Tweets

RT @emmabo: i just need people to understand that before cell phones we had to call landlines and your friend's parents would answer and YO…

I'm encouraging indie founders to think about whether the market/idea they're pursuing is worth the risk/investment.

A founder needs to learn how to identify a bad bet, fold, and move on. 🎴

https://justinjackson.ca/quit

In their latest ep of @indielifepod, @dagorenouf & @jmckinven explore this:

"If you don't look at the risks, you're vulnerable. The reason we failed and we got exhausted, and I burned out, is that we were constantly swimming against the fact that it wasn't a good business."

@michaelkoper That's not bad advice. 😉

@noahwbragg 🎯 yes.

@noahwbragg This is more of a warning to focus on markets/ideas that are worth the risk.

Folks should learn to identify bad bets early and move on (I spent way too much time on bad bets; I should have ejected from those sooner).

"You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em…

@zackgilbert @aarondfrancis Yeah, without a reliable financial engine, the indie lifestyle dies pretty fast!

@dagorenouf and @jmckinven discussed this on their most recent episode too:

https://indielife.fm/episodes/22-closing-down-logology-dagos-startup

Bootstrapping is a huge risk (financially).

You're gambling some of the best years of your career to make a bet that might not work out.

Therefore, make sure that the idea you're working on has the potential to reward you for the risk you're taking. Be realistic about the…

@_knolan @yongfook Well done! 🙌

If your churn numbers are reasonable (and your margins are good), it seems like dropping to part-time at work is doable!

(And depending on your personal costs, you might be able to go FT now?)

@_lhermann @IndieHackers @lizmhermann @stagetimerio I just finished listening.

Inspiring to hear your energy and how you two are working towards your dream together. 🙌

@phuctm97 🤯 I would have never thought they’d shut this down.

@asmartbear @TransistorFM @MathiasHansen @surfoffice Agreed!

Our last retreat was in Montreal, and it was amazing.

https://justinjackson.ca/team-retreat

@kvlly @TransistorFM @MathiasHansen @surfoffice It's one of the locations we're considering!

I'm going to add more tools, strategies, and planning tips for remote team retreats here in our handbook if you're interested:

https://github.com/TransistorFM/handbook/blob/master/remote-team-reatreats.md

Planning a team retreat for @TransistorFM (we're all remote).

I was looking for a tool to suggest good "halfway points" between 5 different coordinates (so we have roughly the same travel time).

@MathiasHansen recommended this tool, and it's perfect!

https://www.surfoffice.com/location-finder

@PPCKirk Yup. Time to get off GA and use something simple, like @usefathom.

@abigailotwell Reminds me of this Ted Lasso clip as he’s leaving Europe:

“I’ve finally realized that air conditioning is a privilege, and not a right.”

😄

@mattwensing Just subscribed!

@mattwensing Didn’t realize you had a newsletter!

@brennandunn Congrats! 🙌

@ianlandsman What does this mean?

@glenmccallumcan Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. 😅

@colinyjchung @waitbutwhy Yes! 🙌

@taylorotwell @aarondfrancis @chris__sev @abigailotwell Fort Smith, AR vs Vancouver, BC

They're both nice places, but it's nuts how much more house you get in Arkansas! 🤯

@jasonfried That’s what I thought!! 💯

Asking my business partner if this can be a business expanse.

@dagorenouf @logologydesign Sending you and @LucieBaratte all the ❤️ in the world.

There's no shame in moving on! Quitting something that isn’t working gives you the space to find something that will work. 💪

Health and relationships first, everything else is secondary.

RT @mijustin: The product validation stage is less about asking:

“Would you pay for this? Would you use this? Have you struggled with thi…

“An Echo Chamber makes its members feel perfectly informed while crippling them as intellectuals.

It teaches them that knowledge is easy and gets them hooked on the feeling of knowing the truth about everything without having to work for it.”

— @waitbutwhy, What's Our Problem

@KatharineWathan @adamwathan 🎉🎉🎉

Just had a great call with @TimLeland. 🙌

Tim is a longtime listener of @buildyoursaas.

He reached out after the @aarondfrancis episode and wanted to share his experience of building projects on the side for 10 years before finally going full-time with http://T.LY

When you're evaluating a product opportunity, look for motivated people in motion (MPiM?)

There's a big difference between someone who says:

"I'd love to start my own online business one day,"

And someone who is actively searching for:

"best e-commerce platforms"

Taking action (buying a product/hiring an employee) takes a lot of energy. It requires sufficient motivation.

People generally don't act unless something is pushing/pulling them to do so. The desire builds until they can't ignore it anymore.

