Nov 3, 2026Host

Batten Down The Hatches

Listen on share.transistor.fm

Batten Down The Hatches

Show notes

Ian and Aaron discuss a short-lived Laravel New, Aaron's first onsite with the marketing team, a successful trip to Philly, the seemingly inevitable security apocalypse, and more.

Sponsored by Svix - https://svix.com/mt, Maileroo - https://maileroo.com/, Bento - https://bentonow.com/, PostShiba - https://www.postshiba.com/, and Typesense - https://typesense.org/.

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(00:00) - Ian's Laravel New didn't last

(24:13) - Laravel Offsite

(35:06) - Everybody's Orbin'

(42:13) - Got The Cash

(50:07) - Follow Up - Are People Actually Replacing SaaS?

(58:18) - Are Companies Rational Economic Actors?

(01:06:26) - Operation Batten Down The Hatches

(01:18:07) - Outro! Dot FM!

Links:Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/ Claude Duet - https://support.claude.com/en/articles/17631495 Firecrawl - https://firecrawl.dev/ Terry Black’s Barbecue - https://terryblacksbbq.com/ Joe T. Garcia’s - https://joetgarcias.com/ Mafia (party game) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game) Catan - https://www.catan.com/ Ghostty - https://ghostty.org/ Amp Orbs - https://ampcode.com/docs/orbs Solo - https://soloterm.com/ PHP×Philly - https://phpxphilly.com/ Mary Perry - https://x.com/sifrious Eff - https://eff.fm/ 1-900-Ice-Cream - https://www.theinfatuation.com/philadelphia/reviews/1-900-ice-cream Less Annoying CRM - https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/ Startup to Last - https://www.startuptolast.com/ North Korea linked to $6.3B Binance hack - https://www.npr.org/2026/10/30/g-s1-150902/blockchain-intelligence-firms-link-north-korea-to-6-3b-hack-on-binance Outro - https://outro.fm/

Transcript

Transcript

Speaker 1

You're listening to Mostly Technical, which is brought to you by Larajobs, the official Laravel job board, and Solo, the workspace for your agents and dev stack. And now, Ian and Aaron.

Aaron Francis

Hello.

Speaker 1

Hello, sir. We-- Boy, do we have a lot to talk about. I-

Aaron Francis

A lot going on.

Speaker 1

I am terrified by your tweets of-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 1

... I nood, I started over, I nood, I started over. I'm not nood, but I started over. But let me first tell you about SviX. In the age where code is cheap, you might be tempted to build webhooks in-house. Do not do this. SviX has solved all the hard problems about scaling webhooks so you can avoid triaging failed deliveries and incrementally building features.

That's SviX, S-V-I-X.com/mt. Thank you to SviX, and also to Mailerroo, mailerroo.com. One platform to send, receive, and test emails with great deliverability, EU hosting, and pricing that doesn't punish you for growing.

Check them out at mailerroo.com. And now, dear listener, there is a branded URL with a query string on it, r=mostlytechnical. You're not gonna remember that, but please go click on the link down below, mailerroo.com. Thank you to Mailerroo and SviX for pre-roll sponsoring the show. Now, Ian-

Aaron Francis

Yes, sir

Speaker 1

... the hell are you doing?

Aaron Francis

I got Laravel two. I'm back in the zone. What'd I get, like four for the year you gave me or something like that, right? So-

Speaker 1

Yeah, I gave you four. You've already, you've already blown 'em.

Aaron Francis

I think I'm on two. Uh-

Speaker 1

No.

Aaron Francis

Or three. Three maybe?

Speaker 1

Gosh, no. All right, we could go a couple directions.

Aaron Francis

Well, it wasn't for the year. It didn't start in January, right? It was like we, uh, I think it when we started it. We should lo- we should write these things down. Outro should have a way to log such facts.

Speaker 1

Let's talk about... There are two directions-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... and you, you get to pick.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Okay

Speaker 1

As the, as the offender, you get to choose which crime we, uh, adjudicate first.

