371: Brian Sierakowski — Mastering Product Communication
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Arvid:Today, I'm catching up with Brian Sierakowski. If you ever wondered what the change log can do for you, this conversation is for you. Brian shares his indie hacking journey of 2024 building a SaaS in the changelog space as well as a hardware startup at the same time. Ever the true indie hacker, he shares behind the scenes insights from this 0 to 1 stage of 2 amazing businesses. This episode is sponsored by Paddle.com, my personal payment provider of choice.
Arvid:I get to work on my business full time because Paddle takes care of all the money stuff. They have great API's, a massive analytics and insights platform
Arvid:and Paddle actually acquired ProfitWell for this a few years ago. And funny enough, Brian was the CEO of one
Arvid:of their main competitors back in the day. In the SaaS world, we are all connected, and Paddle makes it easy to get paid. So check them out at paddle.com.
Arvid:Brian, welcome back to the show. 1 25 ish episodes ago, I think. Episode 238, was it? In early August 2023 was the last time we talked, and we had this very enjoyable conversation about what you had been doing up until then. And it ended with a cliffhanger that that I really enjoyed about that, Chad.
Arvid:You had a few entrepreneurial plans. So let's catch up and see what happened in the meantime. Brian, was 2024 good to you as a founder?
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. I I think so. I it's it's so funny. I I've done kind of entrepreneurial stuff for a long time now.
Brian:I'm also the entrepreneur in residence at our our local accelerator. So I'm kind of, like, constantly talking to people in that 0 to 1 space. And I feel like every single time that I go through it, I'm just reminded of, like, how much harder it is and, like, it takes a lot of time. And you kind of I feel like every single time you you move into that space, you realize how much you don't know because it's always, like, from the outset, I'm like, yeah. You know?
Brian:I know what I'm doing. I've I've built businesses before, and I've been successful. And, like, you know, I I failed in the past, but, you know, I'm not gonna, like
Arvid:Not in the press. Fail again in the future.
Brian:Yeah. I was like, I would how silly would that be to fail again? So, yeah, I just I feel like this past year in particular, just like a lot of the things that I've, like, kind of had the belief around, even around, like, I'd say before this year, like, even thinking about founding team, I was very kind of, like, figured out yourself first. And I think this last year, I've been like, oh, we'll build a team around you first. Like, kind of understanding the value of cofounders and, again, appreciating everything taking time.
Brian:And I've had a little bit of cross training because I'm usually, like, a b to b SaaS guy. I got the chance to work with a hardware company that's b to c, which is, like, totally different and, in fact, way harder. So it's actually, like I'm, like, I'm kind of, like, running back to me to be SaaS. I'm, like, like, get me out of it. Like, hardware is, like right?
Brian:Like, we're just, like, oh, we need more we need more batteries. And there's, like, one factory in the world that makes batteries the way that we do, and, like, we'll get like, we can sell more product when that factory thinks it's appropriate to ship, you know, and then we have to get it shipped. You know, it's all these things of, like, the delivery of software is not like it. So, yeah, I I would say, I mean, this year has been been a whirlwind and but it's been great, and I really feel like a lot of there's been a lot of culmination going on. Like, a lot of the a lot of the lessons that the the universe has tried to teach me over the past couple of years are, like, actually, I feel like sinking in in the past, in the past year.
Arvid:Oh, man. That's great to hear. And, yeah, that that sounds like a lot to deal with and a lot of different things to deal with. Like, very opposing things, b to b SaaS, b to c, a hardware thing. Let's talk about it all.
Arvid:Let's let's dive into the details because those lessons that you have learned and are now applying, I would also like to learn and apply. So you know? And probably everybody listening. So, yeah, let's let's maybe start with the SaaS here because that was, I think, the idea that you had or that was kind of, like, just brewing in the background back in the day. Right?
Arvid:Yeah. So what was the idea back then, and how did it progress from there?
Brian:Yeah. You know, I kind of I I I did the thing that I feel like every SaaS founder, especially, like, multi time founder does of, like, you get to the end of a journey such such as it was, and you kind of think about the next thing. And you're not necessarily thinking about diving back into entrepreneurship, but you kind of like at least this is what I do, and I think it's pretty common of, like, you kinda look back in your recent experience and be like, well, what was really frustrating, and what sucked, and, like, what you know, and maybe also if you're lucky, like, what's changed in the world such that we can, like, solve that problem? And so I thought back to my time at team password, and we were kind of, like, constantly owned by not updating our change log. And I remember, like, it's happened a bunch, but I remember we had this one sales conversation.
Brian:And the guy I was working with was really nice, and it was like this enterprise that was really, like, way outside the size of, like, who we should like, they they went with another company. I think they went with LastPass. But the the person I was working with was really trying to, you know, was trying to do a good job at, like, bringing team password up in the best possible light. And so he, like, shared the spreadsheet with me of, like, here's, like, how we how we compared all the different tools. And, like, it was like, this might be my memory.
Brian:But I I remember, you know, product, like, frequently updated was, like, the first item on the list, and we had, like, a big axe through ours. And it wasn't the case that we weren't updating the product frequently. It's that we weren't updating a change log, and we weren't doing those extra steps. And then I also you know, fast forwarding a little bit, my experience at Baremetrics, we talked there's a whole episode about, you know, kind of the price increase, but I kinda think back to that, and it's like, we were really working. We were doing a ton of product work, and we we had this big bug backlog.
Brian:And when we did the price increase, we got totally owned. Again, anybody who wants to, like, you know, revisit that, we we've got a full episode on it. But I I just kinda think back of, like, well, you know, what if there's a world where we were, like, once a month updating that? Or what if it looked like what if we were updating that change log, like, once a week? Or what if we had, like, 3 to 5 updates a week in that change log for, like, a year?
Brian:And then when we announce a price increase, there's, like, you know, a 100 updates. That's a much different, like we didn't have to do any more product work. We had to tell people about it. So that was kind of the problem that sort of stuck with me. And so I'm like, well, can we, like, can we solve this?
Brian:Like, how do I make sure that Brian in the future, like, never gets gets owned by, like, a change log related problem in the future? And that's really kind of where all the AI stuff came in. And that was sort of the switch for us because the idea before that was, like, one of the problems with writing change logs is that it's, like, it's very unique work. Like, you need to be, like, technical enough to understand the changes. You need to understand the customers.
Brian:You need to be able to understand what the, you know, product team you know, there's, like, a whole process this went through. And then you need to have enough, like, sales and marketing so that you can take that change and phrase it in such a way that, like, here's why we did it. Here's why your company should pay us more money or, you know, like, here's the business benefit to to making this change. And everybody is super busy. So the the idea sort of before we got to what we've landed on right now was, like, well, we could kinda centralize all this information in one place.
Brian:Like, right now, there's, like, conversation happening in GitHub. There's conversations happening in linear or whatever PM tool you're using. There's, like, Slack conversations, and then there's actually, like, code being written. There's, like, pull requests and, like, this, like, actual, like, lines of code changing. So that was kind of our first idea of, like, maybe we can, like, centralize all these things in one place so that a human could possibly do it.
Brian:Not that they not that they will be able to be successful, but, like, it's just, like, literally impossible task if you don't have that information in front of you. And so then AI comes along and, you know, take the kind of, like, you get the audacious idea of, like, what if what if the change log just writes itself? Like, what if we could train an engine that you know, the the first version I kinda make the joke that we're on, like, update engine 6 right now. The first version, we're like, hey. What if we just, like, ship a bunch of commit messages over to OpenAI and say write our updates?
Brian:And that obviously sucks for a lot of reasons. And, you know, we've gone through tons and tons and tons of changes where it's like, oh, well, you just like I think that's one of the cool things about the AI development cycle is, like, it becomes very apparent where the gaps are. It's like, oh, like, this update is just like doesn't have enough information. So, okay, cool. We need to bring in more context.
