FounderQuest
The Honeybadger Crew
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Top 10 FounderQuest Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best FounderQuest episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to FounderQuest for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite FounderQuest episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Making UI Changes While Avoiding Pitchforks
FounderQuest
01/26/24 • 31 min
Today Josh and Ben are talking about UI changes in order to lay the foundation to launch and integrate Insights into Honeybadger as well as steps they are taking to avoid some rollout mistakes they've made in the past. They also reveal how testers are liking Insights so far!
Links:
Derek Sivers
Flipper
Meet the badgers
FounderQuest
Mastodon - @[email protected]
Twitter - @honeybadgerapp
Honeybadger
We're Going on Summer Vacation!
FounderQuest
07/19/19 • 0 min
The guys are taking a few weeks off from podcasting to enjoy the fleeting Pacific northwest summer. They'll be back in late August or early September, fully rested and ready with hot takes to warm you as summer turns to fall.
07/12/19 • 37 min
The guys talk about their experiences with offers to acquire Honeybadger and go over some common structures of acquisition deals (hint - most don’t involve walking a wheelbarrow of money out of your office and never returning). They also chat about things that you should think about if you are presented with an offer to sell your company.
Links:
GitHub
Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 It's happening in me. I'm going to remember you silver lady, so don't you worry.
Josh: 00:08 You'll find her some day.
Announcer: 00:10 Hands off that dial. Business is about to get a whole lot nerdier. You're tuned in to FounderQuest.
Starr: 00:21 Somebody tweeted a while back and somebody referenced us and said that we should talk about this. You know, you should run your company like you're going to sell it. So then I thought, "Well maybe we could talk about sort of acquisitions in general, maybe weave it back and forth."
Starr: 00:33 So Honeybadger has had a couple of fairly serious acquisition talks, none ongoing right now, none that panned out obviously. We're not going to name names because I think it might be illegal for us to because we signed stuff. The first one was with a private equity firm that specialized in sort of smaller companies and taking these companies built by developers and then bringing in business people and figure out how to grow them. And then we had another acquisition talk with a pretty well known company in the developer space, and that would have been kind of a strategic thing because they were kind of trying to bring something to the market that was very similar to what we did. And sort of both of those eventually fell through because we just couldn't really come to terms.
Starr: 01:15 But I think we learned a lot while we were pursuing these because starting out I knew about acquisitions, like what pretty much I imagine anybody knows about acquisitions. It's like, "Okay, you sell a company, you make a ton of money, and that's like your happy ending." But it's really a lot more complex than that. Unless you happen to win the lottery, it's not necessarily like this huge, "You're going to be rich and set for the rest of your life event."
Starr: 01:40 Yeah, so I don't know. What do you guys think?
Ben: 01:44 I think that last statement is key. Our business has grown steadily, but not exponentially right? So, if you're sitting on a rocket ship you could probably have one of those acquisition events where you're set for the rest of your life because they're buying based on the future value of the company. They are not just based on what you've done so far, they are based on what they think you could do with them, combined with you. If you have had this exponential growth event, or if you can show that happening with their added resources to yours, then you could probably pull that off. But in our case, that wasn't really the scenario, right? We were growing steadily, the acquirers were interested in us because they knew that it was a reasonable business that could continue to grow, but not that it was expecting like this phenomenal growth. Yeah, so in our case those numbers weren't going to be crazy high numbers, but they were still nice numbers.
Starr: 02:47 I feel like this is kind of a theme in our podcast, in that the way that most people probably think about acquisitions is focused on the VC model of startups and fundings and acquisitions. In a lot of our episodes we're like, "Okay, this is the VC way of doing things," but that's not like the way for everybody. The sort of VC acquisition model that everybody has in their head is, "Okay, you start this company. Your company has a ton of growth and it targets some market that is adjacent to a big, big company. And that big, big company doesn't have their eye on this sort of little market. Maybe they don't realize how much opportunity is there, but then this little plucky startup comes and exploits that, gets crazy growth, and now you have this little company who is kind of edging in on the territory of a bigger company. And so the big company buys the little company in order to get access to that market." I think that's the most common approach. I mean sometimes the bigger company buys you because you've developed some crazy new technology that they couldn'...
Why Do Developers Get Burned Out?
