- Clippy was this annoying little paperclip
that would offer you suggestions.
Like, oh, did you forget to do this?
Or did you forget to do that?
- It's like you start writing hello
and then Clippy comes in and says,
"Hey, it looks like you're writing a letter to your mom."
- While you're doing like accounting and spreadsheets.
People hated it and Microsoft eventually shut it down.
- Hello, hello, hello.
This is Arnab, your co-host from the Metacast podcast.
And with me here is Ilya.
- Hey, I'm Ilya.
I'm Arnab's co-host of the Metacast podcast.
The podcast about podcasting.
- And this is a meta-sode with our reflections
from the last episode, which was an interview
with the Squadcast founders, Zach and Rock.
- Yes.
- And I also realized that those meta-sodes,
they aren't just reflections.
They are almost like our diary of how we create a Metacast.
Because we talk a lot about things like what our process was,
how it changed, what are the different things we learned,
how keyboards interrupt the recording experience.
So all of that stuff that isn't always related to the previous recording,
but it's the stuff that we have learned since our last recording.
All the stuff that came up since our last recording,
which is kind of interesting.
because if you listen to this a year or two, five years from now,
it would be very interesting to see how that absolutely amazingly sounding great podcast
evolved over those years, right?
From that pretty good sounding actually from the first episode.
But yeah, we had a few hiccups here and there and those meta-sodes,
they actually captured a lot of the, I guess, feedback to ourselves.
- Right.
If this is really five years in the future that you're listening to this episode right now,
I'm assuming that Ilya, you and I are the only people who are listening to this episode,
maybe five years from now, maybe on a rainy day when we're feeling nostalgic.
Hey, let me listen to this.
But listener, if you're really listening and the year is now 2028,
please leave us a review.
That would be amazing.
- It's like year 2028.
- Yes.
- Wow.
I still remember how we celebrated year 2000.
It's like, how come it's like already 2023?
Every time I write this somewhere in an email or a document, I'm like,
seriously 2023, am I this old?
- It does feel like those sci-fi days of flying cars, all that, right?
Like when you hear about 2023, it feels like it should be something like that.
But we're in a very different world right now than what we imagined like say 20 years ago.
- So we are going on a tangent, but this time I promise we will finish this very quickly.
When I was on a vacation a couple of years ago, I had nothing to do one day and I decided to watch
The Demolition Man.
It's a movie from mid nineties, maybe late eighties with Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone and Sandra
Bullock too.
It's one of those action movies where some criminals and the policemen who captured that criminal,
they got put into a cryogenic prison where they get frozen.
And then I think 30 or 40 years later, they get unfrozen because that criminal escapes and
the only person who can catch that person is of course a policeman, right?
And Sandra Bullock is the police woman from the future.
- Oh, I think I've seen this movie.
When you said the name, I didn't quite get it, but now I think I've seen this movie.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Okay.
So, and the thing happens, I think in like year 2015 or something.
Yeah, it might have been 1985 and then the action happens 2015.
And yes, you have flying cars there.
You have video conferencing with holograms of people and stuff like that.
- Yeah.
- And I remember I was looking at this and I was just like laughing because some of that
did come to reality, like the video conferencing, but the whole flying cars thing.
- Yeah, we over imagined the future.
- Every kind of movie that you go back to say from the seventies, eighties, or even nineties,
that is imagining the year 2015 or 2020s.
Flying cars is pretty much the first thing that comes in and we are nowhere close to it.
Actually, maybe it's not a good idea, but regardless, the one thing that we never imagined
is our cell phones and social network.
It's crazy how much we, well, I don't know if you want to call it progress or not necessarily,
but how much advancement we've made in that side that we could not have imagined 15, 20 years back.
- Yeah.
I just hope that the metaverse doesn't happen.
- I want to still enjoy nature in real life, not in my, whatever, VR headset, what do they call them? VR headsets?
- Yeah.
So, I mean, to be fair, I took a sabbatical last year before I quit my job last summer.
One of the things I did is I read a few books about VR.
I did experience it a little bit and I think it can be pretty cool in some spaces, especially.
But I also, when I want to go for a hike, I actually want to go for a hike and not put on my VR headset and imagine that I'm, or not even imagine,
if it's really realistic, then your brain is made to feel that you're in there, you're immersed in it, right?
But I think when I come out of it, I would realize it and I would not enjoy it anymore.
- Yeah.
But also there are energies that are not transferable through, they're not digitizable, you know?
- Yeah.
- Anyway, let's, yeah.
- Well, no, no, no, we've got to finish this tension.
- Okay.
- But I think one thing is really cool is, let's say you want to imagine or get immersed in the ocean world, right?
So you can go hiking, you want to experience the mountain, sure, go there, hike, right?
And you'll get the full thing.
But one thing you cannot do is imagine the ocean world, for example.
And that's something that things like VR can make it very real.
Like being able to swim next to a giant squid or a family of whales, listening to their songs,
and actually being fully immersed in it, right?
- Yeah.
Yeah.
That aspect I buy.
- Yeah.
- Or like you can travel to space, for example.
- Yeah.
- Right?
What I am not in favor of is to replace your regular life, like hikes, like you mentioned, right?
- Yeah.
- With the virtual experience.
- Yeah.
- Because it's not the same.
Yeah.
So things that are impossible to do in real life.
- Yes.
- I think Metaverse is like totally cool for that.
- Yes.
- Well, VR is cool for that.
- Yes.
- The Metaverse thing is like whatever the sim city that you live in, like in your headsets.
- It's also very poorly executed right now.
But yeah, I agree.
I don't want to be working inside the Metaverse or having meetings with
you or other people inside the Metaverse right now.
- Yeah.
Are you ready player one?
- Yeah.
- By the way, disclaimer, we're not affiliated with Meta, Metaverse or any of that.
We are Metacast.
It's completely separate.
- Right.
Yeah.
And when we talk about Prime episodes, we are not affiliated with Amazon.
- Yes.
- Even though we used to be.
- Yes.
- But not in the podcasting capacity.
- Yes.
