Mystery caller
#26

Mystery caller

Brian:

Are we even recording yet?

Justin:

Yeah. We're recording. We're in the show.

Brian:

Alright. Cool. For all listeners, we've got a little little agenda today. Trying to be somewhat organized about So what did what did I put in the in the tweet? So I think we will kick it off with a little bit of like sort of like housekeeping, but maybe like a check-in on this podcast itself.

Brian:

Like our thoughts on it. We we wanna get your thoughts as listeners on how this is going and maybe, you know, some updates to formats and bringing guests back on the show in the couple coming weeks. We wanna talk through that.

Justin:

This could be the last episode.

Brian:

Yeah. This is the final episode. So, I Actually, today, a couple hours ago, booked a vacation and I used ChatGPT to do that. We could talk about that.

Justin:

Hey, I wanna talk about that.

Brian:

You got one about who is my real competition? That's always a good topic.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. That one came out of a Slack group I'm in. I think that would be a good I don't think founders are thinking enough about who their actual competition is.

Brian:

That'll be a good one to chew on.

Justin:

You started a new app.

Brian:

I rails nude new app.

Justin:

Rails nude. Yeah.

Brian:

I'm really excited about this one. Both the app itself and and and I'm really tweaking my process on how I build apps. I'm really excited about that.

Justin:

Oh, that's cool.

Brian:

I do have a domain name for it and I'll there there's nothing on it yet. I'll share it and I'll share the name and I'm curious to know if if you can even guess what the app is.

Justin:

Wow, man.

Brian:

You you had one about risky launch based businesses.

Justin:

This kind of came out of listening to mostly technical and but also just thinking about my own experience with launch based businesses. I I think it's worth Mhmm. Visiting that again.

Brian:

Yeah. For sure. This month, what about like two weeks ago, I sort of I did ratchet up the prices a little bit on on builder methods and

Justin:

Oh, sweet.

Brian:

It's been it's been interesting. I like yeah. I can I can give an update on how November is going? This is this is essentially the third I think third month of revenue. So I'm starting to build actual data, and I'm starting to see what the trend lines sort of look like in this business.

Brian:

It's super early still, but it's really interesting to watch.

Justin:

Great. Alright. Well, let's let's talk about the future of the panel. We're we're we're in our second iteration of the show. What?

Justin:

First iteration

Brian:

Yeah.

Justin:

Was people might not even remember. First iteration of the show was the idea was that we were gonna bring on two guests every episode. And it was going to be this beautiful utopia of different viewpoints and perspectives. And, you know, not just one or two people's opinions or experience, but, you know, a diversity of thoughts and views.

Brian:

Yeah. Like, we literally named the show around this whole concept. And the, you know, the image has, like, four boxes to, you know, two of them open for guests. I think what did that last? Like, a month?

Brian:

Like, six It

Justin:

was like

Brian:

You know, what happened I I think we were both really excited about that concept of of it being a panel and we can we can sort of like rope our our friends in. And I think I think our overly optimistic thinking was like, oh, how hard could it be to just send a DM to any friend on any given Thursday and have them hop on a two hour podcast last minute?

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And but in, like and we we we did do that from time to time. We can probably still do that from randomly from time to time. But the other thing that happens with that is that, first of all, like most people just aren't readily available. But also it's like, we we did try to plan topics. Like, if we're gonna even if we know the person well, we still wanna figure out, like, is this a topic we wanna talk about?

Brian:

Is this the right person we wanna talk about this week? So, you know, I think that you and I both care a lot about pot like content in general, like podcasts, podcast content. And we want to make this a really good show both for us to do, but obviously for the listeners too. And I think I think what ended up happening was we found that that was logistically too tricky to to just pull in guests at any given time.

Justin:

Yeah. And and maybe, I mean, maybe we didn't let that concept breathe enough either. It was in terms of like scheduling people, it was difficult. I also found, and again, maybe with more time, we would have figured this out. But four people on a show is really hard.

Justin:

It's hard enough for you and I to manage a dynamic where we're both speaking about the same amount. And we're like, you know, we're not talking over each other too much. And then you expand that to three people, it's even harder. Four people, I I just often found myself, like, going to the background and just waiting for other people to to say their piece.

Brian:

And Yeah. And it's not even so much about, like, wanting to jump in and get your get your airtime to talk, but it's also, like, it's it's really hard to just do a one on one interview to steer the conversation to make sure you hit to make sure you keep it interesting for listeners. Yeah. Do that with four people and keep it moving. That's that's tough.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I felt like we lost that, you know, has honestly been a challenge. I think every guest that we have on, except for Adam, maybe, because he's just got so much experience with jumping on. But it there's always this a little bit of form formalness to it that I didn't love.

Justin:

Like, it's like, oh, hey, today we've got two guests and Yeah, tell us what your posters. Their guest costume and guest voice. And I just wanted the conversations to feel more authentic than that. And to get to that point where it's like, hey, we can all just relax here and just kind of let things fly a little bit more. Didn't feel like we got there.

Brian:

So we received an email, what, like a week ago from a listener.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Sorry. I forgot who who that was from. I I think what he expressed to us, there was also some truth in that. I think, you know, so so since we made the shift to basically just you and me giving business updates and talking about topics that we think are interesting, which which is always like the easiest thing for us to do. Like, we could literally, like, DM ten minutes before we come on here and talk about what our list of topics are for today, and then we hop on the mics and talk about it.

Brian:

Yeah. Which is always like the easiest thing to do. I mean, I think some people find it interesting, but I I also think that maybe the pendulum swung too far back in the other direction where it I think it probably does get kind of boring after a while if it's just the two of us. And especially if it's week to week where, like, if if I'm giving a business update, like, not a whole lot changes from one week to the next. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin:

So I mean, what's the is there a magic middle where we can have guests and here's the so we outline the challenges. Challenges is it's way more difficult to schedule and plan for a guest, which could sometimes on I'm sure for listeners and people in the chat even though it'll be like, what's the big deal? Like, just book some guests. Like, get, you know, get a calendar booking thing. And when you're do when you're doing a weekly show, like, adding any additional stuff can just make it feel not fun.

Justin:

You know?

Brian:

I well, so first thing is I do think that we should try to bring guests back into the mix in some way. I also think that we should keep, you know, some or maybe even most episodes still just you and me. So like if we bring guests on, maybe it should be like once a month ish, once or twice a month, and then like alternate weeks or once every three or four episodes, something like that.

Justin:

Yeah. But

Brian:

the other point I wanted to make about guests in general is when I reached out to you earlier in the year before we started this podcast, one of my motivations for even starting something new was to maybe do more content with founders who are building products or like still relatively new in their startup. Not necessarily new to entrepreneurship, but within the first year or two or three of their current business. Yeah. And we happen to be friends with some people who have really well established and by a lot of different metrics, very successful SaaS businesses. And we had some of them on show early on.

Brian:

And those people are awesome. We can always find interesting things to talk about. But I also think that it's me, like, me personally, I'm sort of more interested in talking to especially bootstrappers who not are like so early on, like, all right, at the idea stage and trying to get the very first customers, but, you know, maybe a couple thousand MRR or they're onto something. They've been at it six to twelve months that has some traction. And now they're in that stage of like, it's a little bit chaotic trying to figure out what the next chess move is to really make this business work.

Brian:

And the hard thing about that from our perspective is like, yeah, we're probably in touch with a lot of those people, but we're not directly like follow like it's they're not exactly always a DM away.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. You have to do more planning for that.

Nadav:

A little bit

Brian:

more planning. And then the other the other challenge, I just don't know the the what the solution is, but like it would be nice to discover some new, talented, awesome builders and entrepreneurs that maybe we don't know so well yet. But then that requires a whole, like, research and recruiting piece, which I don't think you and I really want to invest any real time in. Yeah. And then, you know, as any podcast does after a while, you start to just receive pitches from from random people, which because sometimes there's great people who come through that.

Brian:

But, like, you you sort of just assume that if it's a cold pitch, you you sort of default to no until it's a yes. You know what I mean?

Justin:

Yeah. Cold pitches to me like, 99.9% of the time, a cold pitch is terrible. Yeah. Now they, like, are ingesting all the transcripts. So they have, like, an AI built understanding of the but it's just I would rather

Brian:

But I I mean, even if we put a call out to like I mean, maybe we should try this. It's like we put some sort of call out either within, like, private Slack communities that we're in. So, there's already a layer of like vetting built in because it's like a private community that we're in. Or maybe even on Twitter or even have some like throw up a basic form or something that people can fill out. And then at least we can have a layer where we can sort of review.

Brian:

And if anything sort of catches our eye, it's like, oh, that seems like an interesting business. I'd like to ask that person a couple of questions.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

But it's just like, you you want to be nice about it, but you also just don't want I think just for the sake of listeners, like, people don't really wanna hear, you know, someone who's just not

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Really doing anything interesting yet. You know?

