Slow & Steady

After taking a three month break from the podcast, Brian joins Benedikt for an update episode. After ending their year on the road adventure after seven months, Brian and his family are back in their hometown in Colorado. In a couple of weeks they'll finally be able to move back into their house. Brian's board game project is in the pipeline with the potential publisher. However, things move a lot slower than Brian and his friend were hoping for. Nonetheless, everyone in the industry confirms that this isn't unusual in the early stages. To keep their creative juices flowing, they both started working on a new, competitive, deck building game. While he's sad that his dream of building a software business as a solo founder didn't work out, Brian's very happy about his job at GitLab. The work is still fun and fulfilling, even though the number of meetings on his calendar increased. Overall, he's a lot more relaxed so the move back into full time employment was the right decision for him. Benedikt has been fixing a problem with Userlist's data processing pipeline in the past week. A very specific set of conditions caused problems for a customer and it took quite some head scratching to figure things out. Ultimately, he's happy that he's now got a team in place so development work doesn't fully stop when unexpected things like this disrupt the week's plan. 

Benedicte's app, POW!, turns two years old on International Women's Day. Benedikt enjoys the ability to pair program again.Benedicte's app, POW!Done for you Demo on queen.raae.codesBenedicte has worked on POW! for two years and she brings some exciting news this week — the team will be expanding! After being more of a back burner project last year, POW! is going to have a bigger focus in 2022 with another developer joining the team. There are some outstanding legal things to figure out, and Benedikt offers some advice when growing the "tiny muffin", but a bigger team will help tackle the complexity of the app. Additionally, Benedicte has finished the Done-for-you Integration Demo sales page.Though it is a bit tricky to test at this point, Benedikt is feeling good about the progress on Userlist's new authorization layer. The two discuss some of the complexity in working through that, but Benedikt thinks he's close to a rollout of an early version. Leo, the new developer at Userlist, continues to contribute and refactored lots of code last week. Benedikt has enjoyed the ability to pair again, particularly when the two of them arrive at a solution that is better than what they could have arrived at alone, individually.Finally, Brian will be returning to the show next week to chat with Benedikt. Unfortunately, Benedicte won't make it as she's headed to London. For those that will be in London on Wednesday, March 16, send her a DM on Twitter to attend her in-person meetup!

Benedicte enjoys a serene winter wonderland. Benedikt adds an unexpected integration.Userlist's Better Done Than Perfect podcastUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 233: Demystifying Product Funnels with Rachel Obstler (of Heap)Benedicte and Benedikt are feeling calm. Benedicte has been staying in the woods outside of Oslo on vacation. Her cell phone and Twitter use are down, and she has been relaxing — skiing and spending family time. Before vacation, she was doing some refactoring on POW! to make it easier to add features in the future. Looking ahead, Benedicte will be traveling to London to visit her dad and to meet up with friends from the interwebs! After that, on to Athens.Benedikt details a win for Userlist — finalizing a new privacy policy and terms of service for GDPR compliance. It was expensive, not so fun, and they may need more updates again soon. Keeping with the recent integration theme, he worked on an unexpected one for Heap, a powerful analytics tool. After many years he also started building an authorization solution to allow for enabling access based on pricing tiers or user roles in the future.

Marie joins Benedicte and Benedikt to discuss building Llama Life, a productivity app centered around focus and fun, in public.Follow Marie on TwitterLlama Life — work through your to-do list with focus and funFirst version of Llama Lifewww.fidgetpage.com — a small project that drives Llama Life trafficLlama Life is a web-based productivity tool that Marie built to help you work through a to-do list, not just build one. While she isn't new to startups, she is new to coding. Self-taught and working as a solo founder until recently, Marie reminds herself that indie hacking on Llama Life is a dream job that combines design, marketing, and her newfound capabilities in software development.Moving quickly as both the designer and developer, Marie continued to build Llama Life after finding early encouragement on Twitter. The product started simple and grew to include authentication, a database, and payments. While the productivity application space is crowded, she built Llama Life out of her own needs. When diagnosed with ADHD, Marie became obsessed with solving for focus and attention and needed a tool that allowed for setting quick timers and one that was also fun.Listen in to learn the story behind the fun branding, how Marie leverages her marketing strengths, and what's ahead for Llama Life!

Benedikt asks some tough comparison questions. Benedicte leans on the "engine" and has some fun.Hacker News, Date ComparisonZach Holman: The Kobayashi Maru of Comparing Dates with TimesBenedikt's date and time comparison tweetSlow & Steady, on YouTube!Done-for-you Demo DraftYou're basically a house plant...Have you weighed in on Benedikt's data comparison conundrum yet? He stirred up quite the team conversation at Userlist, and on Twitter, too. There were some hot takes and lengthy discussions, but he was thankful to have a team to run some difficult date-handling questions by. He was also thankful to get back some deep focus time this week to tackle the challenge. He uploaded the catalog of Slow & Steady episodes to YouTube — now one more place you can listen!Benedicte relied on the Gatsby engine while she had some fun last week. Covid restrictions were lifted in Norway over the weekend. She got drinks with several friends and visited briefly with her sister in person after years apart. On stream last week, viewers seemed to enjoy a more freeform troubleshooting session and she finished a draft of her done-for-you demo. While POW! didn't qualify for TinySeed this year, Benedicte has a friend interested in helping with the marketing and customers interviews.And Brian? He's settled in Boulder and is doing well!

