The guys are taking a few weeks off from podcasting to enjoy the fleeting Pacific northwest summer. They'll be back in late August or early September, fully rested and ready with hot takes to warm you as summer turns to fall. 

The guys talk about their experiences with offers to acquire Honeybadger and go over some common structures of acquisition deals (hint - most don’t involve walking a wheelbarrow of money out of your office and never returning). They also chat about things that you should think about if you are presented with an offer to sell your company.Links:GitHubDependabotPull PandaGemnasiumTableauSalesForceTropical MBA, Before the ExitMicroConfHoneybadgerFull Transcript:Starr:              00:01          It's happening in me. I'm going to remember you silver lady, so don't you worry.Josh:               00:08          You'll find her some day.Announcer:          00:10          Hands off that dial. Business is about to get a whole lot nerdier. You're tuned in to FounderQuest.Starr:              00:21          Somebody tweeted a while back and somebody referenced us and said that we should talk about this. You know, you should run your company like you're going to sell it. So then I thought, "Well maybe we could talk about sort of acquisitions in general, maybe weave it back and forth."Starr:              00:33          So Honeybadger has had a couple of fairly serious acquisition talks, none ongoing right now, none that panned out obviously. We're not going to name names because I think it might be illegal for us to because we signed stuff. The first one was with a private equity firm that specialized in sort of smaller companies and taking these companies built by developers and then bringing in business people and figure out how to grow them. And then we had another acquisition talk with a pretty well known company in the developer space, and that would have been kind of a strategic thing because they were kind of trying to bring something to the market that was very similar to what we did. And sort of both of those eventually fell through because we just couldn't really come to terms.Starr:              01:15          But I think we learned a lot while we were pursuing these because starting out I knew about acquisitions, like what pretty much I imagine anybody knows about acquisitions. It's like, "Okay, you sell a company, you make a ton of money, and that's like your happy ending." But it's really a lot more complex than that. Unless you happen to win the lottery, it's not necessarily like this huge, "You're going to be rich and set for the rest of your life event."Starr:              01:40          Yeah, so I don't know. What do you guys think?Ben:                01:44          I think that last statement is key. Our business has grown steadily, but not exponentially right? So, if you're sitting on a rocket ship you could probably have one of those acquisition events where you're set for the rest of your life because they're buying based on the future value of the company. They are not just based on what you've done so far, they are based on what they think you could do with them, combined with you. If you have had this exponential growth event, or if you can show that happening with their added resources to yours, then you could probably pull that off. But in our case, that wasn't really the scenario, right? We were growing steadily, the acquirers were interested in us because they knew that it was a reasonable business that could continue to grow, but not that it was expecting like this phenomenal growth. Yeah, so in our case those numbers weren't going to be crazy high numbers, but they were still nice numbers.Starr:              02:47          I feel like this is kind of a theme in our podcast, in that the way that most people probably think about acquisitions is focused on the VC model of startups and fundings and acquisitions. In a lot of our episodes we're like, "Okay, this is the VC way of doing things," but that's not like the way for everybody. The sort of VC acquisition model that everybody has in their head is, "Okay, you start this company. Your company has a ton of growth and it targets some market that is adjacent to a big, big company. And that big, big company doesn't have their eye on this sort of little market. Maybe they don't realize how much opportunity is there, but then this little plucky startup comes and exploits that, gets crazy growth, and now you have this little company who is kind of edging in on the territory of a bigger company. And so the big company buys the little company in order to get access to that market." I think that's the most common approach. I mean sometimes the bigger company buys you because you've developed some crazy new technology that they couldn't develop on their own.Starr:              04:04          I think those are the two situations in which you have this really big possible monetary outcome. I mean just listening to stories like that, you kind of see that while in order to that you have to have this crazy amount of growth, to the point where a big, big company worth a billion dollars or more... Actually when I was sort of getting to know about investing, I learned that a company worth a billion dollars is a relatively small company for a public company. So you have to get the attention of one of these sort of bigger companies. And you're not really going to do that unless you have a lot of growth or you have a whole bunch of customers that they really want access to. You've got to have something that they want. And you know we're just not really on that train, right?Ben:                04:56          Not at that scale. I think one thing to keep in mind is the motivation for the acquirer is to, like you said bring in some new technology, or bring in this innovative team, or have access to a market that you have found a way to have access to. And backing up from that, why do they care about these things? Because they want to increase their own revenue. They want to move the needle on their own business. So if you're talking to a hundred billion dollar company and your revenues are in the ten million dollar range, right well okay, that's interesting, but that's not really going to move the needle for that hundred billion dollar company. They are looking for much bigger things.Starr:              05:37          Unless they can leverage something that you have to make a lot more money than you are currently making. Right, because I don't think Microsoft really cares about how much money Github was bringing in. I mean I'm sure they do to some degree. Microsoft bought Github because they want to own open source.Ben:                05:58        &...