Justin:

Well, and I've also had some PTSD. I remember when we were doing product people, you know, we reached out to some people who we knew their voice, and we'd been consuming their podcasts and blog posts and everything. And then we reached out to some people like, oh, they seem cool. And then we got them on the phone and it was like, oh, my god. Like, this is the worst interaction I've had in my life.

Justin:

And now there's this pressure to publish it and all this other stuff. So it's actually a big risk, you know, just having

Brian:

It actually reminds me of the early years of Big Snow Tiny Comp, Brad Brad Tunaar and I. And and now, these days, Brad has sort of taken the lead on on that trip. I'm I'm attending it in January. But he and I, you know, started that in the early years. And in the started, like, twelve, thirteen years ago, and that was at a time when we were almost unknown totally unknown.

Brian:

Like, we actually struggled to find the very first people to to attend. Yeah. But eventually, like, I had a podcast, and and he had a podcast, and and we started to know some people. So we did have, like, an application form for people to join us on this trip to get the very first attendees. And one thing I've learned over the years from that trip is, like, there are some really, really incredible, incredibly awesome people, founders, that are so quiet and unknown.

Brian:

You will never know that they exist Yeah. Unless unless you somehow meet them at a conference. Like, they like, a lot of these people, like, don't even tweet.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

You know? Like but they are incredibly experienced and knowledgeable and super fun to hang out with and super fun on on the, you know, going skiing and snowboarding with. So for the most part, we've been, like, pleasantly surprised, and some of these people turned into six, seven, eight year returning attendees on this, like, mastermind group. There have been a few people who just, you know, nice nice guys and gals, but they just weren't really a great fit and they sort of came and went one year and never came back. Yeah.

Brian:

So so that happens too. But like and and like that again, it was like that, like, application process where, like, we used to have sort of a form. We would look at their form and something was interesting about them and we invited them and, you know, it may have worked out great, maybe not. So it just reminded me of that whole dynamic. Know?

Justin:

I mean, yeah. So I I'd be open to, like, application process, getting more people. Some people in chat are saying we should just bring on some people in chat and have them come on. I said one challenge is AV related, just having people and this is a challenge with all guests, having people with a good mic sound setup. But we could also try that experiment out out.

Justin:

I don't think we'd keep on keep someone on from live chat like the whole time. But we could try to have people drop in for five, ten minutes and see how it feels too.

Brian:

Yeah. Like, nothing I mean, nothing against the awesome folks in our in our live chat. And some of them I actually do know and and I know are awesome people and work on really some really cool stuff. I think my fear with that, just to be totally candid, is that it's so impromptu that that, like, it it would just turn into not great radio.

Justin:

Yeah. You know? It would be an interesting experiment to try sometimes.

Brian:

If we know the person even if it's like a new person that's new to both of us, if they came through an application process and we have a a couple minutes to check out their website before we get on air,

Justin:

then we

Brian:

can at least sort of plan some content around it.

Justin:

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Because otherwise, we're trying to figure it out live. Although, I I'd be fine to try it out live one day too just as an experiment.

Justin:

Because I I used to do that back in the Periscope days. Remember Periscope? I used to go live on Periscope, and you could, like, bring people on. And that was always, like, you know, rolling the dice a little bit. But

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Anyway, so so we we did wanna put that at the top of the show. I know there's a lot of people listening who are not here live.

Brian:

So if you wanna reach out to us through whatever channels you connect with us on, let us know what you think about all that.

Justin:

Yeah. And I think we'll put some sort of link in the show notes about even if it's just a clarity flow link that just says, hey, like, just upload a quick video pitch for, you know, why what you'd want to talk about and give us a sense of, first of all, your AV setup because that does end up being important. But then also

Brian:

just like Give us your your business, a link, what you do, maybe a a quick quick history. And, like also, like, what what is always the best radio, the best content is, like, what are you working on right now? What's your biggest challenge that you think maybe it might be interesting for us to talk through on air?

Nadav:

Mhmm. That could be that could

Brian:

be kinda interesting. So

Justin:

Yeah. Maybe we should just take a risk and just put a link to the chat right now and see what happens.

Brian:

What? Like a clarity full link?

Justin:

No. No. Like a live join us guest link on Riverside here.

Brian:

Oh, right now?

Justin:

Just just just to YOLO it. Just to be a little, like, a little chaotic. Alright. Okay. If

Brian:

if if you want to, I'm

Justin:

We'll do it as an experiment. I I can't pro I might Wait.

Brian:

Is this for, like, anyone to like like, multiple people to join? Or

Justin:

Well, that yeah. What? We might just keep you for a little while here. So let's let's see what happens.

Brian:

We reserve the right to mute you.

Justin:

We we reserve the right to maybe not have you stay on, but we'll we'll try it. We'll try it out. I've never actually used this guest thing. So Alright. We'll see what happens.

Brian:

Why don't we move on with the with the topics, and we'll see

Justin:

if something Yeah. We'll just

Nadav:

see if people next week.

Justin:

Hop in give it a little random chaos here.

Brian:

Uh-oh. Here we go. We already got one.

Justin:

Hey. How's it going?

Nadav:

Justin, do you remember me?

Justin:

Yes. You're the you're the founder of Riverside, aren't you?

Nadav:

I am.

Justin:

Well, welcome. No way. Holy shit. What have you been doing?

Nadav:

This feels full circle. You know, when I launched Riverside, I did this show on on X on Twitter. Yes. I I I invited all these people to call in, and one of them was Justin. I did the show with you.

Justin:

I remember that. Yeah.

Brian:

This is so funny.

Nadav:

Actually, I was just on YouTube, and I saw, ah, Justin's live. So was like, oh, check it out. And then he I saw you're gonna do this. Felt like I need to do this. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. You need to come in. Well, dude, it's so great to see you again. Yeah, man.

Brian:

You you I mean, I don't I don't think we we've met, like, Nadav? Is is is that your? Yeah. Man, this is incredible that you're that you're here, number one. I mean, I I really I'm not just saying this because obviously you're you're on the show.

Brian:

Riverside is one of these products that I've been so impressed with just the constant improvement

Nadav:

Thank you.

Brian:

In in the product. I I I think I've been using it for three or four years, maybe probably longer than that. And, you know, there there was like the early years. And now I'm just so impressed with not only the recording capability, but all the editing stuff and the AI improvements just suit like, I I don't know how you guys do it behind the scenes, but it's it's been great.

Nadav:

Thank you. I I really appreciate it. Yeah. It's honestly a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. It's constant pushing forward and enjoying while you're doing it.

Nadav:

But, yeah, it's been a it's been a journey for sure. So actually Awesome.

Justin:

I was just looking up when the last time you emailed me was I don't know if this is the first time, but back in 2020 That

Nadav:

was hot. You know? I I had to really You emailed me. You emailed me.

Justin:

Back then, I think you had 61 users in '20 So you must be you must have grown a ton since then.

Nadav:

Yeah. We're we're a bit more these days. A bit. Yeah.

Justin:

How big is your team now?

Brian:

That's what I was gonna ask. Like, who's who's behind all this?

Nadav:

Yeah. We're pretty big. We're pretty big. We're like, I don't know if I I can even say it publicly, but we're like 300 people.

Justin:

300. Wow.

Brian:

Incredible.

Justin:

That's wild. And are you still in you were in The Netherlands for a while? Are you still

Nadav:

I'm I I live currently in Tel Aviv. And

Justin:

Oh, you're in Tel Aviv. Okay. Is is is a lot of the team based there, or are you still pretty distributed?

Nadav:

Around half the team is in Tel Aviv. Other half is remote.

Brian:

Very cool.

Justin:

What what advice would you give? Because now you've been going five years, six years?

Nadav:

Yeah. Five years, I think. Yeah.

Justin:

What advice would you give to people just starting up?

Nadav:

What advice? There's so much advice out there. Right? So much so much.

Justin:

Is any of it any good? Do people just have to figure it out on their own?

Brian:

Well, let me ask you let me let me ask the same question.

Nadav:

I'm trying to say something valuable. Right? Not another fluff. But, yeah, go for it. Sorry, Brian.

Brian:

Yeah. I mean, maybe the same question, a little bit different angle. For you, looking back on the trajectory of Riverside. If you can think back to maybe the a year in, a year and a half in, two years, do you remember any, like, big milestone or or really big factor that, like, once this happened, the trajectory changed?

Nadav:

Yeah. I I had a few. Honestly, one of the big milestones was actually probably was, like, when we launched Veracyte, I got even though it was not necessarily proving the product, but I got I created a lot of hype the first day we launched. Product that was we got Justin Jackson on the show on the show. I'm serious.

Nadav:

Indeed, Justin Jackson. It gave a tons escaped tons of energy and like, oh, man. We got a bunch of people. I was live broadcasting on X, and there was some hype, and it was COVID, and it was like, woah. There's something here.

