The Art of Product

When’s the last time you read a manual or document to know how to use product features and functions? Ben’s new mantra: Write it down! Rather than repeat expertise, reuse content. Currently, Tuple’s most unreliable part is its online users list. Beat the competition by doing what others can’t do Ben and special guest, Adam Wathan, address product pricing and licensing questions. Adam hosts Full Stack Radio, created Tailwind CSS, and authored Refactoring UI. He encourages writing simple and succinct stories despite complex information. Also, Adam describes how products on the market look sexy, but may not work well under the hood.

If you’re spending too much time on Twitter, Ben shares some helpful advice. Fully lock and block it by setting parental controls and content restrictions. While attending Big Snow Tiny Conf, Ben’s awareness of his Twitter addiction could no longer be denied. He successfully resisted being lured back into the app. Also, Tuple launched its Apple Pro Display XDR stand giveaway. So far, a sense of humor has generated a positive brand impression and collected more than 900 email addresses. Derrick describes how StaticKit started as a form provider for static sites, but he continues to build out its functionality by offering tooling to collect payments via Stripe. He discovered that trying to force payments in a form model posed many challenges. He decided to offer the same type of functionality as functions, instead of forms. Derrick is feeling content and confident with where the product stands relative to reinventing the model and changing the original vision.

Ben’s back from Tuple’s ski trip retreat, where survey responses were reviewed for strategic planning purposes. Turns out that those who value pair programming actively use Tuple. What’s Tuple doing well? Latency and low friction. What can be added, changed, or improved? Free text, and make the basics a bit more stable and reliable. Ben knows it’s expensive and annoying to run tests all the time, but it’s also possible to mess something up that’s good. From building Level, Derrick understands how minor deviations to features can become major annoyances for customers. However, he’s still on track with his goal to be intentional with the material he consumes by reading Digital Minimalism. Derrick’s feeling zen and reaping the benefits of dumbing down his devices but not getting sucked back in. Plus, he continues to make progress with StaticKit and has moved from prototype to production. Stay tuned!

New Year’s Resolutions? Ben’s goal is to drink less coffee and get a survey out to Tuple customers. What do they want in the future for Tuple features? Are people using Tuple for reasons other than original core assumptions? Ben is looking forward to collecting customer insights to determine if they are on the same product development roadmap. Derrick came up with trends, themes, and habits that he hopes to cultivate and aspire to in 2020. He wants to exhibit intentionality with how he spends his time and not be a slave to Slack, Twitter, and other channels. Does Derrick have adequate self-control, or a suitable replacement? Self-control takes time, energy, and money. However, spending free time letting his mind wander helped Derrick develop a deliberate API design around payments for StaticKit.

In the last episode of 2019, Derrick and Ben focus on reflections and projections. Should they set goals for the coming year when it comes to Tuple and StaticKit? After all, nobody can predict the future, and hard work doesn’t always lead to perfect products and startups. But it’s been an amazing year for Tuple, which went from zero to hundreds of customers. What’s next? Adding cross-platform operating systems and going with freemium pricing model? Always looking ahead, how good are Tuple founders at predicting the future? Time will tell, once they receive their delay emails. Derrick describes how goals can lead to unhealthy behavior. Recently, he spent time with TinySeed mentor, Dr. Sherry Walling, talking about burnout and other mental health aspects for founders of startups. What are the early signs of burnout? Burning the candle at both ends. So, Derrick’s goal is to be less stressed by having more fun and enjoying the journey. Next year is going to be an interesting one for both Derrick and Ben!

Ben has turned out to be a terrific tweeter about Tuple on Twitter. So far, more than 750k impressions have been made regarding his post about the enterprise sales process. He also shared that Tuple’s scaling issues appear to be resolved and fixed. He gave a shout out to the team at You Need A Budget (YNAB) for consistent and concise support. Plus, Ben has started using Anki flashcards to spark his memory and recall names via mnemonics. Derrick reminds us that the last ‘S’ in SaaS is service. He describes how to prevent and combat arrival fallacy and enjoy the journey. So, should he set goals, plan ahead, and look forward to the future of StaticKit? Or, is that too stressful? Will arrival points and milestones bring him happiness? No matter what, Derrick is looking forward to sharing insight about being a skeptic of frontend static Web pages by presenting at ZEIT’s Backendless Conf.

Ben describes how a recent Tuple tweet led to thousands of impressions and mentions, as well as possibly increased free trial sign-ups. Ben is experiencing the enterprise sales process where he could make a good deal of money from a large company, if he chooses to meet its numerous demands. Also, Tuple is making progress with scaling challenges by addressing related Heroku and Ruby issues. Tuple’s smallness is a strength! Derrick’s been working on API design for StaticKit’s payments plug-in, especially to handle European customer authentication regulations that Stripe is moving toward. However, complex and flexible API design can’t be rushed to meet requirements. Derrick hopes to move StaticKit’s interface to his Next.js application. Constantly learning new technologies is critical to know his customer base. So, Derrick was pleased to be invited to present at ZEIT’s Backendless Conf.

Derrick shipped a few things for StaticKit, including Mailchimp and ConvertKit integrations. What’s next? Stripe integration. For now, Derrick is targeting more technical users comfortable with code. At some point, he will involve “no-code” users who can easily drop-in Derrick’s plug-in. He’s done all the hard work for them. Check out new content he created, such as guides and features-specific landing page for opt-in forms. Ben decided to take some time off and away from Tuple during the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s just one of the lifestyle perks of being part of a startup. Ben finally settled on transitioning away from Drip to Customer.io for Tuple’s transactional emails. However, Tuple continues to deal with scaling issues on the infrastructure side. Are problems due to capacity? Memory? Something’s wrong, but not sure what and why...TBD. Yet, November proved to be Tuple’s best month so far with record-breaking growth!

Ben announced the release of a new version of Tuple. The app includes improvements to its Webcam feature and requires less CPU usage and bandwidth. Also, Ben decided to turn off payment notifications from Stripe. Thankfully, too many emails created too much noise. He understands the value of not sending lots of emails, but the right emails to educate Tuple’s target market. Tuple’s pricing page and corporate swag will be released soon. As a Superhuman user, Ben offered Derrick advice on implementing it via Chrome or Electron, as well as a setting to remove badges. In addition to Zapier, Derrick’s working on a Mailchimp integration for StaticKit. He stresses the importance of evolving product positioning to make compelling marketing. Yet, Derrick describes TinySeed’s growth goal that he got as ambitious and unlikely to be achieved.

Derrick shipped a revamped version of StaticKit’s homepage and plans to add a payments section soon. He’s eager to conduct another round of customer development calls. If you want to chat about your experience with static sites and help shape product direction for StaticKit, schedule a call with Derrick on Calendly. Ben already utilizes a checkout option for Tuple and shares some of its challenges. Also, Ben announced and shipped the release of a highly requested and expected Tuple feature—ability to start a Tuple session without sharing your screen. Despite Tuple’s burst of free trial signups, Ben described a decreased conversion rate to paying customers. Both Ben and Derrick share how design matters, especially when upgrading or switching browsers and operating systems that make your app look like a scam and sketchy!