Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Ben presses to meet the Upcase & Tapas launch deadline, and shares some lessons learned from its preparation, promotion, and launch. On Drip, Derrick rolls out more UI updates, is looking to hire JavaScript and Rails engineers, and details his hiring & interview process. Upcase FormKeep Upcase & Tapas ConversionCast

Ben halts the search for a marketer to instead hire a sales consultant and focus on growth himself, and announces a collaboration with Ruby Tapas. Derrick enrolls in a machine learning class, and contemplates Drip team & work structure. Upcase FormKeep What My Calendar Looks Like - Jason Fried Upcase + Tapas Promo Ruby Tapas Mastering Product Launches How We Structure Our Work and Teams at Bas...

Derrick takes a solo retreat to reflect on new goals for Drip, and draws up preliminary plans for scaling team size / structure, as well as speeding up velocity through parallelism. Ben shares his experience with GrowthHackers Projects, hides the lowest plan and implements an automated annual upgrade reminder, pitches a content partnership for Upcase, considers a thoughtbot products bundle, and re...

Ben & Derrick discuss music in the workplace, optimizing Redis, reaching larger markets beyond early adopters, and standing out in job application e-mails. Upcase FormKeep Hostile Architecture on 99% Invisible twemproxy Crossing the Chasm : Geoffrey A. Moore

Derrick considers learning a new language to be prepared for scaling Drip's optimization, and gives new details on the tech used to streamline queries for large accounts. Ben breaks down his post to finding the best candidate for product Head of Marketing, and pointers on developing an entrepreneur's mindset. Podcast Swag Bundles Upcase FormKeep Drip You Should Take A Codecation You're an Elixir D...

Ben discusses the lessons of mimicked learning and tempering of judgmental thinking gleaned from a sports book, and muses on how to apply them to career advice. On Drip, faced with a mountain of catch-up work after the holiday, Derek confronts scalability. Podcast Swag Bundles Upcase FormKeep The Inner Game of Tennis How to Get Good at Making Money - Jason Fried thoughtbot Style Guide We're Hiring...

Ben decides to hire a support firm, document support processes, completes the Hound pricing change, and prepares to make products their own division for next year. Meanwhile, on Drip, Derrick addresses a performance challenge. Podcast Swag Bundles Upcase FormKeep CoSupport Bootstrapped Web Podcast The Checklist Manifesto : Atul Gawande The Checklist I Use To Start My Day Hound

Ben is joined by Mike Perham, author of Sidekiq, to discuss running a business solo, taking a side project from hobby to full time job, and scaling support as an app grows. Upcase FormKeep Indie Hackers- Sidekiq Sidekiq Open Core Software Business Model MikePerham.com Kill Your Dependencies

On Drip, Derrick launches a free tier, and utilizes credit card anti-fraud measures. Ben publicly launches FormLinter, pauses exploring new product ideas in favor of giving attention to existing ones, and starts to rebuild the product team. They also discuss the merits of remote vs in-person collaboration, the pros and cons of open offices, and dealing with interruptions from notifications and mee...

Ben and Nick get super nerdy this week and chat about Meetspace's architecture using Go, Postgres, and HMAC including custom cookie signing, rendering, error handling, tooling, and more! Upcase FormKeep Meetspace - use code GIANTROBOTS30 for 30% off your first month Go Postgres Driver Google's Websocket Driver WebRTC Uniform Interface Secure Signed Cookies - Nick Gauthier HMAC errcheck Go linter T...

Sadly, Ben is stuck in hammock somewhere, and we are without a new episode this week. However, we would love you all to check out thoughtbot's newest podcast, interviewing inspirational designers, developers, and other makers in tech, The Laila & Brenda Show! Give their latest episode a listen here, and if you like it subscribe to their feed however you listen to podcasts! The Laila & Bren...