Nadav:

I was doing these live call ins. It was super exciting. That was that was a big moment, but actually one of the bigger moments as well was I think the first paying customer. I've been building this product before Riverside together with my brother Gideon for years, and it was not Riverside. It was this online video debate platform.

Nadav:

And we had a lot of fun building it and learned a lot throughout, but never made any money. And then at some point we pivoted to Riverside and there was this person who we didn't have a payment system, but I basically just sent her like a PayPal invoice. And that was the first paying customer. And that was like, woah, someone on the internet is paying for our service. That was like a breakthrough for us because up until then, no one had ever paid us.

Nadav:

If anything, we had to pay people to come on our platform. And from that moment on, I I was just doing the math. It's like, alright. I have one paying user. It's pretty scalable.

Nadav:

It's a SaaS. I just need to get to this amount of users, and then I can live off Riverside. And I felt like it could be possible. So that was, like, ton of ton of fuel to keep going after that after the both the live show and the first paying user.

Justin:

Yeah. This

Brian:

this actually might relate to the topic that that Justin brought in for today. We were gonna talk about competition and how we think about our competitors. And actually, like Riverside to me is one of those tools that I do really think of it as a highly competitive space. And I don't know if you see it this way, but in my view, at some point in the last, I don't know, year, two, three years, like Riverside seems to have won that. Yeah.

Brian:

Like, there were like two or three other, like, big names in this space. And I just remember thinking, like, just from a product standpoint, Riverside just kept getting better and the other ones had issues. And like, how do you think about competition in this space?

Nadav:

Yeah. I think I've definitely had periods where I got too obsessed with competition, like, to be transparent. Like, I would think about it too much. Would think, what about if this happened, if that happened? And, you know, I just kept going.

Nadav:

And then you see competition's dying, competition's getting bought, competition CEOs leaving, replacing. I just kept going. And it also gave me a lot of inner peace. Like, I've been through it now for a lot of different cycles that I just see, like, okay, I will have more competition throughout the years, but I'm just gonna keep going and we'll see where the boat lands. So I I guess it it just also I've learned a lot.

Nadav:

Like, this is it's not so of course, that's the advice you always hear. Yeah. Don't obsess over your competitors. It's very easy.

Justin:

It's

Nadav:

hard done. Right? But Yeah. The truth is there really is no point on obsessing over your competitors. I do totally understand if companies or people do it, but that doesn't mean you should try to just really be focused on your internal users and customers.

Brian:

Yeah. I mean, I have no insider information on this, obviously. But as an outside user, I've been a customer of Riverside for a long time, and I have sort of dabbled and tried the other competitors in the past. Sure. And what I've noticed, and I think maybe the answer to the competition question is to just keep focusing on your own product.

Brian:

Like, I think that's the thing that I noticed about the other players in this space is that the products either stagnated or sort of got worse and more frustrating to use. Whereas like every time I logged back into Riverside, something improved. Yeah. No, I think that's You know, and like for me, I'm such a product person. But at the end of the day, customers essentially need to choose one instead of the other, and instead of the type of product where they might be subscribers to multiple, the product matters more than anything.

Nadav:

I think so as well. You know, Justin knows like no other, especially if you can find yourself a space and you know the markets are bigger than they are, you know how many other Chechipity apps there are? Like, everyone knows Chechipity. Right? And everyone knows Grock or or or and Tropic.

Nadav:

Cloud. Cloud. Are, like, the big five, but there's, like, ten, twenty of them you've never heard of that they're all big. Mhmm. Yeah.

Nadav:

A lot of money. I know a few. A lot of money. The Internet's big these days. So Yeah.

Nadav:

It is true on one hand. Of course, at the end, buying a product is a comparison between different products, but the market is much bigger. Even now with AI, people expect it to be a winner take it all market. I think, look, who knows? Yes.

Nadav:

But for the time being, it doesn't appear that that's gonna be the case. So you might as well don't get lost thinking about that and try to figure it out for yourself. Yeah. It is that hard hard difficult to do, obviously.

Justin:

Well, when when did you transition from being, like, an independent bootstrapped, making all this hype yourself on Product Hunt to because eventually, you raised some money, and then you were doing some serious marketing. Like you had you had like an insane investment in content and SEO. Like, there was a transition at some point.

Nadav:

We launched on Product Hunt March 2020 and raised money in August 2020.

Justin:

Oh, wow. So say sorry. Say that again.

Brian:

It's like a couple months.

Nadav:

Yeah. March 2020, we launched on Product Hunt. But before Product Hunt, we already no. Actually, we didn't have much going. But so Product Hunt, we the the payment system was barely working.

Nadav:

We launched March 2020, and then in August, we raised money.

Justin:

Wow. From from the Product Hunt launch? Like, somebody saw the Product Hunt launch?

Nadav:

Yes.

Justin:

Was that Alexis that saw it?

Nadav:

No. We had another investor. His name is Oren Zeff, Zeff Ventures. And then series a was led by Alexis. And it was not that I I I think also at the time, bootstrapping was very hard.

Nadav:

And then I asked myself at some point, was like, okay. Do I wanna bootstrap because because I just am scared to be ambitious, or do I bootstrap because I can't? But then I I, like like, I I just went for the moon because, you know, I think now I was an opportunity. Initially, I I was telling myself, no. We just wanna bootstrap.

Nadav:

But that was not if I would ask myself, that was not really true. I just was saying I wanna bootstrap because I couldn't raise money. Yeah. At some point, I because my ambitions were really big, always. Not always.

Nadav:

They grew, to be honest. But, like, if I could aim for the moon, I would try to aim for the moon. So the confidence grew, and and I I raised money in August 2020. And ever since we've just been in this roller coaster, honestly, kept iterating, kept improving, raised more money, and are creating, hopefully, great products. Yeah.

Justin:

I mean Amazing. It feels like in retrospect that paid off because on both sides, both on the marketing side and the product side I mean, if you go on Reddit and you look up people talking about this category, which is remote recording in a browser, there are a million edge cases and problems. And every day, someone's getting disappointed with

Nadav:

No. It's hard.

Justin:

Yeah. Whatever they're using.

Brian:

Yeah. It it seems like such a high pressure product to make it work.

Justin:

Right. But you guys were able to invest, I think, of all the products, yours became known as the most stable, the most solid. Do you think that was a result of the funding? Or was that just like, was that people? Was that just your own engineering prowess?

Nadav:

I think a few things. One is a starting point in the market. So we started off with recording. We didn't start off with editing or podcast hosting. So our engine okay, this was the core problem that we had to solve.

Nadav:

It turns out, so this is the problem that's most difficult to solve. So we started off with the most difficult problem. You're for not for various reasons, it's much more difficult than it may be. Like, you're dealing with Chrome. Chrome is changing all the time.

Nadav:

You're browser space all the time. It used to be you couldn't save so much in the browser. Computers were getting full. Many, many different edge cases. Give a gear, all kinds of different gear.

Nadav:

You can't even imagine.

Justin:

I can't even imagine because we're getting like, we a common customer support request we get is some, you know, 81 year old lady using Windows 95 wondering why she and Internet Explorer five and wondering why, you know, it's not working. So for you folks, it must be even more so. Like, just so many people trying to use this thing.

Nadav:

Definitely. We have we've gotten some brutal customer support. But basically, like so there's a few things. One, the problem we started with. The second, definitely the people we hired.

Nadav:

You know, I also asked myself in the beginning, like, would we have been able to hire these people if we didn't raise the money? Maybe. But it's not that we we would have been able to pay these guys without the funding. You know? It's like

Justin:

You So you would have been able to or you would not Yes. Have been able

Nadav:

But the question is, I don't know, it's hard.

Brian:

Would they have wanted to join?

Nadav:

For example, like, I don't know, maybe yes, maybe not. It's very hard to determine exactly what would have happened. Right? I will say it definitely was a good decision for us to raise money because we just had this huge opportunity in front of us and have this huge opportunity in front of us. And I think at least we have we have a shot at going for it, and I'm enjoying the journey.

Nadav:

So, yeah, like, of course, Bootstrap has many advantages, and I don't think sometimes people are super opinionated. No, you should Bootstrap. You should do whatever you what you wanna do. Right? Yeah.

Nadav:

I think I think the most important thing is that you're kind of honest to yourself. What do you really wanna do? Because many times people say they wanna bootstrap just because they cannot raise money. That's totally fine. If you cannot raise money, that's okay to bootstrap.

Nadav:

There's nothing bad about it. But yeah, for us, it's played out well. I'm excited. Still have a long way to go, but excited for me.

Brian:

I mean, that actually brought me to what I want to ask you now is like, what so you're about five years in? More more than that? Six years?

Nadav:

Yeah. Yeah. Five years.

