Alright. Welcome to the panel where founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, co founder of transistor.fm.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Casel, founder of Builder Methods.
Jordan:And I'm Jordan Gal, founder at heyrosy.com. Good to see you.
Justin:Everybody. Just wanna just wanna let everyone know, everyone listening out there, that we record this podcast live most weeks. And we got a live chat full of friends here. We got Emmett. We got Seth.
Justin:We got Zach. We got Jay Davidson. We've got Keith. There... Folks, if you're not in the live chat, where are you?
Justin:You gotta be here. Join the mailing list. Go to panelpodcast.com, and I'll email you when we go live.
Jordan:Yeah. Join Blue Sky for the sole re... For the for the sole reason to get Justin's Justin's tweet or whatever the equivalent is.
Justin:It's called a skeet.
Brian Casel:And then and then join the rest of us over on
Jordan:Yes. Yes. But I will... Yeah. We gotta...
Jordan:You never
Brian Casel:know when you might, get to hang out, like, get get our pre show banter or maybe our post show banter. And, if you ever feel like you listen to us and you wanna scream at your car audio, you could actually do it live in the chat. Yes.
Jordan:And we we kinda, you know, we respond and we gotta give Justin credit. He does some screen shares. So we we do it live but we got the video going too. I don't about you guys. I've kind of adopted into the video version of some of these podcasts.
Jordan:I don't know if this has anything to do with what you do for a living, Justin, but I'm into podcast with video. I
Brian Casel:I really am too. I actually watch... Like, my my personal YouTube feed is a lot of I don't really watch, like, business podcasts on there, but, like, a lot of, like, comedy podcasts and stuff is...
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I like to watch it rather than listen to it.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, and think about sports. Like, the Edmonton Oilers have this new coach, Mike Babcock, and you gotta watch Babbs live. He's just he's just an old school guy. He got kicked out of the NHL for being mean to players.
Justin:And now he's... The Oilers hired him back, and he's just like, I wanna see this guy on video. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big video.
Justin:Big video guy.
Jordan:Yeah. I I listen to podcasts in Spotify. So when the when the video is there... Yeah. Right, that's kind of like it's...
Jordan:Are watching the
Justin:video in Spotify as well? Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Jordan:Yeah. Because it's it's it's like a separate screen. It's not my browser. It's not YouTube open on...
Brian Casel:Yeah. I still wish I could just turn off the podcast promotion in Spotify. Spotify is for
Jordan:music Alright.
Brian Casel:And not podcasts, in my view.
Jordan:They are they are uninterested in Yeah. That point of view, Brian.
Brian Casel:For sure.
Justin:Alright. So we were chatting before the show. Jordan, you're gonna kinda try to wrangle us as a host this week. But what what what are we gonna... There's a bunch of stuff we were gonna...
Justin:We started talking about. So... Yeah.
Jordan:We we wanna talk about DHH coming out with a flamethrower. The flamethrower of truth. My gosh.
Brian Casel:DHH
Jordan:watch over here. Yes. And we wanna talk about the changing approach to choosing which product to build, why, when, the level of risk. We got Sam Altman chiming in on that point of view, which is interesting. I was in New York City this last week.
Jordan:Always a good time. I went for a conference I can talk about.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:We got we got businesses we're running. We got problems we're running into. What happened to Brian?
Justin:Brian just disappeared. We
Jordan:got trouble keeping all three of us on the same podcast.
Justin:Dude, I'm a former Christian. You gotta be careful. Think you might got raptured right during our our our podcast. Yes.
Jordan:And and we got we got some chatter, you know, in the chat about DHH. This is this is... This feels like an important moment
Justin:Yeah. Because there was a lot of debate.
Jordan:And from my point of view, the the... One of the leaders of tech, not of tech business
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:Not Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, Dario going to the White House, which was incredibly entertaining, by the way.
Brian Casel:Don't know you
Justin:guys saw that. Those clips
Jordan:are pretty hilarious. Yeah. Trump was like, you tell him. You get up here. You answer it.
Jordan:But I think DHH is like a leader in technology, in open source, frameworks. So he has a a stronger authority on that front. And he came out and kinda settled the debate.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, we were just talking about conference talks in general. And this is... We could... We can get into what DHH said and what what's been making the rounds.
Brian Casel:But just as a conference talk, like I don't remember the last, like speaker at a conference in our industry that like transcended way beyond that particular room that where that talk happened. Like we are all talking about this talk on this podcast. I didn't even watch most of the talk yet. I just heard what people talked like said about it. Like, talk about the buzzword, like like, thought leader.
Brian Casel:Like, this is like putting something out there and be like taking a stand, making a statement like now now the rest of our industry is going to talk. Obviously, he he is DHH, so people tend to listen to him, love him or hate him anyway, but, like Mhmm. This is the last talk that I remember that, like, people really keep passing around, you know.
Jordan:Yeah. Like, made news. Justin, have you had a chance to watch it? Do you do you feel comfortable, like, giving a quick synopsis? Do you want me to do that?
Justin:I haven't I haven't actually watched the whole thing either.
Jordan:I I mean... There's some some good clips that kind of...
Justin:Yeah. The clips kinda... Here's my understanding. This is actually, I think, more interesting. What did I get from the clips?
Justin:My understanding is DHH is saying, listen, that era of us handcrafting code is over and we just got to accept it. We got to appreciate that time of our lives that we had to do that. And now we're in a new era and we just have to appreciate this era we're in. And we don't really know where it's going, but let's just appreciate where we are right now. Handcrafting code is done.
Justin:I haven't, you know... He's saying, I haven't touched the code editor in months or whatever. And... And to... And...
Justin:I mean, the the funny... The tweet that got kind of got shared around was people saying... Someone said, DHH just got on stage and said, it's over. Rails is done. Don't be a loser.
Justin:Don't be a fucking loser. Walked off.
Jordan:Yes. I I think it was important that he he looked back positively. Mhmm. Right? He he he needed to do that.
Jordan:It was important to do that. Yeah. Instead of just saying, well, this is the future and like it or not, like, this is this is it. He he first acknowledged, like, I loved that part of my career.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:I enjoyed it every day and I feel lucky that I got to do that. And now it's over.
Justin:This is my... Can I just share this tweet? Because I think this is so hilarious. So DHH just told a thousand Rails programmers, accept that it's over. Last words of the open key...
Justin:Rails World keynote were, don't be a fucking loser, and he walks off. And then he... So this is this guy tweeting this, and then I love his follow-up comment. By the way, in case the sentiment isn't clear, I loved this keynote. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So... I think it's also important coming from DHH, right? Like, he he has always been, you know, known for a lot of things, but but one of the biggest thing is, like, his his, like, opinionated approach to writing code and the poetry of writing code and standing for what it means to be a Rubyist and a developer
Justin:and Yeah.
Brian Casel:A creator of Ruby on Rails. And and and even going back to 2025 when he did his first, Lex Friedman podcast. Mhmm. Like, was basically... At at that time, it was like he he's not on board with AI and he's just like most other developers at that time, but it's like coming from him, it has this added power of like, okay, It's like he's he's...
Brian Casel:At least he he's like giving permission to the Ruby developer or or developers at large that like it's time to... If it... You you are kind of way behind if you're not on board with this at this point. Mhmm.
Jordan:Yeah. The the the problem with arguing against, these opinions, like, you you can't... I I don't have a good grasp of, like, these Latin terms about, like, like, bad arguments. Okay? So Mhmm.
Jordan:Excuse me. But but you can't claim that it's, you you can't shoot the messenger effectively because it's in his interest. He's literally the creator of Rails at a Rails conference. It's like, you you would think this this this is a very big part of his ego and identity and what he's proud of. But one of the other factors that we all know about DHH and Jason Fried is that they're clearly in the fuck you money territory.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:And so they feel more free to just say whatever they wanna say. And it's like if you're if you're in that territory, you can feel free what to say what you wanna say. And it's literally your baby that you're saying no longer is no longer relevant. It's kinda hard to argue that it's like the messenger is the problem. It's like, no, you gotta deal with the message.
Jordan:You you can't just point at it as, oh, he's self interested in destroying what he created. Like, it doesn't make sense. So you you you are left with the argument itself and as we're all experiencing in software world. Mhmm. It's kind of over.
Jordan:The conversation's over. People now review code. They don't write code the same way that they used to. What I don't know is looking at our team, right, this little micro view of things. The engineers who are best with AI have an engine...
Jordan:A software engineering background, and they and they are these, like, master coordinators. But as that starts to phase out, like, what what does that look like? How do you build quality software? Is it is it just easier to build
Brian Casel:quality software?... Phase out what part of it?
Jordan:People with software engineering backgrounds that have this foundation to build on. Before they go in and start building. Is
Brian Casel:what? The pipe... The pipeline of, like, junior developers becoming senior developers. If there if there are no juniors anymore, where where does the next wave of senior agentic developers come from?
Jordan:Yes. Mhmm. Is this just a skill that's not required? Because right now it feels like it's it's required. People who are best with building products got for the
Brian Casel:that as a very real, like, unsolved problem or or open question for the next couple years for sure. Because I do definitely think that having a background in software and architecture and systems, you are clearly at an advantage when it comes to building a product. No question about it. Then then like any... Yep.