Okay.
Let's go back to the year 2023.
- Yeah, leave us a review.
I think that's what it was about, right?
- Yes.
- So we don't have enough reviews just yet.
So one topic I wanted to suggest you to have in every Metaverse, if applicable,
is giving feedback to each other.
- Yeah.
- I think we've done it in the past.
- Yeah.
- But we can do more of it.
- All right, let's go.
Bring it on.
- Yeah.
Are you ready?
- Yes.
- Are you ready to take feedback?
- Yes.
- I was born ready for feedback.
- Oops.
- Wait, wait.
I think I moved the spoon while I was saying that.
- Exactly.
- I was born ready for feedback.
- Okay.
- I don't know which part we should keep the difference.
- Or both.
So here's what I wanted to...
It's not really a feedback.
It's more like we need to find a process.
And that's actually what Zak and Rok also were talking about in our interview.
What I noticed quite a bit is when any of us start talking when another person hasn't finished yet,
or we think they finished, but, you know, we start talking and we interrupt them.
And then you have this, oh, sorry.
Oh, no, you, no, no, you go and all that.
This stuff, when you edit it, remove it from the record, sometimes it sounds weird.
Because as if something is missing, but you don't want to keep that, you go first, you go first stuff.
So we need to figure out some signaling mechanism where maybe, you know, raise your hand.
Actually, we do this at work at Google.
- Yeah, yeah. - So in Google Meet,
there is a feature to raise your hand.
And then the etiquette, at least at Google, is that when you see somebody raise their hand,
it means that you finish your thought, you finish what you were talking about, right?
And then you say, okay, Arnab, I see your hand is raised, you go.
These days, it's just so commonplace.
I would be just like, Arnab?
And then it would be the signal for you to start asking your question.
And then if multiple people raise their hands, Google Meet actually tracks the order
in which they were raised.
- Yeah, yeah. - And then you just go in order they were raised.
But Squadcast doesn't have the hand raising feature.
- We do videos so we could actually raise our hands.
- Yeah.
Just don't do what one of our colleagues at Amazon used to do where he would raise his hand
and keep it to rest for five minutes.
And it would like freak everybody out because it was uncomfortable to see,
like somebody always holding their hand up.
- Yeah, the other thing with that is in meetings, I think it's very common to raise hands and like
basically transfer from me to you that way.
However, in a podcast, we'll experiment with it, but it might be a bit weird to actually
hear somebody explicitly transferring saying, oh, you want to say something, here you go.
- We should not explicitly say anything.
- Right. - It should be just, I see that you raised your hand
and then maybe I acknowledge it with a nod.
Yeah. And then you lower your hand because otherwise it would be too weird, I think,
if you keep it raised for so long.
- By the way, listeners, I've been keeping my hand raised this whole time and Ilya didn't let me talk.
- Yeah, because we don't have video, right? So I could be passive aggressive.
- Okay. But by the way, when we do record, we do have video.
So yeah, yeah, let's try that out. We'll see how it goes, especially with four people in a recording.
Like we've done how many, two episodes so far and our next one is also with four people.
It can be quite tricky to coordinate like who's going to speak next and all that.
- Yeah. And maybe we could try actually talking to Angela and Annie when we record before the recording.
- Yeah. - And see if we can try out that thing.
Actually, maybe they already have something like that.
- Yeah. - And just see how it works.
You know, I know Angela, I work with her. Annie is new to me, but still like, you know, they're very nice and all.
So we can just try things out, experiment in a safe environment.
- Yeah. - Not that any of our previous guests weren't safe, but this will be.
- By the way, today is the 26th of Jan and we are talking about Squadcast, our reflections,
that the episode that came out last week as your listening listener.
- In March.
- Which came out in March. Yes.
- Yeah.
- But today is 26th of Jan.
I think the point of this episode is time travel anyway, so why not take it further.
But we are interviewing with Angela and Annie in a couple of days on 28th of Jan.
And we're both very excited.
And I don't want to take this too far because we will talk with them and then we'll have a reflection
of their episode too. But thanks for introducing me to that podcast, Hearts in Taiwan.
I am absolutely loving it. I've listened to a lot of new podcasts this year, but that is my highlight so far.
- Yeah. The interesting thing about us doing that podcast, about podcasting, is that because we do research,
we have to expose ourselves to things that we normally might not have listened to. Like Hearts in Taiwan,
I would have never found this organically. The way I discovered that podcast.
So I reached out to Mike, who is our head of developer relations at Google Maps Platform,
and asked him if he knows any podcasters, because by nature, he would be like out there talking to people and all.
And he said, "Yes, one of them is in my team." And he introduced me to, I mean, I knew Angela, of course, before, but he said, like, if this is her podcast,
I would have never listened to something about Taiwan. I just don't have a natural interest in Taiwan. I guess it's not surprising that I don't.
- Yeah. - Then I turned it on and started listening to that podcast. And at some deep level, I can't quite explain it resonated with me so well.
- Yes.
- Not just their personalities, but also the things I talk about, the parenting. And I think they are second
generation immigrants. I'm a first generation immigrant, but my kids are second generation immigrants. So those
things, they just were so interesting. And they approached this from their cultural perspective,
which is different from mine. But for me, it was so kind of mind expanding that, I don't know,
maybe we should savor this for the next meta. So maybe let's go back to squad cast.
- Yes.
- So back to feedback, back to feedback. One thing is those interruptions. So yeah, let's try to maybe raise hands.
- So for the meta swords, I don't think we need that. Like this kind of interruption that you and I have is
very natural. It sounds natural and I want to keep it that way. But I think when there's three or four
people, we definitely need that coordination.
- Yeah. Actually, I didn't experience any issues editing our meta swords because also then you and I can
be conscious of that and maybe take a pause, say it again. It's not a big deal. With guests, it's more
like a continuum of words. We don't re-record stuff there. So the other thing I noticed,
editing, not editing, I was listening to our Jake and Jonathan episode. It came out this week.
