about the future of where this app might go. If you work at an agency or run an agency, please reach out to john@thunk.dev. We want to talk.

Jul 02, 2024•50 min•Ep. 34

33: This too shall pass

We accidentally talk about movies for 15 minutes. Then we talk about calmly riding the waves when bad things happen (a bad thing happened). Finally, we review all of our OKRs from the first half of the year. Spoiler: we made good money, and made ourselves unhappy doing it.

Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 33

32: Monday morning scrutiny

We took some time off. Papercuts is good now. Verbs is still good. We had an uncomfortable moment with a client, and learned some good things from it. Then Daniel discovers we might owe the state of New York $11,000.

Jun 17, 2024•55 min•Ep. 32

31: Buying our time back

We're working fewer client days, but it costs us a lot of money to do that. So what are we getting for that money? We make a plan for what we can do with this extra time to invest in the future.

May 27, 2024•42 min•Ep. 31

30: Strategy brainstorm (empaneling Luke Roush)

Luke Roush is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Sovereign's Capital. John worked for Luke for 4 years. If John ever says anything smart, there's a 40% chance he's just quoting Luke without giving him credit. Luke loves nothing more than brainstorming how to make a business tick. Apologies for the sound quality, we had a little snafu.

May 21, 2024•57 min•Ep. 30

29: Awkward money conversation

It's beef season. We have figured out how to not have Daniel on every client, and which roles we play with each client. Then we have a fun conversation about how we spend money, how much we save for the future, and when to take money out of the company. This is a very real peak behind the curtain, and we're slightly awkward. Build in public.

May 06, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 29

28: Short term profit vs. long term strategy

Business is great. But that means Daniel doesn't have time to do strategic stuff. John is pulling back on client hours to figure out how to do outbound sales. We plan out an onsite (or is it offsite?). Finally, we review our OKRs.

Apr 29, 2024•43 min•Ep. 28

27: Silly Season (empaneling Steve Smallman)

Steve is the founder of a well established creative agency called fifteen4 . Daniel used to work there! We asked Steve about how you do planning (especially with subcontractors) when you have lumpy sales cycles, and no predictable sales process. But he ended up giving us some free consulting on branding, positioning, and strategy for the target customers we want.

Apr 23, 2024•58 min•Ep. 27

26: The leads are weak? YOU'RE weak!

The sales strategy worked! Great leads are pouring in, and we're closing new business. We talk about our strategy on sales calls, and disqualifying ourselves quickly from the wrong kinds of leads. Also we are sleepy.

Apr 15, 2024•38 min•Ep. 26

25: ❤️ Devs seeking new obsession ❤️

We want to find a long term partner, and we want your help. Then things come completely off the rails and we stop talking about business. John rants about healthcare "markets", we discuss Kendrick vs. J. Cole beef, and recommend tv shows.

Apr 08, 2024•42 min•Ep. 25

24: Cohort 2™ (working title)

We are looking for 2 big, gnarly, interesting projects to sink our teeth into over the next 6 months. And we want your help finding them. We also recap all of the smart little things we've learned from retrospectives in the last couple months.

Apr 01, 2024•52 min•Ep. 24

23: SaaS opportunity knocks again

We have an opportunity to do something big, difficult, and pretty different from our other clients. John went on the Over Engineered podcast to talk about whether sprints and estimates matter. We review our OKRs.

Mar 11, 2024•47 min•Ep. 23

22: Mentees keep becoming clients

Daniel and John are out on the speaker circuit. John wants to give more developer talks. We want to mentor more programmers, because that has been an amazing source of clients. And we might convince our friend to become a Laravel dev.

Mar 04, 2024•42 min•Ep. 22

21: Our new pricing model (empaneling Joel Clermont)

Joel Clermont joins us for a discussion about our pricing model. Like us, he has tried a lot of models, and walked away from most of them. He gives us feedback on our latest idea.

Feb 26, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 21

20: The FULL Stack Developer

Papercuts progress. Daniel spent some time with the dutch. Getting busy and landing business. John give talks, Daniel gives talks. Retro-driven company.

Feb 20, 2024•45 min•Ep. 20

19: We're building a SaaS app

Thunk is building a SaaS app. We talk about the plan, where the idea came from, and how it'll work. We also brainstorm ideas for the future.

Jan 23, 2024•50 min•Ep. 19

18: Setting fewer, better goals for 2024

We review our 2023 goals, and set better goals for 2024.

Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 18

17: Empanelling Allison Lacker

Allison is a former colleague of John's, and we're thrilled to have her on the panel of mentors. She has been a developer, product manager, and executive. She has a lot of good perspective on how developers can think more like PMs, and why that matters. We talk processes, metrics, building teams, living with legacy code, and a lot more.

Dec 13, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 17

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