Aaron Francis

Sure.

Speaker 1

You Laravel nood outro.

Aaron Francis

Uh, well that was-

Speaker 1

You also-

Aaron Francis

... a couple weeks ago, yes.

Speaker 1

Nah, I'm in-

Aaron Francis

But people were scared I Laravel nooded again.

Speaker 1

I'm in the new outro.

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 1

So we can talk about the new, new, new, new outro.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

Or we can talk about, uh, your most recent bout with psychosis where you Laravel nood something, you orbed it to death, and then you literally killed it. You took it out-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... back and shot it. So-

Aaron Francis

One dead project

Speaker 1

... I'm a little... I, I said you could pick, but I'm gonna tip my hand a little.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I kinda wanna hear about the thing that you both birthed and destroyed- ... in one weekend. That's kinda where I wanna start.

Aaron Francis

All right. Let's do that. Let's push the actual product to the back of the show, 'cause we are-

Speaker 1

Sure

Aaron Francis

... marketing experts here.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Aaron Francis

And that's where the most listeners are. So let's talk about instead the dead side project, which will be more entertaining, I guarantee.

Speaker 1

Actual product, just I wanna put that in quotes.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Just so that I'm on record as being an, a, an, an actor with integrity.

Aaron Francis

Scam tech?

Speaker 1

Yes.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Actual product that no one has ever seen. Okay, but first-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... the not actual product that no one has ever seen.

Aaron Francis

That's an even lesser product. All right, so this is kinda two segments I have down here in one. So for a while-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I've been using, uh, Obsidian.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Okay? To, like, store notes and things, okay? So that's, that's one element of this story. And then another element of this story, uh, which comes together a little bit later, is that email's making me insane. There's just too... The AI has, like, destroyed email. There's just too much-

Speaker 1

Agreed

Aaron Francis

... coming in, right? It's like-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... it's nuts. So, okay, so for the Obsidian part of this, it's like I'm really sick of using Obsidian because they refuse to embrace any AI at all. Like, it's just, I don't know, they built some graphing library or something. They're go- just, like, pretending it's 2007, and that's fine, and they can do that.

Speaker 1

And, and to steel-

Aaron Francis

But, like-

Speaker 1

... to steel man their argument, they say-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... everything is flat files, just ha- when your AI added.

Aaron Francis

I understand. Well, that's true.

Speaker 1

Okay. I don't, I don't think that's-

Aaron Francis

Um-

Speaker 1

... a great strategy, but that is their strategy.

Aaron Francis

That is their strategy, which if they fully embrace that, I could possibly get on board.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

But they don't fully embrace that, because-

Speaker 1

Nope

Aaron Francis

... their syncing stuff and their vault, cloud vaults don't have MCP.

Speaker 1

Right.

Aaron Francis

Don't have any way for me to interact with these files. So the files are still just stuck on my machine. Uh, I suppose I could use iCloud if I don't use their vault, but that's still gonna be this file stuck in iCloud, which has no MCP, and again, like-

Speaker 1

Not accessible at all

Aaron Francis

... wire up some crazy thing.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Right? But whatever. There's no, like, nice clean way I can just use my AI with it. So-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... uh, so it's like, yeah, I don't wanna deal with folders and stuff anymore. I don't wanna deal with any of that. I just wanna... I think we talked about this a little bit a week or two ago, but I just wanna dump everything I'm thinking about, link stuff into a pile of garbage, and then when I want something out of that pile of garbage, I have the AI go root through the pile of garbage. And everything I, you know, give me everything I said about my health.

Give me everything I said about this project idea. Just go read everything and tell me-

Speaker 1

Or like, what are all the dates I said outro would launch? Like that kind of thing.

