WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.880 it's a psychological trick yeah all of that stuff can be staged and i start to think should we be 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:12.160 more professional in how we do our podcast i'm going to do a hard no here 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:24.800 hello and welcome to the metacast podcast the best podcast ever the podcast where we discuss 00:00:25.920 --> 00:00:33.440 how things are going in our company and yeah chat about various things i'm your host ili bestiliff 00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:41.760 and with me is my co-host arna deka today we are going to talk about software that we use 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:48.240 in our company i mean we are a software company we build software but surprise we also use software 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:55.120 to build software it's like this inception thing that we are in it's all software all the way down 00:00:55.120 --> 00:01:00.000 that's why it's called metacast yeah we have a podcast about the podcasting company 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:06.480 and we use software to build software so yeah how more meta can it get well i guess we got to get 00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:13.920 meta verified and then we will be like fully meta you're not fully meta yet okay so what are we going 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:19.280 to talk about today yeah we're going to talk about software that we use uh we already talked about 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:26.080 subscriptions that we use and we pay for which was i think a pretty interesting episode that was episode 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:34.000 like 31 or 32 32 was corey queen it was it must have been 31 yeah and over the last few weeks we've 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:42.800 accumulated a lot of scars from using google products now that we are corporate google workers google 00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:49.760 workspace users yes and ilia has started developing you're doing more and more of the actual development 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:55.040 work and you're seeing more and more of it so yeah yeah we've been kind of punting this episode because 00:01:55.040 --> 00:02:02.640 we were like we are going to experience more bugs from google so let's do it later so now i think we're 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:08.480 at this point where i don't think anything google does can surprise us at this point well sort of 00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:16.000 yeah it depends as we talk through the episode we'll find out where we stand but i think it's not all 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:23.280 doom and gloom we would not have been able to build and get it to the hands of our beta customers in this 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:29.680 short duration without google i mean absolutely i wouldn't be able to send the white listing email our 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:35.920 infrastructure wouldn't run and also our users wouldn't have android phones without google yeah 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:43.680 google is a great company it's just um there are some dark corners there yeah and it's gigantic so 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:48.960 there is some like seams that don't work with each other anyway we'll get into all that through this 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:54.720 episode yeah so first let's start with the things that we are improving this episode and i know you 00:02:54.720 --> 00:02:59.840 don't have any because you didn't prepare oh i just added one remember well maybe because you didn't 00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:07.920 prepare so that's the prepare better for the episode no i'm just uh semi-kidding here but the topic i 00:03:07.920 --> 00:03:14.800 wanted to bring up in terms of improvements i've been thinking about positioning i think we talked about 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:20.960 that a little bit last time like x coordinate and y coordinate no the playhead position in audio 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:30.240 okay this is getting too inside jokey too meta right now yeah because yeah we were working on 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:35.680 some play help position in the app today well i was working and um i don't know what's helping me 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:40.640 so i think last time i mentioned that people are thinking we are building a podcasting 00:03:40.640 --> 00:03:47.200 like studio kind of thing we are building a podcast we had a discussion about this between you and me like 00:03:47.200 --> 00:03:51.920 last week or something yeah we have it on the recording too uh i think it was in the last episode 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:57.440 oh we did okay yeah everything is very meta in my head so yeah so but the other thing i was thinking 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:04.480 about is so one thing is just communicating the message very clearly like we are the founders of 00:04:04.480 --> 00:04:13.920 metacast a delivery c corp building a building a startup whose product is a podcast app that people can 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:18.480 use to listen to listen to podcasts obviously this is not the marketing pitch but this is 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:24.560 factual statement of what we're working on podcast is our marketing channel right this podcast is our 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:29.360 marketing channel exactly yes and in this podcast we talk about how we built the company so we need 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:35.360 to make it very clear mostly not on the podcast but on our social media channels and i've been actually 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:43.840 using that line at the end of my linkedin posts saying that we are building a podcast app company and yeah 00:04:43.840 --> 00:04:51.680 follow me for more stuff by the way when when we say marketing channel it sounds very salesy in a 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:59.360 negative way i i want to rephrase this to this is more like our community channel right it's a one-way audio 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:07.360 community channel where i mean right now the only people who listen to our are like our supporters fans 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:13.920 people who really are interested in seeing what we're doing how it's getting built and all that and 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:23.360 so it's our one-way audio channel to those people i actually like that because marketing implies that we 