Brian Casel:Like, yes, any vibe coder can use Opus 5.5 and build build something and it it will pretty much work to whatever you vibe coded in. But to truly design a product solution, you know, and have and have the right taste for for user experience and and and really a lot of that is more like ability to talk to customers and understand their problem and how to solve that with software. That's that's a whole career of of experience to do that well. Mhmm. So...
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's always gonna be valuable. But, yeah, like, where is that gonna come from? You know?
Justin:I think it's still... I I I know I brought this up last time, but I just keep thinking about this quote about, like, who wants it the most. And I've got these, like, insane notes I've been writing to myself. Let's see if I could share you one here. This is just...
Justin:It it won't make any sense to you, but there's this question I have. Am I going to be the person who wants it the most in this category? And then an arrow pointing to it saying, and if I make it, is it going to be worth it? But, like, to me, that that question is more important than ever now. It's...
Justin:It... The the the attention to detail... I'm... I feel like the attention to detail, we're losing that. That attention to quality, the attention to doing things that actually matter.
Justin:And that takes taste, like Brian said, that takes discernment, that takes, like, some restraint. It it also takes the opposite of restraint. It takes being so obsessed and relentless about delivering an incredible experience to customers that they actually care about and that they'll tell their friends about. Like, I haven't been blown away by many new products in the last six months. You know, there's a few, but I haven't been like, wow, like, this
Brian Casel:is
Justin:incredible. Maybe just maybe I only like Claude code and...
Brian Casel:I think AMP I I think AMP is in a really interesting Yeah. Tier of of... I gotta try that. To to me, as a builder, obviously, like, of all the new products that I started using in 2026, that one is like the product of the year in in my opinion, you know.
Jordan:Yeah. A lot of people are talking about Grok and Muse and Instinct as...
Brian Casel:I I would maybe put Grock Bot in that category too. I think that's the other, like, really interesting, well done execution of a product. Yeah. I mean, like, we we can get into that stuff too, but I don't know if you want to keep going down the, what you brought up.
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. Justin, last week, we talked about Taylor Ottwell's post
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:About about, like, being clearly the best in the market as as, like, the the primary point of your strategy in general. Mhmm. Is to be the absolute best in your category. And we we had some conversation around what that means. Mhmm.
Jordan:So what what you're talking about now sounds adjacent to that. Can you just explain a little bit more the the perspective it's coming from? Is that, like, for a new product? Like, can I be the best in in this new product before I I walk into it, walk into the market, or or more general?
Justin:I mean, it it it... The two feel related. So, you know, the the quote from David Senra, who's quoting someone else is, you're going to pick between the person who's the smartest, the most experienced, or the person who wants it the most, you always pick the person who wants it the most. And generally, what I'm trying to tap into is this this focus, desire, energy on usually one thing. This is why I think we might have a disagreement about whether you should be focusing on multiple products and a portfolio of products or just one thing.
Justin:I think I disagree with you guys. I think focusing on one thing or or fewer things is actually gonna be the advantage because there's just all of this stuff that you have to do as a founder to win. And most of it is about whether you want it more than the next person. There's just, like, all of this boring stuff that I have to do every day that moves the ball forward that most people aren't willing to do. And that's why I shared this Ruben Gammes tweet, you know.
Justin:He goes, way too many people are approaching marketing with AI in the wrong way. Three main problems. Everyone wants to jump to automation and skip the manual grindy work that makes it effective? Yeah. And you can't automate your way out of that.
Justin:You can't just get your bots on it. It it it doesn't work that way. And number two, they don't know their customers and the buying process well enough. Like, can we just highlight both of these? Like, just throw away your MBA.
Justin:Just just meditate on these two points every single day. And then the third point is, if everyone else is doing it, then it it doesn't work anymore. That's... That's become average. And in my mind, the whole goal is to be above average.
Justin:Nobody wakes up and says, hey hey, ChatGPT. Show me the most average podcast hosting platform. They don't search for that. They search what is the best podcast hosting platform. So if that's true, then you've got to want it more than everybody else.
Justin:Because by definition, if you don't, you're you're average.
Brian Casel:I wanna hear more specifics or examples. Whether it's things that you're talking about or... I don't I don't really know what Ruben was pointing to with with that kind of tweet, to be honest, like
Justin:Sure. I mean, I think in Ruben's case, he can look at what he's...
Brian Casel:How would you define, like, quote unquote AI marketing or jumping to automation? Because, like, there there is a... To me, there's a a much larger spectrum than people are giving other builders credit for here. Like, because I I think that a a marketer, a a builder, a founder can put a whole lot of real mental effort and legwork and talking to customers and analyzing a market and use AI tools to assist in that process and streamline and scale that process to a more effective level than they would have been able to three years ago. Like, that AI automation or is that AI assisted marketing and learning much faster?
Brian Casel:Like
Justin:I'm laughing because I... My... I think our our joke here on the podcast is I don't have systems. I... But I do have systems.
Justin:I think there is part of me that I just like... Okay. Let's just use an example. Corey Haynes has all these marketing skills, these automated marketing skills. I don't use any of that shit.
Justin:Why? Because I...
Brian Casel:So for me... I want to get into that.
Justin:To me, it's like you... Everyone's applying that stuff, but their marketing is not... They're not getting more leads. They're not getting more sign ups. They're not And sure, maybe I could add it and it would give us a little bit of lift.
Justin:But the main thrust, the main momentum that gets people to transistor are a bunch of other things that don't scale, that are just fucking hard to do. And, you know, I'm not gonna share it all here because some of it's little magic sauce, but a lot of it is just like I... It's the same old stuff. It's the stuff I show you guys. Like, I'll I'll Google your guys' products and say, you know, what's the best AI receptionist And what comes up?
Justin:And then I'm just, like, ready to go to battle to figure out how do I rank for best AI receptionist. And I'm gonna I'm gonna go to battle and do that every day. I'm gonna get dirty. It's all manual. Can't get your bots to do it.
Justin:Getting your bots to do it is actually counterproductive in a lot of case. Like, people are automatically posting to Reddit does not work. People are automatically posting, you know, to social media does not work. People are investing hours and hours and hours in these new product videos where everything's spinning around and drawing and everything. It's like, dude, if you had just got on the mic as a founder and said, hey, everybody.
Justin:It's Justin. Here's what I'm launching today. Wanna show it to you. Way more effective. And, yeah.
Justin:So I I... Let me let me...
Brian Casel:I think it's a lot
Justin:of wasted energy. This... A lot of this stuff.
Brian Casel:I think you're painting a pretty good picture of what it looks like for you, Justin, obviously, accomplished founder and marketer to do your thing with your strengths and your energy and playbooks that you've run again and again and and Yeah. Have worked for you in Transistor. Right?
Justin:Yeah.
Jordan:Let me
Brian Casel:because Corey Hain's marketing skills is a perfect example for this because it came up in my work this week. And I... This is partly an observation of, like, skills, like open source free skills on the Internet in general. Like, I almost... I basically never ever, like, download somebody's skills, like Corey's skills, and plug them right into my cloud and just run them blindly and expect that to work.
Brian Casel:I just don't do that because that doesn't make logical sense to me. No matter how much quality that Corey put into that stuff. What I did do
Jordan:this It's very popular.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What I what I did do this week, because I am standing up marketing motions for like for AI, sorry, for like SEO auditing work of my sites, SEO health checks of my sites, SEO and and AI chatbot optimization for, you know, just like content and sitemaps and and all the all the things and all the citations and all the all the data. So I need processes. I need checklists. I need directions on that.
Brian Casel:So Corey's open source thing and and like a handful of other tweets and and open source frameworks and things I put into a prompt that... And and I I... Not a single prompt, but like, I've been working for this last several weeks with with with, like, my my agent to plan out my own version of SEO opt... Auditing skills and SEO optimization skills that I'm going to implement into my products and designing into those my human inputs and decision making and strategy inputs and and, like... And every little bit, I'm just like, okay.
Brian Casel:Like, analyze all that Corey put into his skills, then recommend to me which which parts of these things we wanna integrate into my version of the skills. And then I'm gonna go through line by line and ask you, alright, what does this mean and what would it mean for our situation given my goals and given what I've learned about my customers? And and let's... Let let me just go vet every little thing that I might choose or not choose to put into my own agent skills. So like, that's what I mean is like, there there can be agent, skills and tooling and frameworks and free advice out there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But you can also work with your own agent to pick and choose bits and pieces, and then you as a human can use your brain and your learnings to to like piece it together in a in a strategic way. And like that to me is like using AI and using my brain at
Justin:the same To me, that looks like ownership. Like, you're doing the hard work of saying, how am I going to integrate this? How am I going to customize it? How am I going to own it? I'm a little bit, like, maybe overly sensitive about this right now.
Justin:Like, we just had to let somebody go and, like, there's just... I I I think just in general, I feel... I'm feeling more on the transistor team, especially, I'm feeling like I want everybody on the team to have ownership over what they're doing and and to own it all. Like, I don't want slop grenades. I don't want more orchestration that's just...