Aaron Francis

Give me that. Wait-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... all that stuff, right? And this is not even, like, I don't even need the, like, full Aaron Francis home OS that's got transcripts of everything I've ever been on and all that stuff. I, I-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I'm not even going that far. This is just literally, like, links I find on the internet, I have notes and little thoughts and stuff like that. But putting them in Obsidian in the UI is, you know, that, that era's over. Like, I don't wanna think about the folder it goes in. I don't wanna, like, do all that stuff. So, um... Uh-oh. Did we lose you? Can you hear me?

Speaker 1

Oh, no, I'm just intently listening.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

I was very, very still. I've never been so still in my life.

Aaron Francis

You what? This is literally the stillest you've ever been-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... in three years of doing this show. I was like, "Oh man, he froze."

Speaker 1

No, I'm fully here.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

I had nothing clever to say.

Aaron Francis

Whoa.

Speaker 1

I had no put downs. I'm just listening. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

That was wild. Okay.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

You was a statue there for a minute.

Speaker 1

I was.

Aaron Francis

Okay, so I was like, "You know what? I'm just gonna build this thing." I got a couple domains that work for it. I got a couple, uh-- I was in Philly this week, had a conversation with Alex Hillman that kinda gave me some ideas in this direction.

Speaker 1

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

It's like, I'm just gonna build this. But I can't build software just for me. When I build it, I gotta build it as a product, potential product. I gotta-

Speaker 1

That is, that is our shared disease, for sure.

Aaron Francis

Yes. So-

Speaker 1

Can't just have a little hobby.

Aaron Francis

No.

Speaker 1

God forbid.

Aaron Francis

No. So I'm like, okay, so me and the orbs got on it on like Saturday morning. I was like, I got some ideas, throw stuff together. We're orbing throughout the day. I'm popping in on it on, I think it was Saturday, in and out. And it comes together, and it, it works. It's like, boom, I set it off. I did a big, huge... I actually did it the kind of older way. I built this big spec with the orbs.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

And then I sent off the orbs, and like 30 orbs spun out and like, whatever, built it all. And it works.

Speaker 1

Okay, so at, at the moment of optimism, describe the shape-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... of the product. We'll get to the moment of pessimism where you killed it. But like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... optimistically, what, what was this supposed to be?

Aaron Francis

Um, so it was like, it's, it's your standard AI product. It's a text area, right? A fancy text area that you can put stuff into. It's got a few special little things like, hey, if it's just a link, do a certain group of things, or if it's, uh, you know, a note-looking thing, do different things. If it's a question, give me results. So just a little bit of logic there.

Speaker 1

So kinda like a knowledge base wiki-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... just document storage kind of.

Aaron Francis

What the old people would call a second brain, right?

Speaker 1

Ugh, hate that. Forget it.

Aaron Francis

But like, I'm not buying into that.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

I don't want everything in there. This is just for a few different things. So fine.

Speaker 1

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And, you know, it could do some basic to-do type things, not like a full-featured to-do app, but it's like, hey, it can... You can have a checkbox next to stuff if you wanna call that a to-do, and it can be done or whatever. Okay, fine. And it's like kind of a one-pager. Stuff shows up below the text area. Whatever. There's-- You could break, you could break out things into sheets, um, if you, like basically like an artifact in Claude, right?

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So if you wanted to create a full document in there, as sometimes I have in Oblivion, right? Uh, Obsidian? Obsidian. Um, I always call it Oblivion, actually. Like a gaming thing.

Speaker 1

Oblivion would be a great name for a knowledge base.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that would be. I have a Blackhole, the app, which I thought would be kinda cool as like the name. But anyway.

Speaker 1

Oh, that's a great name.

Aaron Francis

So yeah, so and it worked. But you know, it was just like, this is all the refinement, right? It's just software. It's like, yes, does this stuff go into the database and come out? Yes. Does the AI go in and get it and tell me stuff about it? Yes. Like, that all works. But is it as fast as I want it to be? No. Like, on mobile, is it gonna be annoying? Yes.

