The Art of Product

The feeling of accomplishment you get from doing hard things has become Derrick’s way of living recently. Building a startup like Level is hard, but he feels good when he makes small wins. It’s rewarding when he makes progress. Ben is on a roll right now with Tuple. He’s making progress and getting stuff done. His Pairing Programming Guide is turning people into Tuple subscribers. Today’s Topics Include: Have people with high standards read and review your writing to get feedback Ben’s article, The Case for Pair Programming, was on the front page of Hacker News Ben’s marketing efforts for Tuple have increased its number of subscribers Derrick has a unique challenge of prioritization, so he set a deadline Derrick used Postgres to build a rudimentary search into Level By the end of October, Derrick should have people/teams to test and use Level Product Task List: After you launch, that’s not the end, it’s the beginning Balancing personal finances with no income; set the bar high, but don’t sell yourself short Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Tuple Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide The Case for Pair Programming Upcase Indie Hackers

Adam Wathan, a software developer, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur joins Ben and Derrick on this episode. Adam is also the creator of Nitpick CI, author of Refactoring to Collections, and host of the Full Stack Radio podcast. Usually isolated and working alone, Adam enjoys the opportunity to chat with others about what everyone is working on. It’s like a mastermind session that’s fun and rewarding! Today’s Topics Include: Ben launched Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide earlier than expected at learntopair.com Ben continues to focus on marketing for Tuple, while other team members are developing the product Derrick feels a sense of guilt when working, but not sharing; once you get out of the habit of working in public, it might be difficult to return to it Derrick is up against his deadline of having a deliverable by the end of October Pros and cons of working alone or with partners to handle tasks/responsibilities Rails vs. Laravel Battle? No, PHP as a language battles with no one Adam is working on a refactoring UI book/design survival kit; chapters are independent and pricing still needs to be established What are digital vs. physical perks you could offer to those who purchase a product first? Derrick has been getting Level ready for alpha users and spending time, more than he wants, to get file uploads to work on it Links and resources: Adam Wathan Nitpick CI Refactoring to Collections Full Stack Radio Podcast Adam Wathan on GitHub Adam Wathan’s Email Adam Wathan on Twitter Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Tuple Pair Programming Guide Product Hunt Extreme Programming Book Laravel Ruby on Rails Steve Schoger Colorbox by Lyft Tailwind CSS

Ben and Derrick are joined by Brian Casel, podcaster, cofounder of Big Snow Tiny Conf, and known as “Mr. Process.” The three are fans of podcasts and conferences because they offer time to build relationships with people and talk deeply about things. In this episode, they share their updates and thoughts on involving others in their day-to-day processes. It brings everyone together to learn from each other, as well as build a community and consensus. Today’s Topics Include: Hosting and handling logistics for smaller conferences and retreats Ben shipped his Pair Programming Guide that offers tips, tutorials, and resources Guide to serve as top of funnel for Tuple; build an audience, establish expertise, get people together who care about it, and offer them a tool Flipping into different modes (writing, marketing, programming, etc.); in startup mode, you’re trying to make progress and doing everything - even when you have partners More people are live streaming their coding sessions, writing processes, and other tasks - documenting the creation and development of a product or service Build trust with a group of people to build referrals and have them talk about your product; but giving fans access to your product and building a community can be challenging Building a new product; spend money to hire someone to do it fast or take it slow and learn to do it yourself but don’t get paid for your time When building a company or product, it can be fun and frustrating; these days you should know a bit about all the pieces to it - teaching infrastructure is now an industry Coaches and friends can give you advice and let you know just what you need to know Practice Project vs. Real Product Mindsets: Perfecting something that you know won’t be perfect out of the gate, making it as good as possible, or plan first and then execute Links and resources: Brian Casel on Twitter Productize & Scale Big Snow Tiny Conf BootstrappedWeb ProcessKit Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Tuple MicroConf Startups for the Rest of Us Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide Pairing with Ben Orenstein on the Tuple Pairing Guide (with Adam Wathan) Jason Fried Laravel Mackenzie Child Drift and David Cancel Ruby on Rails