00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:30.880 drive awareness but i feel like it's going to be the other way around this podcast our users will 00:05:30.880 --> 00:05:37.840 discover the podcast through the app and this will be a user radio that's actually a pretty cool 00:05:37.840 --> 00:05:43.920 positioning for this so but the positioning i was going to talk about today is i've been watching a lot 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:53.120 of expert reels on instagram expert reels expert reels okay i'm sure it's common in the us as well 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:59.440 but back home in russia anybody who has sizable audience sizable meaning at least a few thousand 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:05.520 people they sell stuff and there are a lot of people selling courses and selling some services 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:10.480 i mean i can get it when people like get like a hairdresser sells themselves like as a hairdresser 00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:14.560 right people come to them because of their social media it's all great but there are lots and 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:22.640 lots and lots of people now who have learned how to create reels that drive followers and 00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:27.520 subscriptions and all that and then they create courses about creating reels and then those reels 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:32.400 are about creating reels so that they can sell more of their courses i've been watching a lot of those 00:06:32.400 --> 00:06:37.920 because they have a lot of useful content useful information for me this is perfect can i just tell 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:43.120 you about an incident i just read about it like yesterday so this is almost exactly what you're 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:51.440 talking about i was on reddit and i think it was the startups or entrepreneur subreddit and there was a 00:06:51.440 --> 00:06:58.800 post very bold post right saying like anybody can if they put their mind into it anybody can get two 00:06:58.800 --> 00:07:04.560 hundred thousand users within a month and so this person posted saying that anybody can do this and 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:10.720 i'm going to this is my day one i'm going to post every day on reddit saying how i'm going to get 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:17.600 200 000 users a month right through that freaking subreddit that's how they're doing this am i right 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:26.400 it was very meta but almost all the comments were exactly that right like after 30 days you'll come 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:35.040 back and say this is how to get 100 000 users as a course and post it here oh so but here's an 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:40.800 interesting thing there so doing this in public like he's doing or they are doing this person right 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:48.160 they're using this reddit thing as also a marketing channel it's a self-reinforcing thing that they're 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:54.000 doing well i don't know about self-reinforcing i think that might be the attempt but reddit users 00:07:54.000 --> 00:08:01.120 are not the right like it's not like instagram right most of the comments in that thread are like 00:08:01.120 --> 00:08:06.480 i won't say dismissive but they're very cynical and they're seeing through it that you're not 00:08:06.480 --> 00:08:11.680 going to get 200 000 users in a month by posting every day on reddit you're going to get to it 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:17.360 some other way but ultimately what i think not not me the commenters this is the sentiment of the 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:23.760 commenters i'm aggregating into my own voice what i think is that after 30 days you're going to come 00:08:23.760 --> 00:08:30.160 back and sell some sort of an info product showing how to grow to 100 000 users in a month 00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:35.200 and that itself might be the end goal rather than actually growing some product or anything like 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:40.160 that because there was no mention of what product or what they're working on okay that's very 00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:47.120 interesting okay so the positioning i was thinking about is all of those experts that i'm looking at 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:54.560 they have those uh setups where they have lots of great lighting and they have kind of assure sm7b 00:08:54.560 --> 00:09:01.840 microphone in front of them and they talk really well uh sometimes when they talk averagely still like 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:09.920 the setup looks really really good and i was thinking about how much does that affect the perception 00:09:09.920 --> 00:09:15.680 not by people who watch them regularly because then they can appear in any attire and you will still 00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:22.960 perceive them like us right now yeah like us right uh yeah i'm in my pajamas right now no pants me too 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:24.480 green ones 00:09:24.480 --> 00:09:33.200 okay but for people who discover them like accidentally let's say instagram recommends it 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:39.440 on youtube shorts you just like look at somebody how much more likely would you not swipe away 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:44.960 somebody who is looking like me right looking like you like just a t-shirt in the house right 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:51.120 absolutely nothing special uh in terms of uh the setup versus somebody who is like sitting at the 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:56.720 desk with their microphone and as if they're talking to some or talking to somebody else like like a 00:09:56.720 --> 00:10:00.800 podcast host and there are other people in the background watching them like a dead dog kind of 00:10:00.800 --> 00:10:05.600 setup it automatically it is in my head it's like okay so this person has something to say it's a 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:10.800 psychological trick yeah all of that stuff can be staged and i start to think should we be more 00:10:10.800 --> 00:10:17.440 professional in how we do our podcast i'm going to do a hard no here 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:24.560 because it just doesn't suit my personality but it's a hard no because i don't like it because i said 00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:32.960 no no i know that this is the game you have to play nowadays especially if you want to grow 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:40.240 