Software Social

Michele Hansen 0:01
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Colleen: Welcome back software, social listeners, Colleen here, and I am super excited to bring you a special guest today. Today on the podcast we have Nadia the founder of story graph. Story graph is a site that helps you track your reading and choose your neck next book based on your mood, mood, and your favorite topics and themes.
Nadia, thank you so much for coming on.
Nadia: Thank you so much for inviting me.
Colleen: I would love to start with a little bit about your background. You are an economist by trade, right?
Nadia: Right. So my degree was philosophy politics and economics, and I focused, I focused mainly on the economic side, I was moving to the math mathematical side of things and I was heading into investment banking, post university.
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: Yeah. And I was just lucky with the people I met in my final year of uni. I'd done a summer internship in the banking world and I was just very, not very enthused with it.
It just felt, I felt like there was more to life and I'm in my final year of uni, I met so many young entrepreneurs and people running social enterprises and charities, and I just felt like I've always felt entrepreneurial. And I just thought, you know, I want to go into that feels more like. And I'd also started a creative writing online publication called the story graph.
Colleen: Oh, I didn't know that.
Nadia: yeah. That had given me the first taste of running my own thing. And so I, yeah, and I was lucky to meet people who were in the tech space as well. And that's when I started to be familiar with, oh, maybe I should learn how to code. And yeah, essentially, I, I got, I want a couple of places on coding courses and that's how I got into software post universe.
Colleen: So, did you go work at all in investment banking or did you go right from college or university to learning how to code?
Nadia: So I had a graduate offer for bank and I turned that down and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And I'd applied for this entrepreneurship scheme and it got to the final round. And I remembered that when I was filling out the form, there was a checkbox that said we may be piloting a new coding course for women.
Do you want to be considered for this? And I was just like, why not check the box? I wasn't really interested. And I thought, why not? You know? And so when I remember I got the call from the, one of the people who run the program and they said, we've got good news and bad news. And I was like, I immediately knew I didn't get into the main program.
So I said, well, what's the, what's the bad news. And I was like, yeah, you didn't quite make it. And I was like, Okay.
what's the good news. And she said we're going to give you, we're going to do this program. It's called code first girls, and we're going to give you a place. And I remember at the time I was just so disappointed and not getting a place in this entrepreneurship program because it was meant to be my ticket out of not going into the bank.
That I just thought, what do I want with this coding course? And then I remember thinking about it and realizing that I was also. Like the next day, I was offered a summer internship at my college at Oxford where I was. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to come to work at Oxford for a bit after uni, I'm going to travel to London twice a week.
I was from London, but I was at, I was in Oxford and and I'm going to learn to code and then figure it out from there. And it's so, I'm so glad I did that. And then while I was. Twice a week coding course, I saw a tweet saying we're doing a competition for someone to win a free place at makers academy, which was a new software boot camp in London at the time.
And I had a taste of this coding thing. I saw how powerful. It was. And so I said, I'm going to apply for this scholarship free place. And I got the scholarship. And so then I did a three month bootcamp at the beginning of 2014, immediately after. Well, at the end of 2013, rather immediately after the two months that I spent at Oxford traveling twice a week to do the part-time cutting costs.
So that's how I
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: into software fro...

Listen to the latest from Michele's podcast book tour!
Searching for SaaS: https://searchingforsaas.com/podcast/ep25-local-restaurant-app-to-geocoding-as-a-service-michele-hansen-from-geocodio/
One Knight In Product: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/michele-hansen/
Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/224-michele-hansen

Michele Hansen 0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

Your brand shines through, not Reform's

It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Hey, Colleen,

Colleen Schnettler 0:51
hey, Michelle.

Michele Hansen 0:54
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler 0:56
I'm good. I'm good. How about you?

Michele Hansen 0:58
How goes week three now of doing Hammerstone and simple file upload.