The week we recorded this, it came out a couple of days ago. I was listening to it in my car and
there was just, I speak so fast and there are so many, so much stutter and corrections. And I'm like,
this is, this is really bad. I think I've improved over time, but now I'm actually making a conscious
effort to speak more slowly, which I think actually will also benefit me in the life outside podcasting,
which is actually an interesting point that Zach and Rock were also making.
- Yeah. - That podcasting trains you to speak
certain way, to listen certain way. And I think this will be one of the benefits I get from doing this show.
- Yes. So I'll tell you what I hear. I don't hear the stutters or stop words and all that. And I think
we talked about this in our, one of the very first episodes, your brain basically just throws all
that out, right? If you're engrossed in the content, you're not going to hear all that stuff.
And I don't, I do think you speak fast sometimes when you're excited, especially, and you are
excited when you're recording these podcasts. - Especially the Jake and Jonathan.
- Yes. It was not at a level where it was like, that I don't understand that you're going too fast.
In my podcast listening app, I have like the speed turned on a little bit, like 1.15 or 1.2x and it
still sounds natural. And one of the listeners also told me that you are fast, but they like it that
way. And it's very natural. If you're consciously trying to slow it down, do that, but don't go like
overboard with it. I think it's pretty natural what you have going.
- Yeah. One thing I'll say is I was editing our episodes recently at 2x speed. So basically I just...
I don't think we mentioned that before. So we are now working with a sound engineer.
Our process has changed. Now what we do is after we record, I download the files, import them
into the app called Ferrite on the iPad. So I have an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. Ferrite is like
a digital audio workstation, but kind of very rudimentary compared to what you get on the computer.
But with Apple Pencil, it makes it really easy to make edits. And we can talk a little bit more about
that after I finish and thought about speed. Because of Ferrite's interface, it kind of makes it really
easy to switch between 1x and 2x speed. So what I do is when you have those transitions between speakers,
I listen to those on 1x to make sure that I correct it so they sound natural. But when one person is
talking for a long time, I just listen to it on 2x just to make sure there are no like weird artifacts
or something like that. And the funny thing I noticed, I was editing, I think it was this quadcast episode.
Somebody was talking for like a long time. And I think I was asking the question and then I slow it
down to 1x. And my speech felt to me like that. So just purely from like a cognitive perspective,
right? So my brain was playing tricks with me. Because I guess I was so used to listening to
voices on 2x. When slowed down, at normal speed, they felt slowed down. But then if you listen to
those enough on 1x, it starts to feel natural again. It's just such a weird realization. Yeah.
You know, I've been learning and doing like Flutter apps, right? I built one recently. And now I'm
building another one. And this was all new to me. I've never done mobile development. So I did one
course in Udemy. And there's a lot of great content on YouTube, too. But these are all like
36 hours or at least 10 hour long things, right? And I listen to them at like 2x speed.
And so sometimes I go back because I was like, okay, I didn't quite grok it or I need to pay specific
attention because I'm not getting this thing. So I slow down to 1x and it feels so weird. It's like,
in my head, the image of that person speaking has become the 2x speed normally. And when I hear
them speak naturally, it feels very weird now. Yeah. I think there's a big difference in how you
perceive speech when you speed up somebody who narrates like lectures, for example, or audiobooks.
So people read off a script. And they, I think, intentionally speak at proper pace so that people
with different, I guess, cognitive abilities in terms of processing speech can understand and people
who maybe look a bit faster, they can speed it up. So they adjust, right? So audiobooks are usually very,
very slow for my liking. But when you listen to a dialogue, so at least for me, I can't even do 1.1x.
Like it has to be at natural speed because if it's just people talking, I want to hear them talk at
natural pace. The dissonance I had once, I watched Neil Gaiman's Masterclass on masterclass.com
about writing and comics. That's actually how I learned about Sandman. And yeah, so I listened to
maybe three hours of his content. I really liked it at 1x because it's really weird to like see a person
move at a much faster speed too. And also he has a very pleasant voice in a very nice manner. And then
I listened to my first Neil Gaiman's book, which was Coraline. It's a great book and it was narrated
by Neil Gaiman himself. And my app had the setting that all of the books play at like 1.3x, I think.
And it just sounded so weird because his voice was distorted to my ear. So I slowed down to 1x and I was like,
wow. Okay. So now it sounds good. And obviously it took me 30% more time to listen to that audio book,
but it just felt so good when you hear to the author himself doing this. And he has this kind of manner
that is different from, you know, somebody else reads the book rather than the author. It's his book.
He's very excited about his own book and he reads this such great, I don't know, he does really well.
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. By the way, talking about Neil Gaiman, episode number seven of our podcast,
which was a prime episode, we went to... 7.5.
7.5. Yes, you're right. Maybe it should have been like 7.7 or something. But anyway...
Anyway, episode number 7.5 or something between 7 and 8 that came out, we went to depth about Neil Gaiman
and the Sandman comic books and all that. And you asked me to read or listen to his audio books and
stuff, right? So I did pick up the audio book and I started watching the show on Netflix and I have a lot of
stuff to talk about, but we'll reserve it for our next prime episode whenever that comes out.
Yes, yeah. Finish at least the whole series on Netflix and at least one full audio version of it,
which covers three comics. Actually, I think it covers the entire Netflix series.
Okay.
I mean, the same kind of range of the original books.
Right.
So yeah, I'm curious what you will think about it.
Yeah. Cool.
I think I'll surprise you with some of my takes on this, but we'll do it in the next prime episode, not now.
Talking about the other piece of feedback that you and I were talking about is...
So the way we record our episodes right now, the Metacast podcast with guests is we have a set of
high-level topics in mind when we sit down with guests because we do some research, we listen to their
podcasts and their work and come up with some things, but we don't have a script of exactly what we're going to talk about.
And we do go on tangents and I feel like it's been working great.
We do also have a checklist of things to do, like introduce...
Which we never use.
Yes. And we were going to talk about...
You and I have been talking about, like, how can we actually figure out, enforce that checklist?
Because one thing...
Actually, Brian mentioned this in our very second episode is when you're recording...
Very second episode, yes.