engagement from like random users who are seeing you for like 30 seconds right and you need to get 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:47.920 those 30 seconds 15 seconds of not even fame 15 seconds of instagram and make it into a follower 00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:52.320 these are the kind of gimmicks that you have to do maybe i'm very old school in this way 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:59.840 i personally don't do things like like i barely ever go search for things in instagram or follow 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:06.880 people speaking in instagram most of my instagram and every other social media usage is more like 00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:13.280 nature hikes tennis things like that maybe i just don't understand the mentality first of all and second 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:19.920 i don't think i could do that so it's not like i don't want to do it it's rather i can't do that 00:11:20.800 --> 00:11:26.960 so ardab how would you feel if we didn't experiment just hypothetically right i'm just trying to like 00:11:26.960 --> 00:11:33.200 get you transferred to that mindset so let's say next week we are going to a studio i mean each of us 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:39.440 goes to studio and we have to wear a formal shirt and a tie just like imagine yourself doing this how 00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:46.320 would it make you feel okay so before i get to the podcast you already know this and i think you and 00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:53.280 i are very similar in this maybe that's why you brought it up but my first job i had to wear a tie 00:11:53.280 --> 00:12:00.880 every day it was a company that ends with sucks yes we were named the company it was a huge company 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:11.360 yeah yeah but i had to wear a tie every day that was the first four years three no two and a half 00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:17.600 years of my professional work and i was like i'm never doing anything where i'm forced to wear a tie 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:27.280 again so for a podcast no i i don't know maybe it might be too naive but i don't believe in this 00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:35.920 sort of engagement and follower kind of mentality i would rather grow 10 connections a year but they're 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:42.240 like actually deep connections who care about you who know you and all that rather than like 100 000 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:48.320 people who follow you on instagram only for the type of things that you produce in instagram for 00:12:48.320 --> 00:12:55.200 content for that content for that specific type of content that is why i'm saying content is because 00:12:55.200 --> 00:13:01.600 it's not even information it's content it's like a special kind of information it's not just the 00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:08.560 information sometimes there is no information but but it's the presentation and the setup and all that 00:13:08.560 --> 00:13:14.880 yes it's very engaging i would say yeah but the moment you stop doing that for whatever reason you may 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:20.000 decide i've had enough right i don't want to keep doing this you lose all those they're not really 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:26.640 connections they're i think the word follower itself is like they're not following you anyway so that was 00:13:26.640 --> 00:13:34.640 my long long-winded answer to not wearing a tie yeah okay and i think you're very similar so i was uh 00:13:34.640 --> 00:13:40.160 yeah yeah i think i can bridge a couple of topics right now because a few minutes ago i said back home 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:46.480 in russia and it just felt weird and i'll get to why in a moment and also um i think a few episodes 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:52.320 ago we were saying how i was about to record from a car actually which didn't happen because we 00:13:52.320 --> 00:13:57.680 rescheduled and all but i was ready to do that and we'll get to that in a second and also i think in 00:13:57.680 --> 00:14:06.000 episode six or eight when we talked to any and angela from hearts in taiwan eight or ten yeah i told 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:12.160 them i don't feel very american and all that so now you feel very do you now i am very american 00:14:12.160 --> 00:14:20.800 yeah so that uh time when i had to record from the car i was going for an interview for uscs 00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:25.520 interview for immigration interview where they asked me about a bunch of questions like who is my us 00:14:25.520 --> 00:14:30.880 representative and a few other kind of third grade level kind of questions and they tested 00:14:30.880 --> 00:14:38.240 my english skills and all that this was your citizenship uh us citizenship test yes i passed 00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:48.880 it yes a plus with flying blue red and white colors yes and then the week afterwards uh yeah i had my 00:14:48.880 --> 00:14:54.000 ceremony and it actually was a very good ceremony but i had to dress up for that freaking ceremony well 00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:02.080 actually i bought a shirt and formal pants because i didn't have any for the last 10 years last time 00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:09.920 i wore pants and a shirt when i was interviewing for an mba program back in the spring of 2013 00:15:09.920 --> 00:15:15.440 and then when i got my admission letter i'm like screw this i'm gonna throw this all out and because 00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:19.440 we're also moving internationally to the us i threw all of my formal attire out because like you i was 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:26.560 working for another company that ends with express and also a big global brand yes very big global brand 00:15:26.560 --> 00:15:35.280 yeah and i hated wearing not just ties but actually shorts i don't mind as much what i do hate is pants 00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:42.720 i find pants uncomfortable and unbeautiful not that i'm very stylish i know i don't wear pants or formal 00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:48.880 shoes i don't have any yeah but luckily i had formal shoes still that i bought in germany they were some 00:15:48.880 --> 00:15:54.480 kind of like 200 euro shoes that's supposed to last you all of your life you can get like buried in 00:15:54.480 --> 00:15:59.200 those shoes if you like don't lose them because they're just such good quality because they're just 00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:05.680 german made and um you know i didn't want to throw away because they were so