Colleen Schnettler 1:08
It's going well, today, I'm going to dedicate most of the day to simple file uploads. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm finally back into my theoretical four days client work one day, my own thing and never really works out that way. Because I make myself way too available. But I have a lot of plans. But I do want to talk to you about something. Okay. I am I have not had any new signups in six weeks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in the pit of despair, because I'm just generally pretty happy about everything else. But I haven't been really on top of I know, six weeks. Right. That's really. I mean, I

Michele Hansen 1:54
I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.

Colleen Schnettler 1:58
Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I hadn't even really noticed, which is a different a different thing. Has anybody been canceled? I don't know. Because I, yeah, so I don't track that as well as I should. And I think with everything that's been going on, I have been so busy that I haven't. Honestly, I've just been letting it run itself. I checked my email every day, but no one ever emails me, which is nice, by the way. So I hadn't checked it in a while a and I checked it in preparation to do this podcast with you. And I was like, Oh, crap. I haven't had a sign up since July. This is September 2.

Michele Hansen 2:39
So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?

Colleen Schnettler 2:44
No, actually, it hasn't. So I've been pretty consistent. So without doing a full churn analysis, I don't think people are churning. But they're not signing up. Okay, that's not okay. Let me stop. That's not entirely true. People are putting their email address in and then bouncing. So people are still finding my website. But yeah,

Michele Hansen 3:12
I feel like it was like the people who are paying you is that mostly people from Heroku? or from your website?

Colleen Schnettler 3:19
It's mostly people from Heroku.

Michele Hansen 3:21
So are you still getting that like you had this problem where people were like, signing up on Heroku, but then not actually activating it? And like starting to use it, like, Are people still doing that first step on Heroku.

Colleen Schnettler 3:37
So people are using it. I actually had one person respond with what he's doing. So that was cool. In terms of like a new signup. So people are using it that sign up on Heroku, which is good. It's just a lack of new signups is really confusing to me.

Michele Hansen 3:55
Did you ever get that work done on the homepage like and Roku site like we were talking about the code pen and improving the documentation? And like, did did all that happen?

Colleen Schnettler 4:10
So I have a whole list of great things I'm going to do so what I have done this week last week is I actually started writing a piece of I wrote an article right, it didn't take that long. I should have what it doesn't matter what I should have done. I did it. So that's good. So I have seen on Google Analytics said that is getting a decent amount of traffic. Today, literally today. I'm going to get that freakin try it now on the homepage. That is my plan to do that today. Nice. I'm speaking it into existence. The documentation is a whole different animal because I don't think I mean, I really need to redo the documentation. But that's like a whole thing. Like it's not I need to add some things. I think I need to take it in baby steps because I added some things to the tech si...

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Michele Hansen 0:00
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So you remember a couple of weeks ago how I was reading the Jobs to Be Done Playbook?

Colleen Schnettler 0:59
Yes, I sure do.

Michele Hansen 1:01
I'mstill reading that book. But I'm also reading another book. And I want to talk about that other book.

Colleen Schnettler 1:07
Okay.

Psychology of Money

Michele Hansen 1:09
So I finally started reading the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Colleen Schnettler 1:15
Okay.

Michele Hansen 1:16
Which has been on my to-read pile for about, I don't know, about six months or so now, since it came out early last fall. And it's such a good book, like I mean, even if you're not a finance person are particularly interested in personal finance, like, it's a book about money that's not about money. And it's and it's so good. So but there's just one quote and that reminded me of stuff that we talk a lot about together. So I'm just gonna read it to you.

"In a world where intelligence is hyper competitive, and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills, like communication, empathy, and perhaps most of all, flexibility."

Colleen Schnettler 2:08
Hmm, interesting.

Michele Hansen 2:10
And this reminded me a lot of what we talk about, because it's kind of like we've been talking about as it relates to your business. The one of the like, the biggest challenges for you is not the engineering side, it's like, knowing when you should, you know, change directions, or be flexible with with like, what your image of what the business and what the product is. And also like communicating with people about what it does and what it is and pulling that information out of them. And then and then how do we use empathy to figure all of those things out, which is, which is a really big focus for me, and I read this and, like, grabbed the nearest writing utensil near me, which normally I only write in pencils in books, like I will underline things, but I only had a pen, and I was like, This is so amazing, I'm gonna underline it and pen because I'm not gonna regret that, like. That just really stuck with me.