Brian:And then it's like, oh, like, this was technically correct, but it doesn't understand who our customers are. It's like, okay, cool. We need to, like, load in context about the business. And then, like, oh, this update is correct for the customers and correct for what the changes, but it doesn't understand the history of the product. So, okay, we need to build in kind of that.
Brian:You know? So we kind of it's like pipelines on top of pipelines. And, eventually, you get to the point where, hopefully, I think we still have, like I'd say the update engine's, like, 80% of the way there. But, like, you get to the point where it's like, oh, like, I I remember it was, like, earlier this year, the first update was written. And I'm like, oh, this is like I would share this with people.
Brian:Holy crap. The computer computer did this for me, and, you know, and doing that through a a bunch of different changes there. So, yeah. Sorry. It was a little bit little bit of a little bit of a ramble.
Brian:I
Arvid:guess, it's very
Brian:accelerated, yeah, journey. But, yeah, it's kind of where we we got to today of, like, getting to a product where, you know, we're we're still in the phase of, like I I wanna get to the point where this is like a tool that's, like, indispensable to people, and something that also can kind of operate hands free. And so, you know, that that's kind of the phase we're in now of kind of going to people and trying to be, like, convince them. I've also learned a lot about, like, AI. An interesting insight that I've had recently is that people are, like, pretty burned by AI.
Brian:I I was talking to a guy just, like, earlier, and and he was like, yeah. I think your product's really cool, but I just, like, don't believe it. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, it's like, yeah. I've signed up for a bunch of different AI stuff, and they all, like, make all these huge promises.
Brian:And, like, it doesn't you know, none of them ever worked out. And so we're actually building, like, weaker versions of our product, not because we can't automatically like, we can read the code changes, understand the diffs, and, you know, actually write write the updates even if, you know, the commit messages are terrible, which they frequently are. So we we've actually had to kind of take a step back and be like, okay. We kinda need to people are just, like, maybe not gonna believe that the product can do that. So we need to, like, walk them into, like, okay.
Brian:Well, what if we just build, like, a really nice change log that is hosted for you and integrates and does all this, like, distribution stuff for you? But that's been a really interesting learning as well of, like, some people are we're in the stage of the AI hype cycle where people have tried AI stuff, and they are chat GPT wrappers that don't actually deliver on the promise. And so now we need to handle that from, like, a marketing and from a a product perspective.
Arvid:I've heard this a couple times. I've actually seen this with with several, people that I talked to recently is that people just do not trust AI because they've been burned. And to be able to convince them, you effectively need to give them access to the product for free because, otherwise, they just do not believe it. Like, even if you show them a demo, they're like, ah, this is just a demo. This this could be, like, wired together in the background.
Arvid:They wanna they wanna have this magic moment that they so desperately it's still kind of internally believe can exist, but have been burnt away from. And that is that is actually a big expense for founders that makes makes it really hard to calculate stuff like what what I see the cost of acquisition here. Like, do I need to give this person access to the full tool and they need to be able to, like, spend $50 worth of OpenAI credits just to be able to get that one first magic moment. Like, that is a problem. How do you deal with this kind of stuff?
Brian:Yeah. I think that well, the one of the interesting things is, like, in our strategy to kind of stair step people into the product, all of the most expensive AI stuff is kind of at the like, our full imagining of the product is also the most expensive from, like, a credits perspective. So, like, the the initial the initial, like, kind of, like, phase 0 is, like, well, if you don't have a change log that's public, I I think that's, like, that's really important to us. Like, at the outset of this project, I wrote a 92 page blog post about why, like, updates are important and all that sort of stuff. So I kind of like it was supposed to just be, like, a a, you know, a one pager to, anyway, you know how that is.
Brian:Mhmm. Somebody who's written a book before. Yep. Maybe by accident. But yeah.
Brian:So that was kind of the initial thing of, like, well, why don't we just, like, go into the space and provide a a change log that's easy to update and that, you know, kind of one of the kind of initial ideas is, like, we undershare these updates. So kind of building in a lot of the distribution stuff. Like, okay. You you know, people are barely publishing enough updates, but it's like, okay. Well, are you sharing it to social?
Brian:Are you resharing it to social? Are you, capturing an email list? We kind of have this, like, full suite of, like, distribution style features that really have nothing to do with AI, but are kind of, like, necessary to kind of achieve the goal of, you know, the the 92 page, blog post. And then, you know, and then kind of, like, stair stepping people into it. So kind of the next level up, kind of the middle tier.
Brian:And this is kind of how we're doing our pricing as well or at least thinking about it now. It's like, the first one is, like, just a change log, and I don't remember the number we put on it. It's like, you know, $40 a month or $30 a month or something like that. You know? And then It's
Arvid:not too high.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. And then the next one up is like, okay. Now we're gonna put the power in your hands. And so you can connect your GitHub account.
Brian:You can connect your linear account. But you can go through and, I don't know if we should be kind of sharing this analogy publicly, but it's really made sense to us. It's like you can kinda create, like, a shopping cart of, like, hey. Like, I wanna write an update. Here are the linear tickets that are relevant.
Brian:Here are the pull requests, or here's the commits that are relevant. And then as we, like, add more integrations in, it's like, hey. Here's the Slack conversation or whatever. You know? And then I want you to I'm gonna direct the AI and say, like, hey.
Brian:This is what we wanna write the update around. And so that's kind of like the middle ground of, like, there's a human in the loop, but it's kind of there's that frustrating thing when you go to write an update. You launch the page, and it's a blank sheet of paper, and you have to write it. So, you know, that's kind of the middle tier. And then the tier that kind of where we started and what we thought people were gonna want, but it turns out people are kind of most skeptical about, there's a sort of, like, autopilot feature of, like, yeah.
Brian:We'll just, like, monitor all the changes that are happening within your company. We will do an evaluation of whether or not this is worth writing about. Like and that's really comes down to, like, do we think there's customer value on the other side of this thing, which is obviously a little bit fuzzy and something we we obviously, there's obvious room for for improvement there. And then we will we will tell you. Like, we'll kind of serve as, like, your junior product marketing associate, and this, you know, this helpful little bot is gonna, like, bring you updates and say, like, hey.
Brian:If you wanna edit it, you're welcome to edit it, or you can just approve it through. And so that's kind of like the the premium tier. That's like the the 4.99 a month, version. And so we came to that idea not through, like, a means of, like, monetization, but just from, like, well, if we can't get people to trust us with, like, writing the updates at all, then I it just feels like it's just a big leap to be like, hey. It's just the kind of startup problem too.
Brian:It's like, hey. We're the startup. I'm Brian. You might have seen me online. You might have seen some positive things or some negative things, but here I am.
Brian:And, if you don't mind, we'd love you to sign up for an account, create a password, and, oh, by the way, we want you to connect your GitHub, and we wanna connect your your your project management tool and your CMS, and then maybe we can deliver you some value. It's, like, exactly what you were saying. It's, like, that moment of that moment of, like, epiphany is, like, behind, oh, wait. Wait. I have to give you access to all my source code.
Brian:Like, what are you what are you doing with this? Or a lot of times, we have people like, hey. Can you, like, can you just, like, just read the commit message and not the diffs? And it's like, yeah. We tried that, man.
Brian:I'm sorry. Like, we we wish we could do that too, but we actually realized we needed, like, a step in the process to, like, actually review the diff and understand the nature of the code being changed in the context of who your business is and, like, in the way that a human would. Right? It's like they would they wouldn't just, like, look at the message and be like, this is what it is. They would probably have a meeting, which sucks, with the, you know, with one of the developers and be like, what is the nature of this change?
Brian:Like, why are we doing this? And so we kinda have to do that stuff.
