FounderQuest

Show Notes: This week on FounderQuest, it's a cutting room floor clips episode. Hear vintage, unreleased clips of episodes that you weren't supposed to hear. Discussions include: 90's software stores, Alan Turing, water heaters, buying top quality spyware dongles from China and even FounderQuest itself! Links: Wish Apple Arcade  Bear Day One  Babbage’s Usenet Spencer’s Gifts Charles Babbage Alan T...

Show Notes: The world is burning, yet we find ourselves settling into our weird new daily routines. This week Josh, Starr, and Ben discuss the importance of company transparency during a crisis, Tiger King, and, political trigger warning, separating health coverage from employment. Bring your marshmallows, chocolate and crackers! Links: The Witcher 3 Scribendi The Office - Micheal's casual jeans T...

This week on PandemicQuest Josh, Starr and Ben share insider trading tips via the dark web, explain why aliens haven't attacked yet, and their thoughts around starting a SaaS company for hand sanitizer. The truth isn't out there, it's in here! Can you handle it? Links: Kodak Calendar Josh's Investing Blog Post Daddy Daycare Kindergarten Cop Animal Crossing Doom Jack Bogle Full Transcript: Starr: W...

Glove up, mask on, and tune in to this week’s FounderQuest! Starr, Ben and Josh talk hot investing tips now that our 401(k)s are gone, plans for the “Honey Bunker,” pivoting away from remote and back to co-located working, Animal Crossing, hoarding Mucinex, and the Corona vs. Pacifico beer debate is finally settled. Show Notes: Links: Daniel Kahneman Mucinex Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch Jeff Be...

Ben, Josh and Starr are transmitting...err...broadcasting from deep within the COVID-19 epicenter on this week's FounderQuest. They talk about life in our brave new COVID-19 World, Tailwind CSS, and reminisce about the old freelancing days in the time of Big Mouth Billy Bass! Show Notes Links: The Social Network Tailwind CSS Themeforest Morpheus Reddit Covid 19 Basecamp Ruby Central Comic-Con Torn...

Join Ben, Starr, and Josh on this week's FounderQuest for a look at our dystopian future. Ben shares the most interesting questions he received while interviewing and the discussion results in the creation of an onboarding manual for time traveling job candidates. Also, Discover which host, like, bought a totally rad pager, like, this month. Beep Beep! Show Notes Links: Pagersdirect.net Pagerduty...

This week on FounderQuest, Josh, Starr, and Ben hypothesize how long Honeybadger could keep going if they went off the grid given the current pace of tech churn. They also discuss going all-in on COBOL and whether framework trends are actually any different than fashion trends. Get lost in this week's FounderQuest! Show Notes Links: How to Build a Blog in 15 Minutes with Rails Lindy Effect Program...

This week Josh, Ben, and Starr talk vintage console games and announce details about Honeybadger's upcoming RailsConf blow out. The episode then pinballs over to dismissing FU money, insights on hiring and more. Hold on to your headphones! Show Notes Links: RailsConf Waza Remus & Romulus SAML DHH Tableau Calendly M Night Syamalan Full Transcription: Josh: It all started with Remus and Romulus,...

The honeybadgers have been busy this week! Ben, Josh and Starr each have work that shipped this week that they want to brag on. This episode strides over vast expanses, covering issues like compliance, open-source marketing and content marketing. It all builds up to a big reveal at the end, where we finally announce a new Honeybadger effort: the RailsConf Indie Lounge. Full Transcript: Starr: Can...

In this episode the Badgers talk about their predictions for the future of work. They also discuss some of the pros and cons to working remotely and how to prevent loneliness. Conveniently enough, Honeybadger is also hiring a JS developer. Learn the secrets of becoming a Honeybadger! Show Links: Job Listing Code[ish] Podcast Buddhism - No Mind  Justserve.org Full Transcription: Josh :             ...

Ben and Starr have an informal fireside chat about recent tax changes and how to navigate them when running a SaaS company with nationwide sales. Learn about some of the surprising rules some states have around business classifications and why you might have to pay sales tax in one state but not another. Uncle Sam is crashing the internet party, listen and make sure you're prepared! Links: Justin...

History is made this week as FounderQuest welcomes its first ever guest, Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm! A debate ensues around whether it's better to build a product for a niche market or target the larger market as a whole. Also, the next time Jeff Bezos corners you with unsolicited advice for your bootstrapped startup, just ignore him. Listen to find out why. Show Notes: Justin Jac...