FounderQuest
06/14/19 • 42 min
Running a lifestyle business is awesome, contrary to what the VC's say. Figure out your life goals and fit your business to achieve them rather than worrying about 10x-ing. The guys also talk about why developers seem to experience higher rates of burnout than other professions and share their own prevention and coping solutions. Let's FounderQuest!
Links:
The 'Badger Life Blog Post: https://joshuawood.net/badger-life
Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 I had the voiceover guy, the voice of Barney who does our voiceovers. I had him do an intro that involves three guys trying to find personal happiness, and I may have used it once. I don't know, I just feel kind of lame putting it on there because I'm like this is too earnest. My 90s teenager self just won't let me be that earnest.
Ben: 00:22 We're pretty earnest, when you think about it.
Announcer: 00:25 Three developers, one mission. Build a business to nurture personal fulfillment. It's not stupid, it's FounderQuest.
Josh: 00:36 The Badger Life was the title of the blog post I did too that was kind of on this topic.
Starr: 00:42 Oh, that's right.
Ben: 00:43 Josh is the expert on that-
Josh: 00:45 I was just looking at it.
Ben: 00:45 We'll just have you talk the whole episode.
Josh: 00:47 No.
Ben: 00:48 Monologue.
Josh: 00:48 I mean, you want to have an episode, right? My talent is like just breaking the tension with the dumb jokes.
Starr: 00:57 Oh, I thought that was my talent.
Josh: 00:59 Well, clearly we're in trouble because Ben is the only one who can actually like talk cohesively.
Ben: 01:06 So Josh, what was your motivation for writing that blog post?
Josh: 01:11 I think just kind of sharing our view of the world. And I think we found a certain level of success with this now, and it's been something that we've been ... It's a kick that we've been on for a while, and I think it's one of the reasons we started the business was we were early starting the business to have, I think, like as a carryover from the last episode.
Josh: 01:38 We never really start the business to be some sort of like, to get us a bunch of fame and power, anything like that.
Starr: 01:44 Wait, what?
Josh: 01:48 Maybe Starr did, but yeah. I don't know, like we always ... I think the book that I had read and it's probably corny because this is .... I don't know if cliché at this point but I remember like I had just read The 4-Hour Workweek, and I was like, I want to start something that doesn't kill me and still makes a good living and all that sort of thing. That was for me to achieve my financial goals and stuff.
Josh: 02:19 I wrote this blog post, I think it was the last year. I think it's been a little while since I wrote it but-
Starr: 02:27 It's only been a year?
Josh: 02:27 Yeah, I just kind of talked about how we do things.
Starr: 02:30 Wow.
Josh: 02:30 I think it was already a year ago since I wrote that.
Starr: 02:33 I was going to say it seems like a decade ago, but ...
Ben: 02:36 Yeah, I would guess two years ago.
Josh: 02:38 Two years ago?
Starr: 02:39 That's because I have a small child so.
Josh: 02:44 Again, same here. So I don't have much of a concept of time at this point. But I have a feeling it wasn't as long as we're thinking, long ago as we're thinking.
Starr: 02:56 Yeah. So the post was called Badger Life and it sort of describes how we work, the things we value as company. And, man, the response to this was amazing like people were getting in touch with me. They're like, "How do I do this, Starr?" And I was like, "I don't know, man. Get lucky."
Starr: 03:13 Oh, no. I just ruined the podcast. No, everybody is going to unsubscribe now.
Josh: 03:19 Gosh, Starr.
Starr: 03:19 I know. I know.
Josh: 03:21 Well, I know like ...
Starr: 03:22 Ben is the one who knows everything. I'm just along for the ride.
Josh: 03:27 We had a few people mention when we were hiring, as we've hired a few people recently after being a company of three for a long time, and we've had people tell us that through that hiring process that they had read this blog post and it was one of the things that made them want to work with us.
Starr: 03:48 A question for you, Josh. Are we a lifestyle business? Are we a lifestyle business?
Josh: 03:54 I freaking hate the term but let's say, we probably are.
Starr: 03:59 Wait, what?
Ben: 04:00&...
If You Aren't Growing, Are You Dying?
FounderQuest
06/07/19 • 29 min
The guys talk dissect the "If you're not growing you're dying" aphorism and debate if it has merits or if it should be discarded into the dustbin of history. Do entrepreneurs need to have a winner take all mindset or is it acceptable to be a minor player in a large market? Let's get philosophical on this episode of FounderQuest!