Arvid:Yeah. And then the developer would translate the code that they have in their mind into something that can actually be communicated, which is what the AI does too. It brings me to another point because, like, the first thing we talked about was people being skeptical of AI in general, like, of the promise of AI and the results that it that it can deliver, but sometimes does not if people don't really put the effort in, which you are clearly doing. Like, this feels like a, like, an and very, very interesting. Like, I'm as a software developer and entrepreneur, I'm super excited by this.
Arvid:I'm trying to contain my excitement for this conversation so we can actually talk about, you know Please.
Brian:I don't wanna I don't blush too much. You know?
Arvid:But no. It's it's really, really cool because I I also struggle with this. So it's it's a pain point that I feel right now. But I I also, like, feel the other side of things, the entrepreneurial side, where people are like, AI. We don't trust it.
Arvid:And AI, you can trust it. Like, that's the other thing, like, the whole privacy angle of of things. Right? And I talk to a lot of people who run AI assisted or AI enabled businesses that have, for that reason, went into local LLMs and on premise deployment or, you know, clouds the private cloud kind of stuff. So where where is your perspective with with ChangeBot there?
Arvid:Like, is it gonna stay as SaaS, or are you gonna go into the enterprise? You kinda, oh, no. You run your own AI kinda thing?
Brian:Yeah. That's that's a really great question. And so there's kind of, like, 2 different directions on that. So, you know, just in, like, the sheer choice of tools, it feels like we are I don't know. It changes, like, every month, but it feels like using, like, models specifically trained around a specific task will get you the best result.
Brian:So for example, we should use a model. If we're doing code comprehension, we should use a different model than the model that is writing the update and taking all that data and writing prose. Or you know? And so I think, like, that's kind of, like, one big piece of when you talk about talking about getting, like, where are we gonna host this and where is it gonna be and who you know, what's involved. I think a big part of that is, like, well, how again, our very first goal was, like, the updates need to be well written.
Brian:Like because if we don't get there, then it's, like, nobody's gonna use the product. Those were those were kind of like we have 3 product pill pillars. Like, 1, the updates are, like, great. They're well written. And then the second thing is that there are a lot of them.
Brian:Because it's like, if we can write a great update, but it's only once a year, it's like, okay. We can beat that. And then the third thing is that the updates are everywhere. And so it's like, well, it's okay. You've all you have all these great updates that are well written, and there's a ton of them.
Brian:But if nobody ever gets a chance to read them, then you don't get the value. So so that's kind of a part of it from the, you know, from the technology perspective. We wanna be we wanna be really I don't know. And, again, it's like the next version of OpenAI or whoever, you know, next state of the art could come out and maybe the code evaluation in that new model is better than all the other ones, and you can kind of, like, go back into one. But I think that's kind of a core consideration of, like, from, like, a security perspective and from a data perspective of, like, which tools are you using.
Brian:You you get some benefits also out of using these big models because it's like some of the things that if you're gonna locally host an LLM, then you need to be worried about leaks, and you need to be worried about things like your your model sharing data from one customer with another customer, and, like, you kind of run into that area. So we're we're kind of of the perspective of, like, we we we've actually we've done a lot of work in this space, but we don't we had one of our potential customers be like, hey. Can you, like, share a document on me with me of, like, what are you doing from a security perspective? And I'm like, oh, yeah. That totally makes sense as far as why you would want that, and we should write that up.
Brian:But we're kind of going through the process right now. Maybe by the time this launches, we can have that to point to as an example. But, you know, there's all this stuff you can do as far as, like, well, what do you encrypt and what do you store? And, like, you know, for us, we don't store any of your code because we don't we don't need any of your code. And we also have kind of the special benefit of, like, because we're writing change log entries, the end result of what we're generating is meant to be public.
Brian:So, like, even as we are going through the process, like, we're not asking for anything that's like we're we're kind of almost intentionally turning down any sort of tech talk that might indicate what's going on behind the under the hood because it's like that's also just, like, not relevant, and, it's like a it's like an error case. Like, it's like a a failed eval for us if, like, the update is too technical. What sometimes it will do if the update is too small and the LLM's, like, just looking for stuff, they're like, oh, we have to kind of, like, talk about this a little bit more. But, yeah, I I think it's, like, it's really important to, like, do all the normal data security stuff. Right?
Brian:So it's like, don't store more information than you need, obviously. And anything that's, like, sensitive, it needs to be encrypted. And you also need to make sure that you are conscious of all the new LLM stuff. So, like, leaks are, like, a really big thing of, like, data from one customer. And it's it's kind of funny to consider this because, like, this was the, you know, whatever.
Brian:10 years ago in web development, it was, like, really common for data from one customer to get into another like, kind of the idea of having a multi tenant web application was, like, that was, like, a new idea. And so I kind of it almost feels like we're kind of back there. And I and I sort of feel like the same lessons that we learned, you know, 10 years ago on the web, we need to do the same thing. The the one thing that I might we haven't done this yet, but it's mine maybe to your point of, like, joining those 2 topics together of, like, the right tools plus, like, the right process is we thought that once we have a bunch of customers and we have people editing the updates, so we're delivering updates and maybe they're editing them, it might make sense to do a, like, unique fine tuned model for each of those customers just based off of the style of the like, it's, like, wholly outside of who your company is and what you do and, you know, anything else. It's just like, this is the style of update that we like.
Brian:And that that's kind of like a nice, like, kind of final surface layer that we can apply that will just this is like we we know what the inputs were, and we know what you want the outputs to be. So that that's kind of like a nice fine tuning situation to be in. So that might be a situation of, like, maybe that final maybe that final mile goes with the customer or yeah. Even where to where to host it is kind of an open question. But, I've also kind of learned too.
Brian:It's like it's kind of the classic thing of, like, people don't wanna deal with this stuff, which is why they're not, it's why they're not doing it now. So I I think for the foreseeable future, we will regardless of what the infrastructure decision is, we will we'll manage it. But we have gotten a lot of it's funny you mentioned I'll say one last thing. Let's you you asked one question, and you just you sent me off, man. I don't know what one of the big questions we had is, like, who is this product for?
Brian:And those were the 2 paths. It's like, hey. This could be for larger enterprises who I I spoke with one woman who runs a she's like, we have a huge product marketing team. Their company has a 1,000 employees, and they have 8 people in the product marketing. And that's, like, a huge product marketing team.
Brian:So it's like product marketing teams are like they are it's like them versus the world. And so that's where we really got a lot of the insights of just centralizing. For them, it's like, if we could just pull even without doing all the AI stuff, if we just pull all of that information about what's going on inside of the organization into one place, that would be super useful to them. Like, that's probably that's probably an open opportunity. And that kind of that kind of takes us in, like, a top down product strategy, where we're like, okay.
Brian:Well, what systems do you have? Where is that information? What format is it in natively? What format do you need to be in? And we kind of, like, custom build a product based off of that enterprise.
Brian:And there's there's some common shared core across all of those different products, but it would be like a very, like, integrations and kind of a you know, there would be like a 3 month onboarding. You know, it's like it would be like a an enterprise sales thing. And so we've actually decided to move more for smaller teams that are you know, maybe they don't have a 1,000 employees. Maybe they have, like, 5. But the thing that I went back and forth on this for a long time.
Brian:The thing that we did is that we realized that this would allow us to do kind of a bottom up approach of, like, okay. Well, what are the core features that all of these businesses care about, and how can we kind of automate as much of this as possible? Not that we're not trying to do customization because that's the name of the game. It's like, hey. We've had somebody.
Brian:They're like, hey. We love this, like, autopilot plan that you have, but we don't use linear. We use Jira. We'll be like, great. We will we will build that.
