Today, we discuss positioning the startup to the outside world in social media and software that we use to build our software. We go into detail of our CI/CD pipeline for the mobile app and our project management practices. As usual, brace yourself for a lot of tangents!

[02:53] Positioning ourselves into the outside world

[23:01] Processes in our startup

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📕 The Pragmatic Podcaster: a step-by-step guide to starting an amazing podcast: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFPMT8WW

👚 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

Show notes

- https://tramline.app - a CI/CD orchestration tool for mobile app development

- https://bitrise.io - a tool for building mobile apps in the cloud

In this episode, we break down the process of how we wrote The Pragmatic Podcaster book, discuss how writing is similar to programming, talk about tools (Adobe InDesign, Kindle Create), describe the process of getting an e-book and a print version on Amazon, and muse about Google Ads that didn't generate any sales for us.

✉️ Subscribe to Metacast newsletter: https://www.metacastpodcast.com

👋 Send feedback or say hi: [email protected]

Support us:

📕 The Pragmatic Podcaster: a step-by-step guide to starting an amazing podcast: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFPMT8WW

👚 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

Segments:

[02:38] How did the book start

[04:57] "Day 0 - Day 1 - Day 2" framework for creating software and podcasts

[08:00] The process

[12:14] ChatGPT for writing a book??

[13:36] Learnings from writing a book

[16:03] Writing out of coffee shops

[19:34] Walks full of guilt

[23:33] Book writing tools

[30:58] Tools for designing the cover

[33:12] Publishing the book on Amazon and Gumroad

[36:58] Selling the book with Google Ads

[42:18] Podcast recommendations

[50:45] Kid music recommendations & AI music

Show notes

- Make It Clear by Patrick Winston: https://amzn.to/3sPKRIz

- How To Speak by Patrick Winston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

This week, we are discussing The Pragmatic Podcaster book that we’ve just self-published on Kindle and in paperback and hardcover formats on Amazon.

📕 The Pragmatic Podcaster: a step-by-step guide to starting an amazing podcast: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFPMT8WW

📄 Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/033-behind-the-covers-pt-1

✉️ Subscribe to Metacast newsletter: https://www.metacastpodcast.com

👋 Send feedback or say hi: [email protected]

👚 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

This week we sat down with Corey Quinn, the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group and a big celebrity at the AWS circles. Corey is well known for his sense of humor and unrelenting focus on making some good fun of the cloud providers.

In our interview, we are learning a bit of Corey’s background, how The Duckbill Group got started, and how he runs the media side of his business. As usual, we did talk about bootstrapping and running consulting services while building a product.

Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/032-corey-quinn

👉 The Pragmatic Podcaster e-book (use code "METACAST" to get 30% off): https://book.metacastpodcast.com/l/pragmatic-podcaster

👉 The Pragmatic Podcaster on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFPMT8WW

👉 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

Send feedback or say hi: [email protected]

Metacast newsletter: https://www.metacastpodcast.com

Segments

[00:00] Introductions

[04:23] What does Corey do?

[09:51] Bootstrapping a business

[12:29] The Twitter persona

[16:02] Dealing with the growth in Twitter following

[21:05] Can snarkiness backfire?

[23:54] The state of the business today

[25:11] Psychology of cost savings and cost aversion

[28:35] The psychology of bootstrapped companies

[32:43] Getting first customers for a consultancy

[36:03] Common cost optimization patterns

[37:54] The evolution of Corey's media presence

[47:05] Making money from media

[49:58] Business-y topics

[54:11] How to start a consultancy

[56:03] Google, AWS, Azure topics

[01:04:40] Producing content with ChatGPT

[01:07:31] Book recommendation

[01:11:14] Where to find Corey

We’re starting season 2! Going forward, most of our episodes will be conversations about how we’re building our business. We’ll keep doing guest episodes as well, mostly with people who we and other entrepreneurs get to learn from. Listen on to follow our journey.

👉 The Pragmatic Podcaster e-book (use code "METACAST" to get 30% off): https://book.metacastpodcast.com/l/pragmatic-podcaster

👉 The Pragmatic Podcaster on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFPMT8WW

👉 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/031-behind-the-scenes

Send feedback or say hi: [email protected]

Metacast newsletter: https://www.metacastpodcast.com

Segments

[03:10] Season 2 and the changes we're making to the podcast

[13:22] Rat race

[17:15] Working in-person in Vancouver

[29:08] Long-term vs. short-term thinking in a startup

[33:26] Ilya is starting to code again

[42:58] ChatGPT for social media posts

[46:38] The Pragmatic Podcaster book

[54:51] Teaser of the next episode

A conversation with Startups.com founders about venture capital, bootstrapping, and finding your podcasting voice

👉 Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/030-startup-therapy

Segments:

[01:11] Introduction

[03:42] The Startup Therapy podcast

[06:49] Almost no one knows about venture capital

[10:17] Wil’s and Ryan’s startup journeys

[16:12] Venture backed vs. bootstrapped startups

[22:18] Distractions of fundraising

[29:09] Doing consulting work on a side to fund the business

[36:29] The origin story of startups.com

[48:31] How Startup Therapy podcast is run

[56:52] Bad interview episode experiences and finding your own voice

[01:01:29] Podcast recommendations

We’re always happy to hear back from our listeners, so don’t hesitate to drop us a note at [email protected].