Full transcript:
Josh: 00:00 I just... I think that Ben could really pull off like a massive... Like if you had a gigantic, like foot long beard or something. I think you could pull it off.
Ben: 00:11 I could pull off the following.
Starr: 00:12 Like one of those people who moved to California for the gold rush.
Josh: 00:15 Wouldn't he look amazing?
Announcer: 00:17 It's like Steve Jobs and the dude had triplets and they built an app. This is FounderQuest.
Starr: 00:26 If you have one of those cabins and tell people to get away from it.
Josh: 00:29 Like the Unabomber. So I enabled... What is it called? Tweet Delete or something like that? I think you did this too Starr but it deletes all your tweets like beyond a certain timeframe or date.
Starr: 00:48 Yeah.
Josh: 00:49 So now I only have the last year of tweets on my Twitter account.
Starr: 00:55 That's good. So people can't like blackmail you with your own words.
Josh: 00:59 Yeah. They can't like go back to like 2008 and dig up you know, whatever I was saying back then.
Ben: 01:06 I have kind of mixed feelings about that. I mean I like the idea of preserving that history even if it's stupid. I don't know. I guess maybe you could have this goal of tweeting such that your family at your funeral service they just get up and read your tweets your entire life.
Josh: 01:26 I don't know about that. I'm not sure that has... I'm not sure that's how it works.
Ben: 01:32 I mean, they can read the date stamp like March 4th, 2004. Pooping.
Starr: 01:41 My thought on the whole thing is that like what good is it doing anybody to have like my ancient tweets out there? Like the only good is doing anybody is people who are like harvesting that data. And I know people have already harvested it but why leave it out there? Like nobody's going back and reading an old tweet of mine and being like, "Oh, that was insightful."
Josh: 02:01 You mean you... But you don't want to quote tweet yourself from like 10 years ago just to show everyone how right you still are or you were back then or whatever?
Starr: 02:10 Yeah, I don't know. I'm not I don't think that's myself.
Josh: 02:16 Sorry, I totally like blew up your train of thought.
Starr: 02:20 It's okay. There wasn't much of train of thought. It's more like one of those, you know the things like, "Oh brother Where Art Thou?" where they sort of like pump up and down? That's like well platform. They always have them in cartoons?
Josh: 02:32 Yeah.
Starr: 02:33 Yeah. It's like that. That was like the train. That's my train.
Josh: 02:37 Just like the maintenance crew.
Starr: 02:40 Yeah. Oh, so today I think we're going to talk about something that was on Twitter. Justin Jackson, who is at Transistor FM, was in a conversation on Twitter with somebody about this topic of if you're not growing, you're dying. And I think somebody else brought this sort of quote out. Like we all heard this. This is sort of a little aphorism that makes its way around.
Starr: 03:03 And people say... Its one of the things that people say without thinking about too much. And Justin, I think disagreed a little bit with us and was like, "Well, at Transistor, maybe that's not the case." So I think we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And just see where the conversation goes.
Ben: 03:20 I think the danger when it comes to the growth mindset of like, "I have to grow for growth's sake." I think that's where it gets dangerous. And I think that's where a lot of people who reject the whole VC funded path. Because they don't want to have that scenario where they have to grow, like at an extreme rate, or else they just go bust. Like the go big or go home thing. I think-
Starr: 03:44 So you're saying that like there's different pathways, right? There's like this VC funded pathway. And so you're saying like if... The VC funded pathway if you're not like having major growth and you are effectively sort of dying? Is that what you're saying?
Ben: 03:59 Yeah, I think they want you to die if you're not having that spectacular growth so they can focus on something that is having that spectacular growth.
Starr: 04:04 Whereas like a little company like ours like, what does that even mean?
Josh: 04:09 In a regular business?
Ben: 04:10 Yeah. I mean, you may not even be able to handle that spectacular growth. You just are... I don't know if you've read that book Company of One? Fantastic read, if you haven't had a chance to read it.
Sta...
05/31/19 • 39 min
The guys chat about the early days of Ruby and Rails and discuss how the developer community has changed from a more individual hacking pursuit to more of a team sport. Ben also talks about his experiences at the very first RailsConf and teaches young whippersnappers about Why The Lucky Stiff, Shoes, Caboose, and Chunky Bacon. Lastly, is BadgerConf morphing from running joke to a reality? Tune in and find out!
