Welcome to The Panel where founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, cofounder of transistor.fm.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Casel, founder of Builder Methods.
Jordan:And I'm Jordan Gal, founder at heyrosie.com. Great to see you guys.
Justin:It's so nice. It's it's really nice to come back from a a vacation, And it's just like, where do you find your mooring? Where do you find your bearings? I mean, the first place is in that telegram chat that we have. It's like, okay, check-in with Jordan and Brian.
Justin:What's going on? What's the pulse of the universe? I've been unplugged. And then we get back on the microphones. Everything is back as it should be.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Justin:The band is back together.
Brian Casel:And I do like this rhythm of like, you know, like we had like Henry on last week and, you know, a bunch of us have like different travel stuff going on. And then we kind of come back together for a catch up. Feel like today we're catching up.
Justin:That's right. That's right. We got to catch up. Lots to talk about. And I thought I would start this episode with a little story that I think might segue us into the first topic I have here.
Justin:So I have four kids. And the two younger boys, although the other the two older have also exhibited this. They are into flipping stuff on Facebook Marketplace. So I come home. There is a mysterious dresser in the front of my house.
Justin:What is this? Oh, dad, don't worry about that. That's me. I'm selling that on Facebook Marketplace. And so they are, like, going out to thrift stores and flea markets and finding stuff on Facebook Marketplace, and they're trying to flip it and sell it.
Brian Casel:And Are we doing volume here? What what are we
Justin:talking You see, this is exactly the topic I wanted to kind of bring up, which is it's been so interesting to watch this. Right? They're hustling. And the amount of time they're willing to invest in this for the payoff. Right?
Justin:So they're investing hours and hours talking to people on Facebook marketplace, riding their bikes or taking the car out around and seeing if anyone's throwing away any junk that they can,
Brian Casel:like, resell. So it's like not only they're they're they're they're taking inventory too.
Justin:Like it. That's right. There there's two things that are interesting that have come up here. One is it it becomes very clear that the quality of a business really depends on your ability to produce inventory. That's the the first thing.
Justin:Right? You you have to have something to sell. And in that particular category, it's procurement. Like, how are you gonna find the good stuff? And there must be some YouTube thing going on right now because they say there's, like, tons of kids doing this.
Justin:And now that my eyes have been open to it, like, when I'm walking around downtown, like, yesterday, I saw two kids carrying a bunch of, like, old stereo equipment that they found somewhere. And I'm like, there there's, like, a movement of kids flipping stuff.
Jordan:Everyone's finally listening to Gary
Justin:That's yeah. The the Gary Vee meme has reached its apex. And so they're all going to garage sales. They're all, like, scrounging in the ditches to find product to sell. And that so that's a problem.
Justin:Right? You got to be able to procure the inventory. But the second issue is distribution. It's like as soon as they start doing these businesses, I think they realize like, okay, I've got something. How am I going to sell this?
Justin:How am I going to reach a customer? And scaling both of those is tricky.
Brian Casel:I know where you're going with this, but isn't the Facebook Marketplace the distribution?
Justin:The Facebook Marketplace is part of the distribution. Yeah. But they're they're trying to sell it at at pawn shops. They're trying to sell it. They're doing all sorts of stuff.
Jordan:Any value add in the middle? Like, I'll take this dresser and clean it up and paint it?
Justin:Yeah. They're doing some some value add cleaning it up. Okay. Especially with, like, game systems. They're, like, trying to fix them if they're broken.
Justin:And there there's all sorts of stuff there.
Jordan:It's great.
Justin:I I love it. And I but I it's been interesting to think about them, especially them seeing now they're in these algorithms where they're seeing people talk about businesses online. Another one that my son saw was there's this guy online, and he gets a bunch of businesses to advertise on a on a printed piece of card. And then he he pays to distribute that to thousands of houses. And, you know, he makes a bunch of money that way.
Justin:And in each of these cases, I'm just thinking, man, distribution is challenging. And when it comes to let's segue this to building in software. It feels like the inventory problem is not an issue because now everyone's building with AI. You can build there's tons of creating your own inventory is cheap and free. Software's always had the advantage that we can make basically unlimited photocopies of something or have people access the same resource, and it doesn't cost us more.
Justin:Right? So we've never had inventory problems. But the the distribution part, getting customers is the challenge. And every time, my boys suggest this new business idea I've had, the immediate thought in my head is like, how are you going to find customers for this? And that's the gap, you know?
Brian Casel:Yeah. But also, like, I feel like we should step back and just applaud the fact that, like, your kids, I mean, clearly they have the bug. They have the entrepreneurship bug. Whether that turns into a career as an entrepreneurship, like, these are the early signs. Right?
Brian Casel:Like Mhmm. Mhmm.
Justin:That is it is advantage. Although, I don't love the stream of sketchy strangers showing up at my house who now know my address.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan:They're just going up the learning curve and starting to identify issues with the business, the business model, strangers coming to your house. Mhmm. Just one of them.
Justin:Yes. Well and and it is interesting. You know, my one son is realizing some categories of things work better. So, for example, if you can pick up a crate of records at an estate sale Mhmm. That is has a different shape than, like, browsing Facebook Marketplace for hours trying to find a deal on, you know, someone's getting rid of six video games and a game controller.
Brian Casel:Just to, like, imagine myself doing this kind of business for a second. It seems like the really interesting angle are things like the records where the seller is probably some, you know, old person who they're collecting dust in the basement somewhere. But the buyer is like, oh, that's the classic record I've been looking for. Where I That's pay premium for it and they can't find it anywhere else. Right?
Justin:That's right. That's right. So I'm wondering, what do you think? Because I reflecting while I had time off, you know, we left our last conversation. I had just built the first version of spots.fm.
Justin:Brian had just built fly right. Jordan had built this shift reminder tool. Now Brian's got Mimio. And I'm just also have started browsing Twitter again and just looking at that everybody's launching stuff.
Brian Casel:It's like launch
Justin:after launch and every Slack I'm in, people are launching stuff. It just feels like, I saw one the other day was like, spent, you know, $5,000 on credits and I built an Airbnb replacement. And I'm just like, okay, we've all built this stuff. We've got the same problem my kids have started their businesses. Now what?
Justin:What's the go to market strategy? And so I thought we could talk about, this here. Like, what strategies do you see working now? Maybe, Brian, you could start and talk about Mimio and, like, what is it and how you're thinking about that.
Brian Casel:I'll talk about I'll talk about Mimio, which, by the way, for those who listened to last week's episode, I hinted at a at a product that I really wasn't sure if I'm even gonna release it or not. I ended up releasing it, and it is called Mimio, and you can check it out at mimeohq dot com. I debated between like get Mimio and Mhmm. Mimio HQ, went with the HQ. I'll talk about that in a second, but higher level, stepping back, I think in all of our cases, and I would argue every every person's case is extremely different from one another.
Brian Casel:Not only in the business and the go to market and the product and all that, but in their personal What am I trying to say? Like like their personal story of of what they're trying to do here. Mhmm. I mean, if I remember correctly, the the the thing that Jordan was hacking on, like, I think Jordan, it was more about you learning the tools. Right?
Brian Casel:Learning learning the motions and, like, let's let's learn Cloud Code and stuff.
Jordan:Yeah. I've never been able to build anything before. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, you're you're not really starting a second business here. You're you're learning the tools, learning the motions. Right? Yeah. For me, builder methods is my business.