This week the guys talk about their office equipment and remote workspaces which range from working in a winery to building a standalone office in a backyard. They also go full old cranky developer mode on the new office paradigms and warn the youths of back issues stemming from working on couches and bean bags. Don't get them started on open floor plans or unassigned desks! Learn what has, and hasn't, worked for each of the guys on their quest for the perfect coding space.Links:FogBugzJoel SpolskyJoel Spolsky's Blog - Bionic OfficeHintErgoDox RegusInternational Residential CodeFull Transcript:Starr:              00:00          So you just got out there and you reached a moment, you reached a point of decision, and you decided I'm just going to keep going.Ben:                00:07          That's right, yep.Starr:              00:08          Yeah, all of us I think dream of that.Announcer:          00:10          You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Time to start a fire, crack open a can of Tab, and settle in for FounderQuest.Starr:              00:22          And sometimes it's like you go out to buy some milk for your child, or whatever, it's like I'm just going to keep driving. Just keep going. Really. No, I love my child.Josh:               00:33          Before I became a father, you always hear those stories like, dad went out for a pack of smokes, never came back, and I'm like, "How could people do that?" But now that I'm a dad, like I totally get it.Starr:              00:43          Yes, it's not ...Josh:               00:46          I mean it's still wrong.Starr:              00:47          It's very wrong, but it's like I understand the sentiment a little bit better.Ben:                00:53          Of course, my keep going moment just happened to be when I was doing a loop, so I don't know what that really says about me, but ...Starr:              00:59          Oh, that's deep. We're getting really into the weeds now.Ben:                01:03          So how's your shake coming, Starr?Starr:              01:06          It's coming pretty well. Maybe we should ... Should we talk about offices work environments and then we can save it for the podcast? Save it for the-Ben:                01:14          Oh, yeah. That's a good plan.Josh:               01:15          This is the podcast.Starr:              01:18          Holy shit, Josh.Josh:               01:19          Did I just blow your mind?Starr:              01:21          You blew my mind.Ben:                01:22          Because we just fix it all in post around here.Starr:              01:28          We do. Yeah, actually since we're restful, wouldn't we fix it all in put?Ben:                01:36          That's deep, man.Starr:              01:37          Yeah, that's a bad ... That's like a combo, like a dad joke or something. All right. So today I think we're going to talk about offices and work environments, which is, I mean we don't really have offices here at Honeybadger headquarters. Honeybadger headquarters is more of an idea than a place, I think.Starr:              01:57          Each of us has our own customized work unit in the place of our choice. We all set it up to achieve maximum efficiency. And so I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about that. It's like what do we like in an office? What don't we like in an office? Do you think we'll ever have a big Honeybadger open floor plan office?Ben:                02:21          No.Starr:              02:22          No?Ben:                02:23          Never, no.Josh:               02:24          If we had an office it definitely wouldn't be open floor plan.Ben:                02:27          Do you remember the business and software forums back in the day with Joel, and he had this ... When he wrote his blog, he had some awesome stuff about making an awesome development environment, and he had this one about his office space. So they had office space, I think it was in Manhattan, and he went into great detail about how they made it perfect for developers and he just-Starr:              02:52          I realize that. I remember that.Ben:                02:54          Do you remember that blog post?Josh:               02:55          Yeah.Ben:                02:55          And he talked about how each developer had their own office, with a door, and I believe all of them had exterior light, like they all had an exterior window. And I remember him describing it. They had to angle the walls in a certain wall so they could all get a little sliver of window. Anyway, reading that-Starr:              03:13          This was at FogBugz, so Joel Spolsky, FogBugz.Ben:                03:13          Yeah, that was FogBugz, yeah. Yeah. So after I read that I was convinced, yep, that's the way to go, that was the gold standard right there. So I determined that I would never be happy in an open space ever again.Josh:               03:27          Well, I currently am in an open space because my other company, Hint, which is a software, Ruby consulting shop. I'm the only one who likes closed off...