Brian:

What what's on your mind now in 2025? I have a couple questions off of that. I I mean, where do you see the industry and Riverside's role in it? It does seem like Riverside is starting to really bite off other parts of the problem. Right?

Brian:

Like the editing and the hosting and and, you know, like AI trans like summaries and things like that. Right. But then the other thing I wanted to off of that is, like, I you hear about all these, like, major podcasts using Riverside. Right. The the top top podcast.

Brian:

Like, like, celebrities Right. Talk about Riverside. Right? I think

Justin:

Taylor Swift used it.

Nadav:

Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm.

Brian:

Yeah. I mean, so what kind of problems or challenges are are at the top of your mind these days?

Nadav:

When you look at the outside, everything was great. But internally, we have tons of things to solve. We still wanna make, like, even just what we are doing right now much better. The live streaming, the recording, the editing. We've really, really invested a lot in the editing.

Nadav:

Try out the editing. It's like a fully baked editing product now.

Brian:

I was just in the the other day, like, because I'm I'm working on a a new other podcast with with some editing stuff. Yeah, it's got, like, the the script based editing, the multi track. It's it's pretty impressive.

Nadav:

Yeah. And and thank you. And we'd still have a long way to go there, just making it much, much better. So I would say a big part of it is just making what we have much, much better and keeping relentlessly focused on executing. And, yeah, we have a lot of things we're working in and more experiments and more stuff that we're working on.

Nadav:

I think we need to keep our heads on and be focused on even what we are doing right now and keep making it better and better. And there's so much more things we can do and improve. For example, in the editor, of course, AI is changing everything. So we want to simplify editing much more. We want to make it a much better experience if you want to not just create a talking head video, but also if you want to maybe make the video much more engaging with AI on top of the top of the video.

Nadav:

So how can you go from a boring looking talking head video to a much more engaging video? Of course, AI has many more opportunities there. Mhmm.

Justin:

You know what'd be awesome is

Brian:

Super interesting.

Justin:

Is if because I'm I'm manually switching to you know, I'll show things on screen using your your share tab. But it would be awesome if AI was just suggesting, do you wanna share this? Do you want like a little pop up where it's just like Yeah. Hey, you could share this. Oh, hey.

Justin:

We found that Andreessen blog post. Why why don't you put that up on screen? There's like I I feel like that's where I want the AI is an assistant who keeps going out and finding things I can share on screen.

Nadav:

Yeah.

Justin:

I think that that makes the most sense.

Brian:

I I it was interesting to hear you talk about the the like, some going beyond The Boring Interview. Like, this this other new show that I'm working on is, an interview show, and I'm I'm trying to figure out, like, because it's not, an in person thing. I'm trying to figure out how can I make, like, a like, engaging, like, you know Right? YouTube style with with energies and with, like, b roll from the guests and stuff. Right.

Brian:

So that that's really interesting that you're thinking about that.

Nadav:

Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, you know, I through through my work on on builder methods, I talked to a lot of team team leaders and engineering team leaders. And one of the things I'm I'm always interested to hear about

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Brian:

This would be good. Hear And I hear from team members is like their internal adoption of AI, especially on the on the dev team.

Nadav:

Right.

Brian:

I'm wondering if you can talk at all about that. I mean, obviously, we see the AI features in the in the product, but, like, how about your process internally? Like, how much is your team leveraging AI and, like, writing code, reviewing code, things

Nadav:

like that? Yeah. No. That's a great question. There is a difference what people say publicly and privately, meaning like sometimes I ask myself, maybe we're not adopting AI enough because it seems like everything is so easy.

Nadav:

You can vibe code anything. Our product is pretty complex, so you cannot vibe code your site. There are parts where you can maybe can much quicker go from zero to eight, but then the last 20% can still take a lot of time, sometimes even longer using AI. But there are aspects where Gursor and whatever coding tool you're using are super relevant and useful naming and reviewing. Some engineers find it super useful, but other engineers in our company don't find it so useful yet.

Nadav:

I am trying to really encourage people because, you know, it's always changing and getting better and getting better. I will say we're not a company that is vibe coding everything and Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, I mean, you know, the the product was built before AI came around. Right? So Right.

Nadav:

No. And I think that also, you know, there's pros and cons to that, but the con is, you know, we have a whole the whole back end's pretty complex. Just inertia, you know, it's harder to probably on a new cloud base, it's much easier to adopt cursor and all these tools. Our product is a bit more complex to do that. That doesn't mean we should try to lean heavily into that, but that that is the reality on the ground.

Brian:

Yeah. And what you're saying, it it mirrors what I'm hearing from most other CEOs, CTOs, team leaders of of large development teams. It's like like most of them really do want to start to adopt it with their teams, and they're still looking for ways to to transition to it, at least in some ways. I'm I'm curious to know, like, in the past year or so, like, has your team like, has have there been any, like, organizational changes or process changes, like, in terms of, like, new initiatives to to, like, increase adoption at all? Or or I also see a lot of teams is, like, whatever individual engineers are interested in using Cloud Code for this or that or Cursor, like, go for it, but use whatever is easiest for you.

Nadav:

I'm not such a believer in making things mandatory, but at the same time, engineers are skeptical, sometimes too skeptical. So you do want to really encourage them to use it. And I have tried to like share, create like a sense of like sharing examples, sharing what it looks like for people if it works well, sharing being the classical CEO, sharing some tweets, saying, hey, look at this, look at this. Has our workflow really changed? Not so much.

Nadav:

Not so much, I can say, probably as in many ways I can maybe don't even think about. Right? I I'm talking all day long to chest GPT. Yeah. Don't get me wrong.

Nadav:

And I'm I'm I'm I'm thinking I'm talking all the times to it and researching things in LEMS. Probably in researching and and and and debugging, it's helping us a lot. But as, like, how we go from from ideation to execution, not not radically, but maybe I'm already so used to it that I can't even judge it.

Brian:

You know what's funny? I I noticed this with my I have a super small team working with me on on a couple different products. And and I I I do nothing to, like, direct them or or require them to start using AI or or or change the way that they do things. But I do know that, like, my developer on Clarity Flow did start using Cursor on her own just in the last, like, seven, eight months. And I noticed that I mean, we we've been pretty fast in general before this, but, like, things do tend to ship even faster now.

Brian:

Like she completes tasks faster. And also like things are, like if she's more backend, the front end is nicer, requires

Nadav:

less- Right, right, right, right.

Brian:

Less handholding because part of it was done with with that sort of assistance. It's like I I started I start to just notice these little efficiencies even if it's not like programmed into our process in any real way,

Justin:

you know?

Nadav:

I mean, we do all the, like, meeting recording, other stuff, and there's a lot of value, and I think it's summarizing and these kind of these kind of use cases. But, also, look, I I I do manage engineering, like, indirectly, but I'm not hands on on for Probably, it's also being I don't even know what you guys wanna say.

Justin:

I have a we can end on this too, Madhav, just to we don't wanna keep you too long. But and this is a bit personal. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But I just was reminded that you and I did a phone call, I think when you'd hit about 30 people. Did you have you just turned 30?

Justin:

Are you old are you now? You're 31.

Nadav:

31.

Justin:

You're 31. You were still in your late 20s when we had this call. Yeah. And I can just remember you you just had 30 people. I think you just raised money.

Justin:

And at the time, you were very stressed. And as a bootstrapper, I kind of took that as like, oh, yeah. See, we chose the right thing. Like, I'm feeling pretty calm. Nadav is over there.

Justin:

He's stressed out.

Brian:

Here he is with a team of 300.

Justin:

How how are you feeling now? Like, did that did that stress did that initial stress of, you know, all a sudden, we've hired 30 people and all of a sudden, we're raising this money. Do you feel like that subsided? Because I think that is what keeps a lot of people away from raising money. And now you got investors telling you you gotta go big and or maybe just your own ambition is just feels so big and overwhelming.

Justin:

Did that even out?

Nadav:

There's always this chip on my shoulder. Right? It's not like that that chip is gone or the stress is gone. I don't think it's a matter of raising money. That's kind of what I'm saying.

Nadav:

It's more just that I want to fulfill the potential we have. But I don't know if it's stress. It's more like an eagerness to grow at this point. I definitely remember, you know, it was also probably it's funny, I hear, like, that the noise cancellation is not on. But anyway

Brian:

Oh, that might be from my end, there's something going on here.

Nadav:

Well, it's fine. This is my obsession. But I still manage product hands on, which I really enjoy. And even though we're big, what actually what I've really noticed that action, in my case, removes stress. So and I feel like I'm in control in the areas where I want to be, and I think the moment you grow and you suddenly can't control anymore, it feels like you cannot control your destiny or the decisions, that's when you get really stressed.

Nadav:

And I think at the time, there were a lot of different factors. Right? One of them was COVID. I didn't know how long this was gonna last. Like, hey, is this just a fad?