Brian Casel:That's I that's still number one, my primary focus. And for me, first and foremost, I was building a email marketing software tool for myself to use in the emails that I send for builder methods. Yeah. That's my primary driver. And if even if this Mimio idea doesn't turn into any customers, like I still accomplished my number one goal, which is I have moved my email marketing onto my own email stack that I own.
Brian Casel:And that's that. And so I have a number of these internal tools that I have built. Like I probably have three or four other ones that I've built. But most of them don't reach the bar or don't meet a certain criteria that I that makes me think like this is interesting enough for me to release it or at least gauge interest to see if there's a potential product here. Like most of them are just so personal to me that it's like, alright, this is just a me tool.
Brian Casel:Cool. Mimio started that way. And, but I do think that there is a kind of a unique value proposition to it. It is everything that you would think of in an email marketing tool. So you would use it for, you know, your newsletters, your drip sequences, your your onboarding flows, your funnel emails, things like that, which are all things that I do in in builder methods.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. The difference is that it is self hosted or you like it The plan is to offer it as a hosted service or you can download and buy a license and host it on your own server. And then the idea is like instead, it's it's an unbundling play, if you will. Right?
Brian Casel:So I'm I created what I think is my perfect email marketing tool, but I'm unbundling from the sending piece. So you would plug in your own sender, which could be resend or postmark or Amazon SES. I'm using resend for mine. Yeah. And by doing so so there's like a twofold value proposition there.
Brian Casel:Number one, I think it's a really interesting email marketing tool because it's got all the features that you would want in that, but it's also agent first, meaning you can run and manage and create and build everything in it using Cloud Code or Codex or whatever agent you want. Or you can use the nice UI to build out your automation flows. So like, that's what I really wanted. And that was my personal driver just for years getting frustrated with the kits and like the active campaigns and the drips. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like I've been through all of them honestly. And they're all like nice to a certain extent, but then especially once you get into more complex automation flows where you have like promotional sequences and you wanna make sure that these people over here don't get emailed while they're in the middle of a promotional sequence. And you gotta make sure that you're moving this lead magnet person over to that sequence. And like, it gets really complicated. And so once you start building that stuff out, you start to have to like, all right, wait, how does their automation work?
Brian Casel:I guess I gotta contact support to ask how it's working under the hood and they don't really know. And then I'm waiting three days. And so now in 2026, I'm at a point where it's just like, I want to own and run my own tools. Because if I have these questions, or if I have these paper cuts, or I have these complex needs, I want to just go into Claude code and be like, help me figure this out before lunch.
Jordan:Yeah. You know?
Justin:Can I pause you there, though? Because I think that's going to become increasingly common, right? Like, you build something for yourself. And then you say, well, why not just launch it publicly? I'm wondering what that does to the market, if anything, if anything has changed.
Justin:Like, there's always people that have launched projects, side projects, and for whatever reason, they didn't meet the threshold of whatever, caring about it enough or whatever. Like, do you think it's gonna affect anything? Or
Brian Casel:I I do think that this design or this shape of a product is a model that will become more common going forward for most software businesses, in my opinion. But that being said, I just wanna be really clear because people follow along with the work that I do and I talk about here. Like Mimio to me is not, I'm seeing if there's anything here. And frankly, like I was saying last week, like I'm not super confident in it as a product because like you do need to self host it. You do need to plug in your own resend or postmark.
Brian Casel:I mean, we make it easy to do that, but you are still responsible for your sending and deliverability. Whereas like that is the value proposition that the bigger email marketing service platforms offer you. It's like they take care of the hard deliverability stuff. Yeah. I'm just choosing to trust resend or postmark with that.
Brian Casel:And also trust that like I have people who have opted into my list and I'm sending good emails and all that. Like I sent a newsletter today and got pretty high deliverability on it. So like the first test of that is working. But in terms of like go to market, like to me, builder methods is still my business. If I personally, if I choose to release a tool like I did with Flyrite or now with Mimio, I'm sure there will be other ones in the future.
Brian Casel:These are like products that I think some small segment in my audience might find interesting on the fringes. And I can line up an email or two in my email sequences, like the life cycle emails. It's like, hey, by the way, I created this tool. If you happen to fit this criteria, it might be worth checking out. And like, you know, just judging by the replies, I have a very small percentage of my list who might be interested in this, right?
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like I'm not going to be choosing to do products like a CRM for plumbers, right? Like, cause like there are no plumbers in my audience, right? Yeah. So like for me personally, like the, these products, Flyright and Mimio, some portion of my audience does these things. They work with markdown files.
Brian Casel:They like Flyright. They do some email marketing and they're a little bit technical and they like the idea of owning and having your your agents run your email marketing. Maybe Mimio is interesting. But like, the like, my primary business is like builders, people who want to learn how to build with AI. That's builder methods.
Justin:Yeah. What what are your thoughts, Jordan? What's percolating in your mind around this? I I have two things. One is, like, focus and how much focus it really does take to get something to go to market.
Justin:And you're in your particular case, you've been very focused. You're just, like, you're a one so far, you've been a one product person. It feels like all your ammo's behind that. What what are you thinking about these days?
Jordan:I'm less focused than I let on.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan:I'm I'm always I'm always scheming on something and a lot of it just goes on in the background and it doesn't make its way out unless it makes sense, which which I think is fine. Maybe I learned that a while ago that people start to think you're a bit schizophrenic if you just share all of your ideas.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:So here here's my take on what's happening to Brian and I think more widely in the market in general where the limitations that everyone bumps into in a platform like Kit or Drip or any other software that is aimed to have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of customers in a big market and do a really good job, but it is impossible to cover all the different parts. Mhmm. So if you think about a customer base of a product like, let's say, KIT. Let's just say, I don't know, they they probably have a lot of customers. Let's say they have a 100,000 customers.
Jordan:Yeah. Out of that 100,000, let's just say it's eighty twenty. Where 80% of the customer base is like, this is all I need. I don't need anything else. Then you have this 10 this 20% who bump into these limitations and wish that they could control more of it themselves.
Jordan:But it's simply not worth it to go out and do it themselves or to go move to a different platform that they know might satisfy those needs, but will just introduce more limitations anyway. Right? This is this is the I've tried all the email marketing tools. They're all really good. They're all missing something.
Jordan:So like totally normal. You can apply it for CRMs. You can apply that to, I don't know, a lot of different product categories. Yeah. And so in the past, building your own tool was possible.
Jordan:But taking that next step and turning that tool that you built yourself into what I effectively see as like a call option, It's like, I want to have the ability and the right. If there's a lot of demand for this, then I'll turn it into a business. Mhmm. Mhmm. So turning it from your own tool into that used to be really expensive.
Jordan:They gotta go build an admin.
Justin:You gotta move a login.
Jordan:You gotta do the payments. You gotta all these things that required a lot of work. Yep. But now Brian can kinda go from this is my own tool to let me just flip this out as a call option in the market to see where the reaction is
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:Without that much commitment. It's not an enormous amount of time and in some ways, it's kind of fun. Right? What Brian is doing right now is like this very logical thing for someone with his skill set to say, I find this useful. I have no idea if there's like demand for like a multi million dollar business, but it costs me so little to go from my own internal tool and it's good content anyway.
Jordan:So let me just flip it out there and then see what happens. There's very very little downside. You can exercise the option if it makes sense or you leave it out there and it's content and it's practice. If that happens in a lot of different markets, maybe what it does is it chips away at that 20% in different products and and that like bifurcates into like these micro niche products. Mhmm.
Jordan:But it doesn't like it doesn't destroy kit because the 80% is still very very solidly in there on like, I don't I'm not gonna do all that stuff. I don't need to do all that stuff.