Yes, very second.
And we were talking about checklists in our very third episode.
Yes, but Brian mentioned this in the very first episode with a guest.
To make it easier for listeners, it's episode number two.
So if you want to listen to it, it's episode number two.
Yes, with Brian McCullough.
He mentioned what you are having to do when you're recording a podcast.
So you are doing so many functions at the same time, right?
Like, you're trying to keep to a certain agenda, however high level or lose it may be, like in our case.
You're trying to listen with a lot of attention to what your guest is saying, so that you understand it and have a very nice follow-up conversation about it.
At the same time, you're thinking about where next you want to go and how you bridge from where you are to there.
And on top of it, now we have the checklist.
And I feel like that might be at the gut of us completely forgetting about the checklist.
And why we bring this up is in our last episode with Squadcast founders, Zach and Rock, we forgot to ask them at the end where people can find them.
Well, thankfully, they are the founders of Squadcast and it's like all over Squadcast.fm.
So you won't have a problem with that.
But we should have at least mentioned Squadcast.fm.
We didn't even do that.
Yes.
And in our intro also, we mentioned them by name, but they themselves didn't say like,
Hey, this is Zach or this is Rock.
And so it was a bit abrupt in the beginning.
So we should also figure out what's our process to like basically use that checklist.
And I've been thinking like maybe we should just print out like a big sheet, put it like on the wall in front of us or on maybe like an iPad on a secondary display or something like that.
Something that is big and like hard to miss.
Yeah.
One thing that I think affects my workflow or at least used to affect is up until this very day until today.
So I have this foamy, what do you call this?
It's like a sound absorption thing that I would put around my microphone so that I reduce the echo.
And that obscured half of my screen when I was doing the recording.
And also when I would talk, I would turn away from the screen, which also made it difficult for me to track our notes, to track our checklist.
Like my keyboard would be a little bit removed from me.
So it's kind of a very ergonomically bad position that I was in.
So what I did a couple of days ago, I played with the settings of my microphone and also played with the positioning of that foamy thing.
And I found the settings of like the gain and other parameters for the Shure MV7 that allow me now to actually see my full screen and have my keyboard and my trackpad in front of me so that I actually can properly focus on the screen.
So maybe next time I'll try to be there.
Maybe that's what we should do.
Maybe we should appoint who of us is accountable for tracking the checklist.
Maybe for the next recording, let that be me.
So I'll be the scheduling Nazi person.
Not scheduling, checklisting, whatever.
Make sure that we say things that we have to say.
You will be the check police.
Check police.
It's like the Czech Republic police.
Yeah, I was talking to somebody actually the other day and his wife is Slovak, but they live in the Czech Republic.
And we were talking about the other language, like the Slovak language and the Czech language.
I got it the same.
So yeah, when I say the Czech police, I have this recency bias.
You know, I remember him talking about the Czech.
Czech police.
Czech language.
Czech police.
Cool.
And I'm happy for you to do it in the next episode because I'm really looking forward to that conversation.
I know it already that I'm going to be so immersed in that conversation that I would forget about checklists.
So I can be the distracted one.
Actually, let me put the Google doc right now.
And I just say Ilya is the Czech police.
All right.
I'll put it, I'll put it in red in very big letters.
And I hope I don't miss that.
Let's talk about some of the highlights and reflections from the Squadcast episode.
Let's start with yours first.
Sure.
So first thing that I really enjoyed there is there was a lot of passion coming from Zach and Rock about their product, about the users.
So before we started recording, we actually gave them some feedback about pricing.
Basically, we have to use a more expensive plan in order to have more people in the recording.
But because we are doing audio only, a cheaper plan would have sufficed for us if that wasn't restricted.
So we gave that feedback.
They listened very, very carefully.
I almost had flashbacks to Amazon.
You know how sometimes in some companies you talk to product people and they would try to explain to you why you're wrong for not using their product in the right way or you don't understand the logic for why they did things a certain way.
And we will not name the companies, but yeah, some companies do that.
Whereas at Amazon, the product manager would just shut up and listen and ask questions.
And that's exactly what Zach and Rock did.
I really, really enjoyed that part.
As a product manager, I was like, okay, so these people get product.
And you can see this in their product.
The product is really good.
I would say their product is great.
They made the user experience really, really good.
And talking to them, I know why.
And now I understand because the two most important people really care about what they do in their users.
Yeah.
And the other thing that's...
Hand up.
My hand is up.
Talking about feedback to Squadcast.
And going back to our previous thing about checklist.
Wouldn't it be cool to have that checklist in the Squadcast UX itself?
And have AI track what you said and actually say, like, don't forget to...
Actually, that would be great.
At least, like, check boxes that, yeah, you covered this, this, this, this.
Yeah, I think you could enter at whatever, five minutes into the recording, show me this message.
It's 45 minutes, show me that message.
Yeah.
Or something like that, right?
Or even like a simple list of things that we want to cover.
Yeah.
I would really like to have like a pop-up.
Pop-up.
You know, like almost like when you speak with a teleprompter.
Like, let's say we start the episode and then maybe 30 seconds in, it says,
"Don't forget to ask their names."
Yeah.
Or something, right?
So basically, everybody probably has their own hiccups that they
make during the recording, even the professionals.
Yeah.
So we have our own, we get too excited, we forget to...
Actually, I think the problem is like because we chatted with them for so long in the beginning.
Before, yeah.
Yeah, we kind of carried over that context, which we fail to recognize that the listeners
will not have that context.
Right.
So do you want to take that feature request and progress it into Skippy that like pops up
and says, "Hey, sounds like you're five minutes in.
Have you asked them about the names?"
You mean Clippy?
Oh, Clippy.
Did I say Skippy?
Yeah.
Sorry.
You said Skippy, yeah.
Skippy is from...
Where is Skippy from?
That's the sci-fi book.
Really good book that I was listening.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
No, isn't it like a black and white dog from some kind of cartoon?
Skippy?
Snoopy?
No, okay.
And Snoop Dogg is a rap guy.
No, Skippy was from a really fun sci-fi book.