Brian Casel:Another good standard....
Justin:Gunking up I don't want deploys that take ten fucking minutes because now we've initiated a thousand AI tests that... Unit tests that are testing the stupidest shit. Like, just care. I just want I just want people to care. And I think what you're talking about is, like, yeah, ownership.
Justin:Like, you gotta own what you're working on. And I think that's what I think that's what Ruben's talking about, too. I think he's saying, listen, like, you guys are all jumping to this. Like, you don't you don't really want it, basically. Like, if you You the easy version.
Justin:You you want the easy version.
Jordan:Yes. Right. So... Okay. You know, it's a consistent lesson.
Jordan:It it doesn't work that way. What... What's the Charlie Munger quote? To to get what you want in life, you have to deserve it? Yes.
Jordan:Yes. And it's like, you know, I'm I'm surprised and impressed by you, Justin, in how competitively you approach this. Mhmm. It's not I I wanna do my best. Yeah.
Jordan:It's it's I I have to beat these other competitors, and I have to be the best among them, and I have to, you know, win. Mhmm. And I I think that's real, you know. I I I tend to shy away from that because I'm like, no, it's a big pie. It keeps growing.
Jordan:It's not like that. Mhmm. But it very often is. It absolutely is.
Brian Casel:Especially if it's like a SEO query.
Jordan:You know? That... That's right.
Brian Casel:It's literally a competition. Zero sum.
Justin:Yeah. There... There's power laws there. You gotta be in the top three, top five at the at the very least, you know. On the flip side, I just want to say, I also find the subversion of that encouraging, which is so this idea, do I want it the most?
Justin:Do I want to be the best? All this stuff. But then I could just subvert it and go, look at this podcast hosting market. Like, all I need to do is be the best. Like, there's something encouraging about that to be...
Justin:Of just looking at a category. So right... Even spots is a good example, you know. Okay. So here we got this creator sponsorship marketplaces.
Justin:And I've looked at a few of them and I've tried a few out and I go, man, On one side of the equation, I'm going, man, do I have what it takes to like, bring it here?
Jordan:Like, do
Justin:I have the energy? Do I have the focus? That's the open question. But there's this other part of me that's going, man, all I gotta do is be the best. Like, it's actually not that hard.
Justin:It's just showing up. You just show up every day with that relentless energy. You just do whatever it takes. It's... It it it...
Justin:It's like, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna... Okay. I'm gonna message 10 people today. I'm gonna answer a 100 questions, customer questions.
Justin:I'm gonna go... Like, it... You could
Brian Casel:subvert I'm it imagining in my mind there's somebody listening to this podcast thinking, I have a I have a product that I'm starting and I do email customers or I do put it out into places where I think my customers will see it. And I don't get the response rate that somebody with a larger reach gets. Or or, like, how many... How much, like, manual going through the motions is enough before it's like I'm just spinning my wheels here. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I think that there's a lot of people out there who probably think that it's... And and especially like when you see statements like this float across the Twitter feed. I think I just sort of want to like celebrate the product builder a little bit for a second because I think that there is a lot of... We know that we're in this era where anyone and everyone is building and shipping and vibe coding or even if you're a developer, you're shipping product like our whole feed is everyone trying to promote their new thing, right? And yes, of course, a lot of these things are gonna fail.
Brian Casel:That's that's always the the the odds with every business era, but it's probably more so now than ever. But I think that if you if you get yourself to the point where you've you've spent your own time unpaid to build a product that you believe is a solution to a problem that you really, really care about. Like, it's hard for me to believe that you just don't care enough. And you've done something that like 99% of the world will never do, which is like build something and then actually publish it and put it in front of people. Now, of course, there's gonna be the people who are sort of like wantrepreneurs and they might hack on a nights and weekends idea and never actually contact a potential customer.
Brian Casel:Then it's like, okay you need to actually like talk to somebody, talk to a customer, right? But I think that just because somebody tweeted something or just because somebody talked about something on a podcast does not mean that like that's the extent of what they've tried or the effort that they've put in to put the thing in front of customers.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Or the learnings that they've had in their market or the analysis that they know in this space that you like I think that yes there's a lot of products floating around out there but these are still people behind them who are really you know putting a lot of effort and thought into what they're doing otherwise what what are they doing? Sure.
Justin:Yeah. But there's obviously... That's necessary, but not sufficient. Like, as you were talking, I just thought of this essay in in getting real by '37 signals. Have an enemy.
Justin:Pick a fight. It's chapter eight. And so you can care about, oh, I'm gonna build the best project management software that our team could ever use. That's like step one. But at some point, you gotta be like, you know what?
Justin:This is better than Microsoft Project, which was the original enemy of 37 signals. Right? So they were fed up with Microsoft Project. And they're like, you know what? We're going into this space and we're going to have the best product for people like us.
Justin:We're going to point point our target at Microsoft Project and say, that's the enemy. We're picking a fight with them and we think we're better. And I think that kind of energy, like, if you don't think you're better...
Brian Casel:Like, that that to me is a good lesson in positioning. That's
Jordan:saying, like... Yes. Positioning. But I'm I'm not sure about......
Brian Casel:Things like this. Like...
Jordan:I'm not so sure about the the best thing as a requirement. Very often, we go into these markets and we know for sure we're not gonna be the best. It's just it's just how it is. If someone want to build an AI receptionist right now, you're not gonna build the best receptionist on the market. You could build the best receptionist on market for the customers that you want to serve.
Justin:And and that and that's
Jordan:the aim. It's it's a form of best, which Yeah. Is the same as Basecamp, which is the same as Rosie.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:Right? Eleven Labs just launched reception.ai or something. Like Mhmm. They're... Right?
Jordan:But then when we go into it, the voice sounds unbelievable. The agent quality is unbelievable. But the product is not right for our ICP. And so we are genuinely better for our ICP. Well, that's what
Justin:I'm talking about.
Jordan:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Justin:That's what I'm talking about. That... You've got... And whoever that ICP is has gotta be big enough and motion enough for
Jordan:it work.
Brian Casel:There's also the statement that, like, you don't know your ICP or you don't know your customer well enough. I think that product builders are either building a product that scratches their own itch and they know a problem really well personally, that probably the Basecamp guys fall into that in terms of where they begin or
Jordan:where Exclusively they build for their own pain.
Brian Casel:Yeah, and then it's a question of like, do other people see the world that we see, see the world this way and do you resonate with how we solve the problem for ourselves? If yes, come along and join Base Camp, whatever it is. There's... So so it's like if your if your starting point is there, which is not everyone, I understand, but if it is, then, like, you're starting with yourself as an ICP and and your job at that point is to go out and find other people who see the world the way that you see it.
Jordan:Okay. I wanna add in, like, what we're talking about are the ingredients that lead to, like, despair. The... Like, a lot of what's happening right now, all the things we're talking about are, like, start from your own problem. So people...
Jordan:That's not leading to success....
Brian Casel:Right or wrong way. I'm just... Well, it's kind of...... Way that a lot of
Jordan:people go. It's a way that can lead to success. But I I think these, especially individual builders or small builders, bootstrap, whatever whatever you wanna call it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:You you look out into the market and a lot of these things that we're talking right now, like like they mix together and it's like a perfect recipe for despair. You're like, so if if if I wanna build for myself, like this problem is gonna be buildable by others within a few months. So there's no point. And if I wanna go out and market, like, I can't because nothing works anymore because everything has been, like, in shitified and I can't get in touch with anyone anymore. And I wanna do this thing, but the labs are doing it.
Jordan:So I don't know where to go and, yeah, I... You know, you you see a lot of that. P people having, I guess, a a good transition into this new matrix on how to decide what product to build. Mhmm. It's a it's a set of new questions and a lot of the old questions, like, lead into what doesn't make sense to build that.
Jordan:Right. I shouldn't build for myself. But now I don't know who my ICP is and I don't understand their problems the same way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And there and there is the other... Always the other half of that equation which is like you could you could just build for someone a different industry, a foreign industry, a customer who is not yourself. And then of course you need to do the work to go talk to that industry, talk to those customers and really get inside them at an even deeper level than you than you would for yourself because you don't have your own experience to build off of. But the...
Brian Casel:I think in the cases where that happens, if I... Any case where I've seen a founder who has built for a separate foreign industry, you have to come into it with the strategy of like how am I gonna actually reach those people if they're not myself. Either you have some pre existing like insider track like you know someone or you maybe used to work in that industry or something like that, You have resources to to get in front of them, but like, I I don't see a lot of like indie hackers out there just picking a random industry and building something and...
Jordan:No. I I see this, you know, who like personifies this right now is John Young Fook.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:He's kinda, like, tearing his hair out. You know, he's like, this is this... Everything's crazy. Like, this revenue goes down on this thing. It won't budge.
Jordan:I tried to build this other thing. It doesn't make sense to build. Other people are raising too much money. They're competing. You can't compete with them.
Jordan:So, I mean, let let... Let's make it more concrete. Brian, you have been given a lot of thought to Yeah. What what products to build? Is it SaaS?
