Build Your SaaS

This week, Jon and Justin talk about new developments with Transistor : We've taken over $100,000 in funding (from our customers!) We harken back to July of 2018 (right before our official launch), when Justin was stressed about money. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: ProfitWell gives you free subscription metrics for your SaaS. Just plug in your billing system (Stripe, Zuora, Braintree, Chargebee, Recur...

More honest updates from Jon and Justin on what it's like to be building Transistor.fm : People can't believe that we're using this in production. Why SaaS feels better than other businesses we've been involved with. "Kubernetes sounds like a Russian swat squad." There's a temptation to over-engineer things; but there's only two of us working on Transistor! The enterprise sales process seems like...

Jon and Justin share some honest updates about as they continue to build their SaaS (Transistor.fm): Justin swears in this episode. We're half way through 2019!?! Jon is wondering if donuts are big in Canada. Official Transistor start dates: May 2017: actual incorporation date January 2018: Jon and Justin sign partnership documents August 2018: official launch "Some days I feel like I've been doin...

Jon and Justin share some honest updates about as they continue to build their SaaS (Transistor.fm): Jon asks: "how do you prioritize with limited resources?" "Working on something for an hour only isn’t really feasible. it takes about 20 minutes just to back into it." Justin is thinking about " the myth of the niche market " This latest revenue update has Jon and Justin scared. 😱 ★ Thanks to our...

Happy Two-Four ya hosers! After a Canadian long weekend, Jon and Justin convene to talk about: Justin thinks non-alcoholic drinks are going to be huge. Jon just shipped an update that puts RSS feeds on a CDN. We're still struggling to "find the time" to work on big features. Building things slowly vs BEING IN A RUSH! ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsamiq : You can meet the support team at balsamiq.co...

Jon and Justin are wrestling with thoughts about growth: "Our current rate of growth is nice: it feels sustainable." – Justin "It feels less sustainable for me, because I'm working a full-time job." – Jon We’re able to keep up with demand, and enjoy the process. There are all these stories about folks whose companies are growing like crazy. They’re just always adding more people, more process, mor...

Jon and Justin are back from Portland and wrestling with ideas, bots, and CMSes: Justin's spouse wants to know why we wouldn't sell for $5 million (and each get $2.5 million) Jon found some bot traffic that we need to eliminate from our analytics, and it's giving him a Postgres headache. Justin is trying a bunch of different CMS options: Vapid, Statamic in an effort to get off WordPress. ★ Thanks...

Jon and Justin do a founder retreat in Portland with Darby Frey and Shay Howe ( Lead Honestly ). We hashed out some ideas for: How do you start building a really big feature? What does version 1 of our "dynamic content" feature look like? Setting up Mixpanel: creating event triggers, funnels, and onboarding. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsamiq : They make a low-fidelity wireframing tool, specifical...

If you're struggling with pricing your app, listen to this episode! Ben Orenstein, Jordan Gal, Patrick Campbell, and I discussed whether "charge more" is always the right answer. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsamiq : They make a low-fidelity wireframing tool, specifically geared for non-designers. Get in the zone, and I feel creative right away. Try out their free trial: balsamiq.com Clubhouse.io :...

Jon is away so Justin called up Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. In this episode we covered: How Laravel become the most popular backend framework on GitHub. Surprise! Taylor wasn't really into computers before he created Laravel. What was Taylor's motivation? Why did he create this, even though there were other alternatives? What's Laravel's secret? Why did it succeed? How is Laravel a busi...

Jon's away! Today I talked to Spencer Fry, from Podia about: How do you find a good startup idea? What are the worst types of companies to start? Should you raise money or bootstrap? Why the target market for your product matters. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsamiq : They make a low-fidelity wireframing tool, specifically geared for non-designers. Get in the zone, and I feel creative right away. T...

Recorded on April fools day! Here's what we covered: If you're bootstrapping, when should you get a salary? An update on the worst day ever. (We're fine now) A SPECIAL SURPRISE "It feels like there is this convergence in podcasting and I don’t know what to do about it." Anxiety and insecurity about "missing out on better opportunities." ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsamiq : They make a low-fidelity...