Brian:Like, it's like because other companies use that as well. So but that was kind of that was kind of the key, like, strategy shift was, like, we wanted to be much more focused on the bottom up approach of, like, really discovering, like, what this product is and what it should do. And, even all the distribution stuff was came directly out of customers. It was like, well, the feedback, like, over the past, like, 8 months was like, update sucks. Update sucks.
Brian:Update sucks. And it's like, oh, update's good. Need to be able to edit it. It's okay. Can edit it.
Brian:Alright. Now I need it to be everywhere. Say, okay. Great. And then now now it's like, okay.
Brian:I need to be able to, like, capture an email list and, like, send, like, a automated monthly update. It's like, okay. So it's like it's like as soon as you kind of clear the one hurdle, like, until you clear the hurdle, that's all you hear. It's like it's just like update sucks, you know, which is which was fair feedback, and they did suck. But then once you clear the hurdle, it's like every single time you jump the next one, you get there's another there's another one coming.
Brian:And I know once we build all these features, there will be there'll be another, another request on the way for sure.
Arvid:Yeah. And and it does sound like you have found several, if if not, very, very many points of complexity where going into the complexity just opens it up for more complexity. Right? The the example of you're getting nos, nos, nos, and then you get a yes. And after that, yes, all of a sudden, it's a whole new world with, another set of surprises.
Arvid:Man, that sounds like a lot of layers that you have to work through. And I I work with AI tooling as well. I I know those layers and the weird idiosyncratic kind of stuff that happens in there, plus then trying to also solve this for enterprise customers who have this very, we want this and this is the only way it's allowed to be mindset. That's, that is also a challenge for a a start up. Right?
Arvid:A start up that has to deal with custom requirements on every single level, the integrations that you talked about. Man, that that must be so hard. How do you deal with this? Because it feels like, if you wanna go for smaller customers or smaller businesses, that still probably doesn't solve the problem with people choosing very different tools for similar jobs. Are you are you gonna just take the top 5 product management systems and the top 3 code repositories and deal with that?
Arvid:Like, how are you gonna approach this over time?
Brian:Yeah. This that that's a big change in my, like, mentality. I think, especially, like, maybe not in the past year, but, like, especially, like, you know, 5, 10 years ago. I think that I definitely had much more of, like, a headstrong mentality of, like, I know what the market needs, and I am you know, whatever. I'm like Steve Jobs or whatever.
Brian:And, you know, like, I'm wearing turtlenecks. I'm doing the whole thing. And, like, I will tell you, market, like, what the you know, this is what you're missing out on, and this is what you need. And, like, now I'm just kind of like the thing that I always come back to because, like, running a product and building a new product is, like, very challenging, both, like, the actual, like, what to do and how to do it, but also just kind of, like, keeping motivated when, you know, someone tells you that your updates suck or whatever. Or, like, oh, I don't like, we don't need this or whatever the case is.
Brian:Like, the reality is, like, even if you get to a million customers, there's another, like, 1,000,000,000 companies in the world that said no to you. So, the thing I always come back to is, like, I never wanna run another company again without having, like, a constant stream of updates for the marketing team, for the sale, whatever. So because of that, that's kind of my core, and I have those, like, 3 pillars. Those are the the kind of, like those are the nonnegotiables. And then everything else is, like, if a customer comes to me and be like, oh, I'd really like to do this.
Brian:At this stage, like, we have few enough customers. I can have 1 on 1 conversations with everybody. We kinda just my my CTO, my cofounder's name is Ara. And so he'll probably listen to this and, like, slap his forehead, but it's kinda like, we kinda just do it. It's like as long as it's in line with those product pillars.
Brian:It doesn't take the product in a different direction. It's like, yeah, if we have somebody like, we've already gotten a request for GitLab, which instead of GitHub, which is insane to me because it's like, how many customers does GitHub have? It's like, I I thought it was like all of them. But and it's like, okay. Cool.
Brian:Like you know? And maybe there's an argument there's even less tooling in GitLab. But it's kind of like, yeah, once we have this system set up and we understand the nature of Git, it's like, yeah, we'll do we'll do GitLab. Sure. And it's it's it's all about prioritizing them, but I kind of feel like especially for us and and maybe it's also this type of product where it's like the more information that we can pull in, the more context we can get in, the better the result's gonna be, and also the more time savings is gonna be to the person.
Brian:So it's like it's gonna be, like, really great updates, and they don't have to really edit it at all. So it's kind of almost like because of that, we've sort of, like, resigned ourselves to, like, okay. We're just gonna be building a bunch of integrations. And, like, it's hard enough to convince somebody that they need more updates. And, like, once we find somebody who, like, understands that pain to be like, yeah.
Brian:We're the person to help you with that. We're not gonna be like, oh, well, you should also switch off of, like, GitLab on to get you know, it's like Don't force
Arvid:them to do these kind of things. Right? You you just use what they use.
Brian:Totally. So I think it's just kind of like and, you know, we can only move as as fast as we can go, and and we also like, my mentality is sort of working from, like, the center out or the bottom up, whatever. Pick another analogy that I've I've made so far. But it's like, you know, we wanna make sure that our current customers are, like, as excited about the product and are using it and are like, we can see how frequently they're publishing updates. And, like, that needs to be happening.
Brian:And if that falls off, I'm going to, like, reach out to them and be like, what's going on? And why is that? Or, like like, oh, I got I I was gonna get to it, but I got busy. I'm like, why is it why is it, like, that big of a task that you need to you know? So kind of starting with those people and then kind of we have people starting trials and coming in all the time.
Brian:Basically, everybody, they first connect, like, a marketing site instead of their product because they're like, what is this thing? And so that's something for us to to work around, and maybe that's a feature. Maybe we provide updates around the changes to your marketing site. But, you know, then it's just a function of, like, okay. Like or maybe they don't have permissions to the repo, all that sorts of stuff.
Brian:So that's kind of all the stuff for us to work through. But, yeah, we just kinda make a backlog. And I'm sure at some point in time, we'll need to say no to an integration, but, like, I don't even know if that's gonna happen in it's like it's like never know. It's like not in 2025, I don't think. But it's like a it it'll be something where I think we're just gonna have to get a lot better about having sort of more transparency around, like, where I I someone asked me today, like, what the road map was, and I was able to kind of, like, rattle off a couple things.
Brian:And then I forgot one thing, and I'm like, oh, this is actually in position 3, and everything else got pushed over. And so, you know, that could, I don't know, that could get to, like, 50 requests, like, pretty quickly. And then at that point, we need to probably do a better job of just being like, hey. We can't support whatever. We don't we don't support, like, WordPress.
Brian:You can't publish the WordPress right now. And with what's going on in WordPress, maybe we might, like, wait
Arvid:Probably a good idea.
Brian:Wait a little bit, but, you know, you know, that'll that'll be something in the future as far as, like, how we can kind of communicate around that.
Arvid:That makes sense. And integrations always there are a lot of efforts to put something in into the system because you always need to deal with the little tiny issues there and the slightly different ways that they do it compared to somebody else. It kinda makes you think as a founder that that if you built a tool like what ChangeBot is, that has a lot of data sources it needs to pull data from and has a lot of destinations it needs to send data to, your integration kernel, like, the the thing in the middle that in that allows you to integrate into and then distribute from, needs to be highly flexible. Right? Needs to be very, very flexible and be able to deal with all kinds of weird little issues along the way.
Arvid:And I I think that is that's something that every SaaS founder can take away from this. Like, if you don't know what your customers use in terms of tools, be super flexible to be able to integrate them along the way.
Brian:Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's also about, like, kind of, like, transforming each of the different, like, integrations into a format that's, like, natively useful. So it's like transition. Us, like, you know, the end result of, like, what we wind up storing is sort of like the summary of changes.