Full Transcript:
Ben: 00:00 All right.
Starr: 00:01 All right, are we good?
Ben: 00:02 Yep.
Josh: 00:03 Yeah, I'm already up to one megabyte.
Ben: 00:05 We are so good.
Starr: 00:06 Dang. Okay maybe we might have to back up for maximum quality, I don't know.
Ben: 00:10 We'll see how it goes.
Announcer: 00:11 They've been in business for seven years, and they still don't know what they're doing. I guess a podcast seemed natural. Here's FounderQuest.
Josh: 00:23 It should be. I've got terabyte in here, so hopefully we'll...
Ben: 00:26 Yeah. Now you're glad you bought the big disk.
Josh: 00:30 Yeah so I can podcast for an hour without crashing my computer.
Starr: 00:34 Oh that's awesome. So I have been up since four o'clock. Ida woke up at four and decided she wasn't sleeping anymore...
Ben: 00:42 Ouch.
Starr: 00:42 ...so I may lean a bit on your guys for things like making sense.
Ben: 00:46 I've been up since 1:30 because...
Josh: 00:48 No, Come on Ben.
Josh: 00:48 Oh damn, Ben, you always have to one up me.
Starr: 00:54 Alright, so, you guys recently went to RailsConf. You came back, thankfully. You weren't lured away by all those, I don't know...
Starr: 01:07 This is what I mean when I say I'm tired.
Starr: 01:10 Yeah, so you guys went to RailsConf and...
Josh: 01:13 We did get distracted by elixir along the way and...
Ben: 01:16 Today's gonna be the punch drunk podcast.
Starr: 01:19 Yes, yes it is, oh man. You guys recently came back from RailsConf, I was here in my little home office, not at RailsConf, editing the show all on my lonesome. I'm feeling pretty lonely and wistful, and now you guys are back and I'm so happy.
Ben: 01:36 You know what the best thing about RailsConf was? You didn't have to step outside to go to it. Because of all the sky bridges there, we stayed in the conference hotel, which was three blocks away from the conference center. But yet we walked through a sky bridge all the way there. So handy.
Josh: 01:53 This was in Minneapolis right?
Starr: 01:56 You know, I think that's a theme, I don't think I've been outside at any of the RailsConfs I've gone to.
Ben: 02:01 Really?
Starr: 02:03 No, even Atlanta, didn't go outside, tried to walk someplace for lunch, let me tell you, you don't walk places for lunch in Atlanta. You get in your Escalade.
Ben: 02:16 I did a lot of walking around outside in Kansas City.
Starr: 02:17 So how many RailsConfs have you guys been to?
Ben: 02:21 Oh wow.
Starr: 02:22 I've been to, I think, three or four.
Josh: 02:25 I think I've been to, two.
Starr: 02:26 I've spoken at two.
Josh: 02:27 Because I didn't go to RailsConf for a really long time because I went to RubyConf every year.
Starr: 02:33 Yeah.
Josh: 02:33 And I just never got to RailsConf until, I think Phoenix was my first year at RailsConf.
Starr: 02:40 Was it because you were trying to be one of those hipsters that who's like "I don't do Rails, I'm a Rubyist."
Josh: 02:44 Yeah, I don't do Rails, just tell me about garbage collection, okay.
Ben: 02:49 I think I've been to about eight of them.
Starr: 02:50 You went to the first one right?
Ben: 02:52 Yeah, well there's actually two first ones.
Starr: 02:55 Well that's confusing.
Ben: 02:56 Yeah, funny story. So the first official RailsConf was Chicago, but the first international RailsConf happened before the first official RailsConf. And the first international RailsConf happened in Vancouver, Canada.
Josh: &nbs...
05/24/19 • 38 min
The guys talk about strategies for creating systems, documentation, and automation to separate yourself from your business so you can hire employees, get it ready for sale, or even take some time off. Balancing good customer service while being efficient with your time is also discussed along with reasons Honeybadger doesn't use automation for customer service.
Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 I probably should have muted that, so you couldn't hear the toilet flushing.
Josh: 00:05 I don't know whose it was, so... You just needed... There, there you...