Justin:Exactly. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, and you described my view of it exactly just to just to paint that picture a little bit more. Like, I think I spent roughly ten to fourteen days building Mimio the the application. So let's say, like, twelve of those days were building Mimio, the app. And then to flip it to, like, have a marketing site and put a brand on it and do the copywriting and figure out pricing, I've gone, you know, couple different iterations on that. That was an I call it like an extra two days.
Brian Casel:So it was like twelve days to make the tool that I want. Two more days to put it out there, you know? But like, I also want to talk because it did turn into a case study. Like I wrote about it in my newsletter today. It is material.
Brian Casel:Part of what I do is I teach building. I need to keep my skills sharp and all that. The business model I think is interesting. Again, I don't even know how confident I am about Mimio itself, but the shape of selling software this way, I think is actually very interesting, especially for
Jordan:Go a little more into that.
Brian Casel:What's Yes. Okay, like we talk all about how your typical small business owner is not gonna vibe code their own CRM, their own tools, right? Like they're, even if they can, even if Claude is capable of that, your typical business owner is A, not interested, B, too busy, doesn't have the experience or the chops or the design, the dev, the architecture to really put the pieces together in a real way, even if it's just for their own use and not an actual product. Like I buy that. I do think that there's a segment in the world who are inclined to learn to build, but that's still a small segment of business owners out there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I happen to attract them in builder methods, but I get it that your typical small business owner is not going be building their own tools. So for all of us professional software makers, I think that the new model going forward in general is design and build the best software solution to a to a particular businesses pain, but offer it in this format that I I'm thinking of it like an like an agent first design where, like, I it's it's essentially a Rails app with a management repo and some agent skills. And then like the delivery can either be a self installed, self hosted or a licensed model, or I'm sorry, like a provisioned model. So still basically hosting it just like a SaaS would.
Brian Casel:But I do think that there's a case for like offering it as like a downloadable licensable piece of software, which is not new. That's been around for many years. I think that that model is going be coming back. But also like the hosted model can still leverage the same idea where we're not building AI into the product. We are just making every single surface of the product be accessible to your own a like, bring your own agent.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian Casel:API, MCP, get agent skills. Like with Mimio, in addition to the code base itself, there is what I call like a Mimio manager repo. And that's a folder on your own system that has all of your email flows, all of your email drafts, all of your email rules, all of the like, configurations that happen in your Mimio account, but it's all it all lives in files on your file system that you can reason about with Cloud Code. And then you can have Cloud Code, like, design a whole email flow, automation flow, or or draft some emails and push it up into your Mimio. Like it's, you can just manage it that way.
Brian Casel:Or if you're more traditional, want a nice UI, you just open up the web interface and do with that. So that works for me with Mimio, but I think that like that type of model where it's like you have a web interface for the people who want to click buttons. Yeah. You have a file based interface for you to use with Codex or Cloud Code. And then you deploy it either have like like some companies are gonna like want to self host and some companies just don't so they can buy your hosted version.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Two And then I also think that like there there can be a service component to it too. Like like custom installation, custom fittings, cut custom customized version to fit your business, like sell the base software and then customize it. Like, these are not groundbreaking new ideas, but I think that that is the model that starts to make sense now that everybody wants to use software through their own agents.
Brian Casel:Like Here's a here's a
Jordan:question on that because it it makes a ton of sense today and I wonder if that's like a temporary state. Right? Well, that's
Brian Casel:why I think it's
Justin:a little
Jordan:bit more conservative.
Brian Casel:I I tend to think I could be completely wrong about this, but I I tend to think that the like the 2022, '23 model of like wrapping models into your SaaS is the more the temporary state.
Jordan:And this feels more adaptable and future proof to me. Isn't it isn't it, like, layering on that agent demand or like functionality that there's a lot of demand for on top of a service that doesn't currently have it, but might have it in the future?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think that it's I guess what I was saying about like I buy the fact that your typical business owner is not gonna design and build and vibe code their own software, but professional software makers like us can make that software for them. We can just give it to them. But those business owners are going to become increasingly more comfortable with using their software through their own agents. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That Yeah.
Jordan:I agree with that. Mainstream today,
Brian Casel:but I think that by next year, like most businesses are gonna regularly be using Cloud or ChatGPT to do most things.
Jordan:Yeah. And and even the complexity of that will be abstracted out. Like, so I'll be managing things with my agents without needing to know exactly how to do it. Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan:From from my side. Yeah. It's cool. It reminds me a little bit of a service that we use called LiveKit, which is like an it's like a model orchestrator. So we work with LiveKit, and then we get to choose which TTS model, which STT model, which LLM we wanna use.
Jordan:And that gets passed through not only at cost, but because LiveKit is so big, we get their cost. So we get savings just by using them as the orchestration layer, and then we basically just pay them like an annual, like, support fee. But it all all wrapped up and in total, we're better off we pay less in total even with paying them significantly for support because they're coordinating underneath. And and we get all this freedom to say I want that model for this. Actually, this new Cartesia thing just came out.
Jordan:Let's try that for voice. And this new Gemini thing, let's give that a try. It gives us a ton of freedom. It feels much more long term safe that we can just continue to use LiveKit. Doesn't matter what innovation comes out in the models because we could still use it while going through LiveKit.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. And, like, I do think that there's like, if we're talking about, like, the, like, is SaaS dead, which again, I think it's very case by case, but We're gonna cover that later. Yeah. Well, but like one thing that speaks to that is that like, for me, by going this way, like, yeah, I'm saving a ton of money.
Brian Casel:You know, like, because and that's that's like the second value proposition of something like Mimio. And I think, again, I think this plays into this like general model going forward, which is like, if you think about an email marketing service, the reason why they're gonna be just fine is because there are oceans of customers who just don't wanna think about the complexity, and they and they just want an email thing. But they but they are gonna be paying hundreds or thousands per month as their list grows. And what what you're paying for with your typical ESP is the the entire email software suite, like your automation flows, your newsletters, your your your tagging, your all that, and and the deliverability piece.
Jordan:Mhmm. So how do you make it cheaper? Because you're just going right to the metal, right to the actual sender.
Brian Casel:Those two things I'm unbundling. The email software from the
Jordan:sending place. Now I get it. Now I get now I get I get the picture.
Brian Casel:I made the software, and I'm leaving the sending to resend, which if if you're just paying resend, it's, like half the cost.
Jordan:Now that I get it, I think it has a lot of potential. What are you gonna say, Justin?
Justin:Yeah. I think there's some tectonic plates moving here that I think is just so interesting because in the same way so email is one example. In the same way, you know, a lot of people were paying thousands of dollars a month to Webflow. And why? Well, because Webflow solved a problem for them.
Justin:It's like, well, we need a CMS. We need nice themes. We need some support. We need it to be fast, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And sure, like, if you're just a nerd by yourself, you can build and deploy a great marketing website just from your local machine.
Justin:Right? No need for paying Webflow a bunch of money. But now these things are starting to converge. Now normal people are talking to Claude Code and saying, just Claude, build me a website. I want to host it on Cloudflare pages.
Justin:Use Astro or something, and let's go. And this now it changes the model. Right? It's like, I I see it. And the other thing that's happened is all these SaaS companies got increasingly complex, started bundling more and more stuff inside of it, and then got increasingly expensive.
Justin:And so if you're like the other day, I was trying to my son is building an indie video game, and he's like, I need a thing for a simple email tool. And I'm racking my brain. Like, what's a simple email tool these days? Like, they're all like, it's just tons and tons and tons of shit in there. Yep.