The guys answer a listener question about how to ensure customers are happy with your product and how to be proactive in finding out if they aren't. This can be especially difficult if your customers tend to be a little bit introverted...*cough* developers *cough*. Plus Ben reveals the number one reason customers leave Honeybadger!Full Transcript:Starr:              00:00          Yeah. I totally have been playing dumb this whole time as a strategy, 100%. It's not like I don't actually know anything, or I'm just making it up. It's 100% a strategy.Announcer:          00:11          They're just three amigos making their way in the crazy old world of software as a service. Welcome to FounderQuest.Ben:                00:22          In other news, I deployed the Logplex to Lambda, and it worked like a champ. Unfortunately the economics just don't work.Josh:               00:31          Again, bit by the economics again.Ben:                00:34          Yeah. I penciled out the math and it worked. You know you can allocate the amount of ram to the function, right?Josh:               00:42          Yeah.Ben:                00:42          I did the math based on 128 megs of ram, which is the lowest option, because it doesn't use that much. It uses about, I don't know, 30. The problem is, the performance and the concurrency was such that we were running, like, hundreds of concurrent Lambda functions in order to service the level of traffic, well, one-third of our production traffic. AWS has a soft limit of 1,000 concurrent Lambda invocations. You can of course get those soft limits raised if you can justify it, but of course, that comes with money, right? More invocations means more money.Ben:                01:19          I was like, "Okay, 600, 700 concurrent indications, that's really not great. Let's see if we can get that down a bit by increasing the ram," which increases the CPU allocation as well. That works, but at that point, the economics didn't work. Yeah, it was just the combination of concurrency and the amount of time taken to actually process each request.Josh:               01:46          I've taken a shot at this, and now, Ben's taken a shot at this. You guys are Seinfeld fans?Ben:                01:51          Mm-hmm (affirmative).Starr:              01:52          Sure.Josh:               01:52          Katelyn and I have been watching Seinfeld, re-watching it because she's never seen it. Last night, we were on the episode where Newman learns about Kramer's failed Michigan recycling scheme, where they basically like take the bottles in New York, which are worth 5 cents, and they have to figure out how to work the economics out to truck them to Michigan to get 10 cents. I feel like Ben and I are kind of like Kramer and Newman. Yeah, Logplex on Lambda is kind of like our Michigan recycling scheme.Josh:               02:31          Well, in the Seinfeld episode, the way they solved the recycling problem was that, Newman works for the U.S. Postal Service, as you know, and on one day of the year, on Mother's Day, the U.S. Postal Service has overflow, they had a fifth overflow mail truck that goes to Michigan. On one day of the year, they could co-op that mail truck and fill it with recycling, and get a free truck which changed the math in their favor.Ben:                03:05          We need Amazon to provide us a mail truck.Starr:              03:08          The solution to our economic problems is fraud. That's what you're saying, Josh, isn't that?Josh:               03:14          Yeah. Amazon does have a truck. What is that truck that you can like move your data center with?Ben:                03:24          Snowball.Josh:               03:24          Yeah, Snowball.Ben:                03:25          Snowball, yeah.Josh:               03:26          It's like the world's biggest USB drive, right? It's like this semi truck, and it's got a little bit of USB jack on the back of it, and you stick it in your computer.Ben:                03:34          Yeah. I think our customers and might have some issue with the amount of latency that would introduce.Josh:               03:38          Yeah.Ben:                03:39          Oh well.Josh:               03:40          We just need to find a Newman at Amazon that has access to a Snowball truck, and there you go.Ben:                03:47          Yeah. You know those Snowballs actually have like an EC2 environment on them? It's pretty wild.Josh:               03:52          Could take this show on the road.Starr:              03:56          Oh, man. Today, we have another listener question, and it's from, let's see, I can't find this name on here. Tony. It's from our old friend Tony. Tony asked us another question back a couple of episodes ago, and we answered it, and so we're back for round two. The previous question was all about marketing to developers and stuff like that, and now we're on to customer success around developers. I'll just read it. How about that, instead of me just making stuff up?Josh:               04:34          Sounds good.Starr:              04:36          It says, "For an early stage startup in the developer tool space, it's important to talk to customers, get product feedback, build social proof with testimonials and stuff, provide top notch support and love." I like the love part, you know? I like where Tony's coming from. "However, engineers are busy people and do not want to talk to someone," I totally understand that sentiment, "Unless something is broken or if they want to cancel." Yeah. Personally I still don't really want to talk to people.Josh:               05:06          Yeah.Ben:                05:06          I was thinking the same thing. I stil...