Nadav:

Definitely crossed my mind. Right? No. This is a real change. People are gonna continue creating remotely, and now we're much more than just recording.

Nadav:

But that was also part of what was on my mind. But so in conclusion, I I I don't feel stressed. Do I feel super strong hunger and desire to make Riverside much better? Yes.

Justin:

That's great. Dude, what you've accomplished

Nadav:

Thank you so much.

Justin:

Up till now is incredible. And to still be so young and have all that you you still have so many like, you're you've learned so much more than I have just having to manage this big team and everything. It's incredible what you guys have achieved.

Nadav:

That's kind of what I was trying to say. Like, I don't think one is better or it's just different, you know? It really is.

Brian:

Yeah. You know, congrats on all success. Again, like, just to sort of bring it back full circle to the beginning, it's just one of those products that you could tell so much care goes into this product. You could just, as a user, you could feel it day to day still this many years in. So it's it's awesome.

Nadav:

Thank you. That's a that's a huge compliment.

Justin:

Thank you. Next time you come on, I'll turn on the noise canceling for you.

Nadav:

Yeah. Next time, I won't be on the couch as well. This is get a better head off.

Justin:

Oh, dude. That was so great.

Nadav:

Okay. Cool. Bye, guys.

Justin:

See you. Bye.

Brian:

Thanks. See you.

Justin:

Alright. See? There you go. Just a little bit of Unbelievable. You

Brian:

you throw the link on and then the founder of Riverside hops on.

Justin:

Know what I saw Nadav in the chat, and I was like, oh, that's that's probably Nadav. And then that was hilarious. He joined. That's great.

Brian:

That's crazy. And and I I didn't know who he was when he joined. I was like, alright. Who's this?

Justin:

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Incredible. I I do remember him reaching out in the early days and being like, wow, this he was, you know, 26 or something at the time.

Justin:

And Yeah. Just just going.

Brian:

What an what an incredible mini interview there. I mean, there's so many right at the end there, one of it was really interesting to hear how how ambitious he still is. Yeah. Mean, you would you would sort of expect it with a with a fast growing, well established product like this, but like all I ever think about, and probably you still think about this is like sort of like the hunger of the small bootstrapper. But it's interesting to hear how, like, obviously, from the early days product hunt and then like a very quick jumping right into into raising money and, like and and the really quick rise in ambition that he talked about.

Brian:

And that happened quickly in the first couple of months of Riverside. Yeah. Fast forward five years to now, 300 people on the team, probably thousands upon thousands of customers, and he's still like, we we could be so much better. We could we gotta keep growing. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. This is actually the magic. This is the magic of podcasting, and it's also the magic of going to conferences and everything else. I'm so glad he joined because the hearing different people's insights and different people's journeys, like how they experience the thing. Again, this was the original dream of the panel.

Justin:

You wouldn't

Brian:

finally achieved

Nadav:

the panel. We

Justin:

did it. You might not follow that path. But just so you're not making excuses that are imaginary, I think is helpful. And on the other hand, I do know people that raise money the exact same time as him. It ended up crushing them.

Justin:

They couldn't raise more. They ended up selling. They ended up working for this company they didn't like. And it can go all sorts of different ways. But in his case, it's pretty clear from my perspective that and I knew a lot of his competitors.

Justin:

You know, I was friends with the folks at Zencastr and and Squadcast. When when Riverside was ramping up, both on the marketing and product side, they just felt like such a challenger. Like like they are they had the muscle of I think the funding did provide them with some muscle, did allow them to raise their ambition, did allow them to pursue a very difficult product category. And then they got a lucky break, just like we all do with COVID. It was like all of a sudden, you know, everybody you know, every comedian and person with a late night talk show is now using Riverside because they need to do something during lockdown.

Justin:

Once you've experienced it, once you're like, oh, look, we can do this. This is so easy. I send you the link. Then, you know, you keep using it, especially if it continues to be reliable.

Brian:

Yeah. Especially if it just works. Right? And, you know, you had planned this topic of like, know, founders don't think about their competition enough or in the right way, I was probably gearing up to get into the conversation where it's like, you probably shouldn't think about your competition too much or there's We all sorts of things we

Justin:

can

Brian:

get into what you had in mind there. But I just wanted to say Riverside in that space of live recording for podcasts might be like the exception to all my thoughts on on thinking about competition, or it's one of the few exceptions. And that, like, it it is hyper competitive between only a couple of, or at least it it was competitive between only a few players.

Justin:

Like

Brian:

Yeah. We at least in our circles, we we knew of Riverside, Squadcast, and Zencastr. Right?

Justin:

Yeah. And and there there was Skype call recorder for a while, Zoom and other Yeah. Was other

Brian:

stuff like that. Yeah. But like, you could just record Zoom. I I think when people think about who's gonna win this space or if you're if you're competing, how how do you outcompete your competitors? There there are some people who will say, like, you have to out market them.

Justin:

You have

Brian:

to out hustle them on the exposure or on the on the branding or on the reach or on the distribution. But in my opinion, in this particular space, as long as you are already in the game in terms of like a known entity, Riverside, Zencaster, Squadcast, maybe a couple of other options, then it really does come down to product. It's which one are people gonna come in and hit record, and it's going to just work versus which one are they gonna have a frustrating experience with. I mean, I I'm sure I had the same experience as most people. I tried all three at different points, and I got frustrated with two of them.

Brian:

And fast forward to today, I'm still a paying customer on Riverside, you know?

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, Riverside, I would say it was both because Riverside invested that was the whole thing is they invested a ton of money in marketing. Like we almost not just in podcasting, but across multiple categories. Like, people at Buffer were noticing this. Anybody who had SEO for a bunch of topics around the creator economy, all of a sudden, Riverside was just crushing everybody.

Justin:

It was like, where did these guys come from? And they were hiring you know, famously, they hired Steven Robles to do a lot of their video. And it was just like they were investing a ton in marketing. High big booths, sponsoring events. So I think it was both and.

Justin:

For sure

Brian:

Like we like we tend to think of like because we already know these players, but they're probably thinking there there's a whole ocean of people who are just discovering podcasting for the first time. So which which brand are they gonna go with?

Justin:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if you look at their organic keywords on Ahrefs, like, they are ranking for a ton. I mean, they're they're ranking number one for how to start a podcast. They're ranking number one for podcast name generator.

Justin:

Invested so much. And I remember all of us were kind of looking at our Ahrefs and going, oh my god, like we hadn't seen anybody kick up a a content machine like this across and advertising too. Investing tons in Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you know, Instagram ads. They were just everywhere and consistently there.

Brian:

Incredible.

Justin:

So the the I think the the marketing investment paid off. I think this is actually this does go into what I wanted to talk about, which was I'm in a bunch of Slack groups where this comes up, where people have a product in a category that is having a hard time finding traction. And let's just say you're in the the email newsletter space. Right? So you're competing with Mailchimp.

Justin:

And what what I what I find is people are like, well, I'm in this category. There's a lot of people here who should be using my service. Right? And I'm always just thinking about, like, people starting an email newsletter today. What are they thinking about?

Justin:

What are they trying? What's what what are the big names that you're competing against? Well, today, the big name is Substack. And what what advantages does Substack have? Why are people moving to Substack?

Justin:

Well, a lot of it has to do with network effects and distribution. Instead of you having to collect all of your email subscribers yourself, Substack has this huge network that has the at least the promise of being able to and so you're coming in as an indie email newsletter platform. What are you going to do? Is that going to be your target market? Because if you're targeting those kinds of customers

Brian:

So are you I have a question about this conversation. Are you pointing this conversation at the person who is starting something up in a well established category with some big players in it and and how they should think about their competition?

Justin:

It it goes deeper than that. It's it's just thinking about a category, thinking about the the kind of customers you want to go after in that category, and even just the kind of customers that are actually purchasing all those questions. And then just being super realistic about I think there's there's a little bit of bootstrapper myopia, where you get this feeling of like, oh, if I just provide a If

Brian:

I could just find 100 customers, it'll

Justin:

be Yeah. Or but if I just provide the simple version of this, like, you know, Basecamp is the simple, clean, minimalist version of Jira. So I'm

Brian:

just It's gonna not enough anymore. Like, just the fact that you're small and bootstrapped, that that's not enough.

Justin:

It may not be enough. And I also it also makes me feel like you're not thinking about it from the right vantage point, which is I'm a person who is looking to I just actually had this. My daughter was working with this nonprofit. And she's like, where should we be writing our blog? And I was like, I went through all the things.

Justin:

Well, WordPress and Squarespace. And you know, there's, there's Ghost and then there's, you know, Static. And, and then I asked a few more questions. Like, what are you trying to achieve with this? Like, what's the goal?

Justin:

And the goal was to get more readers. The goal is to and I'm like, ah, it's got to be Substack. Like, if you're trying to build a new audience, and you know, you're not particularly good at finding unique little channels and pockets of people, where are you going to go?

