Slow & Steady

Benedikt and Benedicte are both celebrating very productive weeks as they see all their efforts come together in their respective projects.

• Jamstack Conf 2022
• Bhanu Teja P of Feather.so
• The Artist’s Way

Benedikt and the team had a pretty successful week in terms of stuff shipped: they finished the frontend query builder improvements, implemented an Amplitude cohort sync integration, and added a server-side rendering for their new message “document schema”. They also plan to work on a bug in their old editor that’s causing problems with their users’ inline image data.

Benedicte’s also on a roll: they had a great meeting with Cloudinary last week, talking to Newline for producing courses, and is currently getting ready for her talks at Modern FrontEnds Live! and at Jamstack Conf 2022. She’s also working on a fun side project to clean up her Twitter following.

Benedicte and Benedikt talk about the updates from the week and why it's in fact good idea to write down your passwords.

• The ONE Thing by Gery Keller
• Episode with Pierre from ScrapingBee
• 1Password's password recovery process for teams and families
• Password managers don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than not having one

In the last week, Benedikt finally got some work done on the user interface of Userlist's condition builder. This was only possible by ignoring a lot of other things. However, he feels like the effort will pay off in the future by getting the fundamentals right.

Benedicte's focus is on cultivating good habits by keeping up the yoga schedule, being more mindful about preparing food, and enjoying time outside in the sun. She's also preparing to launch the Queen Rae live streams again, starting August 25th, and is looking for guests that have interesting Gatsby projects.

A recent support issue on POW! triggers a discussion about best practices around password management and how some of the advice we all learned in the past might not be the best anymore. 

With the summer almost over, Benedicte is excited to get back on the grind. Benedikt deals with the heat wave and the load of small things at work.

• Modern FrontEnds Live!
• The tweet that got Benedicte the invitation to do an interview with Will Sentance
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

Both Benedicte and Benedikt have felt the unusual temperatures brought by the heat wave.

Aside from his struggles with the current weather in Germany, Benedikt is feeling a bit unfocused because of the load of small things that need his attention at work. He’s also looking into other hosting solutions for Userlist for future reference. Benedikt and Leo are at 90% with the WYSIWYG editor but progress seems kind of slow lately.

Coming home from their long summer vacation, Benedicte is still enjoying the remaining downtime left before school starts but is also excited to get work done soon. She’s back on the 30-day yoga challenge, has a couple of conference talks lined up, and is working on their streamlined offer for ongoing maintenance and support for Gatsby plugins. And in an unexpected turn of events, she got an invite to do an interview with Codesmith’s Will Sentance.

UX designer Nathan Powell joins Benedicte and Benedikt to talk about his latest projects, some practical UX tips, and the struggles with onboarding.

• Nathan’s first SaaS product, Nusii
• Laura Dunn
• Nathan’s UX course for developers, Develop Your UX
• Nathan’s latest SaaS project, Feature Flux
• Check out Nathan’s website
• Follow Nathan on Twitter
• Subscribe to Nathan’s YouTube channel

Nathan Powell, formerly of Nusii, created the business proposal software back in 2013 as a solution to his own pain points as a freelance UX designer. But in 2019, he decided to move on from it and sold everything to his co-founder.

Nathan is now making a comeback in the SaaS game with a new UX course, an upcoming book, and Feature Flux. With his new SaaS project, he hopes to make collaboration and revisions easier for UX designers and development teams. 

Nathan, Benedicte, and Benedikt talk about the biggest UX mistakes SaaS companies are making, their struggles with onboarding and more!

Benedicte is enjoying the slow summer rhythm. Benedikt and the team are feeling good about the new pricing.

• Modern FrontEnds Live!
• Nathan Powell of Feature Flux

Benedicte is enjoying the summer with her family but to her surprise, there was way less recreational coding than she expected (which is a good thing). Despite the slow summer rhythm, Benedicte was still able to get meaningful work done: Cloudinary beta is now ready for testing, her workshop got accepted to the upcoming Modern FrontEnds Live! in London this November, and is in preliminary talks with a potential collaborator for POW!.