Do you know what the 3rd-party scripts on your website are up to? In this week’s episode of FounderQuest, the guys talk about CSP (Content Security Policy) and how it can enhance security in the browser. They also weigh adding it as a feature of Honeybadger vs. a standalone product. CSP - learn it, live it, love it, on this week's FounderQuest.Full transcript:Josh:               00:00          A middle of the night disruption for Ben, what is that? Like 8:30?Starr:              00:05          Oh, somebody called the burn unit! Oh!Announcer:          00:08          You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Time to start a fire! Crack open a can of Tab, and settle in for Founder Quest.Starr:              00:21          It is telling that the only way we can have sick burns on Ben is to accuse him of being too productive.Josh:               00:27          Yeah.Ben:                00:28          It's all good.Starr:              00:29          So you know how turkey makes you sleepy?Ben:                00:31          Tryptophan.Starr:              00:32          You can buy pills full of that stuff.Josh:               00:35          I forgot about Tryptophan supplements.Ben:                00:38          Wait, do they have pills that have both Tryptophan and Melatonin?Starr:              00:41          No, but...Josh:               00:43          Oh that's, that's like a cocktail.Starr:              00:44          I don't know if I want to do that. I want to wake up in the morning eventually.Ben:                00:49          You got to have the Tryptophan, plus the Melatonin, plus the NyQuil chaser.Josh:               00:54          Yeah.Starr:              00:54          And you just empty all those pill... empty all those capsules into a shot of whiskey. And then you just pound that bad boy.Josh:               01:01          Yeah!Ben:                01:03          Throw some Benadryl in there if you haven't... If you're still awake.Josh:               01:06          So today, I thought it would be fun to talk about like an actual sort of feature, like I don't think we've actually shipped this feature yet. Have we?Ben:                01:15          We kind of shipped the feature.Josh:               01:17          We've shipped it a few times in various forms, not-Ben:                01:22          It is not GA yet, as the big boys say.Josh:               01:25          Oh, so if you're a VIP, you get the feature flag. Like the "you can totally use this feature".Ben:                01:30          Exactly. If you're on the list then you get to use this feature.Starr:              01:32          Oh, yeah.Josh:               01:32          You did deploy... yeah, you deployed some of it, right? Or is it all of it?Ben:                01:35          Yes, it's deployed. It's out there.Josh:               01:35          Oh, okay.Ben:                01:36          We could launch it today if we really felt like it. But...Starr:              01:40          Anyway, I thought it would be fun to talk about this feature because it's something we've been discussing for literally years.Ben:                01:47          Literally.Starr:              01:48          I think...Josh:               01:49          Yeah, I think about-Starr:              01:50          I think Ben has taken a couple shots at it.Josh:               01:52          I've taken a couple of shots at it, too.Starr:              01:54          Damn, I feel like I should've taken some shots at it. And this feature is CSP reporting. So could somebody please tell me what the heck that is? Like what, what is CSP reporting?Josh:               02:06          Well, CSP is content security policy reporting. Content security policy is a feature of modern browsers that allows you to alert, basically send alerts to a URL of your choice when content that you don't, that you didn't authorize is loaded on the page.Ben:                02:30          So yeah, in addition to reporting, it also blocks that content, right? I mean, that's the primary use case, is to prevent your side from serving something that you didn't intend it to serve. Right? And so the reporting is kind of an extra benefit that you can, you can track-Josh:               02:44          Yeah.Ben:                02:44          ... but, you can see this in your browser. You know when you open up the console and those console errors, right? You can see if anything violates a content security policy. You can see that the browser is like, "Nope, didn't load that."Starr:              02:56          So what, what might be... What is an example of some bad behavior that this is trying to prevent?Ben:                03:02          So cross-site scripting is huge. So you know, you can inject some JavaScript into a vulnerable page. Let's say you have a content management system that allows you to put some user inpu...

Running a lifestyle business is awesome, contrary to what the VC's say. Figure out your life goals and fit your business to achieve them rather than worrying about 10x-ing. The guys also talk about why developers seem to experience higher rates of burnout than other professions and share their own prevention and coping solutions. Let's FounderQuest!Links:The 'Badger Life Blog Post: https://joshuawood.net/badger-lifeFull Transcript:Starr:              00:01          I had the voiceover guy, the voice of Barney who does our voiceovers. I had him do an intro that involves three guys trying to find personal happiness, and I may have used it once. I don't know, I just feel kind of lame putting it on there because I'm like this is too earnest. My 90s teenager self just won't let me be that earnest.Ben:                00:22          We're pretty earnest, when you think about it.Announcer:          00:25          Three developers, one mission. Build a business to nurture personal fulfillment. It's not stupid, it's FounderQuest.Josh:               00:36          The Badger Life was the title of the blog post I did too that was kind of on this topic.Starr:              00:42          Oh, that's right.Ben:                00:43          Josh is the expert on that-Josh:               00:45          I was just looking at it.Ben:                00:45          We'll just have you talk the whole episode.Josh:               00:47          No.Ben:                00:48          Monologue.Josh:               00:48          I mean, you want to have an episode, right? My talent is like just breaking the tension with the dumb jokes.Starr:              00:57          Oh, I thought that was my talent.Josh:               00:59          Well, clearly we're in trouble because Ben is the only one who can actually like talk cohesively.Ben:                01:06          So Josh, what was your motivation for writing that blog