This week Josh reveals his super secret project that he's been working on and it will...BLOW...YOU...AWAY!!! Just kidding, you and your surroundings are most likely safe but it's pretty darn cool! Want more? The Founders get contrarian and talk about why they sometimes go to the trouble of building tools instead of buying ones that are readily available. They also make a case for using separate ap...

In this episode Josh, Starr, and Ben talk about each of their results from taking the CliftonStrengths assessment and debate the validity of the results. They also discuss if having differing strengths and weaknesses has helped or hindered them working as a team. Show Notes: Links: Macklemore   5 Minute Dungeon   Common Sense With Dan Carlin StrengthsFinder StrenghtsFinder 2.0 (book) Cliff Clavin...

The trio is morphing into a duo on this week's episode of FounderQuest, Fireside Chat edition. Ben and Josh talk about their 2020 resolutions, upping their serverless usage, side projects, and holiday plans. Ben also drops a major update from a previous episode. Links: Cliff Mass Weather Blog Continuous Integration (CI) Unicorn Project Phoenix Project   Dependabot Jenkins GitHub Actions Buildkite...

This week Josh, Ben, and Starr look back at all of the things that Honeybadger shipped in the last 12 months. They also give Apple some free management advice and provide their thoughts on MicroConf's latest announcement. Lastly, will Honeybadger move away from error monitoring and bet its future on textbox applications? Tune in and find out! Links: Exponent Podcast Johny Ive MicroConf Hiring Proc...

This week on FounderQuest Josh, Starr, and Ben talk about the quandary of not knowing how to build something until after you’ve already built it. Therefore, once it's built it can be hard to fight the urge to tear it down and build it again taking into account all of lessons that were learned along the way. The Badgers also imagine a rewrite of Honeybadger using the latest in 90s technology. Trigg...

The guys throw the show notes out the window and kick it freestyle on this special Thanksgiving episode. All of today’s hard-hitting questions are answered: Dark meat or light meat? Turkey or duck? The warm glow of a fireplace or the warm glow of a database upgrade progress bar? Plus, the guys talk about when to start holiday feature freezes and what Honeybadger is working on/not working on this D...

This week on FounderQuest, the guys talk about their decision to offer a free plan alongside the paid plans for Honeybadger and how it impacted the overall business. Josh is also back shares the hottest of takes from his recent trip to Nashville to attend RubyConf. As usual, the show goes off the rails and talks about flying, Ben’s Eye of Sauron approach to fiscal management and an acquisition str...

This week Ben and Starr talk about Honeybadger's efforts using marketplaces to get new business and whether it's worth the development time needed to set them up. They also discuss Honeybadger's participation in the GitHub Student Developer Pack, creating a code of conduct that still allows for free swag, and tease out a special announcement for RailsConf 2020! Links: GitHub Student Developer Pack...

On this week's episode of FounderQuest Josh, Ben, and Starr talk about their Soc 2 and GDPR compliance efforts. They go over the different strategies to handle compliance, the potential costs involved, and discuss if it's worth the time and money. When embarking on their compliance research, the guys also stumbled across some surprising claims companies are using to stretch the truth on actually b...

This week on FounderQuest the guys weigh in on a recent debate sparked by Jason Fried at Basecamp around the value of backlogs. In short, Fried proports that backlogs cause unnecessary stress and that if an idea will be forgotten about if it isn’t written down, then it probably isn’t important in the first place. Honeybadger does have a pretty significant backlog and some on the team find it more...

The guys talk about creating content for Honeybadger and the difficulties switching back and forth from writing prose to writing code. Starr channels his inner Anna Wintour and describes his latest initiative recruiting developers to write guest posts on the blog. Josh talks about his process for writing evergreen content for the newsletter. Links: Leveling Up The Devil Wears Prada Seth Godin Indi...

The guys talk about how they are scaling up their awesome customer service without adding headcount and their journey from email customer support, to chat support, and back to email support. They also discuss how to deal with informational silos and if they should transition Honeybadger to an invite-only luxury brand. Links: Intercom Help Scout Honeybadger Full Transcript: Announcer:           Nev...

Season Two of FounderQuest is upon you! The guys discuss what they did while on summer break, releasing breadcrumbs on Honeybadger and why they help when debugging, launching the new blog, Amazon RDS, and Airwolf! Links: Write for our blog . Full Transcription: Josh:               We can't all be book-learned like you star. Starr:              Yeah, I'm book smart. Josh:               Yeah. Starr:...