Justin:And I see an opportunity now as these things are moving. It's like, what am I gonna recommend that's just easy for people? So I thought of, like, button down email. It's just like dead simple email newsletter stuff or tiny. Host is like dead simple drag and drop hosting.
Justin:But then these existing folks out there, these existing SaaS projects, it's like there is something where it's like, man, we're paying thousands of dollars for this ESP or we're paying thousands of dollars a month for this Webflow thing for CMS. It's like, do we need to do that anymore? If the interface has gotten better, meaning now we can just use Claude code, for example, as the interface. If that's gotten better, then I think a lot of folks are gonna be starting to make these decisions. The lines are gonna get blurred all over the place.
Brian Casel:And I also think that with ESPs, the the percentage of people who are doing complex automations are really small. Yeah. Most people are doing very basic, like maybe a welcome sequence. And that's it. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And some weekly newsletters, or monthly newsletters of that. And I think that most people probably have this feeling, at least I've heard this from some people is like, I'm paying all this money for this really complex tool that can do all these cool things that I know it can, but I've never done 80 of those things because, A, I like, don't have the time or the experience to set up these complex automations. There's a sense of FOMO, oh, that would be We are leaving money on the table. There are holes in our funnel because we don't have the right email automations in place, but like, a lot of it is like, and people hire consultants to help with that. But I also just think that it's like, there's a balance where it's like, on they those like power features for the 10 or 20% who want them.
Brian Casel:But at the end of the day, they're gonna cater to the masses who just need the basic stuff, which means like the power features only go up to so far. And that limitation really frustrates the power users.
Justin:Yeah. I think it's going to get challenging, actually, because like 90 of the software I was going to bring this up. I had a bunch of screenshots. I was going to show you like like QuickBooks Online. I go into that interface and every time I'm like, fuck.
Justin:Like, I just want to like I just want go I just want to do payroll. And then you go into you finally find the payroll button. And then it's like in my brain, I'm like my first step is like, I'd rather just interface with this via MCP. But then my second thought is like, actually, what I'd really like is someone modern to just build an accounting software that's simple for my use case, powerful when I need it, and just let me interact. It's purpose built for interacting with Claude or whatever.
Justin:And the I think this is really going to change a lot of the the way software is delivered. Because if you look at software, a lot of software invariably ends up being designed for the power user, even though it has lots of beginners using it. I I mean, I I don't wanna pick on anyone, but, like, almost all the ESPs right now, I think, are incredibly complicated for most users. And now the power users are going to increasingly be like, I don't wanna use your interface. Like, your interface is slow and cumbersome, and I just wanna interact with it through the MCP or the CLI.
Brian Casel:But there's also like the intermediate user, the beginner to intermediate user can actually level up to more advanced when they have Cloud Code with Fable to trust that it can implement their vision and without the mistakes that they would fumble through on their own. But the other thing is like, an established SaaS company, any category, right. But a lot of the some at least some of the ASPs are taking the right steps now, like where they are offering an MCP, you know? And like two, three weeks ago, before I built Mimio, like my thought was like, all right, let me see if I can get Kit to do what I wanted to do. Let me try out some other tools.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They do have MCPs now. Like the MCPs only surface like half of the functionality. They have no visibility into the actual automation flows, which to me is like the most important part.
Justin:Yep.
Brian Casel:And so then I was like even hacking Cloud Code. I was like, Cloud Code, use the browser to like simulate clicking through an automation flow. And then I would do that and I would literally have, I literally had it run overnight because it took hours to click every node and every button on its own because the MCP doesn't have visibility into that layer, right? Yeah. I'm sure the SaaS companies are gonna improve that over time.
Brian Casel:But like these are the established SaaS companies. They have to sort of retrofit these products to be agent And what I'm saying is that if you just happen to be somebody who's starting a brand new product in 2026 or 2027, agent first. Like that was my guiding light in this and everything I'm doing. Even the other tools that I do, it's like everything in the app has to start and end with, I can run it through my agent and I have a nice interface to look at sometimes. Every functionality is accessible.
Brian Casel:I
Justin:do think that let's get to SaaSpocalypse after this. But I do think the thing I'm noticing in my side is that I think and the transistor is guilty of this too. Our UI over the years has gotten more and more cumbersome. If I drop a brand new user in there, I can see them going, what what's going on here? Like, I think we're one of the best.
Justin:I think we're simplest. But what's changed now is as more and more people start experimenting with Cloud Design and Cloud Code, etcetera, they're gonna start going, I'm able to make really simple software that's easy to use. Now, a lot of people are gonna able to use make really abhorrent software too. But some folks are going to be like, I've built a really simple tool that does a 100% of what I need and want. That's my experience now.
Justin:And then when I go into tools I didn't build, they're very cumbersome. The UI is bad. The UX is bad. So I think we're the danger for incumbents is the bar for good UX and good UI is just raised. I think we got to be so much better because eventually, I think people are gonna be like, well, okay, fine.
Justin:I'll Well,
Brian Casel:yes, I think you're right. But I also think that there is just a fundamental challenge that, like SaaS that are one size fits all are gonna continuously hit or increasingly hit, which is like no matter how nice your UI and UX is. Mhmm. Like, every single business has their own special unique needs.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So so like you can down you can design the actual the absolute perfect pristine flow for for the the the plumber who has exactly this business shape and does this exact workflow every single day, you can optimize for that person. But you're still gonna attract the electricians, you're still gonna attract the general contractors and their businesses are just slightly different. They have these different needs. It's like, okay, so what does that mean? Like this software does 70% of what I want it to.
Brian Casel:And then I'm gonna, as the customer, I'm gonna bend over backwards to like retrofit my business to fit your software model. Like that's the fundamental challenge that businesses are like sat in the old world, like that was just that's life because like people just can't design their own software. Yeah. But in the new world, it's it's just an open question now. You know?
Justin:I I I'm thinking that the new model going forward is you're gonna build your actual UI to be the simplest, most basic, most user friendly version of your software, and then all of the power and features are gonna just be available via the API, CLI, MCP?
Jordan:I'm skeptical not on the outcome, but on the timing. Mhmm. Yeah. And it's such an enormous advantage to have an existing customer base. Yes.
Jordan:That I think it's just as like I think it's more likely that an incumbent with a lot of customers look, sometimes the these organizations get too big and they become dysfunctional and and they they kind of are unlikely to make the necessary changes. Mhmm. But if you think about a company, let's just say like KIT, it hasn't gotten to thousands of employees and is a disaster and dysfunctional. Right? It's it's a good software company.
Jordan:If I'm managing that product, I'm looking at how to pull things in to satisfy the power users right there. It might not look the same. It's not gonna be quite the same UI. There's a lot of stuff to figure out and experiment and fail. But if that's what users want, if that's what the power users want, this this this higher level of control, interaction with their agents from outside of the product, That's what I'm building over the next two, three years.
Jordan:And and and I don't think the market look, for for software products that are for software people, you don't have any time. Mhmm. You you you can just get smoked because everyone switches based on their needs and everyone knows how to pick things up and and learn them quickly. Mhmm. But in the in the more generalized market, that gap in time, you know, a lot of people you caught right now and they'll know what chat GPT is.
Jordan:But if you go one half of a step deeper than that, they don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. And and so that will just take some time but that amount of time is also the opportunity that those incumbents need to listen. There's a lot of talk I see on Twitter about, like, data models and and the difficulty in retrofitting. And I I hear that, but that just sounds like another business challenge.
