Slow & Steady

Benedicte and Benedikt return to the daily grind after enjoying the conference season.Here’s why we had to push back the recording time of this week’s episodeGetting Things Done – a book by David AllenListen to Benedikt’s conversation with Brian Casel about shipping speedPrune Your FollowsAfter not being able to attend for the past years, Benedikt enjoyed himself at MicroConf Europe: nice weather, meeting their customer support advocate in person, and all the social events between the talks. Now back to work after his week-long birthday leave, Benedikt’s trying to figure out how to be smarter with his to-do list. Benedicte’s back to the daily grind after her short conference season in November. Aside from working on the readme files for their Cloudinary plugins, they’re also doing more work on Prune Your Follows as they prepare for their upcoming Product Hunt launch this December.

Ivar Østhus of Unleash chats with Benedicte about feature flagging, how they enable collaboration in teams, how they turned their side gig into a full time business, and more.UnleashFollow Unleash on TwitterFollow Ivar on Twitter and LinkedInWhat started as a side gig in a basement in Norway, Ivar and his brother turned their SaaS into a full time business in early 2021. Their tool allows teams to build features together, ship new features in small increments, and enables transparency within teams and stakeholders. Ivar and Benedicte talk about his journey to commercial exploration, how they talked to over a hundred customers, how they protect their users’ data privacy, and more.

Benedicte enjoys a fun week at Jamstack Conf. Benedikt wraps things up at work before next week’s MicroConf Europe.Despite feeling tired after Jamstack Conf, Benedicte enjoyed a great week in San Francisco that was filled with partying and talking. She also had a nice chat with an encryption backend that might lead to a deal for POW! that’s similar to Prune your Follows.After finishing the final touches on the message composer, the Userlist team is now rolling it out for everyone. Benedikt’s also wrapping up the work on the message topics feature before heading out to MicroConf Europe next week.

After running into a problem with her domain, Benedicte and Benedikt talk about how to protect your email address and domain.Prune Your FollowsBDTP S6E1: Email Deliverability with Lauren MeyerRead more about SPF, DKIM, and DMARCPostmark’s DMARC Reports ToolDespite experiencing a “fail week” with technology, Benedicte celebrates a few wins with her projects such as getting Prune Your Follows ready for beta along with this week’s Xata launch and slowly converting her site to Tailwind. Benedikt and the Userlist team managed to build and ship their most requested Message Topics feature in a span of a week. And after weeks of frustration with his internet connection, things are looking promising as Benedikt decides to switch providers.

Geoff Roberts of Outseta chats with Benedikt and Benedicte about Outseta, their uncommon operating and compensation model, and more.OutsetaJustin WelshSDR NationFollow Geoff on TwitterWhile there are a lot of best in class tools out there, more often than not, early stage businesses only need basic functionalities to get things done.Coming from the same experience, Geoff and Dimitris used it to build Outseta, an all-in-one tech stack (that includes payments, authentications, CRM, and email) for SaaS and membership style businesses. Their tool helps founders focus more of their time on building the product instead of spending time integrating several different tools before launching their business.Geoff, Benedicte, and Benedikt talk about how they attracted both the technical and non-technical audience, how he juggles work and dad duties, and more!

Benedicte lands the deal for Prune Your Follows. Benedikt deals with the slow speed of moving their rendered emails. Should Benedicte get the black or steel refrigerator?BackblazeXataGeoff Roberts of OutsetaBenedicte successfully lands the deal to rebuild Prune Your Follows with Xata, NextAuth, and Gatsby. With everything she has to get done before flying out to San Francisco, she’s looking forward to doing a good crunch time to fight the insecurities away. Benedikt is feeling a bit frustrated with the slow speed of moving rendered emails from their database to Amazon S3. And with the major chunk of work out of the way, Benedikt and Leo were able to do a lot of cleanup on their message composer code.

Benedikt focuses on solving other issues on Userlist. Benedicte makes the most out of her vacation in Germany.Conference BuddyGeoff Roberts of OutsetaWith the message composer now deployed to production, Benedikt and the Userlist team can now focus on adding more niceties and fixing other issues on the platform. Despite being unable to meet up with Benedikt last week, Benedicte had a nice and productive vacation in Germany. She was able to catch up with Mirjam Aulbach of Conference Buddy for brunch and send her proposal on the Sample App + Content Combo. As for Cloudinary related things, Ola’s doing a great job on the readme by bringing joy into it with emojis. 

Benedicte pitches her latest side project to a database startup. Benedikt gets an interesting question from his mentee.Read Benedikt and Jesse’s back and forth about shipping updatesPrune Your FollowsCampfire Labs – a content companyTraction – a book by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin MaresFirst Ruby FriendSenior Engineer Mindset – a book by Swizec TellerBenedikt and the Userlist team are putting the finishing touches on their message composer, which will be deployed to projection very soon. He also met with his First Ruby Friend mentee this week and got an interesting question: how do you become a senior developer?Benedicte just pitched her latest side project, Prune Your Follows, to a database startup and will be having a meeting with them later this week. This new opportunity has gotten her excited about the prospect of turning future side projects as viable lines of business.

Benedicte and Benedikt share tips on how to make the most out of conferences and more.Retweet Colby Fayock’s testimonial about Gatsby Retweet Brian Lovin’s testimonial about UserlistPriya Parker’s “The Art of Gathering”Benedicte is filled with happy hormones this week because of dancing, more work from Cloudinary, and a wonderful testimonial from a customer on Twitter. She’s working on her preparations for upcoming conference talks and has also received a call for proposals for another one next year.Benedikt and the Userlist team also received praise on Twitter from a customer with a large following. The team’s also focused on finishing the editor integration work this month. And after skipping the MicroConf for the past two years, Benedikt will be attending this year’s MicroConf Europe along with their customer advocate, Katarina. Benedicte and Benedikt share their go-to conference tips so you can build new relationships during the event and more.

Coming back from a two-week break here at the podcast, Benedikt and Benedicte talk about the progress they’re making and a few existential questions about shipping updates.Jamstack Conf 2022Modern FrontEnds Live!Prune Your FollowsWith the summer over, everyone’s in “back to work” mode and the pace is picking up.Benedikt is revitalized after his three-week vacation. The Userlist team is making great progress with the message editor. On the frontend, they’re currently polishing the UI and fixing small annoyances with the copy-paste function to make it easier for users. On the backend side of things, Benedikt is working on setting up the validation process for the new document schema and is tackling issues related to their original renderer.Benedicte is gearing up for her upcoming Gatsby talks this November to hit three birds with one stone: two conferences and a video course. Work-wise, she’s still figuring out the right mix of Gatsby products and services. And while it didn’t win the Hackathon, she’s refactored Prune Your Follows to use NextAuth.Benedikt and Benedicte also discuss a few existential questions about shipping updates like: how long should stuff take? What is good enough? How do you balance quality and speed?