I'll try to find it and...
Let's not go there.
Yeah.
Yes, let's not go.
But yeah, Clippy.
So for those of you who actually don't know who Clippy was, Clippy was a paper clip
inside the Microsoft Office 95, I think, interface.
Yeah, something like that.
Office 98.
So we studied Clippy quite a bit because when we were working on the chatbot at Amazon,
we were building something that can assist people.
So I personally studied everything I could find on Clippy.
Clippy was this annoying little paper clip that would offer you suggestions.
Like, oh, did you forget to do this?
Or did you forget to do that?
But it was completely out of context and it was so annoying.
So people hated it and Microsoft eventually shut it down.
It's like you start writing "hello" and then Clippy comes in and says,
"Hey, looks like you're writing a letter to your mom."
Yeah.
Well, while you're doing like accounting and spreadsheets.
Yeah.
That's just how bad it was.
So yeah, Zach and Rock, add Clippy to Squadcast.
Yeah.
Check police.
Yes.
But yeah, some stuff like that would be helpful actually to help automate the workflow.
Yeah.
So continuing with the topic of feedback, during the recording,
actually, as we were talking about all the backups and other things that they do to make
sure that recordings are safe and never lost, you started to have problems with your internet
connection and we don't know whether it was a Squadcast issue or internet issue because the three
of us, the remaining three of us didn't have any problems.
It was only you and yeah, maybe something idiosyncratic, but in any case, so you had this problem
and they were really, really eager to troubleshoot it in real time.
Yes.
They were offering suggestions and they were offering help.
And we tried a few things.
We cut it all out from the episode itself.
Yeah.
So you will not hear this.
But that also showed how deeply they care about the product and their users.
Yeah.
And being founders, I think that's really important.
They're still a small company, but at the same time, they're at like 13, 14 people.
And they're not delegating these things to somebody else saying, "Hey, somebody else will
look at this afterwards."
They're actually trying to help real time.
And I think, yeah, this has happened with my Squadcast usage a few times.
And so far, my observation is that about an hour into the recording, something goes crap.
My internet speed says it's like, "Great, you're at like 300 Mbps or 100 Mbps or whatever."
And that's why that day I left the session, basically restarted.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Basically, I restarted the browser and came back again and it was fine.
Today, we are about 44 minutes into this recording, so let's see how it goes.
Yeah.
But yeah, that was my highlight.
I just enjoyed talking to great product people as a product person myself.
That was really, really good.
And to your point, founders set the tone.
I guess Steve Jobs is a canonical example of Apple.
I'm actually so surprised that Apple products still are great for most part,
unless you start doing things like family sharing in iCloud and stuff like that.
A lot of those complex things that are afterthoughts.
But their core things, they're really, really good.
Especially when you start comparing with other products by other reputable companies,
including Amazon's actually.
Like some of those products are pretty shitty.
Anyway, so what was your highlight?
Okay, so I've got three.
They're all small, so let's go one by one.
The first one was Zach specifically talking about the bootstrapping their business process.
How they, like right from the beginning, they knew that this is a pretty big idea.
I think it's hard to have that kind of validation before you start building it,
before you start seeing traction from customers.
But they had some sort of a belief and validation already.
So he, in fact, talks about like almost over-engineering it.
But they hit the timing exactly right, right?
Like they came out pretty much a year or so before COVID.
And during COVID, this whole business of being forced to record remote, essentially,
from your homes took off.
And they were right there to be along for the ride.
Like Zoom was able to benefit from meetings, right?
And they were just right there.
I think they launched in 2017 or they started in 2017.
Right.
So they had been around for a couple of years.
A couple of years.
Yeah.
And COVID just, I will quote, I think Zach said, it was painful growth.
Yes.
So even with that over-engineering, it was still difficult for them to scale, it seems.
Yeah.
But still, like, otherwise, if they didn't have that, they would have just failed.
Yes.
And they were also very small.
Maybe just two people at that time still.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But regardless, I love the whole bootstrapping part and the fact that, like, they talked about
how they took money outside of their paychecks to fund the initial investment into the thing
and grew it and reached, uh, like basically a revenue with, they gave themselves like a year.
Uh, and this all touched me because I am sort of trying to do the same thing right now.
So yeah, it was, uh, awesome having that chat.
Yeah.
That's the cool thing about our podcast too.
We get to talk to people who can give us free advice.
Yes.
Yeah.
Even if nobody listens to this, we benefit from this, uh, tremendously.
Oh yeah.
And I think aside from learning about these people, talking to them, we are also getting
exposed to so many different things that we just would not have bothered to like read about
or understand, right?
Like, like Taiwan, like the Taiwan thing.
Yeah.
Like talking about that podcast.
I told you already that it has become one of my favorite podcasts, but I also started reading
about the history of Taiwan and China and there's so much complication there.
Right.
And I would not have bothered to read all of that.
In fact, I was on a dog walk with my wife today and I was telling her about all of this
and she got really interested in it too.
So yeah, no, I'm loving it.
Hopefully after our episode, their listenership of by non-Taiwanese listeners will skyrocket.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
By year 2028.
Yes.
So if you're in 2028 and listening to it, now go back and listen to the Hearts in Taiwan podcast.
Yeah.
The episode with Jane Ho, I think that's her name.
Yes.
So they had this author.
Anyway, let's go back to squadron.
Yeah.
We have to remind ourselves like stay on track.
Yeah.
Otherwise, you just go somewhere else all the time.
We do time travel and space travel.
Anyway, my second highlight was the shift to video and that conversation.
And it kind of what Rock said makes common sense, but I think it was pretty insightful still.
And the takeaway for me was get comfortable and consistent with audio first, because video
editing is like 4X, 10X, maybe the amount of work.
And you know it, Ilya, because you've done some video editing in the past.
But while he was talking about this, I was thinking about it and it makes sense, right?
Like video editing is going to be so much more complex, because you can't easily chop things
in and out and actually make it still a smooth video.
Yeah.
So I have not done video production at that level of sophistication.