Jordan:So there there will always be and and and the power that now exists on the desks of people like Brian and others who just know how to do
Justin:it Mhmm.
Jordan:That that will expand. So that market will go from half a percent to 5%. But the 95% will still look to the incumbent into the product that everyone signs up for that they're used to to help them transition from point and click, slow, boring, rigid, difficult to customize to, oh, now in HubSpot, I can start to do all these things. I can also connect it to these external tools and and they can it's not like they win. It's just that they stay winning.
Jordan:Right? They they won't just like fall apart, throw their hands up and say, oh, I guess, you know, we can't compete anymore. It doesn't seem likely. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I think and like, you know, I always get kind of frustrated when it's like just these theoretical debates. This this shit especially happens on on x which really bothers me. It was like, oh, like like there's gonna
Justin:Dude, if you don't like theoretical debates, don't
Brian Casel:go on x. But like, you know, to me, the question is like, is there a SaaS apocalypse or what is the future of SaaS? Like, I think the answer is yes to all of these outcomes. Like, there's just going to be all of these outcomes happening all at the same time. Like, yes, incumbents with strong customer bases and existing distribution who are forward thinking and are doing the hard changes to adapt.
Brian Casel:Yes, they will do great. It'll be hard, but they will do great. Are there gonna be large SaaS that don't do that? Of course, and they're gonna have a hard time. Are there going to be people like me who just replace most of my SaaS with my own custom built tools because I have the chops to do it?
Brian Casel:Yes, of course. Probably not a very large number of people like me, but you know, people like us who a lot of people listening to this podcast, I would I would think. Then I also think that there is also going to be a segment of businesses who do have the inclination to learn to build their own tools. I see these are members of Builder Methods Pro. They come in every day.
Brian Casel:They're not coders, but they are more technical we like to give them credit for. They're just technical in their own operational way, in their domain. And those people have distribution and some of them are even motivated to turn them into products in their unique industry. So there's that might not be a huge, huge part, but like that, that will definitely continue to grow. But then I also think that there's this other segment, I think that there's going to be an increase in consultancies and agencies and software shops, who create and sell things like Mimio and offer them as like, here here's use it as is or or you can customize it or we can customize it for you.
Brian Casel:And you can run it with your agents. Like, you know, all of these things are just going to continue to develop. It's not going be like one of those options is to be the answer, you know? Yeah.
Justin:Well, on the topic of the SaaS pocalypse, Jordan, you had a interesting take on that, I think. What what's what's your kinda take on the SaaSpocalypse?
Jordan:So I think the conversation we're just having now is kind of a perfect segue, a perfect connection to this. So SaaSpocalypse refers to this big price correction in software stocks. Software equities, I think it was like q one. And what actually happened was not like a fundamental problem, meaning earnings came out and were really good. So all these legacy software companies reported great earnings.
Jordan:Mhmm. And so the price drop in this huge correction was not related to earnings. It was related to the capabilities of the models, of the AI models in the frontier. And the capabilities got to a certain point where investor started to get shaky on, okay. What what do these new capabilities mean for these large software companies?
Jordan:And the market kinda tweaked out and just sold because there's a lot of risk and there's a lot of uncertainties, a lot of unknowns. So SaaSpocalypse was not driven by the companies performing poorly. It was people looking out and when people value companies, right, I don't know if how many finance people we have here but DCF, discounted cash flows, like a way to value companies. And basically what you're saying is, I can kinda tell how much this company's gonna make over the next five years. I can it's it's it's pretty clear in the next year.
Jordan:It's decently predictable in the five years. Between years five and ten, it it starts to get fuzzy. And then from year 10 to year infinity, as long as this company exists, I'm gonna take all those, I'm gonna call that terminal value. I'm just from from the real fuzzy ten year all the way out, let's just kinda put that all together. And then add those the the first ten years plus the terminal value and that's how much you think the company is worth.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Justin:Okay? Who who sold off? Like, what like, is it, like, companies like Salesforce had a Yes. Okay.
Jordan:Yes. Yes. Yes. The the big Salesforce's and I don't know. I'm I'm I'm blanking on a bunch of the others, but, like, the a Amazon, the AWS
Justin:because it seems to be it seems to be up in the last month now
Jordan:but It's it's definitely better now but the what the way I wanna connect this is to the private markets. Right? So sespocalypse refers to what happened in the public markets. They publicly traded companies. Yeah.
Jordan:And and the way investors look at the valuation of those companies, that DCF model, basically what happened was from like years five and onward and that terminal value specifically, people started assuming was much lower than they used to assume. The beauty of of SaaS is like, I don't know. You've been growing every quarter for the last ten years. It's pretty likely it'll continue on. Therefore, I'm gonna give you a great multiple because it's so certain.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:That that certainness got hit with the capability jump. Mhmm. So people start to say, we don't we don't know what happens here in the future. And that has now made its way down all the way into the private markets. Yeah.
Jordan:So if you go out and try to sell your traditional software company right now, it's not a problem of multiples. It's a problem of no one's gonna bid. Mhmm. The buyers are gone. And the buyers are gone because they can't get an acquisition through any form of investment committee.
Jordan:If you're a private equity company, you are handling other people's money. And in order to act on your fiduciary duty properly, you have a real process. You don't just buy things because you feel like it. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan:It's like someone points it out, then they meet with the management, then they have a conversation, and then they put a package together and they bring it to an investment committee that looks at it and says, we either approve or disapprove. Mhmm. And you can't get anything through investment committee right now because of the uncertainty around AI modes.
Brian Casel:Future of software.
Jordan:Are you roadkill? What what like, what's gonna happen here in the near future, in the long distance future? Right. Private equity is not venture capital. It's not it's not interested in any zeros at all.
Jordan:You get a zero, your career might be over.
Justin:So Is this what happened to Airtable? Like, it was valued at 4,000,000,000 and then Bending Spoons just bought it for $1.28 Like, a lot of people were surprised by that deal.
Brian Casel:So who is Bending Spoons?
Jordan:Bending Spoons is A a
Justin:lot a lot of people a lot of people would say they're a
Jordan:they're a holding company Yeah. That is focused on cash flow, and they are buying legacy businesses like I mean, look can you look up the list? It's it's like a class. I mean, I think they own AOL.
Brian Casel:Okay. Yes.
Jordan:So that that'll tell you. And They own Vimeo? Vimeo, AOL, a bunch of others. They're out of Italy, and they're just a private equity disciplined software company, and what they do is they look for cash flow. And so these are growth companies.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Airtable, Eventbrite, AOL, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Meetup, Evernote.
Jordan:StreamYard, Evernote. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So so yes, you're right, Brian.
Jordan:Justin. What happened to Airtable is a public market version of what's happening in the private markets.
Justin:Okay. And
Jordan:that and that is capitulation. It is facing reality. There are no more buyers. Right? Airtable is at 500,000,000 in annual revenue and had $965,000,000 in cash on the balance sheet and sold for like what it's 2,200,000,000 minus the 965, like 1.3 actual enterprise value.
Jordan:Yeah. And that, if you can imagine that's happening in the public markets, in in the privates, it's things are so locked up. And and what's happened to me over the last few weeks is I see that and I think right now is the best time to buy a private software company that there has been in the last ten years in terms of opportunity. Mhmm. There are a lot of companies out there that are good, solid companies and people have freaked out and gone way too far on the risk spectrum.
Jordan:And everyone's assuming that everything's going to zero. And if you don't have a very very strong moat like a piece of hardware attached to your product or some network effect or something else that AI is gonna make your business disappear. And that to me is like the biggest green light I have seen. So, you know, if if you say I'm very focused on one product, like, no. I I wanna buy another company right now.