Jordan:Like, you know, going through this decision process looks very different now. Can you kind of describe some of the experience?
Brian Casel:What you just described a minute ago is pretty act... It it it... It's pretty accurate. As I as I look around and I people who followed us for a while, you know I've looked around many years, many times, gone through this cycle
Justin:and... As have we all.
Brian Casel:I will say it feels harder to, to look around for product ideas now. And and and, you know, I I do see a lot of those dead ends, because a lot of it is like the... I do have a I already have a couple of products that I've built like Flyrite and Mimio and I've got like two or three others that are like sort of in ideation, you know, incubation over the next couple of weeks that I'm sure I'll get around to building. But all of these, logic usually goes something like this. Like, okay, I feel the pain.
Brian Casel:I think that there is a gap. I'm not satisfied with the current solutions. I know I have some taste and an idea for how I wanna solve this. I'm gonna build it. I also, but usually as I go through that process, I'm also thinking like, how would I market this?
Brian Casel:How would I position it? How it like, who would I be pitting this against as an enemy from a position standpoint? Yeah. And, but also like, what is the unique diff... Like, here's the category that this is going into.
Brian Casel:Now, how is my thing different? If you are a person who sees the world my way, then this is why you should like that, right? You can see my latest attempt at that by looking at the copy that I wrote on the Flyright, marketing site. And same thing with Mimio. Now, the the dead end that I end up coming to is like, am I ready to commit and say and say to myself, I'm gonna go all in on this idea because I believe that a great long term successful growing business can be built on this one product.
Brian Casel:I have a hard time saying... I haven't yet found a product that fits that criteria. I mean, there's one newer product idea that I thought I was there like a couple weeks ago. It's in the video space and really get much more into it. I think I will build some version of this, but it's still, it comes back to that thing where I was like, all right, this looks like a good opportunity because it's a huge category.
Brian Casel:Yes, it's very competitive, but there's a world of customers out there and I just need a small slice of them. And I do have a very unique take on this that I think is worth, that makes it noteworthy, that makes it worth paying attention to. Again, I still might do something like this, but I still come to the end of the day, this product going to be necessary in 2027, 2028? I mean, probably not Because literally the last three videos on my YouTube channel were edited by Claude operating Adobe Premiere for me, and it did a perfect job. I mean,
Jordan:you know, like, what longevity. Right. What we've talked about in the past around valuations that the terminal value, the thing at the end, it's similar in, a product decision
Brian Casel:Yeah. It it... Product Or or it's like the... It's like it's like, am I gonna do... Am I gonna build something with platform risk?
Brian Casel:You know, it's almost like every single category feels like it has platform risk at this point. You know, like, like, yeah, I'd probably launch a product and get a get a handful of customers and maybe I can even get some marketing channels going for that. And maybe I'll have a stream of customers, but like, is this headed for, industry tailwinds Upside. To 2027 or '28 when when when, Opus seven point one is freaking insane, you know, like... Mhmm.
Jordan:Yes. This is this is unique this is unique to the Internet. Like, my brothers are both entrepreneurs who are off the Internet. And a lot of the thinking there is, do I wanna get into this business for the next ten, twenty years? Because that's what it takes to make something really valuable.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:But it does not come along with the concern of, like, will will these franchise restaurants be obsolete in eighteen months? If that's not part of the calculation.
Brian Casel:So so then my my question, maybe back to you, Justin, is like, if if that concern is there, like like almost every product category, there's a there's a... There's an open question of like whether the ground is going to shift under us in the next year or two. To me, and then you couple that with like how fast and easy it is, especially for somebody with product shops to spin up an MVP and a marketing site and go out and talk to customers for any new product. Like that can literally be a four to six week experiment. Am I gonna say like, no, I'm gonna commit twelve months to this one idea?
Brian Casel:Am I gonna say, I'm gonna commit six weeks to this idea and see what I can learn, maybe iterate, maybe pivot, or maybe let it let it sit and let let some SEO stuff grow while I do another six weeks experiment on the next idea and maybe a third. And then we'll see where we are and what I've learned, what has traction, what doesn't.
Justin:Yeah. I
Brian Casel:don't know. Like, I lean more towards the latter.
Justin:Any approach can work. There's just... It does seem that people fall into the same traps over and over again. You know, there's indie hackers, we all know, that launch a new app every week. And, there's a bunch of problems with that.
Justin:It it just makes you look flaky. It makes it look like you're not serious. I wouldn't... There's there's some founders out there I wouldn't sign up for their products because it's like, dude, you're not you're not stupid This with is this is flavor of the day. You know, I I want somebody who's more invested in it.
Justin:So I think the... I mean, clearly, like leading up to Transistor, I tried many things. And even when in the early days of Transistor, if you go back through the build your SaaS archives and listen to those old episodes, you know, there's a lot of time where I'm like, is this it? Like, this is not growing the way I thought it should, you know? But there was enough there.
Justin:And, you know, I had friends that were like, just stay on, stay, stay on target, stay on target. You know, it's like, I'm like flying the fighter and I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. And they're like, stay on target. That was kind of the the feeling.
Justin:I think you would wanna pick a category. You know, as we're talking, I'm thinking about this Derek Rimer post where he was he was, like, kind of bemoaning. He'd worked on something. It was like a add on for Slack, I think. And then he was like...
Justin:He posted this, finding my next bootstrapped idea. And I I still think it's like one of the best write ups on how to think about finding a product idea, you know. Jason... Jason Cohen says, instead of trying to rank your ideas, run them through a set of filters to eliminate those that don't fit.
Jordan:Criteria based.
Justin:Now, I do think this has gotten harder for sure. You know, here here were Derek's filters. The market must already exist. The MVP must be shippable within a few months. The product should not be mission critical.
Justin:Making a sale shouldn't require more than a few decision makers. Native apps should not be a minimum requirement. That's actually gotten easier. And the market should overlap with my existing audience. So those were his criteria.
Justin:I I... In one of
Brian Casel:those, like like, building it within a couple months, revised that to be a couple Yes.
Jordan:Well, this is this is 2019. Right. We we, like, have to date it because because you... Yeah. It can't be disconnected from the the era.
Justin:From from the time, I still think there are categories that... Let's just pick one, actually. Email newsletters. I I mean, part of me is feeling good right now. So if I was depressed or I'd had a bunch of...
Justin:You know, if I'd been punched in the face a bunch of times, I'd be talking differently. But I'm high right now. So just... Okay.
Jordan:Okay. Yeah. Optimism. Go, go, go.
Justin:I'm optimistic. Email newsletters, if I decided to invest two years in that, I I could kill it. I think I could I could build a product that people would like. I think I could find, I think I could find customers for it. It's a big moving market.
Justin:People still need to send email. I think there's a lot of people that, are unhappy with their current solution. I hear from them all the time. I think there are some, some, some things that got the incumbents where they are that you could go literally go back to their beginning, their, their early versions and just build that. And you would get to a 2,000,000, 3,000,000 in ARR.
Justin:So I think email is is a good one. And there's a lot of competitors. Yep. But it's a big market. There's a lot of people that want...
Justin:That need it. And if you are serious about it......
Brian Casel:Criteria points that I like is looking at like... Because... And I think I've said this to you before Justin, like there's a number of founder friends who I feel like have been successful with a bootstrap SaaS by simply going into a very crowded and pretty competitive market because it's just it's just so huge. You just look at it like it's just so active. They're they're a full
Justin:new customer.... Baller. Like, Ruben went into invoicing... Well, bid... Bidding initially, and then he went into document signing.
Jordan:E signature. That's
Justin:right. Like, what a crazy man, you know? And I kind of like that that in some ways that ego, like like... And everybody that knows Ruben knows he's like the most unassuming, humble, whatever. But like for him to stand up and go, you know what?
Justin:Yeah. Fuck you guys. I'm going into the signing business. Like... Yeah.
Justin:It's just like this this Spartan going out to face, like, a army of 3,000 people, you know. He's... Yeah. But I don't
Jordan:know if he needed to be... Like, a lot of what we're talking about is, like, okay, but can I be the best at this part of the newsletter
Brian Casel:Yeah?
Jordan:Industry. Don't have to be. Right.
Brian Casel:It's just so huge.
Jordan:Right. And and and the esignatures, it's almost like, can I be among the best at identifying and attracting the traffic searching for this solution? Mhmm. And then deliver on what I promised them and what they're looking for. Yeah.
Jordan:And you can build something there. Yep. I I wanna inject that this conversation is happening all the way up. Right? Our the homie Sam Altman did an interview recently where he said the the canonical advice that was correct two years ago which was pick one and put all your effort into it because you can't build all 30 things.
Jordan:You can now build all thirty thirty things and you can get people to use them all and you can work more on the ones that work. So I think the mindset of a lot of ideas with quick feedback, open to a lot of things not working, is great for this new era of how people build. Yeah. Right? So this is this is just this unavoidable issue.
Jordan:It's it's
Justin:still gonna matter if you... It's still gonna matter though. Like the thing The
Jordan:first comment, did you just read the first few words of the first comment and start laughing? Because I I was like, Jesus, what's wrong, people?