Like, you know, the building it as a, a proper application, there's all that kind of stuff, security, other people, just getting into the whole thing. And I was like-

Speaker 1

Security

Aaron Francis

... "Ah, this is stupid."

Speaker 1

We gotta talk about security at some point.

Aaron Francis

Security. That's not even on our list. Security is obviously insane. So like, so then I was just like, "Ah, I'm using it a little bit," and next day I was like, "Nah, you know what? We're done." It might've even been that night. "We're, we're done. That's it. It's dead. Dream's dead." And it was a nice one-- not even a full day. It was like three hours of a project. Built it, a fully working thing, and then it was over.

One-day side project, not months. So that was really cool. I, I loved that about it. I was like, I felt no guilt.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I didn't like give up a lot of time with my family. I didn't like give up a lot of time from the business that actually makes money. I spent a couple hours speccing out this thing, try it out, it sucked, and then I moved on, and it was great.

Speaker 1

All right. Just a couple of lines of questioning here.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, let's go.

Speaker 1

One is, um, why not-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

Why not go full personal software and build out, build out your own kind of... It doesn't even have to be a life OS, but your own kind of like set of little tools and stores and caches-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... where your AI can talk to it? Then your security concerns go way, way, way down because you can-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... just be a one, like you're not a platform where people are gonna put all their valuable data.

Aaron Francis

Sure.

Speaker 1

You can have some security by obscurity. You're just a little guy on the internet hosted on Laravel Cloud-

Aaron Francis

That's true

Speaker 1

... so you don't have a VPS.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So why not-- Why don't you just start like layering on little bitty tools one at a time until you have exactly what you want?

Aaron Francis

It's just, it's still a lot of work, first of all. There's, there's still the security stuff. I agree. It's like you're more obscure. You're definitely not gonna be like a target per se.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But at the same time now we're entering this phase of there's just gonna be tons of stuff crawling around.

Speaker 1

You could be a drive-by, but you're not gonna be-

Aaron Francis

Right, yeah. You could be a drive-by

Speaker 1

... you're not gonna be a target of a nation state.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

So that seems okay.

Aaron Francis

Nobody's-- Yeah, that part's okay. Um, I'm not planning on even putting anything particularly private in this thing.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

So it's like whatever. If you wanna see my blood test results, like have at it.

Speaker 1

Right.

Aaron Francis

Like, whatever. Um, so that part's fine. But again, it's like another thing, thing to maintain. It's another thing to be like, oh man, it's still on Laravel 13 four years from now, right? And like dealing with all that stuff and like-

Speaker 1

I don't think that's real anymore.

Aaron Francis

Maybe it's not gonna be real.

Speaker 1

I brought, I brought one from Laravel 5.5 to 13-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, maybe it's not real

Speaker 1

... without, without looking at it.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I don't think that's real.

Aaron Francis

It's still a thing you had to do though, right? It's just still a thing out there for me to deal with. That, that is a lesser concern, though. I will concede that. Um, I think there's the other thing. The main thing that swung me and where I ended up going with it was actually that like things like the mobile app. Like I just want like a really good mobile app that just works awesome for this thing.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

And-

Speaker 1

If I, if I may-

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... push back again.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

As I'm, as I'm want to do.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

You don't need a mobile app at all. You need, you need an MCP-

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... and you need pick your choice of Groq, Dot, Claude Duet, whatever, and your interface into, uh, the mobile interface into that world is just-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... talking to the agent that is connected to the knowledge base or whatever it is.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of where I ended up.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

But, uh, in a different way. So-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

Where I ended up-

Speaker 1

So is the death, is the death of blackhole.app not the end? You ended up somewhere beyond that?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

You didn't just kill it, you created something else?

Aaron Francis

Yes, there's more to the story.

Speaker 1

Ah!

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

All right.