expensive so luckily i didn't 00:16:05.680 --> 00:16:10.000 have to buy the shoes yeah and uh yeah i went for that um in the interview in the ceremony because 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:15.600 it's one of those things where you should not anti-position yourself and uh come out like as a 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:22.240 slab because then they may have more questions for you you should post the picture of yourself that 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:29.760 you showed me that day in the show notes oh maybe the certificate with the flag yeah like you were like 00:16:29.760 --> 00:16:35.840 clean shaven haircut and everything you look like a different person altogether yeah wearing a shirt 00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:43.360 and pants look like a normal person yeah but yeah anyway so wearing pants then made me feel like 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:52.320 actually not as bad as i expected but you still prefer pajamas yes of course i mean when going out i 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:57.440 prefer shorts i have like these soft shorts they're almost like pajama shorts but yeah but i didn't feel 00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:01.600 as bad i'm like yeah this is just parts of the of the game you know when in rome do as romans do so 00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:07.840 10 years ago i was a little bit more absolutist in my attire tastes but i really like the shorts by the 00:17:07.840 --> 00:17:13.760 way so the short actually really felt good so yeah i might buy a short just for some well i guess 00:17:13.760 --> 00:17:18.720 semi-casual occasions uh so yeah if you want to congratulate me with becoming a us citizen you can 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:20.320 leave a five-star review 00:17:20.320 --> 00:17:29.040 subscribe to our newsletter yeah or reply to the newsletter yeah all of that send ilia a message 00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:36.560 yeah congrats that's a huge step many many many years in coming awesome yeah 10 years in this country 00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:43.120 but yeah what was interesting is i was as i exited the ceremony the immigration building i was driving 00:17:43.120 --> 00:17:51.200 back home and it felt different part of that was the ceremony was so different from border control 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:56.480 experience that you get as an immigrant uh where they like they look at you like who are you and when 00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:01.040 they get the green card they get more polite it becomes normal uh but when you're on the visa it's like 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:07.120 a different experience but there they were like you're one of us and then they had this video of biden 00:18:07.120 --> 00:18:13.360 playing which uh as cheesy as it sounds almost made me tear up but it was a very good video 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:20.400 and also there were lots of people there like with families and like lots of supporters i next to me 00:18:20.400 --> 00:18:25.360 there was a guy he was probably 60 years old i forgot where he was from somewhere in latin america 00:18:25.360 --> 00:18:30.320 uh venezuela or something this guy he looked like he was waiting for this for like 30 years or something 00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:35.920 usually that's i mean that's how long it takes so yeah maybe yeah depending on the country of origin 00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:42.080 right so yeah but he was like singing the anthem and he was dancing it was incredible he was so happy 00:18:42.080 --> 00:18:45.760 when i was going in i was a bit cynical about this whole thing i'm like yeah just give me the paper 00:18:45.760 --> 00:18:53.520 but in there i got really really well i wouldn't say i got really emotional i got a bit emotional 00:18:53.520 --> 00:19:00.080 much more than i expected it's a big step so that's totally normal to feel overwhelmed and a bit emotional 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:08.480 in that well now you feel very american between episode 8 or 10 and episode 35 you've now become 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:13.760 american i think when we did episode 8 is probably when i just applied for it it actually took just six 00:19:13.760 --> 00:19:20.480 months not not that long yeah cool let's move on next to our entree you are talking about positioning we 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:26.960 never finished that thread so like briefly i guess do your takeaway from oh no i was just wondering how 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:35.600 much it might have helped or might help if we do some unnatural things to ourselves again i think it 00:19:35.600 --> 00:19:44.240 might help but i don't know it's the kind of thing that i could honestly do it how about you what do you 00:19:44.240 --> 00:19:50.720 think i think it depends on whether i can still preserve my natural voice and tone but i think there are 00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:58.800 little positioning things that i found that work quite nicely so for example when i write something 00:19:58.800 --> 00:20:04.800 sometimes in the first sentence or two i would mention that i worked at google and amazon and then 00:20:04.800 --> 00:20:10.800 that like it gives credibility it gives authority then i also stopped using things like i think or in my 00:20:10.800 --> 00:20:17.040 opinion or at least i try to use them less of because then it helps you speak more assertively right 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:21.040 even though in in conversation one-on-one you would actually prefer to say those things because it 00:20:21.040 --> 00:20:26.240 makes you more humble but when you broadcast you think it makes you more humble it just makes you 00:20:26.240 --> 00:20:32.480 seem weak that's what they're saying no no i just said like i think it makes you feel more humble 00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:39.840 it makes other people perceive me as more humble i know this is a fact yes oh i should say it makes 00:20:39.840 --> 00:20:44.720 other people perceive you as a more humble person and you should do it yes 00:20:46.320 --> 00:20:53.280 yeah no i think but those things are very organic right maybe we will someday get to that kind of 00:20:53.280 --> 00:21:01.600 place making these small changes little by little but what i don't want to do is completely do something 00:21:01.600 --> 00:21:09.440 for the sake of getting instagram views and follows like you said like sitting in a studio 00:21:09.440 --> 00:21:15.600 making it look like there are people who are listening to us like in a ted talk that's a lie that's not 00:21:15.600 --> 00:21:25.440 a small positioning part and the cleft track yes yeah i won't be able to do that but making small 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:31.920 