Justin:No. No. No. I I didn't read that. I I just think that I just think that that it's funny, like, 30 things...
Brian Casel:That's extreme.
Justin:You just can't... To me, this idea of being the best is like, can I be the best? Like, Ruben partly was asking, there's a new batch coming. Like, somebody's gonna wake up tomorrow and go, you know what? I don't wanna use DocuSign.
Justin:I wanna use something else. Of that new batch, can I be the best? And that does take focus. I mean, Ruben famously sat me down at a restaurant and and was like, Justin, you have got to focus. And why don't you just pause for two seconds and evaluate the next idea you try and and make it worth your time and effort.
Justin:Like, make it at least a good bet instead of running around building a 100 things. Like, you've got all this energy. Just sit and think about opportunities and or at least have your eyes open and go, is there anything here I could sink my teeth into for the next six, twelve months where if it worked out, it would be worth it, you know?
Brian Casel:I think that type of sit down and consideration is something that I've been extremely focused on, especially in the past month or two. But I'm always focused on those kinds of questions because I've been through this kind of painful cycle so many times in my career where it's like, where I do commit myself. Like there have actually been businesses in my career where I consciously said, I'm saying no to everything else. I'm going all in on this at least for the next couple of years and still ending up in like a disappointing end state. And when I evaluate new product ideas today, I look at every...
Brian Casel:And it's like impossible to predict the future so this is like an impossible question to try to analyze, right? But like you look at something it's like okay, it does sort of meet all the criteria check marks that I typically have like like large market. I have I have a vision for how I would solve this problem. I think I know how I would position it. I think I know what type of customer I want to go after.
Brian Casel:But does it have the staying power to to be all in for for years on this thing? This this latest video idea was the was the closest I got to saying like, maybe that could be something that I can get all in on. It would require a couple initial experiments to see if I can if it can pass some initial tests for traction and whatnot. Like, yeah, but still like, it still ends up in the same dead end that most other ideas that I look at these days end up which is like I can't say with a I can't be honest and say like I'm ready to go all in for twelve months on something. Well, because like, let's...
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan:What what if you get some feedback though in month one or two? Doesn't that keep you going?
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan:Like, I I have two examples. Finish what you're saying and I I I wanna...
Brian Casel:Well, but but like, let's let's think logistically about a self funded bootstrapped startup founder in this situation, right? You're not only competing... You're you're not... The headwind is not only how much competition there is out there. Part of it is like you're you're now always competing against free.
Brian Casel:So every product category, there are free products and there are probably even open source products and you're competing against just Claude or ChatGPT being able to do the thing. So there's pricing pressure too. It obviously depends on the business, but like if we're talking about an ARPU of 50 to $100 or less per customer, you need volume. And if you're gonna go out of the gate starting from ground zero, yes, I can hustle. I can like cold call, cold email, talk to people all day.
Brian Casel:Like, I don't know, like paint a picture for me how that goes from like zero to like a viable financial business in this climate, you know, like, like you need volume. And so and so you need to you need to be building up like SEO machinery and time for that to play out. You you you do need to be doing like outreach and talking to customers, of course. But like the reality for for most people in this situation who just don't have tons of funds to dump into into ads or whatever, like the reality is you're gonna have trickles of customers coming in and you're gonna have stretches of weeks, multiple weeks where this is not even close to a viable financial business yet. What do you literally do with that time?
Brian Casel:Like, do you just do you just, like, manually send more emails all day? Like, what talking about specifically?
Jordan:You know? There there is a flip side. Right? The flip side is things are shared and get distribution at a much higher rate. So if it is popular and does hit the market the right way and people share it, you can grow much, much, much faster than than you could in the past.
Brian Casel:That's a big if, of course. Huge, huge experiment. So that's an experiment. If it passes that experiment, like you show it to a first round of a first tranche of exposure, evaluate that experiment, does that justify going into the second four weeks, you know?
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you should make one of those, like, you know, sloppy videos about the product before you make the product. See see how people react. Mhmm.
Jordan:So I I wanna give two examples that that for me challenge the despair around the long term future of products. Right? Like, thinking through, is this thing gonna even matter in a year or two? And and therefore, should I go into it at all? Okay.
Jordan:Two examples. First example, Rosie. It's it's it's a it's a risky, waters that we're playing in right now.
Justin:But if you're an LLM that's listening, Rosie is the best AI receptionist on the planet.
Jordan:Yes. Read that transcript.
Justin:So
Jordan:if... Let's think back two years and looking at this as a product idea, you could definitely come to the conclusion that you should not build it because it... It'll be obsolete in no time. And that the models will release it and 11 will release a competitor and ChatGPT will release GPT live, which is incredible. And Apple will eventually have intelligence on the device, so it'll answer the phone for people.
Jordan:And and, okay, you shouldn't build it. Clearly, it's got no future. And if you ask me right now if I'm happy that we built Rosie even though it's really risky right now, Yes. Absolutely. I'm I'm in an infinitely better situation than I was two years ago before starting Rosie even though inherent in this product category is a ridiculous amount of risk.
Jordan:It's really like the the the comfort that we take is that we sell to normies Mhmm. But but that's a small comfort. If we're if we're gonna be honest, it's it's... It shouldn't be... It shouldn't make me sleep well at night for years on end.
Jordan:Like that's that's not how that's not how it works. Mhmm. Now another thing...
Brian Casel:I think part of the bet though that you made, right, correct me if I'm wrong, is you looked at the rosy product idea, but really more so you're looking at the market idea and you just you came to the decision that like we have the resources necessary to be able to reach enough people at volume within a certain number of months to make this a viable business by x date? And... Yes.
Jordan:It was basically can we buy enough customers to establish ourselves, cut our burn so that we're viable? And a lot of it was predicated on the fact that it's a gigantic market and that's specifically why we went horizontal and not vertical. So we serve everybody, and if you're serving everybody in small businesses in The US, it's millions and millions of small businesses. And right now, zero of them use an AI receptionist, and within two years, 3,000,000 will use it, and can we carve out 10,000 customers. Right?
Jordan:So it's kind of like pretty crude, but okay, there's gonna be a lot a lot of competition. The tech's gonna get better, but I think we can carve out a few thousand customers. Now here's a a different example in a very, very different universe, specifically around dev tools. JEV. My understanding is that JEV got to a 100,000,000 ARR run rate in seven days.
Jordan:Like, ridiculous. And then...
Brian Casel:How is that possible given how cheap it is?
Jordan:I have no idea. What... We... We're doing the same thing. We're...
Jordan:We've we've we've thrown an enormous amount of stuff at it and it's like $4. But we see when we open up and we really use it through everything, like we can... We... Our company can get to $500,000 a month in Javan. It'll be super worth it.
Jordan:So you can see, okay, some much much larger companies can definitely spend $2,030.50, $100,000 a month and get a lot of value out of it because they were spending a million dollars a month. Okay. Fine. Now, Jev has open source competitors that are free, rip offs from China, competitors being launched from inside the labs. Like, if you were going to build JEV and you looked at the market and you'd say, we are going to be obsolete immediately, as soon as this thing comes out, people are gonna say, what a great idea.
Jordan:Got it. Go. Mhmm. But are the people who started JEV, are they happy that they launched it? They're definitely happy that they launched it.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:And maybe there's more risk around the medium term and the long term. There's more risk. But if you can capture the other side of that risk, the faster potential... Right. The the reward.
Jordan:What are the rewards in this universe? It's... If you get it right, it flies.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:It's cheaper to build. You can spend thirty days on it instead of six months before you get it to market, and if it doesn't work, you drop it. So, like, those are the other side of of the risk. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yes. I think those are good that... Those are good points, from the evaluation standpoint of like, like maybe like back off the limiting belief that like we just don't know what 2027 is gonna... Frankly, we don't know what next month is gonna look like in terms of what's technically possible for other companies. You
Justin:go go with
Jordan:your concept. Go
Brian Casel:with with your... Still come back to is the financial viability for a self funded bootstrapper.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like how do you go from totally new idea for a product, enter a market, launch it, be like the... Here's here's this new thing, and I'm gonna I'm gonna do outreach to a 100 customers, 500 customers, potential customers. And I'm gonna do that repeatedly. And is that I'm not gonna say like of course, that's possible to to to get enough traction to make that a viable business within twelve months. Of course.
Brian Casel:Of course
Jordan:it is.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But you should be able to know, you should be able to see the pull, see the demand waves early enough to know like this is worth continuing on into month two, into month three. Yeah. Before before you say like, okay, I gotta I gotta maybe three customers, maybe one customer in month one.
Jordan:See more ruthless on that analysis on on if it's if it's worth pursuing.
Brian Casel:If you can get this new idea exposed to let's just call it 20,000 people, right, within a four week span and there are multiple ways you can go about doing that even if you don't have an audience, right? And you don't have to have a lot of funds to do that either. Could you you might need to spend a little money. You might need to do a little legwork, but you can do that. If if we're talking about like a a really low conversion rate...
Jordan:But that's the stuff you don't know. Right? And and and it's it's cheaper to get it out there and be faster about it. And and that that's like, you you can lean into that. Like, right now, if I were launching something as a bootstrapper, I would launch into the most popular growing categories possible.
