FounderQuest

Ben and Josh discuss the benefits and perils of using AI assistants for programming.

• Cursor
• Codeium Windsurf
• GitHub Copilot announcement
• Perplexity

Ben, Josh, and John Nunemaker are back from RubyConf and take the opportunity to discuss how to sponsor a conference as a small software company. Protip: bring your furniture from home.

• https://wiki.c2.com/?ResultObjectPattern=
• https://www.chairigami.com
• https://twenty.com
• https://rubycentral.org/news/make-railsconf-happen/
• Adam’s Judo Scale infomercial
• https://boxoutsports.com/graphics/multi-format/multi-format-gameday-90-s-series
• https://boxoutsports.com/graphics/tags/saved-by-the-bell

Ben and Josh go off-script for a fun and hopefully-not-too-long chat about their favorite Twitter-like social network, Bluesky.

• https://faineg.substack.com/p/how-i-accidentally-ruined-bluesky
• The hosts of WSUA9 call it skeeting on air
• AOC endorses “team skeets”
• Jake Tapper says “skeeted” live on CNN
• Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech by Mike Masnick
• Composable moderation
• How to set your domain as your handle
• Bluesky reaches 20M users
• https://go.bsky.app/HD2Ty2o
• https://go.bsky.app/EGczjGA
• https://bsky.app/profile/bencurtis.com
• https://bsky.app/profile/joshuawood.honeybadger.io
• https://bsky.app/profile/founder.quest
• https://bsky.app/profile/honeybadger.io
• https://deck.blue/
• https://brid.gy/

Josh and Ben reconnect with their friend JP Boily to discuss building his startup Metrics Watch for just over 9 years before finding a new owner on Acquire.com.

• Bluesky startups & bootstrappers starter pack
• Join the Honeybadger/FounderQuest Discord server!
• https://metricswatch.com/
• https://github.com/topfunky/gruff
• https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
• https://jumpstartrails.com
• https://microconf.com
• https://businessofsoftware.org
• https://rubyconferences.org

Josh and Ben catch up with John Nunemaker after Rails World and dig into John's recent acquisition of Fireside.fm, the podcasting platform created by Dan Benjamin. What's next for John? In short, he's curating some Very Good Software™.

• https://www.johnnunemaker.com/acquiring-fireside/
• https://www.johnnunemaker.com/how-to-find-a-business-partner/
• https://danbenjamin.com/
• http://sifterapp.com/
• https://www.indierails.com/

Ben, Josh, and John discuss pricing, including how to approach pricing, what they do and don't like about pricing, and how pricing works at Honeybadger and Flipper.

• https://cottonbureau.com/p/9EMACZ/shirt/the-process#/17943854/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-m
• https://blog.flippercloud.io/per-seat-pricing-sucks/
• https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/data-modeling-saas-entitlements-and-pricing
• https://basecamp.com/pricing
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
• https://statamic.com/

While Josh is on vacation, Ben chats with guests Will King and John Nunemaker about the process and perils of trying to ship reliably. 

• https://www.wking.dev/logs/shipping-in-layers
• https://longform.asmartbear.com/slc/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
• https://archive.ph/20130719182750/http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm
• https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Hydra-Ambitions-Destined-ebook/dp/B07J57YF47

Ben and Josh catch up after a few weeks of heads-down product work, and they have lots to talk about—including a new Discord server for FounderQuest listeners! Plus, hear Josh’s thesis on why it’s a huge problem if you’re not using your product to the max.

• Shape Up
• Seth Godin
• Blue Ridge Ruby
• Monitorama
• Join the Honeybadger Discord! https://discord.gg/aQaDVBedRf

Longtime friend of the pod Adam McCrea joins Josh and Ben to catch up and chat about his journey building Judoscale—an autoscaling service for Heroku, Render, and AWS!

• Blue Ridge Ruby
• Josh’s Blue Ridge Ruby recap
• Kyle Shold
• Printfection
• JudoScale
• SignWell
• Heroku Add-ons
• Router blog post: https://judoscale.com/blog/heroku-router-post-mortem

John Nunemaker returns to FounderQuest to discuss his writing process—after the guys debate code linters and formatters, of course. It's important to start with the essentials.

Links:
Standardrb

Josh’s 2013 Ruby Style Guide

GitHub Copilot

Copilot Chat for Neovim

Seth Godin

Amy Hoy

My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins

This book will teach you how to write better by Neville Medhora
Carbon