Brian:And so it's like and, like, kind of like that's very easy for us to include in, you know, doing all the rag stuff and, you know, all the all that sorts of stuff. You know? And so it's like, I think that that's kind of how we look at everything should, you know, kind of transforming all those data points into sort of a similar format so that it almost like and maybe it will. Like, maybe, you know, maybe next year, we'll revisit this conversation. I'm like, Arvid, I was so wrong about, you know, I was so wrong about that, but I don't think that it necessarily matters that, like, oh, you know, this conversation was in linear and this conversation was in GitHub Issues.
Brian:It's like it's all of that just turns into context around the nature of the changes and its time stamped as far as when it was happening, and it's, like, related to you know, we'll do, like, clustering and stuff like that to understand, like, what things are connected. But, you know, I I think that that will allow us to get to the point where it's like, well, again, I I I mentioned Slack offhand. I don't know if we'll wind up doing that, but there is kind of this recurring thread of, like, well, you know, what if what if ChangeBot was, like, kind of sitting in the room while these conversations are happening? And I don't even know how that would work. Like, it's one of those things again.
Brian:It's like, I guess that's the other fun thing with AI of, like, I just never would think to do a feature like that. But, you know, there's also a world that's like, okay. Well, like, let's figure out. Let's coerce those conversations into that same format, that same context format, and then let's just include it and see what happens. Like, that would that would probably be how we would we would roll that feature out.
Arvid:Yeah. It's it's really interesting because then you could kinda take, out of all the conversations that happen, find the ones that may have to do with new features and suggest them to be part of this. Or maybe people say, no. This is not one. Maybe this is one.
Arvid:Maybe this is like a human step in between or an AI is smart enough to figure this all out. Just present the results. Then you're right. You don't really think about these things because they just would have been impossible a couple years ago. Right?
Arvid:It's bizarre. Hey. I I really like the the technical side of things, and I could talk about this for hours. I probably shouldn't, which is for him.
Brian:But if
Arvid:you pivot us a little bit to to the the actual, the impact side of things. Like, when you have a change dog, first off, maybe why should you have a change dog? That's something I I personally often struggle with not to have one, but to fill it, like to actually communicate, to push information to my customers. Like, what what is the the benefit of this? How often should it happen?
Arvid:What should you talk about? Can you give me, like can you condense your 92 page, thing into maybe, 92 seconds are a statement here?
Brian:Yeah. I think that's I think that's fair, and that's a very that's a very common request that I get. So I understand that. Yeah. I think that, like and for me, like, I'm coming from personal experience.
Brian:So, like, that feeling of being like, having a potential customer comparing me to other companies and not being able to put my best foot forward and showing, like, what we're doing and and that we're actively engaged. I've heard the story from other founders of, like, because they're not active on social or wherever, somebody be like, oh, I thought you guys were dead. That's that's, like, a very common phrase, and it's like, no. Like, we're actually, like, working 80 hours a week, and, you know, it's just finding this excess time. I think people always find themselves in the spot, especially small teams where they're like, well, you know, I can spend 8 hours and build a feature.
Brian:And then I could spend, like, another, like, 4 hours and, like, write about that and do, like, a really great job of writing about that change I just made, or I could be halfway through another feature. And so that's, like, the trade off. And so, you know, I I think that that's the thing of, like and also, like, there's the bare metric story too. Right? Of, like like, you know, if you wanna make a big change with the business, it's, like, one of those things where it's, like, you really wish you were doing this all along.
Brian:So I I kind of and this is one of the challenges that I have with marketing the product is because, like, I kinda see this from, like, a three-dimensional perspective, and I kind of look at, like, each team. Like, I look at, like, from the top end of, like, from sales, giving them this this resource where it's like, oh, you're comparing us to this company. It's like, oh, well, like, we're updating our product much more frequently, and we're like we just compete with ChartMogul back at Perimetrics. And, like, so I was kind of that was also one of the formative experiences because ChartMogul has a fantastic marketing team. And they would again, in my extremely biased opinion, they would make a big deal about a feature that was not necessarily a big deal.
Brian:But, like, I was on the other side, and our customers would see that. And I feel like there's just like it's like death by a 1,000 cuts. It's like even they they see it, see it, see it, and then, you know, maybe something comes up in the future. So and they're like, okay. Well, maybe we'll try out ChartMogul because, like, they're doing all these great, amazing, revolutionary things.
Brian:Again, not to, like, downplay their product. And I'm insanely biased. You should not listen to anything I have to say about, you know, ChartMogul. But, you know, that that was kind of like one of our original tagline was, like, make your competitors hate you. And so that was really, like, a very, like, sales and marketing focused, message.
Brian:For the marketing team, it's like having, like, finding important things to talk about that is, like, you wanna be kind of present always, but it's like you can only share so many memes. And I know I'm, like, the worst for this. I share too many memes. But it's like even those, like, little small updates, small improvements just gives the marketing team something valuable to talk about. And it's like, hey.
Brian:Like, even I think one of the biggest shifts is, like, how small of an update are you willing to talk about? And I think there's different levels. Like, I don't think you should do a email blast to all of your customers for changing an email form on the page. But I do think it's like it kinda should go somewhere. Maybe maybe changing a form is, like, too small.
Brian:But it's like, oh, like, we fixed this issue when you, like, rechange your update your email or whatever. You know, something like that. It's like, hey. There's, like, this little frustration that somebody reported to us and we fixed. Just having signal on that is just really valuable, and it could be, like, a little tiny social thing that goes out, a little bit of, you know, Twitter juice, blues blue sky juice, whatever, LinkedIn.
Brian:And so, yeah, so so you you kind of take it all the way through the funnel. So, like, it's useful for the sales team, useful for marketing. I think it's useful, like, from an operational perspective internally to, like, know what's going on here. And I think about, like, churn prevention and kind of upsells. So at Baremetrics, we had a big problem of upselling because people just didn't know of all the features that we had.
Brian:And they were, like, missing out. Like, I know for a fact, I would have conversations with people. And they were I was like, why aren't you using this? I'm like, oh, we just we don't know why our customers are canceling. I wish we had some insights around why our customers are are canceling.
Brian:And I'm like, oh, did you know we have a product called cancellation insights? They'd be like, no. It's like, well, shit, man. Like and so, like, there's an upsell thing, but I also kind of have this, like, anti churn path as well where it's like, I think you should be sending your customers more updates than you're sending them invoices. If you send if you ask them for money more frequently than you're letting them know about new things that are happening, any like, it's like anything.
Brian:Just like, hey. We're alive because they will get the invoice. Like, even if you don't send email notifications, which you you should, they'll be they'll see on their credit card statement that, you know, you charge them. And so I think there's just a huge anti churn, you know, churn prevention, technique of, like, hey. Like, we we can see that the product is improving, and I think that feeds in the product as well.
Brian:So it's like, if you have the impression that the product is not being worked on and you're like, oh, I don't know if they're I don't know what they're doing over there. I don't know what they're focused on. I don't know if they're they're doing anything. Like, people are very unlikely to reach out and say, like, hey. I really need you to you know, I I think that's been really huge for, Terminal, the the hardware product that we mentioned.
Brian:They are just so active and so reactive as far as fixing things, and there's, like, a whole developer Discord community. Like, I've really seen that of, like, it's accelerated because people are like, oh, they do care. They do they do stuff. Like, they they they react to to questions that we have or they react to to problems, and they, like, ship. And it's like, oh, like, especially for a hardware company, it's incredible.
Brian:It's like, oh, like, this thing wasn't working, and now it's now it's working. And and, like, I've noticed that the rate of engagement has gone up dramatically. So Yeah. Oh, for sure.
Arvid:So
Brian:it's so it's almost like, what what is the you're like, what is the value of of writing a a a change log? And I'm like, well, you know, it's like a shorter list of, like, what, you know, what benefits it doesn't. Like, it's kind of all the stuff that you wanna do as a business are come from the ability to, like, both have that content and get it out in front of people.