Benedikt is still figuring out how to work with the complexity of the Stripe integration while Leo is making great progress with the editor. The Userlist team is feeling good about the new pricing and is thinking about adding a new plan very soon.

Benedikt fights against spam sign-ups. Benedicte contemplates the next steps for POW! in light of the recent overturn in the U.S.

• Benedicte’s app, POW!
• Benedicte’s talk at React Norway 

Both feeling under the weather lately, things have been a little crazy for both Benedikt and Benedicte.

Benedikt’s plan to work on the Stripe integration got derailed because of relentless spam sign-ups on Userlist. The team has put in a Slack integration to detect spammers early. Benedikt is thinking of adding another layer of protection with a scoring mechanism that can filter out potential spammers based on their email domain. On the plus side, Leo is making great progress with the WYSIWYG editor.

Benedicte ended last week with a happy bubble at React Norway. Ironically, someone told her that the recent overturn in the U.S. happened while she was talking on stage about reproductive rights and privacy. The recent happening has got Benedicte thinking about the next steps for POW!.

Michael Christofides of pgMustard chats with Benedikt and Benedicte about gardening, pgMustard, PostgreSQL, and doing marketing for SaaS.

• pgMustard
• PostgreSQL
• Talk Python to Me Episode #366
• Follow Michael on Twitter

While a relatively older database system, many companies still use PostgreSQL for its reliability and flexibility. However, many users find it difficult to figure out the problem when their database slows down.

Seeing this as a great pain point for their customers, Michael pitched an idea for a tool at his old workplace but unfortunately got rejected. He held on to this tool idea and launched pgMustard in April 2019.

pgMustard helps speed up slow database queries for PostgreSQL. But unlike other tools in the space, pgMustard pinpoints users to the source of the problem and even gives suggestions on how to move forward with it.

Michael, Benedicte, and Benedikt talk about gardening, Supabase, working at Userlist, SEO, and more!

Benedikt finally launches the new pricing. Benedicte talks about their ideas for the next season of the stream.

• Michael from pgMustard

Benedicte had another "boring week" job-wise: regular work, emails, and the stream. On the marketing sales front, she started to follow some of the bigger plugins on GitHub to see what issues will arise. And with the final stream of the season this week, Benedicte shares that they are already thinking of new ideas to try out for the next season. 

Benedikt just launched the new pricing for Userlist and is a bit anxious about how it will turn out. The team also made great progress on their WYSIWYG editor. While building a good user experience is always a fun and exciting challenge for Benedikt, he shares that he needs to focus on backend work more.

Benedicte is feeling calm after an ordinary week. She is getting ready for summer and, beyond the routine activities, she has figured out solutions for the Cloudinary plugins. Now that the "fun" part is over, she will implement the solutions over the next two weeks. Oslo has been warm and Benedicte is taking full advantage. Her talk is approaching in late June and she is prepared to be... unprepared and stressed.

Benedikt has enjoyed good weather as well and planned some local sightseeing recently. The new pricing at Userlist is close, but it is tricky. The team is having difficulty getting the proration the way they want it. After diving into the Stripe Apps, Benedikt is also finding that effort more complex than expected. To kick off yet another, large, infrastructure-like  project, Benedikt and Leo meet and start researching on a new WYSIWYG editor. 

Benedicte and Ola win the Gatsby gig! Benedikt spies a new opportunity.

• Cloudinary
• Structured Content
• Gather's Escape The Island
• Introducing Stripe Apps

Benedicte and Ola hear back on their proposal — they'll be working with Cloudinary on their existing plugins! Benedicte is already digging through the code to tackle any bugs before summer starts. Speaking of Gatsby, she takes a moment to rant about community-based support. POW! picks up a few new customers despite Benedicte not focusing on that in the short term and Structure Content came to Oslo.

Benedikt celebrates as Userlist passes a $15k MRR milestone following a few preceding months of slower growth. The new pricing feature is coming along nicely and he's looking forward to the rollout. Benedikt is also excited about Stripe releasing their new Stripe Apps, a new way to build Stripe integrations. There aren't many companies in the new app marketplace, so it presents an exciting opportunity for Userlist. He would have to learn some React though...