People will often only explicitly define what they need/want once they start searching for a solution.

Before that, it's just a desire that's gradually building until it reaches a threshold: "Dammit, I need to do something about this."

Whether you're building a product, selling a service, or trying to get hired for a job, the key is to target:

1. Folks who have identified what they need/want
2. Folks who are ready to do something about it
3. Folks who have the means (time/money) to do something about it

@mariepoulin That is wild!

Read @mattruby's full piece here. It's a good read. 👍

https://open.substack.com/pub/mattruby/p/we-dont-know-how-to-look

"Look, I’m a slave to tech too – I just wish we were better at acknowledging the tradeoffs we’re making. Otherwise, it’s impossible to make mindful choices about incorporating tech into our lives. That means we remain stuck in an infinite “move fast and break things” machine…

You’re not looking for people who “struggle with this problem,” you’re looking for people who have acted on that struggle, and are looking for a solution.

The product validation stage is less about asking:

“Would you pay for this? Would you use this? Have you struggled with this?”

And more about discovering people who are:

- already searching for a solution
- already using a solution but are looking for something better

@waitbutwhy Please do a printed version of the book!

I’d like to send it to family and friends (some of whom only read physical books)

“Disney movies simplify the world into a binary digital code of 1s and 0s. There’s pure good (1), pure bad (0), and rarely anything in between. Real people are complex and flawed, full of faults but almost always worthy of compassion.”

— @waitbutwhy, What's Our Problem?

“There is a vibrant world of high-rung politics. There’s just an even larger world down below, where politics is less about working together to build a more perfect union and more about the good guys triumphing over the bad guys.”

— @waitbutwhy, What's Our Problem?

RT @phuctm97: Inspired by @mijustin in his popular post: https://justinjackson.ca/i-quit-my-desk/

🎯 good thread.

I'll add a bit more:

If new tech really is The Next Big Thing, we need to go beyond assessing it merely on its business merits and discuss whether this Next Big Thing is a good thing for society.

Big difference between a "hot take" and a reasonable concern. https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1668268395983253505

@mjwhansen 🙏🙏🙏

@mattwensing @jasonlk These days, I’m guessing only about 10-20% of our trials come from my audience.

Vast majority are folks “in motion” who want to start a podcast.

(most of our signups come from existing momentum in our market, not my personal audience)

I highly recommend listening to her audio version as well (hosted on @TransistorFM! 🙌)

https://whatworkspod.transistor.fm/episodes/ep-429-maybe-bigger-isnt-better

🎯 piece by @taragentile:

"As waves of mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs have hit the big podcast studios, legacy media always asks, "What does this mean for the podcasting industry?!" The assumption is that if the big studios can't make it, maybe the whole of podcasting is…

@jasonlk @mattwensing The numbers look quite a bit different if you’re credit card upfront, with a 7-14 day free trial.

I enjoyed this deep dive into “@DCoulbourne’s builds his own ffmpeg in Rust™” on @noplanstomerge:

https://overcast.fm/+pVps6z5gQ

@dvassallo It depends on the consumer psychology and behavior in that product category:

If customers are less likely to pay $180 (at scale), and it’s more likely that I can convince more customers to pay $10/month, than I would choose $10/month.

@grdeken @patio11 @joshuaanderton @TransistorFM In this case, we’re just going to monitor how many more customer conversations we get in @crisp_im

@jessicamwicks @patio11 @joshuaanderton @TransistorFM Thank you! 🙏

Thanks @Netlify, for making it easy to deploy fun projects to the web. ☝️

I'm ready to bring the 🔥 at Hack Night tonight. 🤣

One experiment we’re running is making “Chat with us” more prominent on the homepage.

Rationale:

- The more conversations we have with potential customers we have, the more signups we get.
- Customer support is a key differentiator with Transistor. This is a good way for us to…

@patio11 @joshuaanderton @TransistorFM In this update, @joshuaanderton built a bunch of custom @statamic stuff: custom blog post types, custom nav, new CTA sections, and an automatic Google Structured Data generator.

(Would love other SaaS using Statamic to take a look and tell me what they think! @CasJam)

"Build things; tell people about them." – @patio11

👀 Here are some of the SaaS marketing experiments that @joshuaanderton and I are running over at @TransistorFM.

Would love to hear what you think! 👂

@JudoHacker @dvassallo 🏅 gold metal tweet

🤣

@andber @usefathom @statamic YES 😍

@jeremylatham Our local beer is Okanagan Springs (“1516” is their main brew).

But a surprising number of locals drink Old Milwaukee 🤣

@jovvvian 🤣

There’s nothing like reading the local paper in a small town.