Ben recently returned from an entrepreneur retreat that featured sessions and activities focused on various topics, from projects people were working on to troubles with cofounders. Attendees were able to be honest, open, and transparent with each other. Ben had the opportunity to demo Tuple during the retreat. Feedback was that there are too many people working on its development, so he should focus on marketing. Derrick emphasized the importance of keeping in mind the cost of getting someone caught up to speed on a project. He has thought about hiring a contractor to help with the development of Level, but decided that his single brain was enough. Today’s Topics Include: Ben is working on a website to host the best pair programming guide on the Internet Not getting on the content marketing treadmill, but coming out with 1 or 2 solid, comprehensive pieces of content that draw in people Cascading style sheets (CSS) make your website site look good; should you hire a designer or learn the basics on your own? Create a good network; know people who know about things, and ask for help Derrick pushed a license update for Level’s code base; justified reasons why he should or shouldn’t make it an open source product and garner legal protection Derrick’s original end-of-October people testing goal for Level is still possible; using Trello to list and clarify tasks Finding a balance between making progress and doing other things that keep a product in people’s minds Tuple’s team is starting to adopt more foundational processes to address tasks Feedback from Listeners: More interaction and question-asking between Derrick and Ben, as well as bring people into their podcast process Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Tuple Thoughtbot Big Snow Tiny Conf MicroConf Julian.com Tailwind Redis Trello

Ben is back from retreat #2 for Tuple. It may not have been as good as the first retreat, but was still above baseline productivity. The team worked on refactoring the app. Then, he went to CocoaHeads, which is for MacOS X and iOS developers to discuss Apple's Cocoa and CocoaTouch. Derrick will be speaking about Level at the local Elixir meetup. He is excited to dive deeper into using Elixir and reading books about it. Then, he plans to share what he learns and encourage others to not be intimidated by more powerful concepts in Elixir. Today’s Topics Include: Ben talks about climbing; if he’s not good at something, that makes him feel bad, so he needs to overcome such a feeling Derrick has been trying to figure out strategically how to provide a valuable service around Level’s open source code base; needs to put in the effort of learning how it’ll work Importance of developing DevOps skills, knowledge - whether it’s you or in-house experts As Derrick rapidly builds features for Level, he is tempted to either skimp on full-comprehensive testing or taking extra steps to refactor features into their ideal form Derrick and Ben both are figuring out where they should be and where they should focus their time and efforts as they create their new products Speed and quality are not traded off for one another; code has to be good to be added to and changed later quickly Share what you’ve done with others to be reviewed and receive feedback; plus share your thoughts via Twitter with Ben and Derrick on how they can improve their podcast! Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Tuple CocoaHeads Elixir Thoughtbot Discourse Docker

Derrick is in Washington for ElixirConf. Like Elixir, he is becoming more comfortable with stability, as opposed to constant churn and new stuff all the time. He knows you have to show restraint to try and not solve every problem. While at the conference, Derrick wants to make connections with people and hopes Level will one day be a good use case example for the Elixir community. Ben is discovering that startups are not easy. There are a lot of ups and downs. While other people were enjoying Labor Day, Ben was actually being a boss and getting work done. He may not have worked on the highest priority, but on a task that was satisfying to work on. Today’s Topics Include: Derrick has been keeping up his dev journal for Level by chronicling stories about the day-to-day building process; keeps him focused For his journal, Derrick is using Svbtle, which offers a beta option to enable SSL for secure custom domains Derrick is experimenting with newer Web platform functionality and built a custom element for Level to inject custom HTML and send push notifications Ben was planning to pair using the Tuple app, but a bunch of stuff broke Highs and lows with Tuple have been crazy; the lows make Ben wonder if it is ever going to work Derrick tried using Level with someone else and everything seemed confusing; feel good about small wins, but rough spots can be difficult Still a lot to do with Tuple, but Ben is making forward progress; keyboard support and other features have been merged - becoming a working app Ben has some performance and latency leads for Tuple that are promising Tuple continues to be tested inside and outside of Ben’s team to address variables Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level The Level Journal Tuple ElixirConf RubyConf Heroku Richard Feldman Svbtle

Ben has been focusing on MacOS development and writing code. There’s so much he doesn’t know. But that’s ok. He strives to regularly learn things - just keep making progress for it to feel less intimidating. Derrick has the same mindset. It’s ok to not know everything. Start with the basics, and keep going. You’ll figure things out eventually. Today’s Topics Include: Ben is battling being part of the action or not and what tasks to handle; what is his role? Ben feels guilty about changing his mind, but doesn’t stick with non-optimal decisions Ben is discovering through calls and conversations that there is a market for Tuple Derrick has been focused on the new version of Elm and migrating to it; Elm is not going to break, and it has been thoroughly tested Level development continues with time spent on the Inbox; wants to get the MVP out Derrick plans to do journaling to share things and keep people involved with Level Make the Internet better and faster by not following stupid rules Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Derrick’s Manifesto Tuple Elm Basecamp Drip