Josh: 00:11 Okay, so, Starr. There is, there's your intro.
Announcer: 00:16 They're just three amigos making their way in the crazy old world of software as a service.
Announcer: 00:22 Welcome to Founder Quest!
Josh: 00:26 Oh, that reminds me, I was going to... during that decision-making thing, I was going to say we'd be a lot cooler, though, if we used a blockchain, like to decentralize, since, you know, we're totally like a, you know, a remote, very decentralized company, like we should have a blockchain for a decision-making process.
Ben: 00:42 For real, scan that audio trail.
Starr: 00:43 Yeah.
Ben: 00:44 To make sure that-
Starr: 00:44 The future. The future's now.
Ben: 00:46 ... make sure that Starr doesn't go back and change the decision that we made?
Starr: 00:52 What?!
Josh: 00:52 Uh-huh (affirmative).
Starr: 00:52 Why am I getting this flack?
Ben: 00:53 Well, you know, because you know that I would be the one that would actually be doing that sort of thing, so that's why I'm the...
Josh: 00:58 Well, it's more to protect against Ben, yeah, so it's like a digital gavel.
Ben: 01:01 I'm the totally random element in this outfit, that's for sure.
Josh: 01:05 Yeah. The wild card.
Ben: 01:07 Yes!
Josh: 01:08 The joker.
Ben: 01:08 The joker!
Josh: 01:10 And plus I could buy more video cards, so that I have more weight, my decisions have more weight.
Ben: 01:14 There you go.
Starr: 01:16 All right, so let's catch people up. So last week, we talked about some issues involving systems, like what are our systems for decision-making? And we talked about our quarterly conclaves, our process for doing that, and so this week we're going to be talking about systems and continuing the conversation, this is one long conversation that's just been split up into two.
Starr: 01:36 And we're going to be talking about managing employees, we're going to be talking about daily operations, about ops and all that stuff.
Starr: 01:45 Yeah, let's get going! So like what... we started with nothing, we started with no systems, errors would come in, and Ben would see them and he would manually write out an alert email, and send those out on Gmail. And since then, we've like, we have systems out the, uh... I can't say it on iTunes, I'm sorry, but we've got lots of systems!
Starr: 02:07 So how do we coordinate a bunch of, like three of us are independent workers, we've hired a bunch of independent workers, like how do we coordinate between those?
Ben: 02:15 I think that the technical term you were looking for there was "wazzoo."
Josh: 02:17 Wazzoo?
Starr: 02:18 Oh, okay, most definitely was it.
Ben: 02:20 You know, one of the things that was really crazy early on was, it accelerated so rapidly. Like, I remember, in the early-early days, when we first started this out, and most of the day I was thinking, you know, because we had jobs, so Starr and I were working for a start-up, and I was thinking, "Ah, this should be great! I have two incomes streams, right? Like I have my day job, and then Honeybadger just will be doing its thing on the side, it'd be a cash machine, it'd be awesome!" And then, it didn't go that way. Like-
Josh: 02:51 Then reality struck.
Ben: 02:52 Yeah, the reality struck, where, like, Starr and I are sitting there, at our day jobs, and all of the sudden Honeybadger's on fire, and it was like, "Oh, we got to go take a lunch break right now!", you know?
Starr: 03:00 Yeah.
Ben: 03:01 And so, like eventually, that just... its like the pressure was too much, right? We couldn't do both, and so we had to dive in on Honeybadger. But a lot of that was because things were just growing so rapidly, and traffic was coming in, and things were falling apart, and like in that one server that we bought initially, right, had to become two, and so on. But-
Starr: 03:21 Yeah.
Starr: 03:21 And we did not build this thing for a scale, people. We did not prematurely optimize.
Ben: 03:25 &n...
05/10/19 • 43 min
Hey guys ladle out some secret sauce for successfully marketing and selling to software developers. Also discussed is their Facebook ad boycott, why you should never call a developer, Coke vs. Pepsi, and leveraging Princess Bride to weed out sales emails.
Links:
Art of Product Podcast website
Ben Orenstein on Twitter
CloudForcast website
Nathan Barry on Twitter
Brennan Dunn on Twitter
Railskits website
Ruby Weekly website
Peter Cooper on Twitter
Rob Walling on Twitter
Traction website (not an affiliate)
Transistor.FM website
Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:00 That was really good. I didn't know you could recite poetry.