Colleen Schnettler 3:09
Interesting. Why was that in your psychology of money book?

Michele Hansen 3:13
Oh, I mean, so I don't know if you've ever read Morgan's writing.

Colleen Schnettler 3:16
No.

Michele Hansen 3:16
He writes a lot about the sort of psychology of business. He's a very different business writer. And I used to work with him so I've sort of been been around a lot of his thinking for a while. And I'm really sort of grateful for that, because he has a very unique perspective on things. And you know, it's not very often that you read in a best selling business book that the key is empathy. Right?

Colleen Schnettler 3:42
Yeah.

Michele Hansen 3:42
Running a good business. Right.

And it reminds me a lot of something that I have been working on lately, too. So you know, we've talked about like getting people to reply, when you are trying to talk to them about the reasons why they use your product, which can be difficult.

Colleen Schnettler 4:02
Yeah.

Michele Hansen 4:03
And I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, how we like so on our NPS survey like that, that pops up, I think, you know, relatively soon after someone uses the product, but not the first time and it's, you know, just rank us one to 10. And normally, we just look at this just to make sure we're getting mostly ...

Michele Hansen 00:00

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Colleen Schnettler 00:32

So Michele, how has your week been?

Michele Hansen 00:34

It's good. It's good. You know, I was, I was doing some writing this morning, which is funny, I've realized it's, like, my reward work. Like, you know, when I get through all the other stuff, like it's like, oh, like, now I have some writing time. And,

Colleen Schnettler 00:47

That's amazing because I remember being in high school and, like, English, like whenever I had to write a paper, it was literally my least favorite thing to do. So I find that fascinating that, for you, writing is your reward work.

Michele Hansen 00:59

I, five paragraph essays are, I don't think anyone looks forward to writing those. Like, this is very different than, than that. Um, but so I was, I was writing and I started thinking about this framework that I know we've talked about, and it occurred to me that I have a very tangible example of that.

Colleen Schnettler 01:20

Which framework? StoryBrand, or something else?

Michele Hansen 01:22

No, so it's a Marty Cagan framework.

Colleen Schnettler 01:25

Okay.

Michele Hansen 01:26

So, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up first. So, there's this misconception, I think that people sometimes have or fear about customer research that if they start listening to their customers, then they have to do everything the customers ask them for. And they're basically, like, giving up control over the vision of the product to the customer.

Colleen Schnettler 01:47

Okay.

Michele Hansen 01:48

And that's not true, right? Like, you'll always have to weigh it against, um, what makes sense for you to do. And so, there's this one framework that I particularly like that was developed by Marty Cagan, who is kind of, like, the the product guru, like, he's the head of this consultancy called the Silicon Valley Product Group. Like, he is like the product guy, and in order for a product to be successful, he says how it needs to be valuable, viable, usable, and feasible.

Colleen Schnettler 02:26

Wow, valuable, viable, usable, feasible.

Michele Hansen 02:30

So let's, let's break it down a little bit. So first, it has to be valuable for the customer. Like, it has to be something that is, you know, accomplishes something for them and helps them do something, right. Because if it's something that doesn't help them do something that they would want to do, then they wouldn't use it. Like, the example I kind of think of for this is what was that startup that would, like, squeeze a bag of pureed fruit for you? Like Juicero, or, like, it was some, like, they raised like billions of dollars or whatever, for, like, a smoothie machine, and everyone is like, why? Like, not really very valuable to people.

Colleen Schnettler 03:04

Right. Okay.

Michele Hansen 03:05

I'm sure they had wonderful ideas, and they were great people. It has to be viable, which means it has to be, like, commercially viable, like people have to be willing to pay for it. So like, I could make something that's super awesome and useful, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then it's not a viable product, right? Like, if I'm solving a problem that no one experiences painfully enough to, to pay someone to solve it, then it's not going to work out.