changes here and there maybe someday you do get to a position where people are sitting there and are 00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:38.560 listening to you and cheering and all that and then you post that yeah totally yeah cool 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:45.440 cool 26 minutes in warming up in our episode about software you feel warmed up yet i don't know what 00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:52.400 temperature is right now in my room but it is incredibly hot without ac talking about temperatures what was 00:21:52.400 --> 00:22:00.560 the temperature that day when you were going to sit in a car and record one hour long podcast episode it was not 00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:07.520 too bad because a it was pretty early actually no it was around noon but they had a shaded uh parking lot 00:22:07.520 --> 00:22:12.800 oh underground yeah but you didn't know that when you said okay i'm going to record from the car you 00:22:12.800 --> 00:22:19.040 didn't know that i didn't know that no that would have been quite an experience i think i would have 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:25.120 had to keep the engine running otherwise i wouldn't be able to use the ac right yeah well anyway glad we 00:22:25.120 --> 00:22:31.920 didn't have to do that thanks for cory for rescheduling to the next day yeah all right let's get on to the 00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:39.680 entree so i'm just looking at our notes and we wrote them up like six weeks ago i think and i'm trying to 00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:51.200 see how we segue into this so in our episode 26 we had jason freed and his co-founder dhh david 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:57.120 hanymar hansen created ruby on rails and the thing we have written here in those is culture of putting 00:22:57.120 --> 00:23:01.760 things on rails up front so that's that's a segue i don't know if it worked 00:23:01.760 --> 00:23:10.800 okay yeah that's like a junction in a railway track where like some other train comes from the 00:23:10.800 --> 00:23:17.440 side it like hits you it derails you yeah now we are on a different train yeah anyway yeah i think 00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:24.400 it's a train wreck so very early on we had nothing we just had a document where we wrote up what we 00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:30.960 want to work on like in broad strokes something's kind of more detailed but it was just nothing just 00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:37.200 a bunch of characters typed in a document right we didn't have a mock-up or and this is like 00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:45.520 very very vague like we want to do something where the podcast is not just the audio some at that level 00:23:45.520 --> 00:23:50.880 yeah we might have had something drawn in like a notepad which we didn't use in the doc basically 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:56.320 what i'm saying is like there was nothing that actually creates the software there was no code 00:23:56.320 --> 00:24:00.800 there was no folder with files there was just absolutely nothing not even mocks like you said 00:24:00.800 --> 00:24:07.520 no mocks on on computer and as we started setting things up i think one of the first questions came up 00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:14.240 was like do we use cicd for this and these are the rails that i'm referring to are we going to just do it 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:21.600 like the college kids in the basement away and just like whatever not use version control not use cicd 00:24:21.600 --> 00:24:26.880 because they probably don't even know what it is just hack the thing up deploy directly to production 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:35.280 have users three weeks in and then see it all burning flames in six weeks and then like redo the whole 00:24:35.280 --> 00:24:43.040 thing only to redo it again later on and i think we made the decision to invest pragmatically into tools 00:24:43.040 --> 00:24:49.760 up front and i was going to add that word pragmatic there because we did do a lot of the things you said 00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:55.840 there but we also didn't do a lot of things yes yeah i mean compared to let's say what amazon does 00:24:55.840 --> 00:25:02.880 or google does for their systems we are like at maybe nowhere yeah we're probably at 30 30 percent 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:07.840 i mean i wouldn't say we're nowhere actually tell us what we have do you want to talk about this from 00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:15.440 like the rails perspective or and i'm not saying ruby on rails like the guard rails perspective or 00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:22.160 from like what do we use what we have yeah i feel like more like what are the processes 00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:30.160 that we've instituted to help us be more effective even though it costs us time up front it also some 00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:35.360 money on an ongoing basis but it really helps us be more effective i guess what are the tools and 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:41.520 processes and yeah and what are the tools that we are using to achieve those yeah i think the only meaty one 00:25:41.520 --> 00:25:48.880 in terms of like automation and all that that we have set up is the cicd for the app everything else 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:57.920 like you said we're almost doing what college kids would do right we we are like you said we are coding 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:04.000 it up i mean sometimes we do a little bit of back and forth between you and me is this the right way to 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:09.440 do about it and especially if it's like a complex feature i do brainstorm with you you brainstorm with 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:16.240 me right but other than that we do it we merge it and then we push it and then it's in production like 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:22.480 we are doing a lot of those things but i think the cicd part this is where being pragmatic comes in 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:30.960 right and what i really like about working right now is pretty much all of the time that we have that 00:26:30.960 --> 00:26:39.440 we're working on the actual product is working on the product it's not working on the infrastructure or 00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:46.880 building it or deploying it or monitoring like is google review done is apple review done okay move 00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:52.480 it to the next step and all that so those are the things we have automated and what tools do we use 