Jordan:That's what I that's what I wanna do.
Justin:So what are you looking for? Like, what's what would what would peak your interest in that?
Brian Casel:Get you in this task today, Jordan.
Jordan:Raise $30,000,000 at a $250,000,000 valuation, stuck at 12,000,000 ARR, seven, eight years old, founders are tired, VCs don't give a shit anymore. Let's make a deal so you can go get rich with your friends who are building an AI instead of your boring, like, you know, fencing management software company.
Justin:Yeah. That's it. That's that's a good one because that's there's an emotional component to that which is for the for the initial investors, like, they're like, let's just get this off the balance sheet. Like, someone comes and says, we wanna take it over?
Jordan:Doing yes. It's not doing what you want it to do. And if you offer them rolled equity in the new entity after you buy it, they don't have to mark it down to zero. Mhmm. Key key component.
Jordan:So all this really really works for VC backed companies. Mhmm. A bootstrapper if you're bootstrapping right now and you're $34,000,000 in ARR, just wait. Don't sell. You go out to market to sell right now.
Jordan:You will be disappointed. You'll be taken advantage of. You won't get the right price. Just wait because this is so imbalanced that it will come back. It may be what doesn't come back to absurd valuations and multiples, but it will come back toward normal.
Jordan:And a $5,000,000 a year software company is worth a lot of money. Whereas right now, literally no one will even make an offer.
Justin:Yeah. And you're more bullish than on the fact that these companies have strong fundamentals. They're going to the the idea that AI is going to replace all of this stuff is overblown. Yes.
Jordan:Yeah. In the short
Brian Casel:I term really agree with that take in general. Like, I that's why I really think that, like, established SaaS companies that that have strong customer bases and they have strong distribution. Like, I really think that they're gonna be fine because the switching inertia like it, they're, like, that's why I'm much always much more interested and thinking about and I put all my energy behind like people who are starting new things today rather than like what they established as people should should do because like frankly, like, I don't I don't know. I don't care. I'm I'm much more interested in like the person who's interested in starting something or building for themselves.
Justin:Yeah. You know, I I just had that exact thought. I was gonna ask Jordan like, well, why wouldn't you just go out and just build everything fresh? But of course, what you're buying is you're buying the distribution, you're buying the existing customers, and you're buying them at a discount. And this is actually one place where bending bending spoons is much derided for, like, you know, being, I don't know, that's kind of a toxic acquire.
Justin:But one thing I did see them do well is they their purchase of meetup.com, they've completely revamped the app and they've completely redesigned it. It's a way better product now. They did change their pricing. A lot of like small little meetup groups did not like it, but my guess is that the product is just doing better revenue now, better profitability now. And they got as a part of that deal, a heavily discounted customer base, name brand recognition.
Justin:Like Meetup is exactly what you call a Meetup, right? So where do you post your Meetup? It's going be meetup.com. And then, you know, all these holdouts, like, think it cost me $300 a year to to host Meetups on meetup.com. And at first, was like, oh, shit.
Justin:Like, da da da. But then I'm like, okay, well, I'll just pay it. Like, it's if I wanna run a Meetup, what else am I gonna do? You know?
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. And they're looking at it. You can protect your downside significantly. If you think about Airtable, like, they're taking on $965,000,000 in cash.
Jordan:They can pay out all the severance, all the things they owe, any debts in the company. The founders are making some money. Early investors making some money. Everyone else is kinda not getting much. They'll cut the employee base, and they'll be even more profitable.
Jordan:And then they'll use that cash on the balance sheet plus the profit to pay off the debt that they're using to buy the company, and everybody kinda wins.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:May maybe some employees aren't gonna win, and that is almost like don't even see that as bending spoon's fault. That's just the facts of the company. I mean, it can sustain.
Brian Casel:Most of these companies just continuing on, like, not gonna keep continue with the same head count
Justin:either way.
Jordan:It's just facing reality and it's really really much easier as an executive team to sell to someone else, make $50,000,000, and then have the other person fire 500 people as opposed to doing doing it yourself. That that is that's
Justin:the truth. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I also wonder if there's, like, an opportunity, like, if if you're looking to buy, maybe this could be true more on, the lower end. I don't know. But, like, if if there are if there if if, like, case studies in established SaaS companies making the right moves to readapt and realign for the agent era. Like success stories like this SaaS that's been around for ten years. They reworked their product and their value proposition and and how they how they communicate to customers and and now they're riding right on through this agent era like if if that if if a if a playbook emerges for that.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And and a buyer can go out and find one of these five, ten year old SaaS companies who has not made those moves, who has not run that playbook. Yeah. That could be the opportunity, right? Like, buy the established customer base, the distribution, the product, and take it into the next era, right?
Justin:I think you've sold me, Jordan. It's almost like someone in the chat said zig when other people zag. And if everybody's building these fresh new products from scratch, but then they invariably arrive at the the point where they're like, how am I gonna get customers for this? How am I gonna get distribution for this? The zag is well, what products exist out there right now with 500,000, 6,000, 10,000 customers?
Justin:And you could go in, and it's a lot easier for, like you said, for a new owner to implement kind of new thinking once you've acquired it. It's like, okay, we're gonna have to get leaner. Also, we're gonna have to change the culture. Also, we're gonna have to develop differently. Like, this old way of developing is going out the window.
Jordan:Yep. Change the pricing. These are things that are really, really hard to do with things kinda calcified Mhmm. And someone new can come in and do it. And and, like, my, you know, my my, like, deeper belief on this is that the public markets are going to be more favorable than they have in a long time in the next two, three years.
Jordan:So I think the move is acquiring, like, a 100,000,000 in ARR, doing this with multiple companies, and and then going public. I I think software companies and younger companies with a lot lower revenue are going to be interested and able to go public at a much much higher rate than the last, I mean, five years, ten years. You just look at, like, if Stripe's not public Yeah. No one can no one can go public. It's not even that they can't go public, it's that they're actually better off not going public.
Jordan:Mhmm. And that is so bad for the economy and, like, the country in general. It is a great podcast called Econ Talk. I think I think I think I think it's this one. And and he had on recently the new SEC chairman.
Jordan:Yeah. And I I think the title of the podcast is Make IPOs Great Again. Okay. Listen to that guy and what the government is trying to do. Yeah.
Jordan:I just think, you know, in the past, a company that got to $20.30, 50,000,000, 100,000,000 in annual revenue, I mean, they would just go public. And they would have access to capital. And now they don't because the burden and the cost of being a public company is not worth it. But now that the private markets are actually getting mangled, I don't know if you see a lot of the tweets today about the series a confusion. Right?
Jordan:The series a doesn't know what to do. No one knows what to do with series a. Seed is like, okay, we're taking a chance. At series a, it used to be like, get 2,000,000 revenue in revenue and then go raise the series a and then that will allow you to kind of experiment. And now it's like, people are raising series a's after getting to like 30,000,000 in revenue after one year.
Jordan:And so if you're not that, every other series a investor is like, I can't take risk. Everyone else coming to me asking for money is either way too early or is so obvious that everyone wants to get in. Yeah. So it's like seed and then everything else is basically growth equity. It's Yeah.
Jordan:So the private markets are all screwed up too and I feel like the public markets are gonna emerge as a much more interesting path for entrepreneurs over the next few years. I don't know about you guys. Generally speaking, the last ten years, I don't think about the public markets. I don't think about an IPO. I look at it once and I'm like, oh, that's so cool.