Ben: 00:02 And having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear. Though as for that, the passing there had warned them really about the same.
Josh: 00:10 Yeah, I honestly, I read that poem right before each Crossfit session to kind of pump myself up.
Announcer: 00:18 You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Time to start a fire, crack open a can of Tab, and settle in for FounderQuest.
Ben: 00:31 So the Office Max near my house is closing, and so they had to have this closing sale, like everything's 90% off and stuff.
Starr: 00:40 Yeah?
Ben: 00:41 And we needed some printer paper so I'm like, there's probably nothing left there, but I'll go and just, you know ... So there's gotta be paper. I mean, who buys all the paper, right? There was no paper.
Starr: 00:50 Yeah?
Ben: 00:51 There were some pastels. Like if I wanted pink paper, then I would have been fine. There was plenty of that, but it was bare. Pickings were slim. It was amazing. And it's like post-apocalyptic zombie attack kind of scenario where you're like, "Wow. This place just looks-"
Starr: 01:07 And the zombies eat paper, in this scenario.
Ben: 01:10 Apparently.
Josh: 01:11 Yeah.
Starr: 01:11 Can I show you guys something? Talking about big box stores.
Ben: 01:14 Yes, please.
Starr: 01:14 So I ordered some socks on Amazon. Let me show you, they're very nice socks. They're stripey socks-
Josh: 01:22 Fancy.
Starr: 01:23 I had one pair and I liked them so much, I ordered a variety pack of stripey socks. I'm pretty happy with how they look and everything, but then I looked at the actual box they came in, and look what it has written on it.
Josh: 01:40 What?
Starr: 01:42 It says designed by PetSmart.
Ben: 01:44 Nice.
Starr: 01:45 And I don't know what to think now. Because-
Starr: 01:47 Really? Were they really designed by the PetSmart?
Josh: 01:49 Maybe PetSmart is just like the moniker of the designer.
Starr: 01:53 Maybe. Maybe this is someone in another country who doesn't realize that-
Josh: 01:58 No.
Starr: 01:58 PetSmart's already taken-
Josh: 01:58 It might be like an internet handle or something, @PetSmart. He's PetSmart on IRC, like on Freenode or something.
Ben: 02:07 Now, Starr, aren't you concerned that the horizontal stripes will make your ankles look fat?
Starr: 02:13 Well, you know, Ben, I have very skinny ankles, so, actually, it's the opposite.
Starr: 02:19 Oh, man. So how do you guys want to do this thing? Is this an actual reader question, or listener question?
Ben: 02:25 It is an actual-
Starr: 02:26 Wow.
Ben: 02:26 listener question.
Josh: 02:27 And I think we've got a couple of these lined up, too, so ...
Ben: 02:30 Well, you know, I should qualify that. I don't know that he was an actual listener, listener, because he just sent me an email. He was a listener to The Art of Product podcast-
Starr: 02:38 Oh, okay.
Josh: 02:39 Oh, that you were on a while-
Ben: 02:40 Yeah.
Josh: 02:40 Like two weeks ago. Yeah.
Ben: 02:41 Right, right, and so in my interview with Ben, he asked some questions, and so this individual emailed me...
04/26/19 • 36 min
The gents look back with some hindsight on the debates around private equity, VC vs. bootstrapping Honeybadger, and how funding decisions may have affected recent layoffs at NPM and Travis CI. Our recent Twitter ad performance for FounderQuest is also discussed as well as Nintendo graphics and food trucks. Join us!
Full Transcript:
Josh: We did it. We forgot to send him headphones, Starr.
Starr: He said he had headphones. I asked him, Josh. I asked him.
Josh: We're trying to get Ben to part with his AirPods, and it's like pulling teeth, man.
Announcer: It's like Steve Jobs and The Dude had triplets and they built an app. This is FounderQuest.
Starr: Can you hear us?
Ben: Kinda.
Starr: Yeah? Well, the AirPods might give you a little bit of a delay. I could imagine that would be ... this KVM, the video part worked even though the keyboard and mouse didn't work, but I totally forgot that this monitor can't do 60 hertz over HDMI. Does that makes sense?
Josh: What was the refresh rate on the original, the NES games and stuff?
Starr: Oh, it's super good.