Brian:

I think I think what you're saying I completely agree. I think what really what it comes down to is like, you just have to have a really good answer to why. Why you?

Justin:

Yes. Yes. Why you? Right? Why you and why you for a again

Brian:

For who?

Justin:

And for who? And don't imagine sometimes people just imagine this mythical customer that doesn't exist. Like, they'll be like, well, I'm gonna do a classic one is I'm gonna do something for SaaS founders. And I'm like, ugh, like There's not very many good businesses that have been built for SaaS founders. And when you actually think about SaaS founders, like if you went and interviewed 100 SaaS founders about any question, what are they using for their marketing site?

Justin:

You're going get 100 different answers.

Brian:

Really, it's about why you. And it's like answer because I think too often and I've fallen into this trap many times. Too often, we as founders answer the When someone asks you, because customers will ask you this question repeatedly, why should I choose your product over the known competitors? The answer too often the answer is like way too long. You list too many features.

Brian:

Well, we've had this, this, this, and this, and this, but you're just listing the things that make your parody features. You're just listing the same things that all the other competitors have. So right off the bat, you lost. Because they are more established. They already built up more trust.

Brian:

So you have to have some unique they call it a unique differentiator. And that has to be a one sentence answer to the question of why. Because it what if the if the question is why you or why your product? You shouldn't even need to discuss the parody features. Those are a given.

Brian:

Mhmm. Or they shouldn't even matter because your real answer to why is so important. Like, because because we're the only ones that see the world this way. And if you see the world this way, then you know about this sub problem within a problem. And we know really well.

Brian:

We saw we nailed that one little detail that everyone else ignores. Like, that's the answer. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. And and to be clear, I think you can hit a certain escape velocity. So in the let's just use transistor as an example. So what was transistor's unique differentiator in the beginning? And some of these are going to seem super trite, but but they're actually it's actually true.

Justin:

The number one was there had not been a brand new fresh podcast hosting platform in ages with a fresh UI. Now, is a difficult one to talk about because it this may never work again. This may have only been a thing for this time.

Brian:

People will love to say like design doesn't matter. But at the time, in your space, design absolutely did matter. And that was a differentiator. Right?

Justin:

Didn't matter. Simplecast had just done this big UI revamp that a lot of people didn't like. Libsyn was super old, had not been updated in a long time. There just had not been a fresh user interface. And so when we came along, we said, hey, we're the modern, simple, well designed podcast hosting platform.

Justin:

A lot of people were like, man, I'm just gonna try the fresh new one, you know? So that helped. The other key differentiator was our pricing model. We were one of the first people to offer unlimited podcasts for one price. Everyone else you had to pay every single time you started a new show.

Justin:

And that ended up being a really key differentiator. It was enough to have those two. And then you get a little bit of luck in there. COVID certainly helped. The lockdown certainly helped.

Justin:

I saw I showed you that revenue chart where the first years of COVID, like our revenue increased incredibly. Like, we're talking 300, 500%. I can't remember. It was it was insane. And then we'd hit escape velocity.

Justin:

Now, we are just in the top five podcast hosting Now, of course, we're doing a lot of things behind the scenes. I'm pushing the marketing thing forward every day. We're pushing the product forward every day. Like we're working hard. We're being incredible at customer service.

Justin:

That was another differentiator. We actually did live customer service. All of this helps. But there's two or three things that helped us make that initial splash. And then once we once we hit escape velocity, then these kind of there's these reinforcing effects that can keep you kind of up in the stratosphere.

Brian:

Yeah. It's interesting because I'm, you know, I'm in, like, the first couple of months of my builder methods business, and I am I'm this is actually really top of mind for me right now. It's thinking about what is the actual value proposition and what is the unique differentiator? Like, why I'm more trying to figure out right now, like, why are people buying Builder Methods? Yeah.

Brian:

Like, it's actually selling pretty well. And I don't actually have a clear I have a lot of survey data that I need to do a better job of sifting through it and finding patterns. But I have had a few conversations. And I had one moment about a month ago I, because I ask this question a lot, whenever I get on a call or email with someone, it's like, I love to ask, what are the other options that you've considered? Have you hired other consultants?

Brian:

Have you bought other courses? Have you joined other communities? I ask them And all the sometimes they have or sometimes they've considered them. And one thing that that one team leader, they're like a huge engineering team, He was like, yeah. I looked at some of the other ones, but most of those were from commercial tools.

Brian:

Like, were offering training around their tool. And you're the one who's who comes in, like, unbiased. You're not representing a commercial entity. And so I learned that a month or two ago. And in my recent videos and some of the promotional copy, that's a key benefit now.

Brian:

I didn't know that when I started Builder Methods, but that's like a new bullet point that I really like to touch on. It's like unbiased, like just trying to find the best workflow, whatever tool. Like, I don't represent a major AI platform or a major tool.

Justin:

And I'm also here's a I actually think demographics matter a lot. It's something I think about a lot. And my guess is your audience is a little bit older and older than the AI JavaScript vibe code boy that's on Twitter posting a new, hey, guys, like, at what I just got. You know, like, you're you're not the high energy young whippersnapper. Like, you're Yeah.

Brian:

It's it's true. I I tend to attract professionals.

Justin:

That's right. Older professionals

Brian:

Not I don't know that they're necessarily older. I do attract some older folks. Mhmm. But I know that there are there are also younger folks. It's but they are professionals.

Brian:

Yes. They're they're in careers in this. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. I I think that's a key a key insight.

Brian:

Well, what and that's another thing that's sort of top of mind for me right now and the fact that my audience is the professional means that most of them are set in their ways of hand coding. And they're not skeptical of AI because they're joining things like builder methods. They're interested in it. They feel motivated to spend money on on improving their adoption of AI. Yeah.

Brian:

But at the same time, I'm also noticing now that I I do think that people with a full stack development background, in some ways, they're they have, like, they're at a big advantage if they fully adopt the tools, but they're also slowed down in their adoption because they have to sort of unlearn and transition a lot of old habits. And I'm still trying to find my way around like, well, am I helping people? Should my role be to push them to the new way of doing things or try to push them to unlearn certain things? Or am I falling into the habit, the old entrepreneurial habit of of finding out where my customers are, meeting them there, and helping them do more of what they've already been doing versus trying to convince them to do something new? Like, my my my old product muscle memory has always been like, these people are doing coaching with courses and so let's make the product coaching and we'll offer courses because that's what they're already doing.

Brian:

Let's sell them something where they're already in motion. That was the concept with Clarity Flow. But with builder methods, this is a different thing. It's education, it's community. And the driving motivation behind the purchase is I want to change or I want to adapt.

Brian:

It's like maybe my role isn't to help them do what they've been doing. Maybe my role is to be the coach who pushes them to a new way. Right?

Justin:

Like Yes. Yeah. This is I think this gets really gets at what something I've been thinking about, which is and here's another great Rob Snyder article. The physics of startups. Demand is what causes buyers to buy things.

Justin:

So and his next point. Our businesses simply serve demand. Everything we do only works if it fits the buyer's demand. Demand causes the activities we do to either work or not work. And the only thing that's going to cause your business to grow or grow faster is because there's a bunch of people out there that have demand for what you're offering.

Justin:

So understanding the demand, the size and shape of customer demand is kind of key to unlocking all of this. Because his next point is the goal is to figure out the specific physics of our business. The goal is to figure out the physics of our business. So based on what we know about our customers' demands and options, what exactly is the right shape of our business in terms of product pricing, etcetera. That buyers pull instead of us trying to push it on buyers.

Justin:

And what set of activities should we do to channel and serve that pull? That's what I'm talking about. Like that

Brian:

I think it's like on on the sales pitch and the marketing and the positioning, it's like really resonating with with the thing that's pulling them. Like, make make it easy for them to like, you're you're speaking directly to their why, like why they came in. Right?

Justin:

That's right. And and having an understanding of it, this permeates into every part of the marketing and the product, which is why I've always felt that product and marketing need to work hand in hand. Because ultimately, I've said this so many times with Transistor. People are using Transistor to get their podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever people listen to podcasts. That's what they're doing.

Justin:

They don't know what hosting is. They don't know what a CMS is. They are using us to get their stuff on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and then get some sort of signal back as to how their podcast is doing. That's what that's the primary reason they come to us. And in our world, as developers and engineers and technical people, we're like, well, no, but it's hosting and it's RSS feeds and it's XML and it's all this other stuff.

Justin:

No, no, no, no. We got to get out of that world. Yourself in the seat of somebody who's recording something for the first time, trying to get their voice out into the world. All they care about is us helping them get onto Spotify and Apple. The other day, there's someone who signed up who's been doing a podcast where they've just been posting, uploading little m p threes to their website every day, hand coding it in.