Arvid:I love this. To me, the the term that comes to mind is value nurturing. Like, the idea that you kinda grow this the seed of of value perception in your customers by constantly watering it. That's what it is.
Brian:Right? It's content marketing. You know, I think content marketing happened in an age where people were very, like, top of funnel, like, new customer focused. And I I kind of in the back of my mind, I've had this thing of, like, I think this, like, product customer update, it's, like, kind of like the new content marketing focused at retention and, you know, and, you know, expansion. Now that everybody kind of realized, like, oh, it's not enough to get new customers.
Brian:We need to keep the ones that we have. It's like, you know, that that's kind of like the the wildest, you know, as I whatever. Before I go to sleep at night, you know, I put my head down on the pillow. Like, what's like the wildest like, what's the biggest that this product could be? And it's like, oh, it's like the it's like the HubSpot.
Brian:But instead of focusing on top of funnel, it's focusing on kind of, you know, from sign up through the entire life of the business. Like, if we can, like, 3 x your LTV on every single customer, that becomes a very especially if it does it automatically, that becomes a very valuable product and a very valuable company.
Arvid:It it does feel like a change log and not just a change log, because that's the artifact. Right? But the the communication strategy, the the the deployment distribution method around it, that is the the relationship builder. That is something that retains a relationship, obviously, like a financial relationship. They they stay customers, but it also builds reputation for you.
Arvid:Because when I when I look at the change bot, change lock, it's a mouthful, and it goes back to, like, what is it, March 2024 with the first example posted. And then you scroll up and and scroll up, and you see all these individual change log entries several for certain days. And then it's just so cool to see this whole development of a thing and the effort that goes into it. And that's the reputational part. Right?
Arvid:You see, this is not just a tool that somebody cobbled together. This is something that grew that grew from conversations, that grew from feedback, that grew from involvement with the customer base. The just having that as a a place that people can just be astounded by what went into the tool itself, having that from my own SaaS is something I want. Like, it makes me want to communicate more because every single part of this chain of communication then is a relic for people to to kinda pull up and say, oh, wow. This is this is an old log, but they already like, 3 years ago, they already put in so much effort, and it's still going.
Arvid:That must be something in there. Yeah.
Brian:There's I I and I haven't been able to quantify that, and I think probably, like, it would be very valuable to my marketing if I could. But there is kind of, like, when you, like, go to, like, a very old building or something. It's like I don't know. There's just, like, a different mode we go into as humans of, like, oh, this is, like, something that's been, like, worked on for, like, a very long time and, like, a lot of effort. So much of the effort that we put into our products, like, just goes, like, nowhere.
Brian:Like, most of the people will build a feature and then not talk about it at all, which is, like again, it's like, you know, the tree falling in the forest. Like, you know but then it's like, you know, we also, this is like a total tangent, but something I heard kind of, like, just right at the the right time. There's a artist called Tyler, the creator, and he kind of went on a tirade about, like, how people will, like, release an album and then, like, tweet about it once. And he, like, he, like, he did nothing but talk about the album that he created for, like, a year straight. And he's like, I'm proud of it.
Brian:I worked really hard on it, and it's like, why wouldn't I, like, like, why would you just write one message that, like especially with, like, social, it's all algorithm. It's like the likelihood that even your followers saw it. You'll get, like, 10% of your followers. So that's some that was, like, very formative to me when I heard that. I think I heard that back in, like, February or something like that.
Brian:I'm like, oh, yeah. You built this feature. You spent this hard like, you did this hard work to build this thing. And it maybe it's not like, oh, it's like a brand new, like, version 2.0 of our application. You should size, like, how you talk about it to, like, the size of the change, but it's like, oh, you fixed this bug.
Brian:Like, again, it's all comparison. It's like, most companies, like, don't even fix bugs. So people are embarrassed to post, like, bug fixes on their change log. It's like, no. You actually fixed the problem.
Brian:Like Yes. You know, it's like you you cared enough to fix this, and you're letting everybody know. And, especially, it's like, okay. If you if I look at your change log in the past, like, 6 months, you've got one bug fix. Maybe that doesn't look so great.
Brian:But, yeah, if you've got 2 to 3 updates a week and, like, some of them are bug fixes, some of them are new things, some of them are just, like, tweaks. Like, oh, like, customers couldn't find this button over here. We moved it over there. And, you know, the you know, we're always kind of prompting for customer value. Like, hey.
Brian:Like, we think this is really gonna help you, you know, find mentions of yourself and podcasts that you can create better brand deal. You know, whatever. Like, kind of doing those like, add in those little do a little bit of the sales and little bit of the marketing for you in those things. I think that the net effect of, like, seeing you know, zooming out and seeing, like, oh, in a couple of months, this company has posted, like, over a hunt I think we've we've just crossed a 100 updates. And if it was me building a brand new start up and, like, writing some of the code and doing the marketing and things like that, like, there definitely wouldn't be a 100 updates in the past, like, year.
Brian:It would be like I would try to do it monthly, and I would fail. It would be like one every one every 6 weeks.
Arvid:That's where I'm at. That's where I'm at right now with PodScan. I sent and and this is, this might sound self congratulatory. But yesterday, I convinced myself to actually send one out, and I did. That's great.
Arvid:I have this list of things that I really wanted to talk to people about because these are important features that I built for them. Like, people ask me and I built them, and I then I tell 1 or 2 individually, hey. It's now live, and then they use it and they're happy. But everybody else is like, I don't know. Right?
Arvid:So I I put I pushed that email out to the list, and I I got feedback. I actually got people, hey. This is cool. And I was so happy. I was so happy.
Arvid:I because the features have been around for 2 weeks, I just have to talk
Brian:about it. So I've I've
Arvid:been trying to to get myself to do it weekly, fail horribly to and then do it at least monthly. I think I've sent out well, how old is PodScan now? Like, 6, 7 months? I sent out 6, 7 emails, and I know I probably should have sent out 30, if not 40, with all the little things in between because every single thing is something useful, something meaningful, something people ask for. And like you said, it could just have been this problem that everybody had until now was fixed.
Arvid:Thank you this guy for reporting it. And, you know, like, you can also shout out people in this context, like, very easily because the community of of of your customers might know each other because they're in the same industry. So you have this this opportunity to actually pull people in and and give this kind of another reputational gain at this point. You you've convinced me in these short 40 some minutes that we've talked about this topic that I should really take this seriously. Not just because it's a it's a conversion inducer or a retention retainer, but those are all great things.
Arvid:But for the product itself, it's a meaningful part of the business to have the history. It's kind of keeping keeping records of your own journey. And if if if that is that is to me an important part to to building in public. So why do I not automatically have something gather this information for me or at least have a platform to to put this on? This is really cool.
Arvid:Man, I'm glad you went into this field. That's really cool.
Brian:Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And and I kinda look at it. It's like, well, what was the point of building the feature and doing the work if you don't talk about it?
Brian:Like, don't you need to, like, get credit for your code. It's like you're not like you've already done I mean, maybe I'm like downplaying it a little bit, but I think the, like, actual building, like, writing that software and making those changes and figuring out the problems and fixing it, like, that was the hard work. And now all you have to do is, like it's, like, literally the victory lap where you get all these great, you know, feedback or maybe people give you more ideas and you get, like, credit and people go you know, they're cheering for you, and it's like, that's that's the part that we skip. Like, why are we skipping you know, that's the fun part. And so, yeah, even that that was kind of one of our ideas too of, like, hey.
Brian:Like, maybe the the engine needs tuning and and, you know, we need to, like, maybe we're far away from people just turning on, like, full autopilot of just, hey. Just post this and email my customers and things like that. But, like, the bare minimum is that we can give you a rough draft and be that reminder so that when you go to sit down, you know, once a week or once a month whenever whenever it is that you're gonna do it, you don't have to start from a blank sheet of paper. You can actually, like, say, okay. Cool.
