Hackers Incorporated

Hackers Incorporated episodes:

• 05.25.2024

  Hiring for tiny teams with Justin Jackson

  Adam just wrapped up a big hiring project at Tailwind Labs, adding both a new engineer and a new designer to the team. In this episode he talks through the process with Justin Jackson, founder of Transistor, to compare notes...

  
• 04.02.2024

  Ben steps away from Tuple

  After almost six years, Ben has stepped away from day-to-day work on Tuple and moved to its board. Friend of the pod Aaron Francis interviews Ben about the whole beautiful, complicated, enriching experience. As a treat, the boys dive into...

  
• 01.17.2024

  Building the HEY Calendar with Jason Fried

  37signals have talked a lot about how they build new features for existing products using Shape Up, where they carefully hammer the scope to avoid letting anything ever drag on for more than six weeks. But there's not a lot...

  
• 01.14.2024

  Ben and Adam review 2023

  In this episode, Adam and Ben sit down to evaluate how things went in 2023 in their business and personal lives. The dudes share kind of a lot in this one! More personal flavor than usual. Lots about fitness, mental...

  
• 12.04.2023

  Revisiting the Tailwind Labs business model

  In this episode, Adam and Ben talk through the Tailwind Labs business model. Is Tailwind UI the best way for the company to make money? Or is there a different model where incentives are better aligned with growing the Tailwind...

  
• 11.27.2023

  Launching features like products

  In this episode, Adam and Ben catch up on recent events at Tailwind Labs and Tuple. Adam spoke at Rails World and the impromptu Tailwind CSS meetup in Amsterdam. Ben shares his learnings from some recent feature launches at Tuple....

  
• 10.26.2023

  Building the right team with Jason Fried

  Adam wants to start the process of growing the team at Tailwind Labs, but knowing exactly who, when, and how to hire people (and have them actually work out) is a lot harder than expected. In this episode, he sits...

  
• 09.12.2023

  Q&A: Starting over, the ideal employee, success and happiness, and selling the company

  In this episode, Adam and Ben share some personal updates on lake houses, gym equipment, and luxury electric vehicles, and answer listener questions on topics like things they'd change when starting over, how to be more valuable as an employee,...

  
• 08.30.2023

  Predictable mistakes of the developer-turned-founder

  So many developers (your podcast hosts included) make the same mistakes when trying to turn an idea into a business for the first time. In this episode, Ben and Adam talk through a bunch of these mistakes, why they matter,...

  
• 08.15.2023

  Losing 70 lbs, getting in shape, and 15-minute workouts

  Last year, Adam got very serious about losing weight and getting in shape and lost 70 pounds, getting to about 12% body fat and maintaining enough strength to still bench 315. In this episode, Adam and Ben talk about Adam's...

  
• 08.01.2023

  Hiring is hard

  When you're running a small company, hiring is simultaneously your highest leverage opportunity and the scariest thing ever. In this episode, Adam and Ben share some lessons learned, how they think about hiring for their teams now, and talk through...

  
• 07.19.2023

  Enterprise sales for reluctant founders

  Enterprise sales gets a bad rap amongst indie founders, but at Tuple it's become an important part of their business model. In this episode, Ben shares all his tips and tricks on how to sell to enterprise customers as a...

  
• 07.07.2023

  How to not suck at project management

  Most people are way too comfortable letting a project run for 12 weeks before ever getting it into a shippable state. In this episode, Adam and Ben share the strategies they use to make sure the projects they work on...

  
• 06.09.2023

  Minimalist management with David Heinemeier Hansson

  After over 20 years in business and despite being responsible for a larger-than-ever team, David still finds plenty of time to get his hands in the code and build new products himself. We run significantly younger companies and significantly smaller...

  
• 04.21.2023

  Lifetime pricing is underrated

  Last summer, Tailwind UI moved from selling individual content packages and upsells to a one-time purchase, lifetime access pricing model. Since then, the business has doubled. Having seen this in action, Adam recently convinced his friends Sam and Ryan to...

  
• 03.25.2023

  Revisiting "The Ideal Bootstrapped Business" with Jason Cohen

  Jason Cohen’s talk “Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business” from 2013 is a classic in the bootstrapper canon. In this episode, Jason joins Adam and Ben to see how the talk holds up a decade after its creation. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:27...

  
• 03.25.2023

  Running your business like a band

  “How come Dave Grohl is still playing guitar and writing songs and singing but I'm filling out DMCA takedown notices, answering customer support emails and responding to GitHub issues?” Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:05 Bringing on a band manager 07:34 Why the...

  
• 03.25.2023

  Lessons Learned in 2022-ish

  Ben Orenstein (Tuple) and Adam Wathan (Tailwind CSS) are back on the mics. Today they reflect on 2022 and lessons they’ve learned. Ben has some thoughts on delegation, priorities and enterprise sales, while Adam explains how he made time for...