Justin:

And they're like, I don't understand why no one can listen to this on Apple Podcasts. It's like, well Yeah. We can help that person. I think the mistake I see so many founders making, and it's you can fall into it even with a mature product, is you lose sight of what the driving forces that customers really care about. And you think, oh, well, maybe maybe we should offer this.

Justin:

It's like, well, the the main things are this right here. So how can we make this better?

Brian:

You know, one thing that sort of comes to mind for me lately is I'm starting to think that there is like, the idea of sniffing around for different target customers and then following the scent to to where you're gonna find the potent problem to solve or the potent customer group to figure out what they need and then build a product for them. Like, yes, we know there have been many businesses or SaaS businesses that have been sort of built that way. My pendulum has swung more toward like, just have your own gut vision for the way a certain thing should be in the world and just build that and be super be just be super opinionated about it. And it's okay if you're gonna turn off a lot of people. And obviously, there's zero buyers for this thing, then it's not viable and you can't do it for very long.

Brian:

But if some people resonate with your way of looking at the world, then you do get that sweet spot eventually. It's really hard and there's some luck involved,

Justin:

but

Brian:

I think you'll end up at a much better sweet spot at the end of the day. Like what I'm saying is, I guess I can only speak to my own experience with this. Like with Clarity Flow, again, I I always talk about how it's sort of like it hasn't reached its its expectations. Part of it is because I I did pivot it multiple times and and ultimately to to what it is today with Clarity Flow. It serves coaches.

Brian:

They really like it. But I was sort of just pivoting it a couple times until I landed on something that's kind of sort of worked. But at the end of the day, it still attracts customers who come in. Best paying customers use Clarity Flow the way that it is designed to be used. But then we also get a lot of other customers who sort of use these features, but then they wanna duct tape these other these other tools into it because they wanna do things in a slightly different way than than my vision for Clarity Flow ended up being.

Brian:

And so then you get this mishmash of some perfect customers and some customers who are high likely to churn at some point because they're not using the product in the way that it was designed with a vision. Yeah. Builder Methods is still sort of too young to to really have have fully realized the vision. But I I just in general, when I think about the great products and the great founders and product people, it's like because I think the ideal scenario, when you're talking about the integration between the positioning, the marketing, the sales approach, and then connecting into the product experience, I think the ideal vision is like You resonate with the pain point, that brings them in contact with you. It's like, Oh, this person gets me.

Brian:

They are expressing the same pain point that I'm feeling. So I'm going to take out my credit card and buy this thing. And then the goal for the product should should be in a perfect world. They go through your onboarding flow and it and everything is as they expect it. They get here.

Brian:

Step one, press this button. Step two, okay. I I feel like I'm on the right track. Step three, my problem is solved. Mhmm.

Brian:

Like and and every single customer follows that track. Right?

Justin:

I would I would I would characterize it differently. It's a little bit semantic, but I think it is product and marketing are both serving demand. And then the role of marketing and product is to satisfy that demand in some sort of way. It's different than having a problem, I think, because there's lots of problems for which there's no demand. But demand is there is active buyers out there searching for a solution.

Justin:

I think this is where you can get into trouble when

Brian:

you Then solution has to be very clear cut. Otherwise, you're going to end up with because I've I've seen this in multiple businesses where you where where there's a lot of demand. Because it's like a sort of a general problem.

Justin:

Can you give me an example?

Brian:

I mean, Clarity Flow is an example of this. Every day we get coaches who come to Clarity Flow and sign up. Right? Because they have problems running their coaching business. Right?

Brian:

And I've had other SaaS products like this where people come because their businesses have processes that led them to my tool that can kinda sort of help them.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Right? Every customer who comes through envisions in their mind a slightly different solution, even though they share the same problem.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

And but, like, if if you compare that to a tool or a business or a product that starts from, like, I have an opinion of the world for people like me who experience this problem the way that I experience it. If you feel this thing the way I feel it, then you know and I know what the solution is. So here it is. And when you buy it, you're going to get my vision of that. And you're going to go through this onboarding flow and you're going to be super happy and you're never going to churn because we see the world the same way.

Brian:

You know what you know what I mean?

Justin:

Yeah. I think the only thing that drives that to success, though, is if there is just a bunch of demand that's pushing that along. So let's use example of 37 signals. The demand there, the customer demand is there's lots of people, especially in the web age, that need to manage projects. Agencies, little software companies, whatever.

Justin:

They need to manage projects. It's a it's a really difficult problem to get everyone on the same page, etcetera. And so project management as a as a product category, there's a ton of demand in there. And it's just all pushing towards finding a solution. Someone gets frustrated and the boss gets frustrated or somebody gets frustrated and says, we've got to find a better way of doing this.

Justin:

And that creates the demand we got to go out. Now in front of that so the next thing that they hit is they try a bunch of things. And in their search, they got this demand that's pushing them to go find a solution. In their search, they have a bunch of disappointments, and nothing satisfies the demand they wanted. And then thirty seven signals has their approach, which is highly opinionated.

Justin:

And they're basically saying, we have the solution to your project management. Our philosophy is what you guys have been missing. And so we're gonna not only offer you the software, but we're gonna offer you a methodology, an ideology that is going to solve your problem. It's going to satisfy the demand. But you can't

Brian:

And the requirement for them to have a customer that won't churn is somebody who really buys into that philosophy.

Justin:

That's right. But you can't put that part in front of the demand. You can't say, well, first, I'm just going to form an opinion about the world. And and, like, I think anything, if you're going to do that, that could be an approach that works. But it has to what's behind that has to be just a lot of demand pushing.

Justin:

And then you are just finding the people for whom their demand has not been satisfied yet. And you're saying, well, what maybe you what you want is to find religion, you know, the 37 signals religion. And then you can so it's an approach that can work for sure.

Brian:

I'll give you here here's a here's a good example. I don't mean to always bring up bring up my stuff, but, like, I started a new app four days ago. Four or five four or five days ago.

Justin:

Yeah. Let's talk about it.

Brian:

I actually think this this could be

Justin:

I'm putting this in chat. New app alert. This

Brian:

this could be actually, like, a perfect example of what we're talking about here. I'm scratching my own itch with a problem that I feel deeply. Right? You know, I have to sort of give the caveat, like, is not like my next big business. I'm focused on builder methods.

Brian:

This this is sort of a project that I'm doing, and I'm it's a teachable, but it's a real tool that I'm building for myself. And maybe I'll I'll start to charge for it as a as a mini SaaS tool. That's what I'm that's what I'm doing. So I don't have a landing page up for it

Justin:

yet. Okay.

Brian:

But I do have a domain. I'll share it.

Justin:

Okay.

Brian:

So there's nothing here if you go to this domain. It's called filterhawk. Filter.com.hawk.

Justin:

Like, if I type that in

Brian:

There's gonna be nothing there.

Justin:

But I'm I'm hoping I'm gonna write it the way that you've, like, filterhawk as in a hawk.

Brian:

It's it's it's not spelled any funny way. It's it's like the the hawk, the the animal, and the word filter in front of it.

Justin:

I think one day you should build a landing page that is the this site can't be reached page, but with a Easter egg.

Brian:

Like, design it.

Justin:

Yeah. Like, when you like there's a little Easter egg. You click on it, and then you get through. That's how you get into early access.

Brian:

What do you think FilterHawk is just based on the name?

Justin:

It's filtering something, filtering traffic, filtering analytics, filtering the web, filtering things I care about on the web.

Brian:

Can we see the live chat? This is gonna be on a delay. Let me see if anybody else does.

Justin:

Wait. Yeah. What what do you folks in the live chat think FilterHawk?

Brian:

Before I start before I

Justin:

What do you think FilterHawk does? Maybe filters for Gmail, filters for what else what else have you been filtering? Hawk is a little bit like aggressive or like it's like a wild animal that goes hunting. So maybe is this like?

Brian:

I I wanna before I react to any of your guesses, I wanna see if the chat.

Justin:

Ryan is saying it's an app for tracking how often you need to change your air filters. Ben thinks it's a component for filtering tables. Maybe in Rails. Like, is this a rail oh, this could be a Rails component or something or a jam or something. It's gotta be an AI or something.

Justin:

Yeah. Like, what what do you need to filter in an AI world?

Brian:

I'll give one hint. There is no AI in this product.

Justin:

No AI at all?

Brian:

I mean, I'm using it to to code it, but there are no AI fill features in this pro like, I'm not I'm not connecting any AI APIs into this product.

Justin:

Okay. Andy here says it's for finding content and filtering for the newsletter. So you had that newsletter idea before?

Brian:

That is another product idea that I plan to come back to at some point.

Justin:

Okay. Okay.

Nadav:

So this

Justin:

is not in that.

Brian:

That that's a different tool. Yeah. That's

Nadav:

This is a

Justin:

tool for filtering all of Brian's ideas and figuring out

Nadav:

which ones are

Brian:

Pascal says contraband cigarette. Oh, like filters on a cigarette?