00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:57.920 because you know there are plenty of tools for let's say cloud deployments but for mobile i would 00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:03.840 hazard to guess it's a black box for many people like what tools do we have for that i think at some 00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:09.520 point we should actually bring on the founders of the thing that we're using but let's do a brief intro 00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:19.040 yeah so we use flutter to build the app flutter is a cross-platform app development framework 00:27:19.760 --> 00:27:30.080 that is by google thank you google don't kill this please for our back end we use firebase which is 00:27:30.080 --> 00:27:35.840 also it's acquired by google but it's right now it's run by google right it's almost like a part of 00:27:35.840 --> 00:27:41.440 google cloud platform and it's very well integrated with google cloud so we use firebase and some parts 00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:47.280 of google cloud please don't kill this again the very well part we can discuss later there were some 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:55.200 zombie things there okay yes yeah but we love these things and then once we build the app typically what 00:27:55.200 --> 00:28:01.280 you would have to do to get an app into the end user's device is you have to build it with like xcode or 00:28:01.280 --> 00:28:09.040 something like that sign it then probably the apple has some ways of like uploading the build artifacts 00:28:09.040 --> 00:28:15.440 into app store and then you monitor app store push through like these are the steps and here you go 00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:20.560 build deploy it add it to this user group and all that same thing pretty much the same thing on the 00:28:20.560 --> 00:28:26.320 google play store side too they have to like upload the file to the yeah like developer console 00:28:26.320 --> 00:28:31.280 you build it first i mean like if you do it like a college kid in the basement right so you like you 00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:37.040 build it in your computer and then you upload the file and then you have to babysit it in the google 00:28:37.040 --> 00:28:44.320 play and apple developer console yes and you move it step by step like for example right now we have two 00:28:44.320 --> 00:28:50.080 sets of users for our app you can think about this if you're familiar with like software systems then 00:28:50.080 --> 00:28:58.640 rollout wise it's like stages we have super pooper users and just users yeah it's the pooper users are 00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:04.800 internal users which is just you and me right now because we get the crappiest versions yeah as soon 00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:10.560 as the build is done we get it on our devices actually i don't but that's a different story you do 00:29:10.560 --> 00:29:17.600 i get it on android i don't get it on apple thanks to some weirdness in apple but anyway it's a rotten 00:29:17.600 --> 00:29:25.360 apple yeah with a bite gone out of it anyway the next step is a closed testers group that we have 00:29:25.360 --> 00:29:31.360 set up right and right now how many testers do we have ilia about 15 15 i just allowed this at five 00:29:31.360 --> 00:29:38.400 more a couple of hours ago and i actually want to talk about that too like how tedious and automation 00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:44.080 worthy that experience was and now you have automated i'm not doing it manually again like next time i'll 00:29:44.080 --> 00:29:50.640 automate it before i do it right right and i think this is where it's a really good point about pragmatic 00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:57.680 right we do things manually as much as like we're not going to spend three days setting up some amazing 00:29:57.680 --> 00:30:03.680 automation unless it really pays off right within let's say a month or something like that and you know 00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:10.720 that it's costing time to not do this so i i think what we are optimizing for is like we have only two people 00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:17.440 we need to optimize our time so that we're actually working on the product and not the infrastructure and all that and 00:30:17.440 --> 00:30:24.960 that's kind of why maybe today we'll also talk about why did we choose firebase why not aws all of those things but 00:30:24.960 --> 00:30:33.440 yeah you were asking about the automation machinery because it goes beyond time here because the frustration you 00:30:33.440 --> 00:30:42.000 experience during wait times and just like sitting idle or like getting blocked i think it also drains 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:48.080 energy and then let's say if you were like 100 energy and then you actually spend very little time 00:30:48.080 --> 00:30:53.840 doing something but it was annoying now you're like 70 energy if you think about energy energy is 00:30:53.840 --> 00:31:00.720 probably more of an exponential scale you get a lot less done when you're at 70 compared to when you're at 100 00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:06.560 percent yeah and it's distraction which is kind of like the other side of energy yeah yeah yeah yeah 00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:15.120 totally so we use a thing called tramline that's uh a few of my it's also a startup a few of my friends 00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:19.920 set it up maybe a year ago or something they're doing pretty well now they have started getting 00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:26.160 paying customers and all that including us yeah we pay them uh we shouldn't disclose this we should not 00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:30.720 disclose what we paid them yeah because they're going through the process of figuring out their 00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:37.600 pricing and all that we are paying in advantageous early access rate yes yes and tramline is basically 00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:44.400 you write your code you merge it into your github whatever branch that we have it on the main branch 00:31:44.400 --> 00:31:50.640 then it picks it up from there builds it so we use something called bitrise to actually build the app 00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:56.880 because you can only build an ios app on apple hardware you can't build it on linux or something 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:04.000 like that so bitrise has some almost on-demand kind of machinery available that tramline is the 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:09.200 orchestrator right tramline figures out that oh there's a new code sitting on github and you want to make 00:32:09.200 --> 00:32:16.400 a release or whatever it triggers bitrise to go do the build using apple hardware for the