What I did is like stitching some things, like when I was playing the guitar and stuff
like that.
But even then, what I learned, and I think that's what many of the video bloggers do,
is like if you need to stitch two things together.
So let's say you and I are talking and I want to cut out maybe a long pause or something that I said.
So what I do is I show myself on the video up until that moment where I need to cut.
And then I switch to you listening and nodding your head as I talk.
And then, but I cut maybe like a few seconds in between, you know?
So when you watch any of those videos, maybe like interviews that are kind of produced,
if you see those kind of camera transitions, they are most likely edits.
Right.
So what else I noticed people do is like somebody is just talking on camera
and they change the zoom of the camera.
So it goes like deeper or like in and out.
And actually, you see that it's not just a zoom.
Actually, the video sort of transitions.
So basically, they take those clips and they make it in different zooms.
And it looks to you as if it's just a zoom transition.
It's just a zoom transition.
Yeah, but in fact, they cut out like the middle parts.
To me, it's a bit jarring.
I like when things are just more smooth.
But some people, actually, people like me, I can't talk smoothly for like five minutes.
I have to edit myself.
And it's just so much easier on audio.
Because imagine on audio, I just cut out that piece and move on.
But in the video, I have to like figure out.
Actually, did you look well while nodding your head while listening to me, right?
Yeah.
Because it's also a factor.
You want to make sure that everybody looks well on their video.
And they don't touch their face or, you know, put fingers on their nose or whatever.
Yeah.
Don't pick their noses.
I didn't do it today.
Yeah, don't pick their nose.
Yeah.
I forgot that expression.
Yes, pick their nose.
Actually, today we are recording video just for fun.
And maybe we will cut a few short clips for social sharing.
We are not going to publish the entire thing.
I'm not going to invest time in editing the whole thing.
But yeah, we are doing an experiment.
And I didn't shave, but that's okay.
I don't shave, but I usually trim my goatee.
What is this called?
Goatee.
Yeah.
Is it because goats have a little beard?
Is it why it's called that way?
I think so.
And I think it's a French origin, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
Okay.
What's your third one?
Third and the last one was, I think we are actually, you and I organically already talked
about is it is the benefits to you as a person, as a speaker and a listener that comes out of podcasting.
And I'm starting to see that more and more too, is the skills of listening to somebody very intently,
deeply understand what they're saying, giving them the space to talk about it while thinking two steps ahead and trying to come up with the next set of things to talk about while being in like really engrossing topics.
That's very hard to do.
And hopefully I'm getting better and better at it, but yeah, that's a neat skill.
Yeah.
I fully agree with you.
And also I think you and I, we re-listen to our episodes quite a bit, both during production phase, but also after, like every time our episode comes out, I listen to it.
Yeah.
And so by that time it's like the fourth or fifth time I listen to it.
And every time I pick new things from what people say, but also pick things from how I speak.
Yeah.
And then I try to incorporate that into the next recording.
Yeah.
So it, it not only helps you like cognitively, like listen better and all that, but it also helps you from just like speaking better.
Yeah.
And like, and like, like, like, I say this fucking like all the time.
I do say like, like quite a lot to like.
Yeah.
I need to, I need to unlearn it.
And actually you hear the final version, right?
So you don't always hear all of your likes or all of my likes, but when I listen to the original, to the unprocessed one.
Right.
And I'm like, oh my God, I need to work on this.
Actually our sound engineer.
Oh, by the way, like an hour ago, I didn't finish the topic about the sound engineer.
By the way, shout out to Misha.
Do you want to talk about him a little bit too?
Yeah.
So Misha is our sound engineer.
He's also from Russia.
Like me, he lives in Germany.
He was helping me with my Russian podcast back two years ago.
And yeah, now we are partnering again.
And so after I do my processing in Parite, I don't cut filler words and all that or breaths.
I just cut the content.
I remove the things that shouldn't be said and then send him the audio files.
And he does all of the equalizers and breaths and he cuts out, you know, the arms, like super
long pauses, all that.
So that saves me probably a couple of hours per episode, which is great.
And also he is sound engineer by profession.
He actually has education in that.
Right.
So he can do things like the way I wouldn't think about.
Like, for example, when we had, I think it was about the Jake and Jonathan's episode.
He's like, you guys all kind of in the center channel because you have like the left,
right channel and the right channel.
When you listen, your headphones, you have two ears.
Yeah.
So it's stereo.
And I forgot the term.
I mean, I actually don't know the English term for that because we were talking in Russian,
but he basically panned us across the left and right kind of spectrum.
So if you listen to us, I don't remember exactly what it is, but it's something like
I'm 60% in the left channel and 40% in the right.
And you're 60% in the right.
So yeah, there is more of that balance.
So especially when two people maybe interrupt each other or when people laugh,
it's actually better perceived.
That's super cool.
So it produces like a stereo effect.
Yeah.
It produces a bit of a stereo effect.
It's subtle enough that you don't notice it, but it improves your experience maybe by those,
you know, five extra percent that you wouldn't be able to really separate, but it just sounds good.
Yeah.
Right.
Now I want to put on my headsets, maybe on a like surround sound mode and listen to that episode again.
Yeah.
And maybe here, actually, if you hear yourself more in one year than in the other year.
Yeah.
I did have that feeling today when I was listening to the Jake and Jonathan podcast,
I was driving in the car and obviously I sit on the left because we have right hand drive in,
what is it, whatever it is.
In the U.S., we drive on the right side of the road.
We have left hand drive, but we drive on the right side.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's so confusing.
Why don't you ride on the right side?
So, yeah.
And I had a feeling like my voice was a little bit louder than yours in that recording.
But then, I don't know, maybe, maybe just my brain is playing tricks on me because
I know that they're panned and I'm starting to make things up.
No, I didn't get that feeling.
And I didn't get that feeling when listening to the other parts of this episode in my AirPods.
So, I think I was just making it up.
Maybe.
So, tangent time.
Do you actually drive on the left side in Russia also?
Oh, that's my favorite topic.
So, brace yourself, fasten your seatbelt.
All right.