Aaron Francis

So-

Speaker 1

Carry on

Aaron Francis

... but there wasn't, but there was not a Laravel new involved, so.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Killed it. Was like, "You know, to get this to the level of refinement that I want to use every day on something, I don't wanna do it. We gotta kill it." I could do it just for myself, but it's still-- It actually doesn't-- Just doing it for myself actually doesn't solve my main issue, which is that to get it to be the level of refinement still is going to be a lot of work for me to do that, regardless of even, like, if there's other people involved.

Like-

Speaker 1

So the refinement-

Aaron Francis

Um

Speaker 1

... is an internal pursuit.

Aaron Francis

There i- Yes, for aspects of it. Like, obviously-

Speaker 1

Sure

Aaron Francis

... there's more if you're selling to other people, but, like, I just want certain things to be fast and s- to be a certain way on mobile and whatever, and, like, uh, if I have to build all that stuff, that's annoying. Agree, some of it I could probably outsource to Claude and MCP-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... whatever. But all right. So what I did instead, I was like, "Ah, you know, this is like you could just wire this up." So I was like-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

... "Let's wire it up." So me and Claude, we were like, "All right, we're gonna do this whole knowledge area thing, which is gonna just be Google Docs for the back end."

Speaker 1

Oof.

Aaron Francis

So it's connected-

Speaker 1

Oof

Aaron Francis

... to my Google Docs.

Speaker 1

Oof.

Aaron Francis

It's just making docs. It's got a index and a spreadsheet. We're going crazy with this. And-

Speaker 1

In a Google Sheet?

Aaron Francis

Yep, and we got a couple-

Speaker 1

Oof

Aaron Francis

... of, uh, skills that are just understand what to do. Like, if I just paste a link in now, it knows what to do with it. It's like, "Oh, it's just a link." It does something. If I tell it to log something, it logs it, whatever. So it just uses Google Drive as a storage. Um, it uses Claude as the front door, and that's it, and it's like 95% of what I wanted.

Like, it's just, like, fine. Like, I just go to Claude. So, um, it's your solution, right? Of like, I just go to Claude, except instead of me building my whole back end and having some-

Speaker 1

Sure

Aaron Francis

... MCP thing, like, I just use Google Docs.

Speaker 1

Just use the connector-

Aaron Francis

You know how many things that I made

Speaker 1

... like first party in all the tools.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 1

Chat has one.

Aaron Francis

Exactly.

Speaker 1

Claude has one. They all connect Google Drive just fine.

Aaron Francis

Exactly. So if I switch AIs, I'll be able to switch over to Google Drive from ChatGPT if I go over there, whatever. It doesn't matter. If I wanna do something myself with it, I could hook it up directly b- to Google Drive.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

So it's all in Google Drive. That's the back end. I, I could just go directly in Google Drive's own app if I wanna get at something for some reason, so that's kind of-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

... a nice little benefit. There's not, like, the database I have to go dig around in if I wanna get something and I can't efficiently get it some other way for some reason, um, or I wanna download everything, whatever. It's all backed up. It's all secure, all that stuff. I don't have to worry about any of that stuff, just there. Um, and like, I'm gonna have 100 items a year, uh, 100 to 300 items a year.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So, like, it's not gonna be a problem for many years, uh, of like, oh, it's too slow or whatever. So, um, yeah, and then while I was doing that, I fixed the email issue, 'cause that's what it all kind of tied together for me, was like, "Ah, I gotta fix this email as part of this." I definitely didn't wanna do the email in my own thing. So now I got-- I broke down.

I didn't wanna do it. I've been avoiding it. But much like I was avoiding going to the orbs, I just had to break down and give Claude access to my email, and I was like-

Speaker 1

Ah

Aaron Francis

... "All right, we're just connecting Claude to the email."

Speaker 1

Wow.

Aaron Francis

It can't send, uh, but it can read everything, and it can relabel, um, which I think are the main things it can do.