post?Josh:               01:11          I think just kind of sharing our view of the world. And I think we found a certain level of success with this now, and it's been something that we've been ... It's a kick that we've been on for a while, and I think it's one of the reasons we started the business was we were early starting the business to have, I think, like as a carryover from the last episode.Josh:               01:38          We never really start the business to be some sort of like, to get us a bunch of fame and power, anything like that.Starr:              01:44          Wait, what?Josh:               01:48          Maybe Starr did, but yeah. I don't know, like we always ... I think the book that I had read and it's probably corny because this is .... I don't know if cliché at this point but I remember like I had just read The 4-Hour Workweek, and I was like, I want to start something that doesn't kill me and still makes a good living and all that sort of thing. That was for me to achieve my financial goals and stuff.Josh:               02:19          I wrote this blog post, I think it was the last year. I think it's been a little while since I wrote it but-Starr:              02:27          It's only been a year?Josh:               02:27          Yeah, I just kind of talked about how we do things.Starr:              02:30          Wow.Josh:               02:30          I think it was already a year ago since I wrote that.Starr:              02:33          I was going to say it seems like a decade ago, but ...Ben:                02:36          Yeah, I would guess two years ago.Josh:               02:38          Two years ago?Starr:              02:39          That's because I have a small child so.Josh:               02:44          Again, same here. So I don't have much of a concept of time at this point. But I have a feeling it wasn't as long as we're thinking, long ago as we're thinking.Starr:              02:56          Yeah. So the post was called Badger Life and it sort of describes how we work, the things we value as company. And, man, the response to this was amazing like people were getting in touch with me. They're like, "How do I do this, Starr?" And I was like, "I don't know, man. Get lucky."Starr:              03:13          Oh, no. I just ruined the podcast. No, everybody is going to unsubscribe now.Josh:               03:19          Gosh, Starr.Starr:              03:19          I know. I know.Josh:               03:21          Well, I know like ...Starr:              03:22          Ben is the one who knows everything. I'm just along for the ride.Josh:               03:27          We had a few people mention when we were hiring, as we've hired a few people recently after being a company of three for a long time, and we've had people tell us that through that hiring process that they had read this blog post and it was one of the things that made them want to work with us.Starr:              03:48          A question for you, Josh. Are we a lifestyle business? Are we a lifestyle business?Josh:               03:54          I freaking hate the term but let's say, we probably are.Starr:              03:59          Wait, what?Ben:                04:00&...

The guys talk dissect the "If you're not growing you're dying" aphorism and debate if it has merits or if it should be discarded into the dustbin of history. Do entrepreneurs need to have a winner take all mindset or is it acceptable to be a minor player in a large market? Let's get philosophical on this episode of FounderQuest!Full transcript:Josh:               00:00          I just... I think that Ben could really pull off like a massive... Like if you had a gigantic, like foot long beard or something. I think you could pull it off.Ben:                00:11          I could pull off the following.Starr:              00:12          Like one of those people who moved to California for the gold rush.Josh:               00:15          Wouldn't he look amazing?Announcer:          00:17          It's like Steve Jobs and the dude had triplets and they built an app. This is FounderQuest.Starr:              00:26          If you have one of those cabins and tell people to get away from it.Josh:               00:29          Like the Unabomber. So I enabled... What is it called? Tweet Delete or something like that? I think you did this too Starr but it deletes all your tweets like beyond a certain timeframe or date.Starr:              00:48          Yeah.Josh:               00:49          So now I only have the last year of tweets on my Twitter account.Starr:              00:55          That's good. So people can't like blackmail you with your own words.Josh:               00:59          Yeah. They can't like go back to like 2008 and dig up you know, whatever I was saying back then.Ben:                01:06          I have kind of mixed feelings about that. I mean I like the idea of preserving that history even if it's stupid. I don't know. I guess maybe you could have this goal of tweeting such that your family at your funeral service they just get up and read your tweets your entire life.Josh:               01:26          I don't know about that. I'm not sure that has... I'm not sure that's how it works.Ben:                01:32          I mean, they can read the date stamp like March 4th, 2004. Pooping.Starr:              01:41          My thought on the whole thing is that like what good is it doing anybody to have like my ancient tweets out there? Like the only good is doing anybody is people who are like harvesting that data. And I know people have already harvested it but why leave it out there? Like nobody's going back and reading an old tweet of mine and being like, "Oh, that was insightful."Josh:               02:01          You mean you... But you don't want to quote tweet yourself from like 10 years ago just to show everyone how right you still are or you were back then or whatever?Starr:              02:10          Yeah, I don't know. I'm not I don't think that's myself.Josh:               02:16          Sorry, I totally like blew up your train of thought.Starr:              02:20          It's okay. There wasn't much of train of thought. It's more like one of those, you know the things like, "Oh brother Where Art Thou?" where they sort of like pump up and down? That's like well platform. They always have them in cartoons?Josh:               02:32          Yeah.Starr:              02:33          Yeah. It's like that. That was like the train. That's my train.Josh:               02:37          Just like the maintenance crew.Starr:              02:40          Yeah. Oh, so today I think we're going to talk about something that was on Twitter. Justin Jackson, who is at Transistor FM, was in a conversation on Twitter with somebody about this topic of if