ios build and 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:24.080 linux for the android one it basically uses flutter commands and all that to build the app sign it and 00:32:24.080 --> 00:32:31.280 all that and then tramline uploads it to app store and google play and then basically whatever you would 00:32:31.280 --> 00:32:38.000 do all those manual steps it automates all that the only manual step that you and i have is the 00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:44.320 we do have a manual approval and this is the pragmatic part i was trying to come to is we haven't written 00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:49.680 integration tests or anything and people who know me would kind of like not believe that but yeah 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:56.480 there are no automatic tests apart from like there is one whether the app boots or not 00:32:56.480 --> 00:33:03.680 yeah it's already bootstrapped so yeah that's the machinery that we're using so yeah flutter 00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:10.720 firebase and then for cicd bitrise and all this tramline yeah so once you merge a pull request 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:17.280 the next night tramline just picks it up and makes a release and in the morning uh we see a new version 00:33:17.280 --> 00:33:22.960 on our phone because test flight automatically updates it yeah because we are internal users group right so 00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:28.640 as soon as the build is done it deploys it to the internal users group yours and my phones right now 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:37.120 my android your ios yeah and then that is the only approval step we have is to test it for a little bit and 00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:43.440 then we say okay this is ready to go send it to the beta testers yeah and then you get it pretty much 00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:50.000 right away well not right away maybe within an hour or so so google play the first review 00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:58.400 of the app the very first review it took about eight days eight days but since then it feels very 00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:04.560 automated uh because as soon as we send it for approval within about 30 minutes it gets approved 00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:11.760 and then gets deployed apple there's more of a human things like there's a mix of automation and human 00:34:11.760 --> 00:34:17.840 in the loop because some bills i don't know what they do but on some bills they determine that this 00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:24.720 needs more time or maybe a human to verify or whatever and so it takes time sometimes up to a day 00:34:24.720 --> 00:34:31.200 but sometimes it gets like approved in 30 minutes or 40 minutes yeah yeah and we have a sign in with 00:34:31.200 --> 00:34:37.440 google so basically we don't allow any unauthenticated usage of the app at this point if you use the app 00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:43.360 as a beta tester you have to be signed in and we use google sign in is the only option available right 00:34:43.360 --> 00:34:52.400 now so and what happens so this was surprising every time we send the app for review there's like four or 00:34:52.400 --> 00:35:00.640 five new users who sign in and they seem to just sign in they don't do much in the app right i thought 00:35:00.640 --> 00:35:08.560 it was like four or five hundred users no no no right now we're up to about i think 70 or so but every time 00:35:08.560 --> 00:35:15.360 you do a release there's like five to ten ish new users who pop in and we were really puzzled like 00:35:15.360 --> 00:35:21.520 who are these people why how are they finding it because it's not listed anywhere on app store or 00:35:21.520 --> 00:35:28.480 google play on the public one the only way to get it is if we invite you in even then we add people to 00:35:28.480 --> 00:35:33.760 the group so if people are not in the group they shouldn't be able to install the app right so the only 00:35:33.760 --> 00:35:39.840 thing we were kind of hypothesizing is this must be google testing it or something and we couldn't find 00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:45.600 any documentation and i was freaking out a little bit about it so i posted on reddit and all that and 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:52.160 people said the same thing like yeah it's most likely google testing it slipping on our apps so they can 00:35:52.160 --> 00:35:59.360 improve youtube music yeah yeah youtube music for podcasts yeah but the the email addresses have a 00:35:59.360 --> 00:36:05.600 pattern right it's like first name dot last name and some four or five digits or something like that so 00:36:05.600 --> 00:36:13.200 it's like ryan dot severs one two four five six at gmail.com and uh we were not able to figure out 00:36:13.200 --> 00:36:18.160 any start document it's kind of bizarre that this is like google doing it and i hope it's google doing 00:36:18.160 --> 00:36:25.200 it because but man our daily actives were growing we just have to keep making releases 00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:31.440 actually that's an interesting point about vanity metrics right so let's say in our case if all we 00:36:31.440 --> 00:36:36.960 tracked was just how many people sign in daily active users people who sign into the app at least once 00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:43.360 what we would get is that every release we would get five new sign-ins and uh yeah our daily actives 00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:47.600 well actually not daily actives like new users and it would be like a total vanity metric here 00:36:47.600 --> 00:36:52.960 it would just keep growing and like you said the more users we make the more it grows so you basically 00:36:52.960 --> 00:37:00.080 incentivize absolutely inappropriate behavior to gain the metric that makes no sense the other thing that 00:37:00.080 --> 00:37:08.880 we've set up early on which made us feel very professional is we've set up a project in github 00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:15.760 very early on we were we started using notion to track our stuff and uh track some of the tasks 00:37:16.320 --> 00:37:23.760 but i never liked notion for one simple reason uh of how it manages text editing blocky text editor it's 00:37:23.760 --> 00:37:28.320 in blocks yeah you can select multiple bullet points like for me if you can't select multiple bullet 00:37:28.320 --> 00:37:34.000 points you're out of my software deck you know i cannot use a use software like that yeah we needed 00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:40.320 to move somewhere else we moved all of our docs to google docs and google sheets luckily no slides yet 00:37:40.320 --> 00:37:48.240 and we created a github project where we started to accumulate tasks and we actually were really 00:37:48.240 --> 