Josh: Right?
Starr: Because it's a CRT.
Josh: Yeah.
Starr: It's just whatever the refresh rate is for your TV. Right? That's baked into the NSTC. It's for standard, which by the way, is frickin' complicated. Video output onto old school NTSC ... for CRT stuff is incredibly complicated, and I tried to understand it, and I pretty much just failed.
Ben: Is his PAL any simpler?
Starr: I mean, I don't think so because you're, because it's all analog, right? You're controlling the signal that goes, this analog signal that goes out and directs this electron beam and ...
Ben: Yeah.
Starr: It's just not this world of pixels. So TV's don't, they have phosphors but they don't really have pixels. Like computers have. There's no pixel at 1010 so, but fortunately some, some people who are smarter than I have when I was doing my emulator, they all basically they had mapped out the different cycles of the PPU, which is the NES' GPU, basically. The different clock cycles of the GPU each correlate to a specific pixel on your screen. So I didn't have to actually, you know what? To do an emulator, you don't actually need to know the details of how TVs work and stuff and refresh rate and all that.
Josh: So the results for the my Twitter experiment yesterday got a little better over time. So it seems that Twitter's ad algorithm is a self, it's a self learning algorithm. So it starts out, you tell it kinda who the type of people you want it to target are, but then it optimizes itself over time as it actually starts to get clicks.
Starr: Really?
Josh: If someone clicks then it, I assume, it picks people that are more similar to them or that it thinks are more similar to them and yeah, so it started out when I had first run it for a few hours, I had a, it was, it spent 10 bucks and got 13 clicks and but that's really bad. It was 86 cents a click by the end ...
Starr: What's a click though? What's a click?
Josh: No. It was a link.
Starr: Okay, yeah.
Josh: Whatever they call it. a link promotion campaign.
Starr: Okay.
Josh: There was one link in the tweet and the call to action was, or the result was to click that link.
Starr: I thought you were talking about your pun.
Josh: Oh, no. No, that did terribly. That was a follower campaign. I think I learned a lot about follower campaigns too. I just was using the wrong campaign too.
Starr: Okay.
Josh: Also, people don't really probably care about puns in their advertised Twitter feed, but it was a fun afternoon and I stand by it. But yeah, by the end of this fall, by the end of the second experiment, which was more of a real experiment, I had brought the click down or the cost per click down to 46 cents. So we got about 113 click throughs to FounderQuest.
Starr: Oh, nice. Nice.
Josh: To the episode and yeah.
Starr: Very cool.
Josh: At least now we know and I don't know, I think I got the targeting pretty good, but I, it was my first try, so I'm sure we could optimize that a little bit. Maybe the content too. So if we want to buy clicks, we now know that they probably cost somewhere between 25 and 50 cents.
Starr: Awesome. I wonder how many of those people subscribed or downloaded something.
Josh: I don't know. I think that's one reason I wasn't quite convinced that it was the best idea to link to the, I linked to an actual episode page 'cause I wanted to talk about the episode is like the reason you want, you get interested.
Starr: Yeah.
Josh: But I think if I did this again, I want to try a dedicated landing page that's made for the campaign that has an actual, a real call to action like subscribe.
Ben: Yeah. Like an intro or something.
Josh: Right. Yeah. Not just the transcript, ...
Cutting (Almost) to the Bone
FounderQuest
12/15/23 • 36 min
This week Josh and Ben discuss Honeybadger's recent revenue struggles, how they got to this point, and the steps they're taking to weather the storm. They also explain why 2024 could be the company's best year ever!
Links:
Steve Jobs - "Saying No"
Meet the badgers
FounderQuest
Mastodon - @[email protected]
Twitter - @honeybadgerapp
Honeybadger
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FAQ
How many episodes does FounderQuest have?
FounderQuest currently has 119 episodes available.
What topics does FounderQuest cover?
The podcast is about Founder, Ruby, Startup, Saas, Podcasts, Technology, Developer and Business.
What is the most popular episode on FounderQuest?
The episode title '’Tis The Season For Tangents!' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on FounderQuest?
The average episode length on FounderQuest is 35 minutes.
How often are episodes of FounderQuest released?
Episodes of FounderQuest are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of FounderQuest?
The first episode of FounderQuest was released on Mar 1, 2019.
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