Brian:Here's all these things. I can just I like this line. I don't like this line. And then, you know Yes. Get get it out there.
Arvid:That's that's the thing. Right? There's a job to be done, and you don't wanna do it. But if somebody almost does it completely for you and just sends it to you, says, hey, this is what I would send right now. What do you think?
Arvid:Right? It's so much easier to say yes or say no, but then not even think about it. Right? Like, the that that I think that's that's what the problem always has been for me is a priority problem. Like, my additional 4 hours of work that I could put into the product, they feel so much more urgent than the, the necessity to communicate with my customers feel urgent.
Arvid:I know that the necessity is just as urgent. Right? It's just as important for me to talk to my customers and share the things that might make them not cancel or might make them upgrade. Right? So from a from a from a builder's perspective, the tech stuff is always burning hotter.
Arvid:It always feels like there's an explosion somewhere in there.
Brian:And that's where your skill set is. Like and, also, it's like this work is hard like, it's hard to write. You know? Like, being a writer is like an actual job and, like, you know, marketing people, especially if, you know, the the best of the best in, like, content marketing. It's like, there's a true art form.
Brian:It's like, there's really, like, very little science to it. It's, like, extremely artistic and, like, very, like, you have to be very smart, and it's, like, a totally different side of your brain as well. So, like, I do that as well. If, like, if I have, like, a task that I'm certain that I have the skills to do, and then I have a task that even if I know it's, like, extremely important, but I'm not sure you know, if this is not, like, conscious, this is subconscious, but I'm like, I will just, like, kind of ignore or delay upon the thing that I'm, like, not or even if, like, even product stuff. We have one, if anybody listens to this and is so kind to, like, sign up for for ChangeBot, we have, like, the email the screen you see, like, hey.
Brian:We need you to confirm your email. I don't like the way that that page is style. And it's been on, like, kind of, like, item 5, 6 of my to do list every single day for the past 2 weeks. And I just realized I was I was thinking about it last night. I'm like, this is taking so long because I don't I haven't designed what I want that page to look like.
Brian:So the I'm just I'm holding myself back from doing it because it's it's uncertain. I'm like, so what I need to do is just design what I want that page to look like and, like, explain to people why we're asking. Like, hey. We need you to confirm your email because we're whatever. We're gonna be spending AI credits during your you know, whatever.
Brian:Like, we need to protect ourselves or whatever the case is or, you know, here's, like, if you're confused, book a call with me, all that sort of stuff. And so I think that if 2 weeks ago, I would have made my task, you know, think about what this page should have on it, articulate why you don't like the way that it looks, and the way that it's performing, then I would have been much more likely to do it. And so it's like that on steroids for updates because it's like, what do I what do I write about? And, like, oh, am I just, like, bragging too much? Is this is this worth writing about?
Brian:And, like, how should I phrase it? And how do you know, it's like all those sorts of things. It's just like, I'll just build another feature. But, you know, that's that's dangerous. That's like a that's a really you know, then you get to the point where it's like, oh, we've been working on the product for
Arvid:a couple of months or
Brian:a couple of years, and, you know, now we now we're trying to get this big customer and, like, you know, whatever the case is. Even like you said, just even just getting that feedback, getting that maybe burnout. Maybe you don't have the motivation to keep going unless you see people see, like, hey. This is really great that you're doing this. Like, keep doing this.
Brian:I am actually using your product. You know, people like, hearing somebody to be like, there are other people on the other side of this that are getting value. Please keep going. Like, that's really useful to hear.
Arvid:That's kind of a yeah. It means to to get to make people remember that you're there. Right? That you're not just a transactional tool that but that does actually relationship in there. And, yes, I think every time you you talk about this, like, you have to tell people that the product does this because they won't find it out themselves.
Arvid:I'm always reminded of if if you build it, they will come. And how we know that that is such a folly in just in approaching anything. Right? Just building a thing doesn't mean anybody knows about it. We're in a world of constant attention grabbing algorithms.
Arvid:You need to put yourself out there. Just social media is the exact same thing. If you wanna get people interested in your business, you have to be present where they are, and you have to talk about your business. A changelog is that, but for your customers, for your users, for your prospective users, for for your trial users. Like, I'm I'm thinking about this just now.
Arvid:How how if I don't have a cadence of at least 10 days, then some of my trial users will never get a product update from me during their trial, and that sucks. Why wouldn't I send them every one every 3 days so they see, oh, wow. I signed up to a thing that's still getting new features. I need to stick with this. Right?
Arvid:That's just self sabotage at this point.
Brian:Totally. Yeah. Constantly getting better and, yeah, I think that
Arvid:I mean, one of the
Brian:things that we figured out very early of, like, you know, people that we really wanted to serve are, you know, just people in SaaS just because that's kinda you know, kinda makes sense to have the recurring benefit. But, also, like, there's kind of a subsection for people that we think are really good for our product of people who are shipping. Because we have had a couple people come to us already and be like, hey. We wanna fill our change log. And the reason why it wasn't filled is because they just weren't doing any like, they weren't building stuff.
Brian:And so I do feel like, you know, maybe there's something down the road that we could do for those people. It just doesn't really, like you know, it's just a different different problem. It's like a repurposing thing, and it's
Arvid:just That's a different stage too. Right? Like, first first, you fill it up now, and then you do the backfill later.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I also just feel like we just I just wanna stay, like, super focused. It's like, hey. Especially, like, in your case.
Brian:Like, you're doing the work. It's like it's not like you need some magical system. You know, there's not like a some marketing framework that has some, like, initialism that, you know, you have to follow the whatever. The the tower framework or what you know, whatever. It's like, you're doing the work.
Brian:You just have to talk about it. And it's like, you know, it's like that that's the type of company that we really wanna support. Because there's, like, a lot of people out there that are just, like, really grinding on the product, and you you wouldn't know it. Like, you it is not apparent that it's like, oh, this person is, like, spending legitimately, like, 60 hour weeks, and they have been for 2 years. Like, you know their product is good and you know that, you know, it's it's interesting, but it's like you don't really get a sense of scale.
Brian:And so I'm like, those are the people that I wanna help because it's like, they're doing all the hard work.
Arvid:I bet I bet you've convinced a lot of these people to look into ChangeLog in general, if they haven't already, and to look into ChangeBot right now. So if people want to follow both ChangeBot and and Terminal, we didn't even get to talk much about this, and you, and all the other things that you're going to be building over the next year, Where do you want them to go?
Brian:See see. So I mean, yes,
Arvid:it's a terminal.
Brian:400 page views, our simple analytics for ChangeBot. So when this drops, this needs to be double that number. It's gonna look something like this, I think, when the when the episode drops. But, yeah, yeah, terminal's amazing. Useterminal.com.
Brian:It's been actually, like, totally, like I feel like this is, like, the sales pitch, but it's, like, actually true of, like, the idea of, like, being heads down in, like, maker mode. It's, like, something like that. Like, if I didn't have a little dashboard to show me, like, what our web traffic looked like, I'd be going to simple analytics. Sorry, guys. I love you guys.
Brian:Like, but, like, I'd be going to the their website every day, and then I'd be clicking on stuff and I'd be rabbit holing. And so having it in front of me always, and if there's an issue or, like, when there was a spike, that's an indication to me that I should go take a look. And then most of the time, it's just kind of, you know, little SEO pops here and there. Just having all those notifications and all those dashboards, like, pushed into this form factor, this hardware form factor has been, like, actually really useful because there's so much to think about and so much to work on that, it's really great. And I'm a part of the developer community as well and seeing the stuff that people are building.