you're not growing, you're dying. And I think somebody else brought this sort of quote out. Like we all heard this. This is sort of a little aphorism that makes its way around.Starr:              03:03          And people say... Its one of the things that people say without thinking about too much. And Justin, I think disagreed a little bit with us and was like, "Well, at Transistor, maybe that's not the case." So I think we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And just see where the conversation goes.Ben:                03:20          I think the danger when it comes to the growth mindset of like, "I have to grow for growth's sake." I think that's where it gets dangerous. And I think that's where a lot of people who reject the whole VC funded path. Because they don't want to have that scenario where they have to grow, like at an extreme rate, or else they just go bust. Like the go big or go home thing. I think-Starr:              03:44          So you're saying that like there's different pathways, right? There's like this VC funded pathway. And so you're saying like if... The VC funded pathway if you're not like having major growth and you are effectively sort of dying? Is that what you're saying?Ben:                03:59          Yeah, I think they want you to die if you're not having that spectacular growth so they can focus on something that is having that spectacular growth.Starr:              04:04          Whereas like a little company like ours like, what does that even mean?Josh:               04:09          In a regular business?Ben:                04:10          Yeah. I mean, you may not even be able to handle that spectacular growth. You just are... I don't know if you've read that book Company of One? Fantastic read, if you haven't had a chance to read it.Starr:              04:20          No. I haven't.Josh:               04:21          I haven't either.Ben:                04:22          Yeah. He talks about the same concept. Like he's not interested in running t...

The guys chat about the early days of Ruby and Rails and discuss how the developer community has changed from a more individual hacking pursuit to more of a team sport. Ben also talks about his experiences at the very first RailsConf and teaches young whippersnappers about Why The Lucky Stiff, Shoes, Caboose, and Chunky Bacon. Lastly, is BadgerConf morphing from running joke to a reality? Tune in and find out!Full Transcript:Ben:                00:00          All right.Starr:              00:01          All right, are we good?Ben:                00:02          Yep.Josh:               00:03          Yeah, I'm already up to one megabyte.Ben:                00:05          We are so good.Starr:              00:06          Dang. Okay maybe we might have to back up for maximum quality, I don't know.Ben:                00:10          We'll see how it goes.Announcer:          00:11          They've been in business for seven years, and they still don't know what they're doing. I guess a podcast seemed natural. Here's FounderQuest.Josh:               00:23          It should be. I've got terabyte in here, so hopefully we'll...Ben:                00:26          Yeah. Now you're glad you bought the big disk.Josh:               00:30          Yeah so I can podcast for an hour without crashing my computer.Starr:              00:34          Oh that's awesome. So I have been up since four o'clock. Ida woke up at four and decided she wasn't sleeping anymore...Ben:                00:42          Ouch.Starr:              00:42          ...so I may lean a bit on your guys for things like making sense.Ben:                00:46          I've been up since 1:30 because...Josh:               00:48          No, Come on Ben.Josh:               00:48          Oh damn, Ben, you always have to one up me.Starr:              00:54          Alright, so, you guys recently went to RailsConf. You came back, thankfully. You weren't lured away by all those, I don't know...Starr:              01:07          This is what I mean when I say I'm tired.Starr:              01:10          Yeah, so you guys went to RailsConf and...Josh:               01:13          We did get distracted by elixir along the way and...Ben:                01:16          Today's gonna be the punch drunk podcast.Starr:              01:19          Yes, yes it is, oh man. You guys recently came back from RailsConf, I was here in my little home office, not at RailsConf, editing the show all on my lonesome. I'm feeling pretty lonely and wistful, and now you guys are back and I'm so happy.Ben:                01:36          You know what the best thing about RailsConf was? You didn't have to step outside to go to it. Because of all the sky bridges there, we stayed in the conference hotel, which was three blocks away from the conference center. But yet we walked through a sky bridge all the way there. So handy.Josh:               01:53          This was in Minneapolis right?Starr:              01:56          You know, I think that's a theme, I don't think I've been outside at any of the RailsConfs I've gone to.Ben:                02:01          Really?Starr:              02:03          No, even Atlanta, didn't go outside, tried to walk someplace for lunch, let me tell you, you don't walk places for lunch in Atlanta. You get in your Escalade.Ben:                02:16          I did a lot of walking around outside in Kansas City.Starr:              02:17          So how many RailsConfs have you guys been to?Ben:                02:21          Oh wow.Starr:              02:22          I've been to, I think, three or four.Josh:               02:25          I think I've been to, two.Starr:              02:26          I've spoken at two.Josh:               02:27          Because I didn't go to RailsConf for a really long time because I went to RubyConf every year.Starr:              02:33          Yeah.Josh:               02:33          And I just never got to RailsConf until, I think Phoenix was my first year at RailsConf.Starr:              02:40          Was it because you were trying to be one of those hipsters that who's like "I don't do Rails, I'm a Rubyist."Josh:               02:44          Yeah, I don't do Rails, just tell me about garbage collection, okay.Ben:                02:49          I think I've been to about eight of them.Starr:              02:50          You went to the first one right?Ben:                02:52          Yeah, well there's actually two first ones.Starr:              02:55          Well that's confusing.Ben:                02:56          Yeah, funny story. So the first official RailsConf was Chicago, but the first international RailsConf happened before the first official RailsConf. And the first international RailsConf happened in Vancouver, Canada.Josh:              &nbs...

