Will AI replace developers?
Ben and Josh discuss the benefits and perils of using AI assistants for programming. Cursor Codeium Windsurf GitHub Copilot announcement Perplexity
Episodes
FounderQuest
Developers building a software business on our own terms.
Episodes
How to Sponsor a Conference
Ben, Josh, and John Nunemaker are back from RubyConf and take the opportunity to discuss how to sponsor a conference as a small software company. Protip: bring your furniture from home. https://wiki.c2.com/?ResultObjectPattern= https://www.chairigami.com https://twenty.com https://rubycentral.org/news/make-railsconf-happen/ Adam’s Judo Scale infomercial https://boxoutsports.com/graphics/multi-format/multi-format-gameday-90-s-series https://boxoutsports.com/graphics/tags/saved-by-the-bell...
Why does Bluesky love Alf so much?
Ben and Josh go off-script for a fun and hopefully-not-too-long chat about their favorite Twitter-like social network, Bluesky. https://faineg.substack.com/p/how-i-accidentally-ruined-bluesky The hosts of WSUA9 call it skeeting on air AOC endorses “team skeets” Jake Tapper says “skeeted” live on CNN Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech by Mike Masnick Composable moderation How to set your domain as your handle Bluesky reaches 20M users https://go.bsky.app/HD2Ty2o htt...
Selling Metrics Watch with JP Boily
Josh and Ben reconnect with their friend JP Boily to discuss building his startup Metrics Watch for just over 9 years before finding a new owner on Acquire.com. Bluesky startups & bootstrappers starter pack Join the Honeybadger/FounderQuest Discord server! https://metricswatch.com/ https://github.com/topfunky/gruff https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer https://jumpstartrails.com https://microconf.com https://businessofsoftware.org https://rubyconferences.org...
Acquiring Fireside with John Nunemaker
Josh and Ben catch up with John Nunemaker after Rails World and dig into John's recent acquisition of Fireside.fm, the podcasting platform created by Dan Benjamin. What's next for John? In short, he's curating some Very Good Software™. https://www.johnnunemaker.com/acquiring-fireside/ https://www.johnnunemaker.com/how-to-find-a-business-partner/ https://danbenjamin.com/ http://sifterapp.com/ https://www.indierails.com/...
Pricing
Ben, Josh, and John discuss pricing, including how to approach pricing, what they do and don't like about pricing, and how pricing works at Honeybadger and Flipper. https://cottonbureau.com/p/9EMACZ/shirt/the-process#/17943854/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-m https://blog.flippercloud.io/per-seat-pricing-sucks/ https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/data-modeling-saas-entitlements-and-pricing https://basecamp.com/pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://statamic....
Shipping in Layers with Will and John
While Josh is on vacation, Ben chats with guests Will King and John Nunemaker about the process and perils of trying to ship reliably. https://www.wking.dev/logs/shipping-in-layers https://longform.asmartbear.com/slc/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product https://archive.ph/20130719182750/http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Hydra-Ambitions-Destined-ebook/dp/B07J57YF47...
Dogfooding, Developers, and Discord!
Ben and Josh catch up after a few weeks of heads-down product work, and they have lots to talk about—including a new Discord server for FounderQuest listeners! Plus, hear Josh’s thesis on why it’s a huge problem if you’re not using your product to the max. Shape Up Seth Godin Blue Ridge Ruby Monitorama Join the Honeybadger Discord! https://discord.gg/aQaDVBedRf...
Scaling Judoscale with Adam McCrea
Longtime friend of the pod Adam McCrea joins Josh and Ben to catch up and chat about his journey building Judoscale—an autoscaling service for Heroku, Render, and AWS! Blue Ridge Ruby Josh’s Blue Ridge Ruby recap Kyle Shold Printfection JudoScale SignWell Heroku Add-ons Router blog post: https://judoscale.com/blog/heroku-router-post-mortem...
Writing and Content Marketing for Developers
John Nunemaker returns to FounderQuest to discuss his writing process—after the guys debate code linters and formatters, of course. It's important to start with the essentials. Links: Standardrb Josh’s 2013 Ruby Style Guide GitHub Copilot Copilot Chat for Neovim Seth Godin Amy Hoy My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins This book will teach you how to write better by Neville Medhora Carbon...