Brian Casel:I think your Twitter feed looks very different than than mine.
Justin:Brian, I was just gonna say, this is why I like Jordan on the podcast is he just brings a totally different
Brian Casel:point of view
Justin:than I'm thinking.
Brian Casel:Mine are mostly like Met's tweets and like random other stuff.
Jordan:Mine mine's like this stuff and, like, the horror of antisemitism taking over the world.
Justin:Yeah. I know. Yep. I mean, you said you guys probably saw those series eight tweets,
Brian Casel:and Brian and I were both like, nope.
Jordan:Haven't seen a series eight tweet.
Brian Casel:Series what now?
Justin:Okay. Here's a this is not investment advice, but what so just give me a few quick takes. Investing in the public now or in a significant way or waiting, what's your take there?
Jordan:I literally know nothing about investing in the public markets. Okay. The best thing I've done is I bought Palantir a few weeks ago, and I look like a genius right now. Besides besides that, I don't know what I'm talking about. It goes so deep.
Jordan:I'm a I'm a just buy a fund and leave the thing alone for a
Justin:long Dollar cost averaging?
Jordan:Yeah. I don't know what.
Brian Casel:Okay. Boring index funds all the way.
Justin:That's good for me. So and but on the other thing, that is it'll be interesting to see what deals people are gonna start making now. And if it becomes more accessible to smaller funds, like, there gonna be more Andrew Wilkinson like tiny funds? Tiny you know, there he's picked up Dribbble and all these other things. It's like, oh, is there gonna be more of those where you just get a a founder?
Justin:The timing is bad. They're just like, I gotta get out of this. I wanna go do something more exciting. The investors aren't taking my calls. Mhmm.
Justin:Let's write this thing off.
Jordan:Yeah. A lot of people call them calling Bending Spoons these days. Yeah. Lot of lot of inbound for Bending Spoons.
Brian Casel:I I I think I remember Andrew Wilkinson talking about on My First Million maybe a couple months ago that they're doing some kind of pause in all their acquisitions?
Jordan:Yeah. They they I mean, TINY TINY did not do well. And and they actually did go public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. But Right. But they got destroyed.
Jordan:Their stocks down 99% kind of a thing. And and that's it's tough to come back because, you know, as a holding company, you're taking this view of we're gonna raise money to acquire these companies, then we're gonna go public to have access to better debt and and whatever else. And then if it doesn't work out, people start to lose faith and then people don't want to sell their companies to you. So it's tiny tiny is not doing well. I don't know Yeah.
Jordan:If they can come back. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Tiny was intended to be like a Berkshire Hathaway of the Internet type of approach where you're buying for value.
Jordan:My understanding of working with Tiny from the limited view that I have and the few people that I spoke to, not not a great experience for the the company being acquired.
Justin:Yep. Interesting. Alright. Well, let's I mean, this is great. We already got But I got I got a I got a meeting here in fifteen.
Justin:So I think let's
Jordan:just Talk.
Justin:Let's just end with some personal some personal updates. Yeah. What do we do? What's up, bro? Why don't we start with you, Brian?
Justin:What's going on in your world? What what's kind of are feeling? Talk about my vacation. Yeah. How's everything going?
Brian Casel:I'm still recovering from surgery. That's been a little bit of an adventure. You know, there there's, like, the life and the work side and compartmentalizing those things. And but overall, you know, pretty good. The the girls are in in camp right now for, like, a a four week stint.
Brian Casel:So that's been nice for for me and my wife to have, like, our house back every
Jordan:day. All the kids in sleepaway camp?
Brian Casel:No. Not sleepaway. Like,
Jordan:Okay. Just like Oh, like, okay. But
Brian Casel:they're they're out from, you know, eight to Right. Three every day. So
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. You love
Justin:your kids, but summer I mean, I think Emmett even came into the the chat. He's like, listen, I gotta go because this is summertime right now. We got
Brian Casel:Yeah, you know, like having having a little bit of like a normal schedule in in the house. That that's been nice. Mhmm. Did a did a trip a couple weeks ago. We have another one coming up.
Brian Casel:We're gonna go to Maine and go to go to the beach for a couple days, I think in like two weeks. Nice. That's about it.
Justin:What what about you, Jordan? Sorry to hear about that the health stuff though, Brian. Hope hopefully, that gets better.
Jordan:I have kinda come to life a little bit over the last I few feel good. I I got I got some good energy. I think coming back from vacation and and kind of being happy to settle back into home has been great. I have been playing a ton of paddle. Oh.
Jordan:I got I I I used to do, like, Sunday nights, which is, like, basically, they have a few beers, hang out with your friends, night version of paddle league.
Justin:Okay.
Jordan:And I I kinda pushed myself. I was like, I think I wanna go more competitive. And so now I'm in, like, a more competitive part of the league. So What what is paddle?
Brian Casel:That that seems super fun.
Justin:Is paddle
Brian Casel:I mean, seen it on like a team.
Jordan:That that's kind of I I I hear you. It's competitive. You're on a team. It's not that serious. At least I don't take it that seriously.
Jordan:I'm I'm I'm smiling when I'm losing. Yeah. You know, it's fine.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. Paddle like it's like paddle. It's like pickleball, racquetball, paddle. It's just a hybrid thing. It's kinda like paddle, but in the Midwest, we do it outdoors in the winter, which is very strange choice.
Jordan:Okay. And it's like chain link fence instead of plexiglass. And this very very, like, sandpaper like platform that you play on top of, and there's these big engine heaters underneath. It's an insane sport.
Justin:I've never even heard
Jordan:of that. So this is Padel. That's indoors, like reasonable people. Okay. Put look up platform tennis.
Jordan:Okay.
Brian Casel:That's yeah. That that seems like easier than tennis and not as boring as pickleball.
Jordan:Yes. Pickleball's really fun but I'm not I yeah. That's it
Brian Casel:right I I just couldn't get into it. But the but the and like tennis is like hard unless you're like really good at it. Yes. Yes. This this just looks like a ton of fun.
Jordan:It's it's really fun. So I've been doing that. I've been exercising. I I I don't know about you guys how you do your like clothing shopping. I shop like once a year and I kinda just like fill in all the
Brian Casel:blanks. Same.
Justin:And that,
Jordan:you know, so I'm like focused on it for like a week or two and I'm like, okay. Now I don't think about it for another year.
Justin:So I've had a lot
Jordan:of fun over the last two weeks like learning all the new brands and all this other stuff and I get a little more into it. I I hope I can maintain my energy there because I end up buying stuff and I'm like, I wanna dress nice. I wanna take my wife out to dinner and like look like an adult. Mhmm. And then I and then I it doesn't happen very often so I'm I'm hoping it's like, if I spend enough money on this shirt, I I must wear it.
Jordan:Right?
Brian Casel:I I I went through a phase like that about a month ago too. I'd like, I I need some decent shirts.
Jordan:Because like Yes.
Brian Casel:Because like my my whole life is in like sweats or shorts and t shirts and like we're super casual all the time. But then it's like I find myself like going to a conference or something. It's like, I I need to look kinda
Jordan:decent for once. We're unprepared because the people who go to work and get dressed Monday to Friday, they they have, you know, years of wardrobe built up. Yeah. And and and we don't. That's right.
Jordan:That's it. And then tomorrow, we're having museum day. We're going to a slightly difficult museum exhibit for Anne Frank, you know, and that'll be kind of an interesting experience with the kids to talk. Two two of my girls have read her diary.
Justin:Oh, wow.