The guys talk about strategies for creating systems, documentation, and automation to separate yourself from your business so you can hire employees, get it ready for sale, or even take some time off. Balancing good customer service while being efficient with your time is also discussed along with reasons Honeybadger doesn't use automation for customer service.Full Transcript:Starr:              00:01          I probably should have muted that, so you couldn't hear the toilet flushing.Josh:               00:05          I don't know whose it was, so... You just needed... There, there you...Josh:               00:11          Okay, so, Starr. There is, there's your intro.Announcer:          00:16          They're just three amigos making their way in the crazy old world of software as a service.Announcer:          00:22          Welcome to Founder Quest!Josh:               00:26          Oh, that reminds me, I was going to... during that decision-making thing, I was going to say we'd be a lot cooler, though, if we used a blockchain, like to decentralize, since, you know, we're totally like a, you know, a remote, very decentralized company, like we should have a blockchain for a decision-making process.Ben:                00:42          For real, scan that audio trail.Starr:              00:43          Yeah.Ben:                00:44          To make sure that-Starr:              00:44          The future. The future's now.Ben:                00:46          ... make sure that Starr doesn't go back and change the decision that we made?Starr:              00:52          What?!Josh:               00:52          Uh-huh (affirmative).Starr:              00:52          Why am I getting this flack?Ben:                00:53          Well, you know, because you know that I would be the one that would actually be doing that sort of thing, so that's why I'm the...Josh:               00:58          Well, it's more to protect against Ben, yeah, so it's like a digital gavel.Ben:                01:01          I'm the totally random element in this outfit, that's for sure.Josh:               01:05          Yeah. The wild card.Ben:                01:07          Yes!Josh:               01:08          The joker.Ben:                01:08          The joker!Josh:               01:10          And plus I could buy more video cards, so that I have more weight, my decisions have more weight.Ben:                01:14          There you go.Starr:              01:16          All right, so let's catch people up. So last week, we talked about some issues involving systems, like what are our systems for decision-making? And we talked about our quarterly conclaves, our process for doing that, and so this week we're going to be talking about systems and continuing the conversation, this is one long conversation that's just been split up into two.Starr:              01:36          And we're going to be talking about managing employees, we're going to be talking about daily operations, about ops and all that stuff.Starr:              01:45          Yeah, let's get going! So like what... we started with nothing, we started with no systems, errors would come in, and Ben would see them and he would manually write out an alert email, and send those out on Gmail. And since then, we've like, we have systems out the, uh... I can't say it on iTunes, I'm sorry, but we've got lots of systems!Starr:              02:07          So how do we coordinate a bunch of, like three of us are independent workers, we've hired a bunch of independent workers, like how do we coordinate between those?Ben:                02:15          I think that the technical term you were looking for there was "wazzoo."Josh:               02:17          Wazzoo?Starr:              02:18          Oh, okay, most definitely was it.Ben:                02:20          You know, one of the things that was really crazy early on was, it accelerated so rapidly. Like, I remember, in the early-early days, when we first started this out, and most of the day I was thinking, you know, because we had jobs, so Starr and I were working for a start-up, and I was thinking, "Ah, this should be great! I have two incomes streams, right? Like I have my day job, and then Honeybadger just will be doing its thing on the side, it'd be a cash machine, it'd be awesome!" And then, it didn't go that way. Like-Josh:               02:51          Then reality struck.Ben:                02:52          Yeah, the reality struck, where, like, Starr and I are sitting there, at our day jobs, and all of the sudden Honeybadger's on fire, and it was like, "Oh, we got to go take a lunch break right now!", you know?Starr:              03:00          Yeah.Ben:                03:01          And so, like eventually, that just... its like the pressure was too much, right? We couldn't do both, and so we had to dive in on Honeybadger. But a lot of that was because things were just growing so rapidly, and traffic was coming in, and things were falling apart, and like in that one server that we bought initially, right, had to become two, and so on. But-Starr:              03:21          Yeah.Starr:              03:21          And we did not build this thing for a scale, people. We did not prematurely optimize.Ben:                03:25    &n...

