Customer Interview Part 1: The Interview

Michele Hansen  0:00
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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone. So we're doing something a little bit different this week. We've had a lot of conversations lately about doing customer interviews. And so we thought that it might be helpful to do a demo of one so that you can all understand what goes into one. So we have someone who has agreed to be interviewed. Who is using Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And so I'm going to interview them today. 

Alright, so here we go. We're gonna get started. 

Michele Hansen
Hi, Is this Drew?

Drew  1:24  
Yep, this is Drew.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Hi, Drew, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Drew  1:30  
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So before we get started, I just want to ask if you had any questions for me?

Drew  1:38  
I'm not off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll find some along the way.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
Okay, feel free to ask any questions that might come up. 

Drew  1:45  
Okay. 

Michele Hansen  1:47  
And just before we get started, I just want to make sure that it's okay, we record this interview.

Drew  1:51  
Yeah, absolutely.

Michele Hansen  1:53  
Okay, so um, so just to get started, Could you just tell me a little bit about like, how you came to even needing something like Simple File Upload in the first place?

Drew  2:05  
Well, I'm, I'm building a product that is going to play currently has a, it's a job listing platform. So we wanted companies to be able to upload their logo, you know, to sit next to their listing. But our stage two of that we're actually adding in some more verbose user accounts, where users will have avatars, they'll be able to upload resumes and stuff like that. So we just really, we really saw that we were gonna need something that would allow us to upload all the files and handle them easily.

Michele Hansen  2:42  
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I'm curious, have you tried anything else to do this?

Drew  2:51  
Yeah, we were using Firebase Storage, because we were using firestore as our database. So we started using Firebase Storage. Just because, you know, they, they were right next to each other seemed like an easy enough fit. And it was working at first. But we recently started going through a big migration to next js, which has, which is you know, some things are just handled a little differently from a code perspective. And Firebase Storage just did not work as easily. As it was, we found ourself running into a lot of walls, jumping through a lot of hoops just to make the simplest things work.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Can you tell me a little bit more about those hoops and, and walls that you ran into?

Drew  3:44  
I'm trying to think a specific case. So we were we're really just trying to load the image before the component was loaded. You know, so it would be there when, when the page did load. But because of because of how they give you access to it with promises, and you know, all that fun stuff. I don't know if it's because we were implementing it wrong. Or maybe they just weren't ever really meant to work hand in hand, but we would get we were getting errors that, you know, it couldn't it couldn't do what we were asking because the data it needed, wasn't there yet when it was asking for it. And we really started to feel like we were just putting band aids on things to make something work. And this was really kind of our big push to make the platform more stable, not less. That was probably the biggest one.

Michele Hansen  4:45  
Sounds like that was like frustrating. A lot of like, fits and starts for you guys.

Drew  4:51  
Yeah, it really was because there we had it working. And it you know, it took a little bit of work to get it working that first time and Most every other piece of the code kind of just transferred one to one for the most part. And this, this part just did not. And we already had, you know, we had a decent amount of files in the stores that we wanted to get to, but for whatever reason, be it user error or stored there. It just wasn't happening.

Michele Hansen  5:24  
Yeah, I'm going to do remember, like how long it was, like from from the time when you just started, decided to start using Firebase Storage? And then until you decided, like, wasn't going to work? Like, how long was that?

Drew  5:42  
Oh, we started, we started using it around a year ago, the it was working fine. We started, we started working on this big rebuild about maybe a month and a half ago. And that was probably when we started realizing that it wasn't gonna work. And I think it was, I think I spent probably three days trying to wrestle it before I've just relented.

Michele Hansen  6:08  
Oh, man.So it took six weeks of try of trying to get it to work, and then you intensely worked on it for three days, and then it still wouldn't work.

Drew  6:21  
Well, the six weeks wasn't fully working on trying to get it to work six weeks was, you know, getting all the components moved over. And all that other stuff set up for the new environment. And then, but you are correct, it was three intense days of trying to make it work.

Michele Hansen  6:37  
Man, there must have been super frustrating.

Drew  6:41  
It was and I was I was at my wit's end.

Michele Hansen  6:48  
So when did you start thinking like that, maybe use something else.

Drew  6:57  
Almost immediately, I wanted to use something else, but I didn't know what else would be out there at the pricing model that they provide. Um, but I guess, free free always comes with caveats. And I found those caveats early on.

Michele Hansen  7:12  
Oh, so Firebase Storage was free if you were using firestore.

Drew  7:17  
Yeah, they have their, they have this whole platform set up where it's, it's free up until X amount of requests, but that number is like really high. So it's really, it's really enticing when you're trying to just, you know, when you just want to get something up and moving. The widget, we just kept hitting brick walls with the storage.

Michele Hansen  7:38  
Yeah, it sounds like it. So. So you were, you had like three days of intensely trying to work on this. You wanted to use something else? And then you you didn't know what oth...