Jordan:Right? And and
Brian Casel:Is that in Chicago?
Jordan:It is in Chicago. Yeah. Big big museum here. It's an exhibit there. And then we're gonna palette cleanse and go to the Museum of Ice Cream right after that.
Justin:Oh, yeah.
Jordan:There you go. So it is no joke how much you spend these days going to a museum. It's probably like a thousand dollar day, you know, between Wow. Yeah. It's hardcore.
Jordan:Right? I'm like, oh, okay. I guess this is, you know, this is how it goes these days. Woah. But but very exciting.
Jordan:Supposed to be, like, you know, 75 and sunny. So we're gonna have a a great family day.
Justin:That's awesome.
Brian Casel:The amount we spend on ice cream is far from zero.
Jordan:Nowhere near zero.
Justin:Yeah. We've we've got
Brian Casel:an ice cream budget.
Jordan:I wanna ask you what what kind of ice cream you're into, but let's listen to Justin first. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:I just came off a great two week trip. Went to Toronto for three, four days to visit our son, and then took the train from Toronto to Ottawa, and then took the train from Ottawa to Montreal, and then took the overnight train from Montreal to Halifax. It was really fun. I'll just share one story, which is my I met the lead singer of this band, MXPX, is Mike Herrera. And I met him through podcasting ten years ago or something.
Justin:And he'll DM me every once in a while. I'll DM him every once in while. But it's a very, like, Internet, like, acquaintanceship, you know?
Jordan:Okay.
Justin:And, like, I think three or four months, MXPX came to Vancouver, and I bought tickets. My wife and I went. It was great. And then afterwards, he messaged me. He's like, What?
Justin:You were at the show? Why didn't you come backstage? And I was like, I like I was like I was way too nervous. I was like, I'm not gonna do this. So fast forward, we're going to Toronto.
Justin:I'm looking in at events in Toronto, and Goldfinger is playing. And Goldfinger is a very famous ska band. They had they're on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack.
Jordan:And
Justin:Mike is now the bass player for Goldfinger. He's been that for the last four or five years. And so I messaged him and I was like, hey, like, you guys are going be a Toronto this year. I should go get tickets. And he's like, oh, don't get tickets.
Justin:I'll just get you tickets. I'm like, okay, okay. So I don't know what this means. I'm like, I said to my wife and son, I'm like, think we should go to this. And my son's like, I don't know.
Justin:I don't I was like, let's just go. So we go and he messages me. He's like, come backstage before the show. And I'm like, I have no idea what that means. Like, I don't know what to do.
Justin:I don't know where I go. I have no idea what that means.
Jordan:But you're gonna look cool in front of your son. So Yes. Yes.
Justin:But I didn't want to ask Mike that because I was, like, embarrassed.
Brian Casel:Oh, so, like, what are the logistics on this?
Justin:Yeah. Like, what does this mean? Like, do I just talk to some? So we go to Drake. You go to the car, but
Brian Casel:now said it's cool. You can let me in.
Justin:Mhmm. Drake has created this venue in Toronto, which is where the show is. So we show up, and I just go to the ticket office. I'm like they're like, hi. And the whole time, I'm like, Mike said he was gonna leave some tickets for us.
Jordan:Okay.
Justin:And they're like, okay. So
Jordan:you you're not playing this cool at all.
Justin:No. You're not playing this cool. And then they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:And so then they say, here, give us your hands. And they give us these these bracelets. And I wish I'd noticed right away that they were different color than everyone else's, but I had no idea. And then I'm like, I I'm new to this. I'm like, Mike said to go backstage before the show.
Justin:Like, what do we do? And they said, oh, yeah. Well, you guys just have the right the right wristband. Just show that to security and then go into the venue, pass the stage, just show it to the security at the doors there, and they'll let you in. Okay.
Justin:So we go into the venue is already packed. It's, like, thousands and thousands of people, like, getting ready for this show. And so I felt like I was, like, holding my wife's hand, and she's, like, holding my son's hand. And we're, like, going through this, like, this didn't really happen. But that's how it felt.
Justin:And then I get to the security, like, holding everyone's hand. And we're just like, And immediately, they're just like, yep. They open the door, let us in. We are in the back. Like, there's like band members from Goldfinger walking around, going on their smoke break.
Justin:There's like all this stuff happening. We're just kind of like it's like, I'm just like holding my family's hand in the back. It's like, is Mike here? And they're like, Oh, he's in the green room upstairs. We're like, Okay.
Justin:So we go start going upstairs. We look to our left. The stage is right there. Like, the first band is already on. I could have gone out and, like, punched the guy in the face.
Justin:I could have grabbed the mic. It's just, like, all there. And we're just like, what is going on? We walk up to the top, open the door, come in, and we're just, like, stepped into the green room. The band is, like, hanging out on the couch.
Justin:They're just kind of like, hey, who are you guys? I'm like,
Jordan:I'm here to And see
Justin:they're like, I don't know where Mike is. And I'm just like, okay. And then I'm like, just kind of standing there with my family awkwardly, like, waiting for
Brian Casel:Oh my god. This is gold.
Jordan:Didn't bring any drugs. You know? You got nothing. And
Justin:so we keep walking. I say, Okay, let's go back downstairs. We'll look for like, you know, like who's, you know, who's around. And as we go downstairs, who comes to the doors but John Feldman, who's the lead singer of Goldfinger. And he just kind of like looks at us and goes, Hey.
Justin:He's like And I'm like, Hey. He's like, I'm John. I'm like, I know who you are. Where's Mike? So we finally find Mike.
Justin:This is the first time I've met him in my life. And instantly, it was like once I saw him, I was like, Okay, now it's cool. Because I've had conversations with him. It's fun. He's like, Yeah, let's go up to the green room.
Justin:Up to the green room, he asks us, Hey, you guys want a beer or anything? So we had this beer. And the whole time, we're just like, This is wild. Anyway, they get ready to go do the show. We go back out, and it's so packed.
Justin:We can't find a spot to look at the stage. And then one of the security sees us and goes, You guys know there's a VIP seating area upstairs. Right? We go up, they led us through this curtain. There's all these, like, nice tables and chairs set up, and you get, like, table service for drinks and everything.
Justin:So we watched the whole concert from up there. The whole experience was just wild. Incredible. And then afterwards, he said Mike said, Come and hang out after the show. And so there's like a door at the top of the VIP area, and we just walked through that.
Justin:And once again, we're right in the green room again. We're just like, Woah, what is going on here? So that whole experience was just, like, crazy. My son's brain was just like, like, what is going on here?
Jordan:Must have gotten Goldfinger's good.
Brian Casel:I still I still listen to him.
Justin:It it was it very was very weird seeing, like, thousands and thousands of people who are just, like, crazy for this band. And to think I was just hanging out with them on a couch just like and they're just
Brian Casel:Amazing.
Justin:Totally normal. And, like, it's a little bit underwhelming even. Like, they're just, like, there to do a job and, like, you know what?
Brian Casel:They've just been on the road for four decades.
Justin:Yeah. Anyway, that's just one story from the trip.
Brian Casel:Amazing. That's awesome.
Jordan:Good work. This is what happens when you go backpacking, you know, through Europe on the on the Euro train. Great stories. That's right.
Justin:You get some stories. Cool. Alright, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We are back, I think, next week.
Justin:Right? Next Friday, we'll be here. Great to see everyone in the chat. Hey, Pascal. Nice to see you drop in at the end there.
Justin:Yes. And we'll see you next week. Bye.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Thanks, folks.