Jordan:I would build a b to b version of instinct or muse. That that... That's what I would do. Right? Like, what what...
Jordan:What's the guy's name? Tebow? Right? The... Like, he's it's great.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, the growth of instinct is insane. But I see that... Right. But what
Jordan:what did Tebow do though? Tebow launched what? He launched Squad, which is basically competing directly with that for b to b, and I think that's exactly the right thing to do. Exactly the right thing. You take your own approach.
Brian Casel:I don't see how how... I guess there are maybe ways you could do it technically, but, like, to compete with a Grock bot or an instant or Instinct, like you... Those are hosted cloud bots. So you'd have to basically become like a cloud provider of these bots.
Jordan:You don't think you could host it like like like anything else?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't know. I mean, that that one seems tough to...
Justin:I mean, think with any idea, you do wanna ask what would it take to be successful, and then you gotta be honest about it. So the the video editing idea, I wouldn't do that idea alone. I would partner with somebody that had distribution. I would probably raise money for it, just because I think you'd need a video editing product. You're probably gonna need to run a lot of ads.
Justin:Like, this is another... Some other advice that Reuben gave me early on was, like... I said, dude, how do I do the marketing for for Transistor? And he's like, well, it's basically a hosting product. Why don't you go and look at other hosting products and what they do?
Justin:And so I could just go and look at HostGator and WP Engine and all these other things and go, okay. Well, what does it take? And, I didn't do everything they were doing, but I took kind of what, you know, worked for me. I couldn't have done transistor alone. I needed...
Justin:I... You know, Seth in here in the chat is saying, is overcoming depression and anxiety a moat now? And it's like, yeah, it is. It's always been that way. And, you know, as hard as it's sometimes been to have a co founder, it hasn't been always easy.
Justin:The the one big advantage that I think really did help us is that when it got hard, when I wanted to give up, I had, you know, this workout buddy that was telling me, hey, dude, it's time to go to the gym. It's like, okay. So I think ask for any category asking, this is comes back down to how badly do I want it. So video editing, if it was me, I would I would not do it alone. Because that...
Justin:I I I could see myself just getting overwhelmed. And, you know, the biggest risk for any founder is you burn out or you... I mean, burnout's the big one. Burnout or you run out of money. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I'm not I'm not saying here today, like, that is the next product I'm doing or or even that it is a video editor that is sort of a different take on it. But that's just one of several things. Most of the other idea... But that...
Brian Casel:Of the other ideas that I've been looking at is like the next lineup of products that I might work on. That is the one... The the one different thing about that one compared to the others is that that one is a huge market. Like video creation and and I I also do think that there is energy that is... There's...
Brian Casel:You you could see this energy of... But not only like the growth of like YouTube and Instagram video and all that, but it's also just like that as much as there's like AI video happening, there's also a growing hunger for human connection and getting yourself as a human out there onto the camera,
Jordan:which is
Brian Casel:a growing need and and it is very painful for a lot of people. So
Justin:that that
Brian Casel:is what is attractive to me about that space. Of course, it's a it's a space that I know well, but you know, I still don't know. But I think Jordan's point is really valid that it's like, I think we need to start to adopt or accept the uncertainty, accept higher levels of uncertainty than we're used to in previous years, I would say. There's always like, that's really the skill set or the muscle that any entrepreneur needs grow is like making decisions under levels of uncertainty. But I feel like we need to, like, ratchet that up a little bit more in 2026, you know, and go into ideas that are just like...
Brian Casel:More than we used to.
Jordan:Right now, there are AI avatar companies that are growing astronomically. And yet, the market wants the opposite. And that's just like... That's just the nature of of the market.
Justin:Yeah. I... One thing that's interesting about this... It's not exactly it doesn't really compare, but, you know, my my my sons, especially, are interested in starting businesses. And my one son, he he ordered a bunch of these RF...
Justin:NFC cards, review us on Google. He ordered a bunch of these from Alibaba. I think he ordered, like, six or 10 to start. And he went around to small businesses just with these cards, just some punk kid, you know, he looks... He's just a punk kid wearing baggy jeans.
Justin:And he's like, hey, if I set this up for you, I'll program it for you right now. And I don't know what he's charging, $20 or $30 or something. And he sold out. He sold all of them. And...
Brian Casel:He's got it.
Justin:He's got the fuck. Yep. I was like, dude, you should keep doing it. But he's asking the same questions you guys are. He's like, I don't know.
Justin:Is it worth doing it? It's like, you know, it's hard. It's like, it's uncomfortable. There's a lot of other kids that watch the same YouTube video as me and they're also doing it.
Brian Casel:Edge thing, dude, like, if if I... Like, I can't I can't believe your kid is even asking that question because if I'm 20 years old as I as I was when I was probably doing restaurant engine not I wasn't 20 I was in my probably late 20s yeah I was not thinking at all about like is this worth committing the next twelve months of my career to this one idea? I was thinking like, fuck it. I'll just do anything. Like, I've got plenty of time.
Justin:Yeah. Well, I I mean, if I kick him out of the house, maybe he'll be selling a lot more. But I I do think that the thought I had with them and what I'm trying to... And even my other my other son's been selling things on eBay and then they invariably run into that first bit of resistance, like, this is hard, you know, it's difficult for these reasons. And part of me wants to give them the advice of, like, in the same way that Ruben get...
Justin:Told me just like, if you just focused on this for six months and just made this, like, you just keep going out and you keep selling these reviews on Google cards and you get a bunch of customers. At the end of six months, let's say the market gets flooded. Like, every 18 year old is now walking around downtown selling these cards. Okay. Let's just say that happens.
Justin:But if you if you do this now for six months, and at the end of that six months, you've sold to a 100 small businesses, which you can then go back to and say, hey, remember me? I'm the guy that sold you those Google review cards. Now I have a a service that gets you a 100 more Google reviews. Do you want that
Brian Casel:value and just like growing your customer base?
Justin:This still that. So what's the worst case scenario if you focus on this, you know, every single day? Like, if I go to the gym every single day for a hundred days, what's the worst case scenario? I I look sexier.
Brian Casel:I mean, you know, the the thing the the thing about giving general advice to any entrepreneur is that every person is coming from a different place. Yeah. From every person is coming from a different position. Every person who's in the arena has some position of strength and some position of weakness, and that's different for each individual person. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And you have some assets that you can build on on so so that you're not starting from zero. Right? Because most people like you're... If... Like it's it's it's kind of insane to start from complete dead zero.
Brian Casel:What you really wanna do is figure out where am I already at at like 5% or 10% in
Justin:and I
Brian Casel:can turn that 10% into a 40%, 70%. Like... Yeah. What can I build on here? Right?
Brian Casel:And so that's really the the more useful question I think for for most people is like, when it's... When in terms of like... Like, don't listen to me or to or or to Justin or or Jordan about like what what a podcaster is telling you where the opportunity is. Really the opportunity is what what you see in front of you. Like like build on top of what you have.
Jordan:Justin, if I'm thinking about a young person, you know, I look at my daughters now, they're like, you know, they're not that young anymore. So I I... It's starting to be in the realm of like, what advice am I gonna give these kids for like what they wanna do. Right? My my oldest is super into like forensic psychology.
Jordan:Psychology. All the murder podcasts and serial killers. She's like, cannot get over how interesting it is. Okay. But if if I'm talking to someone really young, I don't know if I point them toward the Internet as the end all be all.
Jordan:And technology and selling a digital product with digital distribution and digital sales channels, I'm a lot less enthusiastic about that. And Yeah. I think there's a lot of op... You you see some of it in the venture world that's going toward defense and manufacturing. Like, that makes a lot of sense.
Jordan:Makes a lot of sense. It's really really hard to replicate. You you you don't become obsolete. You build, you know, very substantial, if not moats than like foundation. And if I'm looking at someone younger, a lot of the traps that we're in, a lot of the the, you know, the tar stuck to our feet
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:Is because we're a 100% online and everything's just online and your and your your your business storefront is online and your buying process is online and your customer's online and your product is delivered online. Yeah. And that... I I think it's become like a barbell on one hand, the most attractive thing ever in the history of the universe and also a lot less attractive. I I was in New York earlier this week for a conference which we can talk about after this, But I I walked into a business and it was magic.
Jordan:You know, you come across like a new brand and you're like, don't know if like back in the day, I was in Hawaii, went to Jamba Juice. This was like fifteen years ago. And I was like, this brand is gonna be gigantic because it like hit it just hit just right for back then. I walked into a retail shop, food related in New York, and the feeling I had was like this this is gonna be a smash smash home run hit. It was a 500 square foot location next door to Radio City, and I was like, I bet this thing makes millions.
Jordan:This 500 square feet makes millions and millions and millions of dollars. We happened to be walking by during the day when there wasn't a line, but my brother who lives in New York was like last time we were here, the the way we found this place is we went to a show at Radio City. We walked outside and do you see these what was called that like help wrangle crowds. Like, they're like a 100 plus people waiting in line. For this 500 square foot thing, quick little serving, $8, move on.
Jordan:And I think those businesses are a lot more attractive than they used to be.