On Sunday, we had a service outage. Jon and Justin talk about what happened: TLS / SSL day of horror Sunday morning Justin started getting messages from a few Android users that they couldn’t download episodes. Then, the afternoon hits, and we started getting a flood of tweets, DMs, text messages, and support requests. We talk about how we fixed it, and what we'd like to change for next time. Also...

Lots of interesting items this week: Justin got a personal message from an NFL player Jon moved everyone over to the new CDN Podcasting has a lot of confusing paradigms for users It took two days of transferring files (just under 1TB) Justin signed up for the Transistor as if he was a customer He live-streamed the whole thing (got tons of good input from live chat) Jon is wondering how we're going...

Good stuff this week: Justin wants to know: when's the last time you changed your business' homepage? Jon does a deep dive into Apple's podcasting docs. Justin built a status (uptime) page for Transistor using Tailwind. Jon thinks there is enterprise demand for private podcasts. Justin chats about Startup Kung-Fu. They both chat about specialists vs generalists. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Clubhouse...

Good stuff this week: Jon ran into Myke Hurley at the Cards Against Humanity office. Whether you should work from home or the office. Spotify analytics update in Transistor . How do you feel about "walled gardens?" Sometimes the best plan is to do nothing . Just wait and see what happens. Billing updates for delinquent customers Did someone try to phish us on-air? ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Balsami...

Jon and Justin share their progress on: The bandwidth / CDN cost problem (and how it might affect our profitability). Marco Arment: "It would cost them probably thousands of dollars a month in bandwidth and CDN costs to host our show." We made a decision on whether we'll take investment now. (Hats off to Earnest Capital, TinySeed, and Indie. VC for offering such great options!) Should founders use...

This week, Jon and Justin are wrestling with some heavy startup founder topics: What should your SaaS company's gross margins be? How much is bandwidth going to cost us? How does it affect our margins? Example: [Account A] does 495,000 downloads in a month, average file size is 8 MB, that’s 3960 GB of bandwidth in a month. If bandwidth is $0.01 per GB, that’s $39.60 just for bandwidth for that one...

Dave Zohrob, the CEO of Chartable, chats with Justin about bootstrapping a startup in the podcast space. We cover: Why Jon and Justin started Transistor Navigating co-founder relationships How to stand out and build a podcast audience in 2019 Our thoughts on Anchor (this was recorded pre-acquisition) This is a re-broadcast of the Chartable Radio podcast . ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Alitu.com : Alit...

In this episode: Jon and Justin open up about the challenges of bootstrapping "on the side."  How things have gotten harder (in some ways) now that we have customers. Jon is finding it hard to juggle his day job, and getting time to build the "big features." Justin flip-flips back and forth about investment. Would investors and advisors meddle too much? We also discuss the Spotify rumors: buying G...

In this episode, Jon and Justin discuss the golden rule for growing your audience. This could mean: How to get more paying customers for your software product. How to get more followers on Twitter. How to get more podcast listeners. ★ Thanks to our sponsors: Alitu.com : Alitu removes all the tech headaches associated with producing your podcast. They take care of processing, editing & publishi...

In this episode Jon and Justin discuss talk about how you should think about your software product's competition. Why you shouldn’t focus on the competition It’s a distraction. The main point by many folks is: “when you focus too much on the competition, it means you’re not focusing enough on your customers.” It causes anxiety. “ Last summer, I stopped[reading industry news]. I had just reached th...

We received some product marketing questions from Nirav Mehta:  How to get the word out about your SaaS? Should you pursue partnerships? How can you get distribution for your software product? What marketing channels work best? Build anticipation before you launch One big opportunity many folks miss is building up anticipation before they launch. Examples: Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger shared desi...

Jon Buda and Justin Jackson make predictions for the tech industry, the podcasting space, and the startup ecosystem. Predictions for 2019 There will be a global economic downturn. Companies will be looking for more affordable marketing spend. Brands that don't have a strong relationship with their audience will lose. This could be increase the number of companies who invest in podcasting. Audio is...

In this episode, we talk about the different types of customers for a SaaS: B to C: selling to consumers. Here, we'd think of products and services like Verizon, iPhone apps, etc... B to Prosumer: selling to prosumers. Prosumers are power users; serious hobbyists. Sometimes, they earn a bit of money from their hobby. Examples: a photographer who shoots a few weddings a year, a painter who sells a...