In this episode, we cover the topic we wanted to cover for the last few weeks but always ran out of time. It’s the topic of SaaS subscriptions. As a business that doesn’t yet make any revenue, we pay quite a bit in subscription fees because these days everything is a subscription. Apparently, soon we’ll be paying a subscription to heat our butts in cars — Arnab tells a story of a car manufacturer that will ship cars with all the hardware, but will disable “premium” features unless you pay a monthly fee.

Segments

[00:38] First annual Metacast all-hands

[02:33] Creating TikTok worthy content

[05:58] Active listening strikes back

[08:05] In-person recording setup

[10:03] Introducing our CDO, Chief Dog Officer

[10:52] Crab emoji at Google

[12:09] Reflection on the Jason Fried episode

[15:45] User research studies for our app

[20:58] The original name for our company

[22:56] The SaaS Subscriptions Pandemic

[33:55] Google vs. Amazon culture

This week, we were lucky to talk to Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals (the company behind Basecamp and HEY) and a co-author of Rework, Remote and a few other books.

👉 Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/028-jason-fried 👉 Our book about starting a podcast: https://bit.ly/metacast-book 👉 Metacast merch: https://merch.metacastpodcast.com

Segments

• [02:07] Introduction of Jason and 37signals 
• [04:28] Founder role vs. CEO role 
• [07:27] Working with the same co-founder for 20 years 
• [10:00] Disagreements between founders 
• [12:21] Disagree and commit principle 
• [14:04] The business side of things (numbers, accounting, etc.) 
• [17:07] On costs and profitability 
• [19:51] Intentionally keeping the company small 
• [22:51] Managing risk 
• [25:01] Jeff Bezos’ investment 
• [31:24] Working on several products at the same time 
• [32:21] Six-week cycles vs. long-term projects 
• [37:40] Evolution of 37signals 
• [43:35] Keeping products until the end of the Internet 
• [46:18] Calm companies 
• [47:28] Listening to customer feedback 
• [53:15] Jason's email is public. Is this a good idea? 
• [56:57] Employee performance reviews and fixed salaries 
• [58:35] Can the "calm company" mindset work in big companies? 
• [01:04:41] How does one find a calm company to work for? 
• [01:06:36] Publishing books 
• [01:09:28] On being contrarian and no politics at work 

We’re always happy to hear back from our listeners, so don’t hesitate to drop us a note at [email protected]. Subscribe to our newsletter where we announce new episodes, publish key takeaways, and ramble about interesting stuff at https://www.metacastpodcast.com.

We are starting to share bits of what we’re working on — a podcast app! The main topic of today’s episode is podcast listening apps and the things they suck at. Also in the episode: some backstory of how we decided to work together, golden handcuffs of a big tech, the working backwards approach, and importance of checklists.

👉 Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/027-why-podcast-apps-suck

Segments:

[01:34] RSS feeds, the backbone of podcasting

[04:37] Why are we doing a podcast about podcasting?

[06:28] Why are we building yet another podcast app?

[10:56] Podcasts vs. YouTube videos

[15:04] Podcasts as a library of content

[17:17] Sharing content from podcasts with friends

[19:11] Taking notes while listening to podcasts

[23:56] Why podcast apps suck

[24:54] Working backwards and prioritization

[29:49] A prophetic screenshot from 4 years ago

[36:20] Golden handcuffs

[39:25] Going back to Amazon (hypothetically)

[40:53] Next episode spoiler

[42:55] The importance of checklists

[44:04] Call for inputs for our product

We’re always happy to hear back from our listeners, so don’t hesitate to drop us a note!

We’ve heard feedback that listeners really love our metasodes — the episodes where Arnab and I chat about all things podcasting, careers, books, etc. We also heard feedback loud and clear that our episodes are too long…

On today’s episode, we chat about these changes, producing a video episode in Descript, Conway’s law, our new merch store, our upcoming book, and a few more things.

👉 Book on starting a podcast: https://bit.ly/metacast-book

👉 Metacast merch: https://metacast.creator-spring.com/

👉 Full show notes with links: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/026-change-is-the-only-constant

[00:56] We’re slightly tweaking the format

[03:58] Discussing feedback from our listeners

[10:23] Our experience producing the very first video episode

[14:44] Working with Descript’s Studio Sound

[19:54] Our book about starting a podcast

[24:26] Conway’s law

[25:42] Publishing books on Amazon (or not)

[27:23] Book recommendations

[29:44] Improving one thing at a time

[36:37] Send us inputs for our product

[37:24] How to send us a voicemail

We’re always happy to hear back from our listeners, so don’t hesitate to drop us a note!

- Email: [email protected]

- Ilya’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyabezdelev/

- Arnab’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/or9ob

Subscribe to our newsletter where we announce new episodes, publish key takeaways, and ramble about interesting stuff at https://www.metacastpodcast.com.