RailsConf recap with John Nunemaker
Josh and Ben are joined by John Nunemaker to discuss their recent trip to Detroit for RailsConf, as well as the announcement from RubyCentral that 2025 will mark the final RailsConf (though not the last Rails conference!). Later in the episode, Josh and Ben reveal the outcome of their Honeybadger Insights launch goal and discuss the team's last dev cycle. John also shares an update on his work with Flipper! Links: Chartkick Frictionless Generators Flipper todo_or_die gem heya gem Userlist John N...
Insights Into Our Marketing Playbook
This week, Josh and Ben dive deep into the marketing strategy for their new product, Insights, in response to a listener question. They talk about what groups they are targeting first, some of the planned marketing tactics for reaching each group, and how they are building awareness within the Honeybadger app without annoying existing users. Links: pg_cron Judoscale Traction Insights tour page Insights announcement blog post Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.soci...
Holy Ship! Insights is Live!
This week Josh and Ben discuss shipping Insights, what's next for the product, and their strategies to get people to actually use it. Plus Ben shares the results from his latest performance science projects. Grab your safety glasses and headphones! Links: Lab Tech Yabeda Yabeda for Insights Vector Fluentd Evil Martians blog Scientist Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud...
An Exceptional Week At Honeybadger
This week Josh and Ben discuss shipping a Clickhouse migration and Honeybadger's new look. They also talk about Exceptional Creatures hitting number one on Hacker News and being featured at the top of Ruby Weekly. Plus, did Ben get interviewed by a rubber duck? Links: Exceptional Creatures Kamal Daily Lex Clickhouse Activerecord Scientist RealGeeks Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger...
Making UI Changes While Avoiding Pitchforks
Today Josh and Ben are talking about UI changes in order to lay the foundation to launch and integrate Insights into Honeybadger as well as steps they are taking to avoid some rollout mistakes they've made in the past. They also reveal how testers are liking Insights so far! Links: Derek Sivers Flipper Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger...
Our Big Hairy Audacious Goal
GOOAAALLL!!! This week Ben and Josh discuss how to get Honeybadger's growth back on track by setting a company-wide goal. They also talk about how to promote new features in your product without annoying your users and what Santa brought them for Christmas! Links: BHAG Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger...
Cutting (Almost) to the Bone
This week Josh and Ben discuss Honeybadger's recent revenue struggles, how they got to this point, and the steps they're taking to weather the storm. They also explain why 2024 could be the company's best year ever! Links: Steve Jobs - "Saying No" Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger...
’Tis The Season For Tangents!
Kevin joins Josh and Ben again this week as the trio discusses Honeybadger's hack week, processes for making bold UI/UX changes, what to do/not do if your customers hate said UI/UX changes, plus the latest trends in Crocs fashion! Links Crocs Joel on Software - Things you should never do DHH Business of Software Everyday Information Architecture Meet the badgers Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @h...
Moar badgers! Kevin Webster has entered the chat.
It's a trifecta of badgers this week as Honeybadger's own Kevin Webster takes us on a deep dive into the genesis of his baby/our new product, Insights. There is also a discussion around the challenges of dealing with burnout plus the Holy Hand Grenade! Links Meet the badgers ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger...
Insights Into Insights and Viva Las Vegas!
This week Josh and Ben give further insights into Insights and discuss challenges around shoehorning a new product into an existing one. They also talk about marketing strategies, a Las Vegas trip, and disaster recovery! All this and more in this week's episode! Links Ahoy Heya ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud Michele Hansen - "When done well, marketing and teaching are nearly indistinguishable from one another." FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerap...
FounderQuest Has Returned! Episode 100!
FounderQuest is back for episode 100! Learn why FounderQuest is down to two hosts. Listen to tales of hosting lavish RailsConf parties. Plus, don't miss the details of the secret upcoming product release that has been a year in the making! Links: Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Website...
Talking SaaS With Garrett Dimon
Show notes: Links: Garrett Dimon Minitest Heat Heat Map Reporter for Minitest Review Starting & Sustaining Sifter App Automated transcript (only about 70% accurate) Ben Welcome to FounderQuest, this has been Today, I'm interviewing Garrett Diamond Star and josh are taking the day off and I get a chat with Garrett, who's a longtime friend of mine and fantastic entrepreneur and all around great person in the world, so I'm excited to have you here. Gary, Thanks, Garrett thanks for having me. Be...