Today’s guest, Justin Jackson, just launched a podcast platform called, Transistor.fm. Justin describes the time he spent working with co-founder Jon Buda to get it ready to go live. Launching involves a lot of energy and emotion with ups and downs. Whether working on your own or with someone else, Justin encourages you to take time away to work on something to focus on it and make significant progress. Today’s Topics Include: Reporting is key feature for podcast hosting applications; Transistor.fm offers an awesome analytics feature When catching up with competitors, have a comparable minimum set of features Some features don’t look good in screenshots; showcase a feature Lots of time was spent on the launch, which Justin hoped would create a ripple effect for sign ups, word of mouth, tweets, and other engagement People see something on Product Hunt, and they buy it; it’s an easy decision but not an intent-based audience - looking for entertainment and freebies Splash for Transistor.fm made it the #1 product and generated sign ups A podcast is an investment; Justin decided to use credit card sign up for Transistor.fm to build a brand and trust Calculating churn, setting expectations, and reaching goals; banking on slow, steady growth Starting work on Spots.fm, self-serve ads for indie creators; making it as easy to advertise on a podcast as it is advertising on Facebook Get a company to sponsor you and write off as marketing expense; way for podcasters to earn income from their show Talk, observe, and listen to “normals” to find that people buy things because of podcasts; don’t change people’s priorities to fit your ideals Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Derrick’s Manifesto Tuple Build Your SaaS Podcast MegaMaker Justin Jackson Newsletter The Importance of Trust with Your Audience with Justin Jackson Transistor.fm Laracon Tuple Native App and Level Inbox Workflows Product Hunt Rob Walling Tim Ferriss

Ben is back from a productive retreat with his Tuple co-founders. It was deep concentration work that didn’t feel like a chore, but a feeling of joy. They experienced a milestone - scrapped the electron-based version of their app to work on a native functional prototype. There’s a ton more to do, but it basically works. The pieces are coming together. Derrick understands the foundation required to pretty much get anything done with a new product. He is considering a future retreat, but wondering if the benefits are worth it to go off somewhere as a solo founder. Or, would it be more productive to be just sitting at his desk at home? The most critical item on his radar and one of the biggest unknowns he continues to battle is how the mechanics of Level’s Inbox will work. If it doesn’t function well, then the whole promise of the app breaks down. Today’s Topics Include: Ben is trying to get to dog food ability - being able to pair using the app while actually working on the app Ben is using Basecamp and GitHub Issues to manage tasks that are still left to do Ben is still experiencing a steady stream of tweets, sharing, and sign ups for Tuple Derrick also has a steady stream of tweets and is up to 4,500 handle reservations Derrick is evaluating what paradigm he is mirroring when it comes to notifications and actionable to do items It can be counterintuitive but ultimately helpful to think about something so technical that it sends you back into a loop of higher level conceptual thinking Derrick’s making progress and at a decision point; trust his instincts and build something to be used, build a prototype, or build static mock-ups? Take a risk and set a date! Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Derrick’s Manifesto Tuple Codetree Basecamp GitHub Issues Drip

Ben is out of town on a retreat with his Tuple co-founders, and Derrick is deep into building Level. So, this episode features Derrick as a recent guest on the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast. Rob Walling interviews Derrick about Level - what inspired the idea and how he went about trying to validate it. Today’s Topics Include: Level’s landing page and current query of number of members; scarcity play is effective Level is a Slack competitor, but much less interruptive and more asynchronous Derrick discovered Slack does not scale well as a team grows, interrupts people’s flow; Level is Derrick’s take on the solution to those issues Derrick hit the ground running with his manifesto and getting people signed up for Level His efforts on Twitter were effective because it’s a product marketed toward developers Dealing with feedback, ill-informed comments and conversations Derrick wanted to talk to too many, rather than too few people about value of creating a new product to address pain points Differentiation from Slack: Level niched down to developers and open sourced Derrick plans to offer free and on-prem versions of Level Whiteboarding to go over ideas and transform them into something tangible Derrick is working on mock-ups; challenging to lay out UI elements, such as the Inbox Risks are involved; when building something new, the challenge is to validate your most risky hypotheses - the ones that are most likely to fail Level is the third Saas startup that Derrick has worked on; first time he will not earn income or revenue while building Level, so had to make adjustments Links and resources: Derrick Reimer Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter Ben Orenstein Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter Level Derrick’s Manifesto Tuple Fostering a Culture of Creativity with Rob Walling Exploring the Open Source Business Model Startups for the Rest of Us: How Derrick Reimer is Validating His Ambitious Third Saas Application Drip Codetree MicroConf