Colleen Schnettler 03:30

Okay.

Michele Hansen 03:30

It has to be usable, which may be the easiest of all these words, to understand that, like, they have to be able to figure out how to use it. So,

Colleen Schnettler 03:39

Okay.

Michele Hansen 03:39

You may have heard this in the context of usability testing, which is basically, like, if I make a website that you can do something on, but you can't actually figure out how to do that, and it's confusing, then it doesn't matter if what the product does is something that's valuable t...

MICHELE HANSEN: Welcome to the software social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN: So tell me, Colleen, what's going on with your consulting/transition-to -product business this week?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So, I have been stuck in the idea generation phase of trying to start a small business for quite a while. And I've had a lot of different ideas that I've chased down and they really have not amounted to much. So I've decided instead of continually searching for something, I'm going to build something that I want that I know I will use with my clients and throw it out in the world and hope it sticks. Exactly.

MICHELE HANSEN: Dogfooding!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: This, really, for me like a lot of the literature, I read about startups -- and I read a lot of literature about startups -- says not to code before you have an established market. But the truth is, it's something I want, it's something I know my clients will use (because I am their developer!), and I'm sick of kind of spinning my wheels. I feel like I need to take more action.

MICHELE HANSEN: So, Colleen, what is this idea you're working on?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So I am working on an image hosting platform, I hate to use the word term platform, it's not really a platform. Basically, what I'm trying what I'm building is something that's going to be a JavaScript widget that you install into your site that's going to provide you with a drop zone UI, and then your users can drop their images into your drop zone UI. It puts them -- it's going to create cloud storage for you, and it's going to save them to the cloud, and the cloud will be under my business. I don't know if I explained that well. Well, it'll be in the cloud. I'll put them in front of a CDN. Because I think the CDN part's really important. And it's just going to return the URL. So that's my plan. And there's a lot of image management software out there. Actually, there's a ton of image management software out there. But there's nothing that's just really easy. Like when you're working on a small SaaS app, in my opinion, you just want to move forward as quickly as possible and you want to make progress and the stuff out there isn't bad... but I just want to make it dead simple, especially for like newer developers or developers who don't want to deal with a lot of image management or they don't want to figure out how to use AWS. When you're a newer developer, you're just learning how to develop, you don't want to then have to go spend hours and hours figuring out AWS, in my opinion. So it's just gonna make the process simple. It's gonna be a five minute install. You just drop the snippet in, you put the button on, and it will provide your users their drop zone and all you have to do is save the URL of the image. So now you automatically have your image hosted on the cloud. So you don't have to worry about that. Like I said, I have not yet, but my goal is to put in front of the CDN so you don't have to worry about that. And then you can use the image, you know, like you would any cloud image.

MICHELE HANSEN: So have you talked to other developers who have talked about their frustrations with other image management platforms?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: No.

MICHELE HANSEN: Colleen!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So here's the thing I know. So here's okay. I know but like, I have come every client I have, I have this freakin problem and it really irks me that there's not a better solution.

MICHELE HANSEN: That's worth something.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: That's worth something! And so when I do talk, okay, that's not fair when I first started to talk to people, and there is -- I did talk to other people.

MICHELE HANSEN: Before the pandemic, we talked to other people, right? In general...

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yes, before when I could TALK to people. So I have talked to people about this. And a lot of them use big. So so the people I know like they use big powerful solutions like enterprise-level solutions because they work for enterprise-level clientele, right. So a lot of my friends work for big, you know, fancy companies. And so they have these big enterprise solutions. And so I have looked at those solutions. And they're not bad, but they're a pain to set up. It's way more like there's one that's really popular in the Rails community. And it's fine, but like, it's just way more overhead when you just want your user to be able to add a couple images, right? Like it's a huge overhead to import this third party library and configure it, it's a whole thing. You got to figure out how to use it. It's a whole thing. Like, it's just too hard for what you're trying to do. So I am trying to take this thing that almost every application needs, your user usually has some kind of avatar most a...