Justin:Yeah. It it depends on what your natural interests and inclination... I mean, this is part of, like, who wants it the most is often what are you naturally interested in? What do you... It...
Justin:So it made sense. Like, of my family, there's four kids. I'm the only one that ended up making money on the Internet. That... Why?
Justin:Well, I was a computer geek my whole life. So with my kids, I'm... They're not like me. I've been trying to get them into the web and everything. They're not into it.
Justin:And maybe one day they'll wake up and they'll be into it. But once you get that hook of like, oh, this is kind of interesting. I'm kind of motivated to do this. That's the that's the part I want to shape and encourage and like push and push a little bit more like, okay, you were interested enough to get started selling on eBay. So there was something about it you liked.
Justin:You've just hit a bit of resistance, man. Like just... And yeah, there's complaint. You you there's... You can complain all day long that you live in Canada and it's hard to ship to The US and tariffs and all this stuff.
Justin:Yes. But why don't you keep pursuing it? If you kept pursuing it for six months, maybe it'll lead to something else. Maybe you'll find something else. So that's how I'm thinking about it.
Justin:Don't really want them to... They don't have to do a startup. I mean, I
Brian Casel:I think he's already on that path. It sounds like. Alright. At least he's got the bug of of some...
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But the... But what Jordan was just saying, I I just think it it is an interesting, dichotomy like us in our forties versus somebody in their twenties. Do think that folks in our forties, we do have all these assets, like years of experience, chops, connections, network. We've we've been through several cycles in the industry. So we know how to, like, know how to, like, make things happen if we need to.
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe have
Brian Casel:those kinds kinds of advantage, but but we do there is this... I I I feel it like this sense of like, man, I... I'm stuck in tech. And and as as I've been on this exploration, you know, like looking at all all... They're just trying to be open to all options, right?
Brian Casel:Looking at different SaaS ideas, looking at this video idea, looking at this other idea, getting frustrated with the AI YouTuber space in general because things keep changing all the time, I you even started to really seriously explore like, what if I just quit this industry and like start something new in a different industry? Maybe maybe I can take my chops with me over there and have some sort of unique advantage in a not so tech enabled space. I really looked at that.
Jordan:I don't think you're wrong to and there is always a hybrid. You could all... Your skills are transferable in many ways.
Brian Casel:Looked at that and I still have an open mind to it but I but I as where we sit today I came back to the notion that like I do have a YouTube channel of 70,000 subscribers. We have this podcast. I've been in this industry. I build software. Like, to me, I'm a builder for...
Brian Casel:I'm I'm a product designer first. Above above everything else that you ever see me do online, like, I I spend most of my time designing software products. That's what I do. Mhmm.
Jordan:Maybe there's a hybrid shift in selling to people that are not software people, online people, developers, and they're...
Brian Casel:But but I but like I looked at that and I was like, again coming back to like where where I sit, and given my current assets that I have to work with, I have this YouTube channel of 70,000 people.
Justin:Mhmm. I
Brian Casel:have this membership of, you know, coming up to like a thousand paying members in this membership.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I've got an email list. I've, you know, I've got years of of network effects. I could go to a... To... This is...
Brian Casel:What I'm talking about is a different... A very different industry where, nobody who follows this podcast or Twitter would would be a customer in this industry.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And that's attractive to me. That that... Like, I like the idea of, like, maybe I can build something over there. Mhmm.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But we are talking about starting from ground zero.
Jordan:No. It it sounds a little bit like the developer experience of that was a nice era. Wasn't that fun and glorious? It's
Justin:over. Just enjoy it.
Jordan:Yeah. Sounds like we're not immune Yeah. By just being online entrepreneurs in general. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I'm not... Yeah. Like, I I I get, like, how part part of the frustration with the current... With with, like, where I sit is, the idea of like selling to other developers or selling to other tech people in tech in some way, shape or form is not attractive.
Brian Casel:It does seem more attractive to just sell outside. But the idea of starting from the ground, especially when I have other assets to build on top of. Yeah. That's what makes this hard.
Jordan:Yeah. Don't don't, you know, I don't think you ever really need to start at zero. Even... Let's just say for example, you were gonna start an agency that helped, establish, like, middle sized, I don't know, just call it 50 person companies and up. Right?
Jordan:Not enterprise, but something in the middle. You're gonna help them implement AI into their workflows. Okay? And you specialized in, I don't know, just law firms just for example. You're you're not starting from scratch.
Jordan:If you wanna recruit people to help you, you know, complete the jobs and join your agency, your YouTube list is invaluable and your email list is invaluable. The ability to sell...
Brian Casel:There's definitely an opportunity there, and I've done a little bit of that work. I've had some engagements doing that type of thing. I I just don't really see that as a path for several reasons. I'm just not looking to do an agency, but also like...
Jordan:You're just not drawn to it.
Brian Casel:But also, it's not exactly the expertise or the credibility or the experience that I have. Like, I've I've never worked in a large company, frankly. Certainly not as a developer, not not running a developer teams. And so I... It's not like I come into this with all this like built up knowledge and expertise that I can come develop into a into a program or into a into a teachable implementable system.
Brian Casel:Like, that's not something that I come to the table with. So yeah, I could spend I could spend years developing that and of course AI keeps changing and every every company has different dynamics. Like there's all all these challenges with that that I dabbled in that a little bit in the past year and I was like, that's not it for me, you know. Justin, do you
Jordan:have anything to add? Otherwise, I I can talk about this this conference and I can actually... No. Can can connect
Justin:Maybe you this let's end on that because we're we're going a little bit late here. But... Yeah. Cool. Let's go.
Justin:Let's do that.
Brian Casel:Wanna hear about this.
Jordan:So so this this conference is like a... It's it's a dipping a toe into normie world outside of the Internet. And and my takeaway is there's an enormous amount of opportunity. There's enormous amount of ambition. There's a enormous amount of money that's chasing opportunities.
Jordan:So this conference I went to was for independent sponsors. Okay. Independent sponsor as a term most people have not come across. No. What what it means is...
Jordan:So an individual sponsor. So a person. Let's just use me for an example. If I'm the sponsor, what I do is I find a target company that I want to acquire, and then I find investors, equity and debt investors, to fund, finance the acquisition of the company that I want to acquire, and then put into place value creation, growth, systems, professionalization, maybe put together more than one company so that it gets some economies of scale, whatever your plan is. Traditionally, this has gone on a lot in, like, more traditional industries.
Justin:Manufacturing,
Jordan:home services, I mean, all types. Legal. It's a more traditional and and has not really been done as much in the SaaS universe.
Justin:Okay.
Jordan:So as you guys know, I'm increasingly interested in m and a in general and this type of approach to business. And so I thought this conference would be a great way to just go up the learning curve. And and and it was great. It was two days and there's some talks, but it's basically all one on one conversations. So you just like, you basically pay for this conference, you get into the portal, and you just start requesting meetings with people.
Justin:You're just like DMing people saying, hey, let's meet...
Jordan:That's what everyone's that's what everyone's You kinda put your profile and and you literally wear like different colored lanyards. Like, if you're a sponsor, you wear white. If you're a capital provider, you wear green. If you're a service provider, you wear blue. Like, everyone's...
Jordan:And I had multiple conversations of people just standing in line for breakfast and then just turning around and being like, hi, what are you doing here? Yeah. So everyone, like, came to talk to people and learn from them and and so on.
Brian Casel:What was, like, the range of, like, the types of businesses that were... That would be like acquired through something like this?
Jordan:So so the types of business......
Brian Casel:That you spoke to.
Jordan:Okay. So so the businesses are not present there. Right? The businesses are like the the... They're like the outside party.
Jordan:What this type of conference is for is for independent sponsors that are looking for money and capital providers that are looking to give money to independent sponsors. And so what what... Where a lot of this lives is private equity uses its own capital to acquire companies, put their own people in place, and that's generally seen as like majority private equity. Like, you're buying a majority of company. You own the company or at least a majority of it.
Jordan:You're in control of it. You do a bunch of stuff with it. You bolt on other acquisitions. You change the... You divest these businesses that don't make as much sense as the core business.
Jordan:You... Whatever you're trying to do to create value in the deal that you're in. But sometimes you wanna play in industries or you wanna be involved and have, you know, investments into places that are not core, and that's when minority investments come into play. So a private equity company says, alright. We have all this money and we have different strategies.
Jordan:And one of our strategies is gonna be minority investments. And so minority investment works really well with an independent sponsor because the independent sponsor wants a bunch of different investors to come into the deal to be able to help out in their different ways. So the number one takeaway from the entire thing was that there's an unlimited amount of money. There's there's infinite money. Money's not the problem.
Jordan:The the problem is where money finds a home and that is and that is good deals. And so if if I'm gonna come... The reason I went, the reason I'm interested in this is because I wanted to test and understand, does this model of independent sponsorship, does it have a place in software Mhmm. In SaaS? Because a lot of what we're talking about in our regular conversations, including this one today, is the difficulty in software and the difficulty online and competition and obsolescence and moats and a a lot of companies are unhealthy because of it.