Two part special! In part one, the guys chat about decision making in a siloed company structure and the challenges of making sure everyone is on the same page. That's not all! More details about the secret Honeybadger conclaves are leaked, dirty laundry is aired about the logo scandal that shook the company to its core, and America's favorite Honeybadger is revealed!Full Transcript:Ben:                00:00          Yeah, maybe you want to omit that from the whole thing because we probably don't want the FBI come and knock on the door and ask us, "Hey, what other customers that we have here might be...Josh:               00:08          I like that it's a good story and...Announcer:          00:10          So did those guys really name their app after a meme? Huh? Buckle up, fellow kids. It's time for Founder Quest.Josh:               00:20          I mean, okay. Once you get that Trump tweet out there it brings down the hammer on you.Ben:                00:26          No collusion.Josh:               00:28          I like the Ben Findley's suggestion that we kind of just put out a no collusion preemptively. Like, you know a disclaimer tweet.Ben:                00:34          Right, right.Starr:              00:36          That works. That's law.Josh:               00:38          Right? Yeah. I think it is.Starr:              00:40          It's like calling shotgun.Josh:               00:40          Right? Yeah. Just call no collusion ahead of time.Starr:              00:46          I just wrote a message to my friend, the orthodontist to ask her about how people sell stuff to orthodontists.Ben:                00:51          Direct mail, direct mail.Ben:                00:54          I've always wanted to do direct mail, like designing postcards and putting them in the mail.Starr:              01:01          You know, I'll give it to you. Like direct mail does have this sort of appeal to it, but also it's like I've never actually bought anything from direct mail. I don't think.Josh:               01:07          You know what's big business in direct mail, is political mailers.Starr:              01:13          Oh yeah. So let's get into those. So my friend... I'm just going to describe this in case we decided to put it in the podcast. My friend, the orthodontist, was described a marketing issue that they have. They have to do this process manually, and it's real pain in the ass. It doesn't really map well to any generic marketing solutions because they have to coordinate between a prospect who's also a patient.Starr:              01:36          So it was medical stuff involved. They have to get in touch with their dentist, and so there's like a two party thing happening. And she's like, "Yeah, you should build me this software."Starr:              01:45          So I just messaged her and was like, "Okay, so how do people actually buy software in orthodontist land? Do people come and like demo it for them? When they buy do they come back, and then train the staff?" Because all that stuff just sounds like a lot of work, boys. Like I don't know how to do that.Ben:                02:06          Well. That's pretty easy to do, but yeah, that's a lot of work.Starr:              02:08          No, I mean I would know how to do it, but I don't know how to like manage people to do it. You know what I mean?Ben:                02:14          Wouldn't it be wild to have like a fleet of reps out across the country, out showing software and like a real enterprise-y business. On that note, an area of software sales that I've always found interesting and intriguing is school systems. Like they had the most horrendous software ,and I'm pretty sure it's only because they have to deal with companies that have to deal with their purchasing process.Ben:                02:39          And so these companies are like, "You know what, because of your messed up purchasing process, I'm going to force you to use this craptacular software. Ha! Take that."Starr:              02:48          Oh totally, totally. So my partner Evie was a... she used to do web stuff at this well-respected local university that I will not name. And it was just amazing hearing about the amount of money they were paying for a new CRM. Like a CRM in 2019, the University of Washington... Which is not the school that she worked at. It's much bigger than the school she worked at. Their CRM is WordPress, but no. This little private school has to have this weird enterprise-y CRM because it does all this things, meets all this requirements.Starr:              03:28          It's like they're paying something like twenty thousand a month for it. Like, it's insane. It's insane.Josh:               03:33          CRM or CMS?Starr:              03:35          Oh shit. A CMS. I always get those confused. No wonder nobody calls me. No wonder I suck at sales, guys.Ben:                03:42          You are not going to be a sales rep, Starr.Starr:              03:44          No, I'm just publishing my sales leads for the world to see. I don't even realize it.Ben:                03:52          We talked about Josh's food truck dream, and like one of my dreams once there's sunset money involved, and I don't really have to work anymore, what kind of things would I like to do? I think like volunteering to replace the craptacular software at schools is something that I would like to do.Ben:                04:12          I'm just going to show up. I'm going to be the White Knight, I'm going to just replace all your bad software.Josh:               04:18          Just set up shop in their basement.Ben:                04:19 ...