IndieRails

Jess and Jeremy kick off the first recording of 2025 with a recap of 2024, and a look at their plans and goals for the new year. We chat about the importance of celebrating milestones, time management, financial planning, scaling development with business growth, and the cycles of sowing and reaping in our work.

Paul Campbell is a Rails developer (since v0.13), conference organizer, and the CEO and co-founder of Team Tito . Paul joins us to talk about his career building software, companies, and events. We chat about Paul's journey into programming, the risks and rewards of running conferences, finding his co-founder, and the opportunities that led to building Tito , Vito , and most recently, IO . Relevan...

In this episode, we are joined by Barry Hess, James Adam, and Matthew Lettini from the Good Enough team to discuss their journey in creating a self-sustaining business built around meaningful, user-focused software. We explore the inception of their company and their latest product, Jelly —a shared inbox for teams. We dive into their experimental approach to business, their year of experimentation...

In this episode, we're excited to introduce our guest, Becky Searls. We recently met Becky at Rails World and learned about her business, Better with Becky —a fitness training program focused on people with a growth mindset. Over the past year, she worked with her husband Justin to build her first product, Build with Becky, a personalized workout program and fitness app built in Rails, which launc...

In this episode, Jess and Jeremy chat about leveling up professionally, the importance of community and personal growth, and the challenges of starting new things. Jess shares several things that have inspired him recently, and Jeremy gives an update on Liminal and shares some ideas he has around discoverability challenges in the Rails ecosystem. Referenced Bunch of Guys video clip Raise your stan...

In this episode, Justin Searls (open source author, speaker, and co-founder of Test Double ) joins us in-person at Rails World to talk about his career, speaking, consulting, the One Person Framework , and building a web application for his wife's fitness business, Better with Becky . Follow Justin Website Twitter Mastodon LinkedIn Relevant Links The Empowered Programmer talk Test Double Breaking...

On Day 2 of Rails World , Jess and Jeremy join with Drew Bragg of Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It and Adrian Marin and Yaro Shmarov  of the Friendly Show to chat about the conference. Enjoy!

In this crossover episode, Jeremy and Jess join up with Chris & Jason from Remote Ruby podcast to discuss Ruby programming, indie development, and the challenges of building and maintaining software as solo developers. We dive into the origins of Indie Rails, share our individual career journeys, and explore Jeremy's project, Liminal, which aims to replace traditional forums and Slack with a m...

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown , an email platform with first-class Markdown support. Justin is also a partner at Third South Capital , where he and his partners buy and grow existing software products. We chat about his background in marketing and software development, bootstrapping Buttondown while working at Stripe, the Buttondown tech stack ( Django , a cousin of Rails and Vue ), and...

Landon Gray is a Rubyist, speaker, strategic advisor, and AI engineer. In May, he left Test Double to found Identus Consulting , where he helps companies with generative AI and machine learning. We chat about his love for consulting, how he got into AI, and how he's working with clients these days, using a blend of technical and project management skills. Follow Landon Twitter LinkedIn Ruby AI Twi...

Our guest will be no stranger to most of our listeners. He’s been around the Ruby community for many years. He’s spoken at conferences, hosted conferences, hosts a "pretty good" podcast , author of courses, a staff engineer at Podia and more recently the co-founder of a successful SaaS: Job Boardly . Enjoy the show with Jason Charnes ! Related Links Personal Website X Job Boardly Podia Remote Ruby

In this episode, we are thrilled to host Nate Berkopec , a renowned author, speaker, trainer, and consultant. Nate runs Speedshop , his Rails performance consultancy, and is the author of " The Complete Guide to Rails Performance ." He also maintains Puma , the most popular Ruby web server, and somehow finds time to be an avid cyclist. Nate's journey from a junior Rails developer to a leading perf...

In this episode, Jeremy shares his latest product idea ( Liminal , a fresh take on old-school forums) with Jess and gets his raw, unfiltered feedback. At the end, Jeremy makes a commitment to Jess to launch an MVP by November 1.