Tales From The Good/Bad Old Days Of Freelance Gigs
Show notes: Links: Sweaty Startup Hook Relay Spider season Write for Honeybadger Automated transcript (only about 75% accurate) Ben So I've been, I've been using Hook Relay over the past week and I got to say, there's nothing as useful as using your own product to make you see places where the product can be improved. So I've, I've opened a couple of issues. Yeah, yeah. And uh, I mean, they're not, they're not major things, but it's like, oh, it would be nice if this was different, would be nice...
Hook Relay Launched! Was it Fireworks or Crickets?
Show notes: Links: Hook Relay SSL Server Test Second brand marketing tips Twitter thread Xhtmlchop Hook Relay Twitter announcement Hook Relay blog announcement Derrick Reimer & Corey Haines Product Hunt launch Startup Director List Indie Hackers launch repeatedly Not very accurate auto-generated transcript: Ben - you know, last week I recorded a quick little message talking about why we weren't recording our podcast. That was in the middle of the let's encrypt ssl certificate fiasco that swe...
The Internet Broke; Why There's No Episode This Week
Show notes: Links: Umm...here's a picture of a Honeybadger sleeping on our 404 page . He's definitely sleeping. Transcription: *Note, transcription is paraphrased with 1.3% accuracy Ben "Expired certificates, yada yada yada, internet broke...no episode. Bada-boom-bada-bing, have a good weekend."...
Everyone Says It’s a Bad Idea; Should You Do It Anyway?
Show notes: Links: Felix Livni Schedulista Transcript: *This is an unedited, automated transcript, with only about 80% accuracy* Ben All right, so, uh welcome the founder quest today, you have me, Ben, because Star and josh are taking the day off and we have Felix of me who is with us or with me chatting about uh founder related stuff. It's just one of our uh, intermittent founder interview kind of episodes where we're just going to have a great chat, talk about some stuff, so welcome Felix. Tha...
Our Outbound Sales Autopsy
Show notes: Links: Saasler Koombea Hook Relay Transcript: *note - this is an unedited, automatically generated, transcript with only about 80% accuracy* Ben So I say we we just had a new customer signed up just like minutes ago and said that the reason they signed up was our podcast. So awesome. Good stuff. Good stuff. So pro tip for you says operators out there, put a little box and your on boarding, asking people how they heard about you or whatever. It's very, very informative. Starr Yeah, it...
There Ain't No Business Like No Business
Show notes: Links: Bold Badgers NFT Mantis scooter Ridwell Write for Honeybadger Transcript: *note - this is an unedited automatically generated transcript with about 80% accuracy* Josh: So we really are we doing this, uh, super quick. Do we need to like speed up our voices? Artificially Ben: The chipmonk episode. Starr: There you go. No, we should just, we should slow them down. So it'll um, we can just record a minute episode and then we'll take minutes to listen to it. Josh: Yeah, yeah. That'...
Hook Relay Is Livin' That FULL Duplex Lyfe!
Show notes Links: Hey Dumpster Fire Goatse.cx Full transcript: *This is an unedited automated transcript which is only about 80% accurate* Starr Yeah, well, sad news. Um I did not see my printing press last weekend because I I came down with a cold, it wasn't it wasn't covid, so don't worry, it's okay. Um But we're waiting for the test to come back. So you know the difference between now and the before times is now when you get a cold life shuts down and you can't really do anything until your r...
Our Ops Are Smooth Like A Jar Of Skippy
Show Notes: Links: Micromort Noblesse oblige Josh's dotfiles GitHub Code Spaces Full Transcript: Ben: Yeah. I've been holding out for the new MacBook Pros. The M1 is pretty tempting, but I want whatever comes next. I want the 16-inch new hotness that's apparently supposed to be launching in November, but I've been waiting for it so patiently for so long now. Josh: Will they have the M2? Ben: Yeah, either or that or M1X. People are kind of unsure what the odds are. Starr: Why do they do that? Why...