Justin:

The filter hawk. Yeah.

Brian:

I'm I'm drop shipping cigarettes from over here. Yeah. I love that's great. Okay.

Justin:

Product selection tool. Yeah, Ben. Is it can you give us any more hints? Like, just give us an let's just keep this going further.

Brian:

I'll alright. The one last hint, and maybe this will get to it, is, like, he it was mentioned already. Like, the answer was mentioned already.

Justin:

Oh, the answer was already mentioned By me or by chat?

Brian:

I'll get I'll give it away. So it is a it is a replacement for Gmail filters.

Justin:

Oh, okay. Okay.

Brian:

So this started as well, first of all, I I I think I had mentioned I've been using the tool Shortwave for my email client.

Justin:

Yeah. I remember us having that conversation. Yeah.

Brian:

I I mean, I hate to sort of bad mouth products on air like this. I I actually happen to think Shortwave is a fantastic product and and their take on the email. I I had a tweet last week that said all the email client tools out there are super opinionated, and I hate all their opinion.

Justin:

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian:

So I I tweeted that, and that was sort of rooted in the fact that I I started to go on the hunt for changing email clients. And I was sort of sad to see this happen, but like their service or my connection to it just kept going down for multiple days at a time and it caused me to lose a lot of emails and it was just really frustrating. But the reason I had started using Shortwave about, I don't know, six, seven months ago, before that I was using Hey, and before that I was just using Gmail. And mostly my Gmail goes back twenty years. And so I had like a six month period on Hey, and then I came back to Gmail.

Brian:

Shortwave integrates with Gmail.

Nadav:

Mhmm.

Brian:

So the the reason I did go to Shortwave in in was because my inbox is so chaotic. Like, have a lot of, like, important business emails with contacts day to day. And then I and now I have an audience that sends me replies every single day to my newsletter, into my and so that's a whole category of emails like that that flood my inbox. Plus, I I send so many surveys, which I think is really important to do, and and they get sent into my inbox. But those too need to be tagged and and categorized.

Brian:

Right?

Justin:

Are are you using labels quite a bit then?

Brian:

A ton a ton of labels.

Justin:

I'm not a big label person. I'm just, like, in my inbox, and I'm reading, archiving, replying, and that's my I don't use labels

Brian:

so I have so much noise, dude. It's like it again, it's it's the it's the newsletter replies, but then you have all the all the just noise, which is like Stripe notifications

Nadav:

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Brian:

New sign new account notifications, cancellation notifications, and or or just like my this SaaS tool just sent me an invoice that that's auto paid.

Justin:

You see. Just there just there, you started to hook me because at first, I was like, I don't know if I have a problem. And then you mentioned Stripe notifications. Like, I it would be nice to just have more rules to filter stuff out.

Brian:

And then, like, error monitoring. And then, like

Justin:

Yeah. I got all that stuff too.

Brian:

Stuff like that. And then, like, newsletters, I tend to subscribe using my personal Gmail so that they're separate from my work email. But I still get some newsletters that I in my work. All of those categories of emails need to be labeled. And you would think you you would think, and I've been trying for many years and many months to just set up Gmail Gmail has a has a feature called filters.

Brian:

Right?

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

You go you go in there, and if you look at my filters, they're extremely complex at this point.

Justin:

And you

Brian:

can and you can make them complex. You can do these really complex queries, you know, Gmail syntax or whatever, to say if the subject line contains these words but doesn't contain these words, and if the from email address is from is not from one of my domain email addresses, then automatically filter it, automatically tag it, automatically mark it as read, automatically skip the inbox. You can do stuff like that with with filters.

Nadav:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Right? Where it starts to break down is when you have so many of these different inbound emails, and some of these subject lines are sending emails I I can't control, so I have to filter out for them. Then you just start to add all these and this and this or this or this logic into those queries. And then those queries just simply break. Like, they don't and and I work with AI to try to rewrite them, and they just don't work.

Brian:

Right? And then the other thing I noticed is Gmail has all this quote unquote magic that they try to do under the hood, which is out of they will you know, they have automatically try to categorize things as like promotions. Yeah. Or automatically categorize stuff as important or not important.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

That stuff really often conflicts with the very specific filters that I tried to set up. Right? Like like this email, I specifically wanted to filter to say, like, skip my inbox and go over here and be labeled over there. But instead, Gmail thinks that some keyword in there made made it important, so they bump it into my main inbox. You know?

Justin:

So how how are you gonna do this better? How are you gonna do this better than Gmail?

Brian:

Okay. So and and one more thing that's annoying about about the thing about the Gmail things is that even if you try to filter on a very specific word, you could say if the subject line contains money received from Stripe.

Nadav:

Right?

Brian:

Like those specific words.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Gmail will also filter paid or funds. Or like it'll like, you know, words that are sort of like what you meant.

Nadav:

Mhmm.

Brian:

But I'm trying to filter something very specific.

Justin:

Yeah. You know? Which Dave Jinko, by the way, is is is he he he doesn't believe that this product isn't going to include AI.

Brian:

No. It's not.

Justin:

Wow. Okay. Alright.

Brian:

So and I've already built it. Like, I'm I'm already starting to use it on my own inbox right now. It's not releasable yet, but it's I I have a prototype that I've built in the last four or

Nadav:

five days.

Justin:

Okay.

Brian:

It integrates with the Gmail API.

Justin:

K.

Brian:

Right? So so you you sign up, you connect your Gmail account, and then all of basically, every email is hitting this application. And and then I have a workflow builder, a a filter builder. So so the the idea is, like, if if you're gonna use FilterHawk, you should probably stop using Gmail filters. Just don't use them.

Justin:

Got it. Got it.

Brian:

Turn turn them all off. Delete them. Now your emails are gonna go through FilterHawk. And I'm sure people listening to this are like, there's no way I'm sending my emails to FilterHawk. That that's fine.

Brian:

I I don't I don't blame you. But I am.

Justin:

Like But wait. So wait. The the emails go to FilterHawk, and then they have to get released from FilterHawk to back to my Gmail?

Brian:

No. Filterhawk just takes actions on your email. You're still going to use Gmail as your or you could use Superhuman or you can use Shortwave because any other email client that you want to use that integrates with Gmail, can use.

Justin:

Got it.

Brian:

The only purpose of Filterhawk as a product is to replace Gmail filters. So when when an email comes into Filterhawk, we have a workflow builder, which is much more intuitive than Gmail's chaotic query system. Right? So so you so it'll be a visual workflow builder, just like you're building a workflow like a visual workflow in ConvertKit. Right?

Brian:

Like, if if this let me see if I can get a rough this is a super rough look at it.

Justin:

Yeah. Show us. You're you're talking about a, like, a visual builder kind of like this then. Like these little visual automations in

Brian:

Okay. So this is a, like, the design is not finished. This is super crude, but I will share my screen on this. Okay. How do I

Justin:

Just that while you're getting that ready. I you are really good at processes. You're good at building kind of these kind of filtering UIs.

Brian:

Okay. So I'm looking at my workflows page.

Justin:

Okay. Yep. I see it.

Brian:

Yep. In this, you know, in this test environment, I have two workflows, workflow a and workflow b. Theoretically, I could have five, six, eight workflows. So this is another thing. Before we even dive into the individual workflows themselves, I can define the order in which my workflows run.

Brian:

This is something you cannot do with Gmail filters. So if I have 10 different Gmail filters, I never know which one is gonna run-in which order and which one is gonna cancel another one out.

Justin:

Sorry, Brent. I gotta leave. I got an appointment right now. You can keep going.

Brian:

Oh, shit. Okay.

Justin:

See you guys. Bye.

Brian:

That's that's Filterhawk. I guess Justin had like a a thing. Anyway, I I don't know. For for anyone who's who's watching, I I I have no idea what just happened with Justin. I hope everything's okay.

Brian:

It seemed like it was I don't know if it was an emergency or Well, I I also have to have to head out as well. So this was a I mean, this was an episode for the ages. We had, you know, we had the founder of Riverside hop on here. This was a really good one. So I think this is gonna go down as one of those one of those milestone episodes with a very, very strange ending.

Brian:

So thank you folks for for tuning in. And we will we will check-in next week, and I'm gonna go see what's going on with Justin. Alright. Later.

Justin:

I've been gone for an hour. Is this thing still going? Sorry, everybody. I have this recording mode where nothing gets through. No messages get through.

Justin:

And also, I noticed my wife called me, so she must have had to quiet call twice. And I had a sauna cold plunge appointment I had to run to. Everything's okay. I'm fine. Just I don't know why I didn't shut this down before I left.

Justin:

But there you go. Just a little bit of drama. It's funny that the chat I was really worried that someone was gonna use that Riverside link and join take over the stream, but nobody did that I can tell. Alright. See you guys.

Justin:

Bye.