Jess and Jeremy catch up in this one-on-one episode after a short summer break. We cover a number of topics, including our latest seasons of work, reading the book Million Dollar Consulting, our mastermind group, and some realizations looking back over the last year.

In this episode, Jeremy and Jess are joined by two of the cofounders of JetRockets , a custom software development agency with a specialty in Rails. Natalie Kaminski (CEO) and Igor Alexandrov (CTO) share how the company started and how it's grown over the past 12 years. We discuss how and why they use Rails, how they hire developers, their approach to management, and the importance of strong organ...

Andrew Atkinson is a Rails developer, turned Postgres specialist, turned author and consultant. He joins us to talk about his developer journey, how he found his niche with Postgres, writing his new book, High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails , and the launch of his consulting practice. Relevant Links Twitter Website ( Consulting page ) High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails Newsletter How we made...

In this episode, Jeremy and Jess get a chance to connect with Tom Rossi, the cofounder of Higher Pixels . Tom's story is an inspiring one for developers wanting to build products. He and his team have been successful creating a handful of SaaS products. Tom has been instrumental in creating Buzzsprout , their flagship podcast hosting platform that's helping thousands of podcasters share their stor...

In this episode, Jeremy & Jess dive into the world of partnerships and collaboration, a terrain that's become familiar to indie developers seeking growth and innovation. We explore the ins and outs of partnering with others, sharing insights from our experiences over the past year. From initiating low-stakes collaborations to finding the right projects with potential partners, we unpack strate...

Today, we're joined by two remarkable individuals, Ben Wood and Nate Vick, seasoned entrepreneurs with over a decade of experience running a Rails consulting business with many successes: Hint In this episode, Ben and Nate share their unique journey, from the highs of entrepreneurship to the tough decision of winding down their business. Despite this challenging transition, their passion for innov...

Cody Norman is a Rails consultant, fly fisherman, BBQ connoisseur, and big fan of the state of Colorado. He joins us to share about getting into software development, his journey to consulting, and his mentorship work. We also chat about his product Spot Squid , his plans for Rawhide Ruby , and his upcoming RailsConf talk on Action Mailbox: Attraction Mailbox - Why I love Action Mailbox . Cody als...

In this episode of IndieRails, we delve into the world of productized services in software development. Moving beyond the traditional model of bespoke or custom solutions, productized services offer a blend of consistency, scalability, and efficiency, reshaping how businesses approach service offerings. We were prompted to look into this topic by a question from Pascal , who coincidentally just la...

Andy Croll is a Rubyist, author, and speaker. He's the CTO of CoverageBook , creator of the First Ruby Friend mentoring program, organizer of Brighton Ruby , and this year is co-chair of RailsConf . In short, he's a bit busy. In our conversation, we dive into his work at CoverageBook, discuss the hiring, onboarding, and mentoring of early career devs, and talk Ruby conferences (and why you should...

In this episode we get the chance to interview Ben Orenstein: A person who probably doesn't need much of an introduction to our listeners. This episode should be special. Ben's journey from developer to entrepreneur exemplifies the path many in our audience aspire to tread. With a keen eye for opportunities and a deep understanding of the software industry's nuances, Ben's insights are invaluable...

In this episode, we chat with Jess's friend and fellow Georgian, Matt D. Smith . While developers may not be too familiar, Matt is widely known and well respected in the interface design community. He ran an independent design studio for many years, eventually transitioning to building products and courses. Matt is currently focused on Shift Nudge , the premiere online learning experience for desi...

In this episode we catch up with an old friend, Allan Branch. Allan and his partner Steve were early adopters of rails and made a big splash in the tech community with their company LessEverything. They put on many conferences (LessConf), workshops, offered consulting services, created and sold a SaaS, displayed silly/witty marketing and shared a ton of what they've learned through social and open...