Episode description

Show Notes:
Links:
Dithering
Stratechery
Promised Land
Shape Up
National Treasure

Full Transcript:
Ben:
I was looking through our accounts this morning and just doing some database checking and looking at some accounts that had been in our database for like seven years. Like, "Oh yeah. I remember them." And they're like old friends basically. It's like, "Oh, the memories."

Josh:
Memories.

Starr:
Yeah. That's funny. Last week I remember, it just hit me in the middle of the week, I was making jokes about our customers and like squeezing blood from turnips. And I just feel like I should point out that those were jokes, specifically because it's kind of absurd that we would do that because we treat our customers maybe too well, I don't know. But I realized not everybody might know me personally and realize I'm joking.

Josh:
There are those who will too, yeah.

Starr:
Yeah, yeah. And they go on to run private equity firms.

Josh:
Right? My thoughts exactly.

Ben:
Oh dear.

Josh:
We won't say who.

Ben:
No names.

Starr:
Well, we'll name names for our Patreon supporters. They'll get the special feed where we just like dish on everybody.

Ben:
This is where we announce we're setting up our Patreon for a minimum contribution of $1000 a month.

Josh:
That's genius.

Starr:
Oh, my God. Can you imagine? That would be amazing, like all the secret insider backroom knowledge. We have enough to fill up about like 10 minutes of a show.

Ben:
Well, it could be the FounderQuest extended edition. Right? So in the normal edition we just cover the percentages, but in the extended edition you have real numbers, right?

Starr:
Oh, there you go.

Josh:
That's amazing, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I like that.

Ben:
Yeah. So I don't know if you know of Ben Thompson, he writes Stratechery. It's fantastic.

Starr:
Wait, say that again?

Ben:
Stratechery by Ben Thompson.

Josh:
I was just listening to the daily update today. Catching up on daily updates.

Ben:
So he started a paid newsletter back before paid newsletters were cool, fantastic writer, good stuff. Talks about tech and legal and all kinds of fun things that we care about. And he and Gruber of Daring Fireball fame recently started a paid podcast. Recently, I mean, it's been a few months, several months now, but it's still kind of new to me. So I subscribed to that as well, and I love their format. It's 15 minutes, no more, no less, three times a week. And they just talk about the stuff that's currently going on, the same kinds of things that you would find at Gruber's site or at Thompson's site. So tech and legal and society and stuff.

Josh:
Current events.

Ben:
Yeah. Paid podcasts, man, that's where it's at.

Josh:
Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. They basically like just set a timer and then at the end of when it starts to run out, they play this little time running out stopwatch thing and then it just cuts it off. They have to wrap it up or I think it cuts them off mid sentence.

Ben:
Yeah. They have some tight editing going on.

Josh:
They're pretty good.

Ben:
It's fun.

Starr:
How much does it cost? I'm curious.

Josh:
$5 a month, I think.

Ben:
Yeah. I pay annually, so I don't even remember.

Starr:
Okay, so it's not like a luxury exclusive type product.

Josh:
No.

Ben:
It's not super premium like FounderQuest extended edition.

Starr:
Exactly.

Josh:
I imagine with their audience, $5 a month adds up.

Ben:
Yeah, I imagine it does.

Starr:
Yeah. But ours is SOC 2 compliant.

Ben:
Right, right. We've got compliance on our side.

Josh:
The other thing I found interesting about their format or about how they sell it is that they also bundle, like Ben for instance with Stratechery, you can buy Dithering with your Stratechery subscription. And I think it gives you maybe a bundle discount or something slight. And I don't know if Gruber does the same thing or what, but I think...

Starr:
Dithering? Is that the name of the...

Josh:
Yeah, Dithering is the name of the podcast.

Starr:
Oh, okay. I thought you meant like image dithering. I was really confused there for a second.

Josh:
Yeah. I guess it would help if we told people what the name is. But I thought that was interesting. So you can buy it through their, I don't know what their website is. Just search Dithering. But yeah, you can subscribe there or you can subscribe to both.

Ben:
Yeah. I have the bundle and it's so worth it. If you're into tech and you're into modern antitrust and things like that, it's totally worth it.

Josh:
Yeah. Tech and society.

Ben:
Yep.

Josh:
We should get him on the pod.

Ben:
Yeah. That'd be cool. Actually, it was kind of...

Josh:
That's what the kids say these days.

Starr:
You know who we should get on this podcast? I've been saying we should get this person on forever. Barack Hussein Obama.

Ben:
Oh, speaking of, I've been reading his book, his latest book.

Starr:
Yeah?

Ben:
That is an excellent book. You should definitely check it out.

Starr:
What's it called again?

Ben:
I don't know. I just read it. I don't look at the cover. But it's great. The writing is just top-notch, the man is a genius. Not that I know him or he owes me any favors or anything, it's just, I mean obviously he's well-spoken, I mean he's got good evidence of that over his eight years of his presidency, but just the book is basically a reflection of his experiences leading up to becoming president and that's as far as I've gotten so far, I've gotten to election night, he just won. But the way that he writes, just the conversational style, and the context that he brings into his experiences running for president, it's just a great read.

Starr:
Well, cool, I'll have to check it out. We had the weirdest madness of crowds thing happen last night in our household. So I'm just going to tell this story, it's not related to FounderQuest. I mean, I guess you could make it a point...

Josh:
Everything is related.

Starr:
Yeah. Everything is related. I can tie it back to marketing, like look at this, look at me. So this friend group texted us last night and was like, "Hey, on the down low there's this clinic that has a bunch of COVID vaccine, it's about to expire and you can just go sign up for an appointment there, and because it's about to expire, they just want whoever." Right? And we heard stories about this happening at various places. And we're like, "Okay. I guess this is fine." So we go on and make an appointment and everything. And then about like an hour later, we're just sitting around being like, "This just seems a little weird, right? Like if it's about to expire, how can I make an appointment for next week? It just seems a little off."

Starr:
And so we started asking around and it turns out that like everybody, so many different people we knew had gotten a special on the lowdown tip from their friends that there was a batch of vaccine about to expire. And then in a parenting group, somebody in DC posted about like, "Hey, have you heard this thing that's going around? There's this batch of vaccine that's about to expire." And so we canceled our appointments and so did everybody else in that group. And so I was thinking abou...