So, back in the 90s, I mean, we drive on the right side and the steering wheel is supposed
to be on the left side, just like in most of the world, except for, I guess, UK and a few
countries in Asia.
India, yeah.
Oh, India, right.
Actually, yes.
That was very jarring when I moved from India to US, but within a couple of weeks, it was okay.
But yeah, I'm curious.
Can I preempt?
Are you saying that you sit on the right side and drive on the right side?
Oh my God.
Yes.
Back in the 90s, when the borders opened up and people started to import cars, it was a lot
cheaper to import cars from Japan.
Because I'm from East Siberia, which is, it's not far east of Russia, but it's like east enough.
So, it's like much closer to Japan than it is to Europe.
So, a lot of that secondhand cars, obviously, in the Moscow region, Moscow, St. Petersburg,
all of that stuff, all of those cities in the West, they were importing the old kind of
Volkswagen and Renaults and whatever you have in Europe, the kind of the cheaper ones.
Also more expensive ones, but also a lot of the cheap ones.
In the eastern part, it was a lot cheaper to import from Japan.
Because also their system is such that people change cars every few years and they sell them
off auctions. And for the auctions, they do a lot of testing of the cars. So, actually,
you could trust the records from the auction because it's an independent auction that tests
the cars. Unlike, let's say, going to Europe and buying it from somebody who you don't know.
Right. It's like today's pre-certified kind of process.
Yeah, but that is kind of fully independent. So, that's just how cars are traded in Japan,
secondhand cars. And lots of those cars, they started to be imported into Russia.
So, up until I think the Urals, like from Vladivostok to Ekaterinburg, which is like,
whatever, five or six time zones. So, those regions have, or used to have mostly right-handed cars
driving on the right side of the road. And I used to have one of those too. So, back in 2006,
it was my first car I bought like a year out of college. I remember I paid $607,000 for it.
Wait, wait, wait. $607,000? $7,000, yes. $6,700. $6,700, yes.
Yeah, $6,700. Wait, not dollars though. Are you saying an equivalent?
No, because the transaction was actually made in the US dollars.
Ha. Okay.
So, but yeah, because I don't think we can buy Japanese yens with Russian rubles. So,
I think it was like the intermediate currency was the US dollar.
Wow. That's also very fascinating. So, you actually buy from Japan. It's not like somebody's importing
and selling it to you locally.
So, that's $606,700 is inclusive of the company who bought the car from the auction in Japan,
right. Transported it on the ship to Russia, to Vladivostok. Then did all of the customs,
right? Paid customs, all of the customs duties are included in that price too. And then probably
about 500 bucks or so of that went to the guy who went to Vladivostok on my behalf on an airplane and
bought the car by being on the phone with me. He was basically like there, choosing the car for me. Like
a bunch of cars were imported in Russia. There's like a huge area where you have a lot of those
cars and he was picking the car for me. This is not a friend or anything. This is like a person who
does this, like a broker. This is a person who does this for living. Yes. Okay. And then he drove that
car for like four days, I think, because it's 4,000 kilometers. It was like 2,500 miles or so from
Vladivostok to Irkutsk, where I'm from. So yeah, all inclusive $607. Why do I keep saying this? $6,700.
So the car was probably sold at the auction for maybe like 3,000 bucks. Yeah. And this was a Nissan,
like a, actually there's another cool thing about the Japanese cars. There isn't a European or American
counterpart for that exact model. The chassis are used for many other cars. I think, actually I don't
know Nissan's that well, but it's like an equivalent of like Toyota Corolla kind of thing, but maybe a
little bit bigger than Toyota Corolla, but it's that category of cars, like middle class kind of small
cars, but it was like a station wagon with a lot of what they call this, like a spoiler and all that
stuff, but it was all made by a manufacturer and it was like a bright red car. I'll actually add an image
to our newsletter. So if you haven't seen that, like check out the car. I really wanted a Subaru Impreza.
I'm like a big Subaru fan, but like the only Impreza he had there, because I wanted a manual transmission
and all of the Japanese cars, like most Japanese cars come with automatic. Wait, what year was this?
It was the year 2006 and the car was produced in the year 2000. Okay. So it was a six year old car.
So yeah, that Impreza that he found, it had all of those, like the pedals, you could see too much
metal on those pedals. And he's like, the guy who was driving this car probably wasn't driving it very
carefully. So like, I wouldn't recommend buying that particular car. So yeah, that's why I went with that
Nissan and I drove it for a couple of years. Yeah. Anyway, all of my friends had the right handed cars
back there. Then I moved to Moscow and I carried this car with me. I basically put it on the train
and then picked it up later. And in Moscow, it was kind of jarring because just to understand where I'm
from, it's a kind of mid-sized city, 600,000 people, but most roads are four lanes. So two lanes each way.
In Moscow, you get this like whatever, six, seven lanes each way. And the speeds are much faster.
Yeah. So it's much faster speed. You have to change lanes a lot. And when you're on the right,
it's actually very easy to change to the right because you can see very clearly. But changing to
the left is kind of annoying because you can't see much. But you drive on the right side of the road
in Russia. You drive on the right side of the road. Yeah. And the most difficult part, we traveled to my
wife's parents who lived in the south of Russia. We drove maybe 1,400 kilometers each way in one day.
1,400 kilometers?
Yes. So 1,000 miles.
Wow. That's crazy.
Yeah. It took us 17 hours.
Okay.
I was like 24 or something. So young and crazy. And it was also in the winter. We were going there for
new years. The difficult part was the narrow two lane roads where you have just one lane each way.
Yeah. And so when you pass, you have to go on the opposite side of the road.
Yeah.
And when you sit on the right and you want to pass a lorry, is it an Australian word?
Yeah. You can't see what's on the other side. Yeah.
Yeah. If you have like a big truck or a bus, you can't see anything. You have to use your passenger
to tell you when it's safe to pass. So yeah. But then I think at some point, maybe 10 years ago or so,
they passed a law that makes it cost prohibitive to import those cars because you have to pay a lot
of like extra. Right.
