FounderQuest Should You Target Pieces Of Pie Or Whole Enchiladas?
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 Jackson
Transistor.fm
Mitch Hedberg
Product Journey podcast
John Gruber and Merlin Mann talk at SXSW
Full Transcript:
Justin: You just wait for someone to say something funny?
Josh: Yep. We just got to wait. We don't start until someone says something funny.
Justin: That's so much pressure. That reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg bit. Do you remember that bit?
Josh: No, I don't.
Justin: He's like, "My job is to sit around and wait and think up things that are funny, but sometimes I'm too far away from a pen. So then I just convince myself that what I thought up wasn't funny."
Justin: Mitch Hedberg's my spirit animal. If you haven't... I think he's better on audio, but yeah, just look up some of his old stuff. It's just some comedians are... they'll get into a bit and the bit has stages, and they'll sometimes hit the same thing over and over again, and it'll be 30 minutes. Like Chris Rock, "Barack Obama." He'll just keep saying the same thing over and over again. But Mitch Hedberg is like fastball after fastball. It's just all one-liners. Yeah, he's so funny.
Josh: Nice. We'll have to find some links for the show notes.
Justin: Yeah. Definitely worth checking out.
Josh: And speaking of, for our listeners, I was going to say if you think that Starr sounds a lot like Justin Jackson today, it's because Starr, unfortunately, couldn't make it. Her daughter's sick, and so she's home playing caretaker. But luckily Justin was available, and so we're going to... I guess this is the first guest episode of-
Justin: Is this the first time ever?
Ben: You're our first guest host.
Josh: You're the first ever guest.
Justin: I should've worn my Honeybadgers shirt today.
Ben: Totally.
Josh: Yeah.
Justin: I love that shirt. I don't even know what I was thinking.
Josh: To be fair, you should always wear your Honeybadgers shirt. But especially on FounderQuest.
Ben: We should send you six more so you can wear them every day.
Justin: Yeah, just so I wear them every single day. I've got the Godzilla one. It's so good. Is there multiple shirts, or is that the only one you guys have right now?
Josh: There's two. Godzilla's the latest, and then the other one was like a badger ripping out of the chest of the shirt. We actually have a couple other designs that we should probably get going, get to the printers.
Justin: I think folks could learn a lot from you just in terms of swag. You definitely have the best swag. I think you set the high bar, and everyone else is just trying to catch up to you.
Josh: Well, thanks. We love our swag.
Ben: It's been a lot of fun.
Josh: It's fun. Yeah. And we like to have fun.
Justin: My least favorite thing about going to conferences... I'm going to get into trouble for this. My least favorite thing about going to conferences is somebody comes up to me with a shirt that they made for their startup, and they're like, "Hey, take a shirt. What size are you?" I'm looking at the shirt, I'm going, "I'm never going to wear that." I'm not going to wear your shirt that's for... See, I can't even talk about it because some people will know.
Josh: Hypothetical company incorporated.
Ben: They make the great painting shirts.
Justin: It's almost like people forget. They do all of this, well hopefully, they do all of this thinking about building something people want with their software product, and then they make a shirt that just like, their dumb logo or something with the .com in it or the .biz. And then-
Josh: It's an afterthought.
Justin: Although, actually, I will wear a .biz shirt. If you have a .biz domain, I will wear that shirt.
Ben: How about a .ca shirt? Would you wear a .ca shirt?
Josh: A .ca?
Justin: I will definitely wear a .ca shirt. That's fair.
Josh: You got to rep the CA.
Justin: I've had a few Americans go, "What the hell is this .ca?" I'm like, "It's Canadian. It's .ca."
Josh: .ca. That's good.
Justin: Because the C in French is ca-
Josh: Yeah. Yes. I caught that.
Josh: We're a little bit cultured here.
Ben: We are in the Pacific Northwest. We're close enough, right?
Josh: Totally. Yeah. Well, if you... I know you're a Laravel guy for the most par...