00:37:52.560 deliberate about how we set this up and i think actually what we've set up is pretty good i think 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:59.600 it's working quite well for us so what we've done is obviously we have the repos for the app and the 00:37:59.600 --> 00:38:05.280 back end for the app and the back end yeah where all code lives but some of our features actually most of 00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:11.360 our features they require work in both the app and the back end but they may also need design so we 00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:17.040 can't put them in one of those repos or they will just get lost there so what we've done instead we 00:38:17.040 --> 00:38:25.440 created a meta repo as you know we love the word meta at this point yeah yeah despite meta meta lc 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:31.920 or meta inc whatever they are meta systems i think anyway so we have a meta repo which has a project 00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:38.560 associated with it which looks like a kanban board which has super basic fields like i mean columns to 00:38:38.560 --> 00:38:45.040 do in progress i think in design test i think blocked or something and then done we don't have 00:38:45.040 --> 00:38:50.880 blocked we don't have blocked yeah okay good we're never blocked because it's you and me right as you 00:38:50.880 --> 00:38:58.400 can get blocked by third parties that's stuff with a g yeah and basically we create a bunch of issues in 00:38:58.400 --> 00:39:05.520 in that project which get created in the meta repo and that has been working surprisingly well for us 00:39:05.520 --> 00:39:12.720 the experience looks very much like what i'm used to at amazon but a lot simpler and i think same for you 00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:21.840 it's lightweight and i think we're also keeping a balance on adding enough details into these tasks 00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:28.000 but not like too much details at the same time yeah we basically just use check checklists to add like 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:34.560 these are the few things that we need to do to make sure that this feature is done right and as we create 00:39:34.560 --> 00:39:40.560 those features we would paste screenshots we would paste some links to things that helped us troubleshoot 00:39:40.560 --> 00:39:47.280 issues you would sometimes post a lot more when you have to like debug stuff but it will help us later 00:39:47.280 --> 00:39:52.960 run if we have to do with the same problem again but also for me especially screenshots is part of the 00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:59.680 memorabilia because our app will be not recognizable a year from now and we can just go back to those 00:39:59.680 --> 00:40:08.400 github issues that have a number below 200 look at those and uh we actually had a version of the app 00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:16.320 with our internal name and we were using an orca for like the spinners and error pages and all that 00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:25.760 and i kept a gif of the app experience for posterity maybe we'll someday release that way it'll be fun 00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:37.680 we'll see but yeah that was killer anyway anyway so i think i have seen these task management systems 00:40:37.680 --> 00:40:47.680 go two ways one is you don't have any or enough information in them so each task is like the 00:40:47.680 --> 00:40:56.320 title is a line that says do x or like implement analytics or like you know something like that 00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:01.280 it's like when your tpm forces you to use a task management system and everybody complies 00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:09.680 and then it's unusable yeah and then like you go after a month and you have no idea what's involved 00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:16.800 in that what it is about and all that that's one spectrum the other side of the spectrum i've seen is 00:41:16.800 --> 00:41:25.120 adding too much in there and this starts actually really nicely in the beginning when you add like a lot of 00:41:25.120 --> 00:41:33.120 details in these stories but what starts to happen is you start believing in that framework quite a lot 00:41:33.120 --> 00:41:40.960 where you start adding nitty-gritty tasks for each and everything even if you're never going to work 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:48.800 on it like like a pasting code there like this is the code i wrote oh no no i'm not talking about the 00:41:48.800 --> 00:41:55.680 details of the task but so let's say we come across a bug today well if it's a bug it's a different story 00:41:55.680 --> 00:42:01.360 but you have an idea for an improvement if you keep adding all those things into your task management 00:42:01.360 --> 00:42:07.280 system pretty soon the task management system will start to overwhelm you with the amount of things 00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:11.520 you have there because every time you need to go through you need to triage like what do we need 00:42:11.520 --> 00:42:18.080 to do for our next release like what are the minimum things we need to do to get this app to the next beta 00:42:18.080 --> 00:42:24.320 right so like when you're working on 10 things but you have like 700 tasks but you have to manage those 00:42:24.320 --> 00:42:31.840 yes exactly and i think this is where the balance between them is critical so far it's only been 00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:37.760 what like six months or so i guess for us so we'll see how it goes after a year but so far it's a good 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.280 balance like i have a grasp of the task board like pretty quickly yeah and with this i'm getting the pull 00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:53.040 requests so my son requests me to pull out of this conversation and go read him a book so he can go 00:42:53.040 --> 00:43:01.200 to bed so he can wake up tomorrow morning and go to school nice and refreshed so dear listeners we will 00:43:01.200 --> 00:43:09.200 finish our discussion about uh the google side of the world and you can see him banging on on the 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:15.760 on the door i can hear him yeah it's like a pull request where they also pinged you in chat right 00:43:15.760 --> 00:43:21.120 yeah it's like hey can you look at this pull request yeah yeah i sent it just now two minutes 00:43:21.120 --> 00:43:26.720 ago yeah and then they come to you like tap you on your shoulder it's like how about my pull request 00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:33.200 right so i guess we'll just have to say goodbye at this point i have forces far beyond my capacity 00:43:33.200 --> 00:43:39.280 to manage right now yeah yeah we'll catch up next time all right bye good yep bye 00:43:39.840 --> 00:44:09.820 Thank you.