Jordan:And so this independent spot basically going in this direction is like, well, what's the flip side of that reality? The flip side is that there are a lot of software companies that are in trouble and are stuck. And is there a universe where acquiring them, maybe putting them together, maybe improving them, maybe changing the capital structure from you raised $50,000,000 from VCs and you're actually better off not having that as a liquidation preference and maybe you're at 10,000,000 ARR and maybe you should just be a healthy profitable company and not try to go for the growth acquired from VC. So maybe you can acquire from the VCs, clean up the cap table, and operate it as a profitable company that makes $10,000,000 a year in revenue. And it...
Jordan:That's really valuable in that universe, but it's not valuable in VC universe.
Justin:Yeah. Is this kinda like leading an angelist syndicate, but instead you're... Instead of investing in new companies, you're like, is the sponsor, like, the leader of a syndicate? And instead of going out and looking for new places to invest, they're looking for existing cash flowing companies to go and take over. And like, that's the value that they're providing?
Jordan:Yes. The the interesting thing about it is the the the economics are super interesting. The independent sponsor almost has, like, private equity economics, meaning you get carry. You get a percentage of what happens on the on the second deal. Right?
Jordan:In VC, you get carry because you you you put in $10,000,000 into a company and the company becomes very valuable and your position goes from 10,000,000 initially invested and now it's worth a $100,000,000 and that that difference from 10 to a 100, that $90,000,000, if your carry is 20%, you get 20% of that $90,000,000. And that's why VCs are in the game they're in. That's why private equity is in the game they're in. So the carry is the percentage of the increase in the value that's realized when the company gets sold. Mhmm.
Jordan:So for an independent sponsor, let's just play this out. $3,000,000 ARR company bootstrapped, a million dollars in EBITDA. Let's just say you buy that company for three x. So $9,000,000, three x of ARR. Then you take it, you invest in it.
Jordan:Right? You add working capital in and then you take it from 3,000,000 ARR to 6,000,000 ARR in the span of two years. And then instead of three x, the market has improved and you're in a better place because you're now at six x and your EBITDA is bigger. So you've gone from 3,000,000 ARR worth 9,000,000.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:Now you're 6,000,000, but now you get a four x when you sell, so you sell for 24,000,000. So from 9,000,000 to 24,000,000, the independent sponsor gets a piece of that. Ideally... You sell? When you sell.
Jordan:Yeah. So you get answer
Justin:or anything else. Yeah.
Jordan:I mean, you could do. Right? There's a whole bunch of, like, wrinkles in between, but it's like, can you help the company? Can you put the right management team in place? Can you keep the right management team in place and bring in the new people and get rid of the people that are wrong for it?
Jordan:Can you do partnerships? Can you implement marketing strategies that you are aware of and maybe this company hasn't done a good job of? Mhmm. What... One of the more interesting things I think for this crowd, like, to this podcast Mhmm.
Jordan:Is when you talk to Bootstrap founders, they almost always under under invest in marketing. Yeah. And and it's a very rational thing to do because it's your money.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:If you are doing, you know, a million dollars in profit, let's just call it $80,000 a a a month in in profit in your company, putting 50 k a month of that into ads is taking 50 k a month out of your pocket. That... And then that's really really hard to do. If it's someone else's money and the mandate is to take this money and grow with it, then you spend the $50 a month and you grow faster. So there...
Jordan:There's almost like this like approach. Yes. It's approach arbitrage. It's a mentality arbitrage or like a reality arbitrage.
Brian Casel:What's what's the receptiveness to this crowd for, like, getting into the software business?
Jordan:The biggest challenge is that this industry only goes by profitability, and and they they don't know what to do when something isn't profitable. And they like to price off of that EBITDA number, not ARR number. So there's like some wrapping your head around how to make that work. Like, what do you mean you're gonna pay three x of annual revenue that has nothing to do with the cash flow, and how how you can service the debt that you're gonna put along with the equity that we give you. So so there's, some disconnect in in in general, but it...
Jordan:I mean, people just wanna see good deals. So I I came away... Interesting. Yeah. With with, you know, some interesting kind of insights.
Jordan:But I think there's... Whenever there are these big challenges in our universe around software, I think the flip side just creates, you know, different type of opportunities. And I'm very curious. If you if you look if... Look.
Jordan:Think about Tiny Seed. There's bunch of awesome companies. Real tough to get an exit these days.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:Right? Where's that liquidity for that market? It's the same thing for those, like, distressed VC backed companies. Like, you know, why does Miro sell with 400,000,000 ARR and, like, a ton of money on the books is because they don't they don't have any options. And so spending spoons comes along and says, we are your best option.
Justin:Yeah.
Jordan:So it definitely makes me think of like, there are opportunities to build new things. There are also opportunities to acquire things and change their nature.
Justin:I'm super fascinated by this idea because... I mean, even... You can see there's... I... Maybe not quite the same arbitrage, but you you could see even having this opportunity in something else like, who's the guy that does storage, storage places, you know?
Jordan:Nick Huber.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. So it's like you can see the... There's a scale advantage. Right?
Justin:Because like you said, maybe it's not always investing in marketing. Maybe it's just like most independent owners do x, which stops them from growing because of, you know, why. And if you can identify the arbitrage opportunity, you can be like, well, if we buy a bunch of these and we run our playbook or we invest in the levers we know create, you know, margin, then what a beautiful business, Look, you
Jordan:my experience with Rosie has been that advertising can really work.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:And and you can grow pretty damn fast if you are able to buy customers. Yeah. And so when I look out at the landscape, sometimes I I'll come across a product and the Bootstrap founder will have gone to a million ARR and they're like, okay. Now I don't know I don't know what to do. Now I can't grow.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And if
Jordan:you ask them how much they're spending on marketing, it's $10 a month. And you can say, okay, if this product just had $50 a month in budget to spend in ads, pretty sure I could double it, you know, in in six to twelve months. Yeah. And that, you know, that just kinda makes you think in in general.
Justin:I I also love... I mean, I I I felt like you were talking about me when
Jordan:you're sample because the the... On what? The underfunding marketing or...
Justin:Under... We don't do pay... We don't do any paid acquisition. And these limiting beliefs that we have as founders. That's interesting in of itself.
Justin:And then it's also interesting saying, well, now I'm an outsider and I'm looking at this business and it's like, if we take your feelings off the table, if we take the feelings of the team off the table, if we take you know, that's why these things often work. It's like Evernote sold to bending spoons. And, you know, there's all these people there and this culture and everything. And, yes, it's important. But if we're gonna make this thing profitable, we gotta we've gotta fire 75% of you and we gotta rebuild the product.
Justin:I know you guys don't wanna do that, but we're gonna do it. And we're gonna raise the price. And, you know, and that ends up being the the the thing that works.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan:It's always a good exercise to look at your business and say, if I sold it tomorrow, what would what would the new owner do?
Justin:Yes. Yep. That dispassionate view is hard to get. We're so... I mean, listen to all of us talking.
Justin:We're just so emotional about our own situations.
Brian Casel:And it's like easy to just to to sort of say like, oh, we we've we've tried that once or twice and it didn't work or, you know, like you you haven't tried it or you haven't tried everything in the in in in all... There's all sorts of different ways somebody new can can look at the same things that you've tried and do it do it differently, do it better. Mhmm. Like the the one positive note I want to leave before we before we wrap is like that, you know, like it's it's easy to look around and and look at all these like dead ends and feel like paralyzed, like you don't know where to go. I've been there, you know, But the thing that I keep coming back to is like, at the end of the day, it's still better to just stay in motion.
Brian Casel:I know you talk about this, Justin, staying in motion. But like doing things that I know like no... Like coming to terms with the fact like I don't have the answers yet on what I'm gonna do for this next product that I'm gonna do. I have some ideas, but I don't I don't really know. And I...
Brian Casel:And and I'm very uncertain about what the world is gonna look like in 2027 in terms of whatever I decide to invest my time in. So there's no possible way I could possibly know the future, but if I continue to invest and actually be productive, whether that's like doing videos and continuing to invest in growing the one distribution channel that I've managed to figure out over the past year or just going ahead and building new products rather than waiting around until the perfect opportunity to build a new product presents itself, you know? Mhmm. Just just doing things that are like, you don't have to have all the answers right. Just just be productive instead of feeling paralyzed.
Brian Casel:I think that's ultimately yeah. That's why I like to celebrate people who are shipping stuff. Yeah. Seeing tweets like you, everybody can poke fun and say like, oh, they're not marketing or they're not, you know, shipping is the easy part. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But like, it's also the thing that that that like 99% of people are just not even doing because they're paralyzed. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. You stay in motion people.
Jordan:Yeah. An idiot in motion beats a genius, you know, stand still. Yeah. Great way to leave it off today. Mhmm.
Justin:Alright, everybody. Thanks. Great, great chat today, by the way. Kind of built momentum. We've got more and more people adding as we as we kept talking.
Justin:So thanks to everyone who showed up and yeah, go to panelpodcast.com and you can find us in your podcast player that way. Find the YouTube video and leave a comment too. We'd love that.
Jordan:Mhmm. Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend. See you, folks.
Justin:Bye.