Brian:Like, one person has, like, a international space station tracker so you can know, like, when the space station's over. You know, it's like it's really cool. One guy actually, it's totally open source from a firmware perspective. So one guy hacked it so that it's, like, live updating with his playlist, and so he's got it on his speakers. So, anyway, so it's really cool.
Arvid:Yeah. I I hope it is because mine is still in the mail. Okay. Like, in in Canada, there there's been a a postal strike over the last couple weeks, so I have not received anything. But, Oh, that's
Brian:so funny. Yeah. I I saw that. We've had a couple of people complaining about slow delivery, and I just saw because my wife does ecommerce stuff, you know, here and there. And so we got a notification that it was something like USPS was like, yeah.
Brian:Deliveries are gonna be a little bit slow, because, like, Canada's not accepting any of our mail, and, like, that's had carryover of, like it's like, oh, we have, like, an entire country's worth of mail, like, that we have to hold on to, and we don't know what to do with it. So I think it's, yeah, hopefully, that gets worked out.
Arvid:Well, they they stopped. I think they they were sent back to work, and there's a whole political angle to this. I don't definitely don't wanna dive into this. But I guess that's that's one of those things that you just don't have to think about with the SaaS. Right?
Arvid:You don't have to deal with postal strikes or anything like it. Oh, man. That's cool. Now I'm I'm looking forward to having mine, and I I got the developer edition as well. So I'm looking forward to getting my my PodScan, monitoring into into that system as well just to see, like, how my system is performing.
Brian:Yeah. That'd be really cool to have, like, a little we have, like, a, like, Hacker News and Reddit and things like that that'll kinda show you those headlines so you can feel like you're informed, but you don't, like, click and go through. So that might be cool for you to build a similar one where it's like, hey. Like, here's, like, your most recent mentions. And so you don't have to think to go, and you just kind of look.
Brian:And if you see one that's like, oh, it's we were mentioned on, whatever, CNN. It's like, okay. Maybe look into that.
Arvid:That's that's that is one of the the the customer facing purposes, definitely. I I've I'm I'm excited to to hack on that. And then for my own monitoring too. Right? Like, what's the system doing?
Arvid:What are my servers doing? Are the GPUs burning? Right? That kind of stuff. Like, the there's a there is so much so much monitoring we could do and so much, updates that I need to know for my for my own business.
Arvid:No. I'm I'm excited for terminal. I I think it's it's still it's crazy to to think that you have to work both on something that is as, like, AI centric and SaaS centric as Changepod is, and then you have something that is so so almost like deep tech, even though just hardware. But, you know, like, it's it's just you have to deal with firmware. We have to deal with, like, display logic and updating screens.
Brian:Getting on people's Wi Fi. Yes. It's just like you know, it's the universal issue and, you know, we really tried to build this in a super secure way of where most, like, IoT things are, like, you know, the the company can drive and push updates to, but terminals, they can only they they request. And so we can't, like, proactively push something. Like, the terminal has to ask for packets.
Brian:And so that's caused us some pain points, but I think that not I feel like so many, like, IoT devices are just, like, just, like, vulnerabilities, like, waiting to it's like, hey. Like, let's put this, like, not sufficiently secured device onto your network that the public Internet can access. It's just like an insane thing to do.
Arvid:Bad idea.
Brian:Yeah. It's a really bad idea, and it's, like, 99% of those devices. So, you know, we've also had to kind of work through that. Say, hey. Because of our choices, like, we can't, like it's, like, a little bit harder to troubleshoot because we can't just, like, push or, like, we can't see what did we send.
Brian:We have to go back and, like, well, what did you ask for? And then why did why did this device ask for this? And to kinda, like, you know, reverse engineer from that perspective.
Arvid:Honey, how that that's, like, privacy and security concerns, that's something you take into every single business. Like, the moment you have to do with the Internet, to deal with the Internet, you have to just make sure that what you do or what your devices do, what your software does is, beneficial and not harmful to your customer. I mean, it should go without saying, but it it's still is a it's a concern that may be overlooked in in the this the zeal and eagerness that some people have for building businesses. Right?
Brian:Totally. Yeah. You you can easily build a Trojan horse when you're, like, you're literally delivering something physical into somebody's house. So it's like, only so many people are gonna, like eventually, we're gonna probably snap back away from this, like but people getting hacked from their, like, refrigerator and stuff like that. I think, like, we we've only got so many of those left where we're like, okay.
Brian:We really need to, like, rethink how we're how we're handled.
Arvid:Yeah. It's weird that my light bulb, can be an attack vector in into my own.
Brian:Yeah. Totally.
Arvid:It's bizarre.
Brian:Exactly.
Arvid:Well, let's let's drop a couple URLs and social feeds here so that people can follow you on your journey. We have terminal. We have change bot. We have you, yourself. Just throw a couple URLs out there that people can
Brian:Totally.
Arvid:Mentally click right now.
Brian:Use terminal.com for terminal. You can buy them now. And depending on when you order it and depending on the, state of the manufacturing in the world, we will get it. We we we've got an update on the website, so we let you know when it's shipping. So we still have we have units in stock right now, but if there's any delays like that, that'll update.
Brian:So we're really transparent about, I think we're one of the few Kickstarters who, like, actually delivered a product and and and continue to do so. So, like, we we try to be really good, about that and, global, shipping strikes notwithstanding. So that that's, terminal, changebot dotai is changebot. And you can go up there and you can sign up today, and we have the whole self-service flow, or you can book a call with me. And then I'm on I'm on Twitter mostly, b Sierkowski, which will be linked.
Brian:You don't have to worry about spelling that. And, I've been trying out Blue Sky as well. I've been kind of dipping my my toe in the water. I feel very much like a noob over there. And in fact, I don't even know, like I think I'm Bea Serakowsky.
Brian:Maybe I'm Brian Serakowsky. I don't actually know who I am, but we'll find the link.
Arvid:Find it out.
Brian:That's how new I am. So, yeah, I understand that I I've been given the advice that I should be begging to be on starter packs, and so, this is an open open request if you have a, like, sass dude, sass bro, starter list. Please include me. And then yeah. And we we don't really do anything that's, like, change bot native right now.
Brian:I think we have a Twitter account. We have a Blue Sky account. But mostly, we're just using that to, like, reshare while we're kind of in the founder led stage. It's like you kind of wanna talk to us and and, Ara's on on there as well. So, that's one way if you wanna follow us on either of those platforms.
Brian:You can follow ChangeBot, and then you'll get all the tweets and blue skies from myself and R as well.
Arvid:All the updates.
Brian:All the updates.
Arvid:Literally and figuratively. Literally
Brian:all the updates.
Arvid:Well, I really appreciate you sharing this. I'm so excited. I'm excited that we had this conversation today. Obviously, learning all about these things, but also that what you wanted to do back in the day actually came to fruition over this year, plus then terminal and all the other things that happened besides that. That is so really cool to see.
Arvid:That's I I think founder wise, you did pretty well. That's pretty awesome.
Brian:I'll give myself a b plus.
Arvid:You know? No. I
Brian:take it.
Arvid:That's awesome, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for for sharing all of this with me today. It really made me think differently about how important, change logs are. So I appreciate that.
Arvid:And I can wait for next year when we have another chat and see where it's gone. That's gonna be awesome. Thanks so much, Brian. Really appreciate it.
Arvid:And that's it for today. Thank you for listening to
Arvid:the Goodstraw founder. You can find me on Twitter
Arvid:at Abid Kal, a r v I d k a h l. You can find my books and my Twitter course there too. And if you wanna support me on the show, please tell everyone you know about podscan.fm and leave a rating and a review for this podcast by going to rate this podcast dot com slash founder. Makes a massive difference if you show up there because then the podcast will show up in other people's feeds, and that will truly help the show. Thank you so much for listening.
Arvid:Have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
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