New @TransistorFM stickers.

PODCASTICORN!! 🦄 🎤

RT @amandalhu: Everyone who is wearing N95s again for the smoke: write your future self a note about what it feels like to have to protect…

RT @edgarrmcgregor: 1. New York, 2023
2. San Francisco, 2020
3. Los Angeles, 2020
4. Sydney, 2019

In the past 4 years alone, each city has…

If you’re in #vernonbc, I’m putting on one more of these this Friday.

@aarondfrancis Yup. Agreed. Same is true for podcasts. 👍

@aarondfrancis I'm here for the 🌶 takes!

Fantastic discussion on @buildyoursaas for founders and team members. We covered:

- How to navigate founder stress
- The particular kinds of stress that founders face
- How to navigate team dynamics, and help individuals do their best work
- “Work self” vs “home self” https://twitter.com/marcelladotco/status/1666503131834793987

@yongfook 🙌 congrats!

@adamwathan Oooh. This looks good. 🤩

RT @molly0xFFF: an increasing number of top 20/top 50/top 100 coins are being described as securities by the SEC, particularly after today'…

@iChris @TransistorFM @marcelladotco 💯 this.

@asmartbear They were each helpful at a different stage of the company (although they’ve all compounded over time).

I have no idea how to prioritize them. 😂

So much of success seems to be the accumulation of small strengths over time.

@arithisandthat We (@joshuaanderton) and I have been trying to make this the best guide for learning how to:

⭐ Pick a podcast topic
🎙️ Choose a microphone
💻 Record and edit your episode
🟢 Upload to @spotify, @ApplePodcasts, etc.
📈 Promote your podcast
💰 Monetize

https://transistor.fm/how-to-start-a-podcast/

@asmartbear A few things that worked for Transistor:

1. Differentiating through our story/personality/POV
2. Differentiating through pricing/biz model
3. Differentiating through customer service
4. Differentiating by understanding customers better (and delivering high-leverage features)

Every decision has an ongoing "maintenance cost."

Be sure to count that cost before you make a commitment.

https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1207691055404965888

Everyone sees the tradeoffs, benefits, and drawbacks of each decision differently.

Personally, I've tried to make decisions that result in more simplicity, calmness, and enjoyment for me and the people around me.

https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1228183854298451970

For Transistor, doing enterprise sales would probably earn us more money but would result in us having to do things that would make our jobs less enjoyable:

- more meetings
- more overhead
- more compliance
- more legal wrangling
- more complex billing

It's not for us. 😅

The decision for a business to do FB ads seems innocuous enough, but it means:

- Installing a tracking pixel everywhere on your site
- You need a FB accnt to manage your ads 😫
- Spending lots of $$$ and time learning to optimize your ads

For me, the cons outweigh the benefits.

We once got two kittens.

The kids LOVED them.

But:
- I was extremely allergenic
- They destroyed our furniture
- Their shots/vet bills were expensive
- We couldn't just take off on vacation
- The cat litter became a regular problem

For us, the cons outweighed the benefits.

The decisions we make can have a profound effect on our quality of life.

Each decision kicks off a cascading set of consequences, not all of which are anticipated.

A few examples:

1. Deciding to get a pet
2. Deciding to do FB ads
3. Deciding to do enterprise sales

@arvidkahl I'm "first generation" in the sense that my parents didn't have a business (they were both teachers), but I had a lot of encouragement and guidance from them (both had an entrepreneurial spirit).

@AndrewWarner Is it because all the channels are more crowded?

(More participants?)

Now that media has been democratized (and there are more voices), what causes something to break through?

Do you think it's harder to break through the noise today than it was 5 years ago?

(with your marketing, promotion, ideas, product, video, song, blog post, podcast)

@voozahq 🤣

@AlbanBrooke Made you one.

@TheOmarZenhom can't wait to listen to podcasts on this thing! 😜

https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1665832725993910273

nbd just listening to podcasts on my apple goggles

#WWDC23

My son just made a good point: when you're using these Apple goggles with Facetime... you can see other people, but they can't see you?

#WWDC23

That cable though 😬

Ok. I'm wearing these snowboarding. #WWDC23

RT @DurvidImel: Apple just revealed a Screen Distance feature to keep you from looking to close at your display, but they’re about to annou…

<everyone just waiting through these watchOS updates to see if Apple is doing VR....>

#WWDC23

Love the wallpaper for Apple's new MacOS Sonoma #WWDC23

Caption this.

#WWDC23

Watching Craig run downstairs is why I'm tuning in.

Top highlight so far.

#WWDC23