The Panel – smart founders discuss the realities of building a business

Okay. Let's do one more take. Brian, one of my favorite things about being a bootstrapper and going to conferences are those moments where after hours, you go to a bar or you go to someone's room and you just shoot the shit. You talk about what is it really like running your business? What are the real challenges you're seeing right now?

100%. You know, a lot of these, conferences are it's you know, the the talks are fine, but it's really all about, the hallway track, the dinners, the lunches. I I love to meet up with, founders and go snowboarding and talking on the chairlift about our our businesses, our lives away from our businesses, all of it.

And I think what emerges in those conversations is the fact that, you know, on the Internet, everyone pretends like there's one right answer. You know? There's one path to success. And all the gurus and tweeters and everyone, they're all sharing, like, the one true way to get somewhere. But reality is different, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. If if there's one thing that that I've learned from a couple years around the block around the block in this in this industry is that there really is no right way or wrong way to build and launch a product, to grow a products business, to build a great life as an entrepreneur on the Internet. Everyone does it differently. Everyone wins at this game in a different way. And and we define success in different ways.

And that's that's what I'm really excited to dig into in this podcast because we're gonna have a rotating panel of of guests where we can just hear different perspectives.

Yeah. That's the goal. This show is called the panel because in every episode, Brian and I are going to bring on 2 of our founder friends to debate and discuss the most important issues for software entrepreneurs, software developers, anyone trying to build a business and a career in tech.

You know, one of the things that I love so much about working in this industry is how well connected we are. I think that's really unique to us, and other industries are not as well connected as we are. Podcasts is a are a huge part of why we are so well connected. And this podcast, the panel is a is a great place where we can bring our founder friends together and just hear different perspectives about what's going on right now in in your business, in your life, in your in your part of the world, where you're coming from, what you're seeing on the ground.

And I guess we should introduce ourselves, for this trailer. I'm Justin Jackson. You might know me as the cofounder of Transistor.fm and the cohost of the build your SaaS podcast.

And I'm Brian Casel. I'm working on instrumental products. We build products for people who build products. You might also know me as the cohost of the Bootstrap web podcast. And in

terms of topics, we've got a whole bunch of ideas, real issues that we wanna talk about, like what's really working in SaaS marketing right now in terms of acquiring customers?

Yeah. And, you know, what I'm really interested in is how fast things are changing, especially with AI and how that impacts how we think about products, how we build products, how customers buy products. I think all this stuff is changing. Customer behavior is changing. Business models are getting flipped on their head.

And if we can bring on our friends who have had different experiences, we can explore some of these topics. Like, what's it like running a business that's based on open source? We know those people. They can tell us the pros and the cons. What's it like serving a really niche category?

Well, we can bring those folks on as well. What about, you know, one time purchases versus recurring SaaS purchases? We can bring on people that can provide their perspective, and then you as a listener benefit because you can decide what path might work best for you.

You know, I mean, that's where I've always, gotten my inspiration is from observing and following along with with people like yourself, Justin, and so many others in our in our industry. You know, you can just take little nuggets, little little bits and pizza pieces of ideas that you can take back into your own own world and spin it and and and put your own, perspective on it. There there is no right or wrong way to build a product, to build a business, to build a great life as a founder and entrepreneur doing things on the Internet.

And, hopefully, by providing more diverse perspectives, people will also be able to identify with one of those perspectives and feel like they're not alone in the way that they're feeling about their business or their progress so far. So if you're a founder over 40 and you're starting to get a little tired, we'll have that perspective. But if you're, you know, a founder in your twenties thirties and you still got lots of spit and vinegar, we'll provide that perspective as well. And, hopefully, it just allows everybody to feel like, okay. I'm there's somebody else out there that's going through the same thing as I am.

You know, and I I just one more thing that I'm fired up about and and oh, and always continually fired up about is when you have a new idea, or you're about to take action on building a new product, or launching a new business, or launching a big new feature, a new campaign in your business. That fire that happens when you're in the, in the pre launch building phase. I wanna sort of tap into that and and and like peer into the window of of what people are currently cooking up. Like, that that's always exciting to me.

Me too. Me too. So if you're excited about this idea, we could use your help. Go to panel podcast.com and sign up for the waiting list. We're gonna send you an email right away asking for your feedback.

And this show is going to be done in both video and audio. So if you'd prefer to watch on YouTube, you can do it there, or you can subscribe to us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your show.

Yep. You know the drill. And, hey, we're gonna have comments, of course, in in the YouTube channel. You can comment back to us on Blue Sky or at least on my end. I'm still on x.

But, yeah.

So, again, if this sounds interesting to you, head to panel podcast.com, sign up for that waiting list, and we'll let you know when we're publishing our first episode. Cool. I think that was good.

Yeah.