Ben and Nick chat about ways to pitch your product, working solo as well as sustainably, and the costs of doing business. Upcase FormKeep Meetspace - use code GIANTROBOTS30 for 30% off your first month Staying Motivated While Working Solo Nick on Twitter

Ben talks to Nick Gauthier, founder of MeetSpace, about the importance of validating ideas, reading through API documentation, and pricing surveys. Podcast Patreon Survey Upcase FormKeep MeetSpace - use code GIANTROBOTS30 for 30% off your first month HMAC Random Postgres Docs App Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter How Our Users Picked Our Pricing Go Newsletter SaaSFest Nick on Twitter

Derrick finds some new areas to improve after walking new hires through Drip's architecture, and discusses his custom billing engine. On Hound, Ben delegates the new-pricing project, and validates a new product idea. Podcast Patreon Survey Upcase FormKeep Drip Briefs FullStory Hound techzing podcast The War of Art Content Marketing ROI

Derrick brings a few more new hires onto the team, and ships a change to make clients' Javascript snippets more performant. On Hound, Ben does some direct outreach sales, considers bringing on someone to help with marketing, and muses on the balancing act between product manager, developer, and marketing. Podcast Patreon Survey Upcase FormKeep Drip Bootstrapped Web Podcast Greg Pollack Founder's T...

On Hound, Ben sends out announcements for pricing changes, questions when a decision is the "right" decision when it comes to customer feedback, and toys with per-seat pricing model feasibility. Derrick has a successful first week on-boarding the new dev-ops hire, offers Ben some advice on balancing features with price, and discusses some customer acquisition campaigns. Podcast Patreon Survey Upca...

Ben plans a camping trip, acquires a new Twitter account, releases his notes on giving great conference talks, and begins to tell users of Hound's new pricing. Derrick reacts to the announcement of Github Projects and what that means for Codetree, ships the new form design on Drip, and muses on the ramifications to Google's announced penalizing of intrusive mobile pop-ups. Upcase FormKeep Drip Ult...

On Drip, Derrick deals with a high-bandwidth customer and hires a new devops team member. Meanwhile, Ben brainstorms new pricing structures for Hound. Upcase FormKeep Drip Lessons From the Saas Metrics of 1500 Companies - Patrick Campbell MicroConf Session Overview (video not currently available)

Derrick switches domains from getdrip.com to drip.co, begins to update the design of the Drip widget, and tries to find balance in his varying roles as CTO. Ben hands off the reigns of Upcase, switches to a low-tech project management solution, and mixes work and personal todos. Upcase FormKeep Drip Implementing a Strong Code-Review Culture - Derek Prior Seeking Wisdom Podcast 16Personalities Mome...

Ben welcomes guest co-host Derrick Reimer, co-founder of Drip, getting to know his background and products for our first outside-thoughtbot view on SaaS strategy (as well as Ben's arm-twisty methods for getting him on the podcast in the first place)! Upcase FormKeep Drip MicroConf Sidekiq Codetree Drip Workflows Derrick on Twitter

thoughtbot CEO Chad Pytel joins Ben to discuss our recent office closings and reasons necessitating this decision, what this means for the product team, and the future of thoughtbot. Also, a teaser of what to expect next from Giant Robots Podcast. Upcase FormKeep Hound Chad on Giant Robots from last year Chad on Twitter

Fresh back from vacation, Ben shifts his attention to a Hound project, adding in tiered plans and pricing. Chris begins to build out a drip sequence for content recommendations, prepares to roll off to return to client work, and leaves us with some final reflections, takeaways, and lessons learned while on Upcase. Upcase FormKeep Hound ./bin/setup Warren Buffett's 2-List System

Chris delves into marketing mode for the TDD course, removes more client-side analytics code, and starts redesigning the information architecture on Upcase. On FormKeep, Ben alerts users to site down-time, removes all pay-per-form logic from the codebase, and begins to set up trials sans credit-card. Upcase FormKeep Netflix Culture Deck Fundamentals of TDD on Upcase Fundamentals of TDD Blog Post P...

Ben receives some insight on customer referrals for FormKeep, applies his pricing philosophy to Hound, and realizes a personal blind-spot when it comes to customer satisfaction. On Upcase, Chris patches an automated follow-up messaging bug leading to enhanced focus on server-side analytics, welcomes Tyson to the team to begin work on trail mapping course content, and soft launches the Fundamentals...

Ben rants about bad jokes on twitter, doesn't ship any improved activation features on FormKeep this week, irons out some bugs on FormLinter, and begins an ad campaign. Chris contemplates shifting Upcase's business model, and walks through the impetus driving this decision. Upcase FormKeep John Carmack Twitter Fan-In FormLinter The Weekly Iteration