Benedicte shares some positive feedback. Benedikt moves forward with a suite of integrations.Queen Raae, testimonial tweet An embarrassed Queen Raae on streamUserlist Integrations pageBenedicte is feeling flattered, is receiving praise online, and saving this kind of feedback for the future in a "brag folder". She recommends starting one of these for brightening up a gloomy day or for reminding you of your achievements when it comes time for performance reviews. In addition to working on some new sales pages, Benedicte has applied to TinySeed with POW!. She doesn't meet the recommended MRR threshold but discusses the motivations behind applying anyway.Benedikt hasn't had the strictest focus given recent customer support issues and new hire ramp-up time, but he has made lots of progress with the Userlist integrations despite this. Some companies make this work easier for developers than others — Stripe is one of the good ones (add this to the list of non-sponsored Stripe shoutout episodes). In another milestone, Userlist has moved all email marketing to... Userlist! This was made possible with the feature update from last year and they finally made the jump over.

Time flies for Benedikt at Userlist. Benedicte will save you from your Gatsby emergency.TinySeed: an accelerator for SaaS bootstrappersHow to Start a Podcast in 2022 – Beginners Podcasting Guide with @mijustinEmergency Gatsby Call Sales PageSyntax - Tasty Web Development Treats with @wesbos and @stolinskiLlama Life - calm, focused productivityBannerbear — generate marketing visualsBenedikt has a frustrating day but shares a big milestone — after 50 months, his shares in Userlist have fully vested. He details how the business agreement between the Userlist co-founders worked and why it was smart to have it in place early on. Benedikt also shares a "royal screwup" story from the past week. After deleting an entire account he was able to restore everything after only several hours of work. In fact, despite the undesirable set of events, the success of the recovery effort is a "win".Benedicte launches her "Emergency Gatsby Call" sales page for those stuck on a reef — a one-on-one call to the rescue! She plans to make a page for giving talks as well. Some people think she works for Gatsby. These pages will help reinforce that she can help do Gatsby work for them. The upcoming streams include some plug-in making and code reviews.The two talk integrations, dunning emails, and they tease a future guest!

Benedikt and Benedicte chat with Lesley about her product Newsletter Glue.Lesley's websiteFollow Lesley on TwitterNewsletter Glue — Lesley's productWordPress GutenbergBenedicte's Tree Top Hut getawayPOW!Lesley Sim, co-founder of Newsletter Glue and fan of unique top-level domains, discusses product pivots, finding co-founders and freelancers, bootstrapping, WordPress, and more.Newsletter Glue is a plug-in that allows you to build and publish newsletters with the power of WordPress. The current offering is the result of a zoom-in pivot where Lesley solved one of her own problems. She works on the product remotely with her technical co-founder, Ahmed, and they've seen traction since the pivot.The three wrap up with weekly updates. Benedicte gets a new customer for POW!, Benedikt shares a meaningful win, and Lesley is riding a productive wave.

The third Monday of January may be a downer, but not for Benedikt and Benedicte!Blue MondayThe Great Gatsby with Queen Raae - REACT 168Benedikt: Tree data structure threadSmashing MagazineBenedikt is bathing in artificial light, exercising, and staying focused thanks to the new frontend developer, Leo, at Userlist. These factors, combined with a good year and small raise, have him beating the usual winter blues. Last week they helped a customer through a spam attack and he completed more integration work. Benedikt has enjoyed talking through the code with another developer. Benedicte, feeling confused about progress last week, is nonetheless keeping the engine alive. Schools are closing and childcare has been tricky but she had glimpses of "supermom". She completed her first non-hourly contract, started a draft for her Smashing Magazine article, kept up with yoga, and will even sneak in a short treehouse cabin trip this week. Like Benedikt, she has also enjoyed discussing code at a higher level with Ola as he comes up to speed.

Benedicte celebrates her birthday and Benedikt dives into backend work.Latest stream with Mirjam The Great Gatsby with Queen Raae - REACT 168While Benedicte enjoys a birthday tradition, the momentum from last week has slowed down. Not to fear — the Gatsby "engine" is proving a valuable way to keep things moving along. Routine, systems, and daily email writing were all "winners" for the week. A podcast appearance on React Round Up went well, too.Benedikt adjusts to working with Userlist's newest addition, Leo. Despite delegating tasks, Benedikt realized he is still spending time thinking about the delegated work. Otherwise, the onboarding is off to an excellent start and it has allowed Benedikt a chance to focus on the backend work. Exercise returns as a focus as well.Admire anyone that is working "slow and steady" on their business? Let us know and perhaps we'll have them on as a guest!