And it's cheaper to buy European cars or Japanese cars produced in Russia, or I guess that used to
be produced because I don't think anything is produced these days now, after last year and the
whole Ukraine situation. But what people were doing after that law was passed, they would cut the car in
two parts in Japan. So, and then basically they import parts. That's what it was called.
Are you serious?
Yes.
How do you import like half of a car? Or no, you mean like...
You just import like parts.
The gearbox.
Yeah. I don't know how exactly... I suppose they would maybe take the engine out, take the gearbox out,
and then they cut the... What do you call it? The chassis... Not is it the chassis? Like in two.
And then they import those as parts, like the engine, the gearbox...
And it's way cheaper.
Yeah. And then you don't have to pay... Then you don't import the car. You import parts.
Yeah. And then it was like a loophole in that law that was passed.
Wait, wait. And then people assemble it themselves? Or was there like a whole
industry growing up that does this?
It's like an end-to-end service, right? It's like the same company. They kind of import and then they
put it back together. Yeah.
And it puts it back together so well that you actually don't know if it was done to the car or not.
I mean, you have to see the customs documents to actually know that it happened.
But the thing is like, because you don't import it as a car, there is no... Like you don't get the
document that every... Like a car's passport or whatever it's called. So what they do is they find
another car that is like the same model, same year more or less, that was like completely
destroyed in a car crash or something. Right.
So they create documents as if that car, like the engine was replaced, the gearbox was replaced.
Right.
So all of those parts that have actually numbers on them, then like as if that car was like
refurbished with those new parts. Right.
And then this basically, this whole thing is like, like gray scheme.
This is for like reselling it afterwards.
Otherwise, nobody would buy a car that you don't know the history of, yeah.
Yeah. But then it's like so much cheaper that you just take the risk.
It's a very long story.
That was an amusing detour.
Yes. Yeah. So like I had an option to buy one of those cars at some point because another thing was
like you pay the import tax based on the engine volume in cubic centimeters. And even when cars were
imported through the proper channel, if you want to import like a Ford Mustang or something that has
5.6 liter engine over there for 4.6, whatever it is, you pay more import tax and customs duty
than you would pay for the car itself. Right.
So people were doing this tricky stuff to go around the laws.
Apparently these kind of shenanigans are also pretty common in the southern parts of US
because we moved from US to Canada, right? And we brought our car over, imported it.
After a few years, we were trying to sell it. Every dealer that we went to to sell the car
was very particular. Like, has it ever been to these certain states, right? Like Alabama,
Georgia and all that. Because apparently, at least that's what they said is there's a lot of this
kind of thing going on where the VIN numbers and the engine chassis numbers and all that are just
swapped out completely without the parts or you can't trust that anymore.
Interesting. I always thought US was like law abiding country.
Yeah.
Well, when I lived in Seattle, do you remember how like people would stand in front of a red
traffic light, like pedestrian, you know, crosswalk with absolutely no cars on a small road and wait
until the white light turns on so they can cross? That was just so bizarre to me when I moved there.
And I remember I was taking this thing, the van pool, where the company pays for the van and then you
team up with a bunch of your colleagues who live like in your vicinity and you drive that van to work
back and forth. And then, yeah, it's like free commute. And I remember there was an Indian guy,
I forgot his name, but he was saying that drivers on the road are so polite and like law abiding,
like to the extent it feels stupid.
Yeah. Well, compared to India, yeah.
Yeah. But then I moved to Florida.
Yeah.
We were here for a month, about a year ago. And yeah, we got a nice car. Yeah, actually,
that was really cool. We got upgraded to like BMW 3 Series just for free. I had a fast car. And I
remember, you know, the speed limit is like 65 or something. And I would go 80 usually. But then you
have people who pass you with speed. Yeah. It feels like they go like 110, maybe 120 miles per hour.
Right. Some Dodge Charger or something like passes you and your car shakes a little bit because of that
air that's moving. And you look at your speedometer and you're like 80 miles per hour. So what speed is
he fucking driving at? Right. And then every time I drive on the highway, I see people cross from the
leftmost lane to turn right. So basically they just cross five lanes between other cars.
70, 80 miles per hour. And I'm like, what the is that? Right. So that changed my perspective on the US
and especially the South. Yeah. I think US is such a big country that there's like pretty much anything
you take, there's so much variety in there. Right. Like when I lived in New York, I didn't drive much,
but whatever I did, it was crazy. But Seattle was such a nice place. Vancouver is very similar in terms of like
traffic and culture to Seattle. So yeah. Have you ever driven in San Francisco in the city yourself?
Yes. Yes. I mean, San Francisco wasn't that bad, but I think the LA area, that was crazy. Like the
speed limit is 55. I'm going at say 80 and people are like honking at you and crossing you on the right,
left, left, left. Somebody's behind you honking. And they're like, I don't know. I think everybody
just plays the number game. Like you will get a ticket at some point, but you paid and keep doing the
same thing again. Yeah. What I found really weird when I was driving in the South for the first time,
we were doing a vacation and I had a car in San Francisco for a few days. During those rush hours,
nobody would let me exit the parking lot. Like you tried to back up to the road and then people
would just like honk at you. Like why? Because people would just pass by you very fast, honk at
you. Yeah. It just felt so rude compared to Seattle for sure. Yeah. But even compared to Florida here,
for example, like the traffic, like at the mall, for example, in the parking lot, people would always
let you back up or back out, I think is the right word. But there people were just so rude. I felt
stressed for the first couple of days. And I think it's the culture. It's the driving culture that you
go there, you live there. And within a few months, it just becomes the norm and you stop noticing these
things, which in Vancouver too, there are some bad drivers who like you're trying to take an exit and
you forgot and you're like late. So you're trying to like take an exit at the last minute. And there
are a few people who wouldn't let you, but for the most part, everybody's like happy to let you join
their lane and all that. A really nice driving experience. And in some ways, I feel like the
more the population and traffic grows, the more these kind of problems basically become worse and
and worse. Yeah. And I think all these people need is check police. So do we. See you next week. Yes.