Speaker 1

Can it archive?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Well, that's like, apparently that's the label permission. It can unlabel-

Speaker 1

Oh

Aaron Francis

... which is archive. Apparently, I didn't know this, w- labeled inbox is your inbox, and when you unlabel inbox, that is archiving.

Speaker 1

Hmm.

Aaron Francis

So something with no inbox label is archived, apparently. So-

Speaker 1

Huh, learn something new every day

Aaron Francis

... so that's-- Yeah. So that's what it is. So I went in there, me and, uh, whatever. That took a little finagling 'cause, like, annoying thing about that is I want it to run, like, every hour kinda during the day to, like, clean stuff up, but then it creates a new session every time, and that's insane. So it's just like you're gonna have, like, hundreds of sessions just, like, in there of like, "I looked at this thing and got rid of this newsletter," so that's nuts.

But if you do it through Duet, apparently-- So I did it in Duet instead, moved it to Duet, and in there it can suppress the session. It can suppress the session, but it cannot suppress the notification. Uh, it, so it can update the same session over and over, but then it still generates a notification, like a push notification, which was super annoying.

So I just told it not to-

Speaker 1

Is Duet their, their GroqBot offering?

Aaron Francis

Their dot, yes.

Speaker 1

I haven't, I haven't touched it at all.

Aaron Francis

That's their, that's their thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1

All right, cool.

Aaron Francis

So I got into that over the weekend, which was part of the impetus of this changeover too, and I was like, "All right. Well, if you don't write anything, can you do the tasks and not update this conversation at all?" And it's like, "Yes," and then that won't generate a push notification. So now it's just off archiving stuff as needed or move, labeling it. There's a couple labels. And I don't get any notifications.

It just magically happens. So far it seems to be working, uh, and my email is way nicer. So that was good.

Speaker 1

This, uh-

Aaron Francis

So we got all that organization done.

Speaker 1

I may be walking back the oofs about Google Drive that I was giving you as you were-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... as you were narrating.

Aaron Francis

You're thinking.

Speaker 1

I'm thinking. Um, I do like the univers-universality of Google Drive.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Speaker 1

Uh, everything that you wanna connect to it will connect to it.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

You, the human, have access to it. I also like the security of it.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

It's a Google product.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

Um, and I'm, I'm running, uh... I am running to be protected by str- by strong people at this point.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 1

So I, I do, I do like that. Um, I- I think if-- I know that Google Docs now supports Markdown.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

I think if you forced all of those-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

-notes to be Markdown, I think I would-

Aaron Francis

Nope.

Speaker 1

-be happier. I don't want-

Aaron Francis

I like that.

Speaker 1

-rich text. I don't want my agent-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

-trying to like read and construct rich text.

Aaron Francis

Mm. This is a very good idea. We're doing that.

Speaker 1

That feels expensive to me.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Um.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

I like, I like the idea of the Google Sheet as like the, the database index.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So it doesn't have to like do a million API calls to find something.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

That feels nice. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't feel like this is too crazy.

Aaron Francis

Yay, he doesn't hate it, yeah.

Speaker 1

And, and I don't know where it'll play in, but, uh, Google App Script is unbelievably underrated.

Aaron Francis

Jamie has used this recently and was-

Speaker 1

It is.

Aaron Francis

-like freaking out about it, yeah.

Speaker 1

Back when I was at the property tax firm, that's the first way that I implemented like their set of code, was just incredibly complex Google App Scripts. And it ran the business for a year before like they hired-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

-me full time. They hired me as a contractor, I wrote all these scripts.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

And it totally worked, and then we built in-house software. But even now, I have written some Google App Scripts 'cause I'm a little bit loathe to give everyone access to my email.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So I've written Google App Scripts that like when I label something as a receipt, the... an App Script comes through later and picks it up-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

-and either auto-forwards it or posts it or something.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

And so I have a few little App Scripts running, um, just to kinda like automate some Google Drive stuff that I, I don't want to just have an agent try to figure out every time.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

So okay, this is more... This is, this is closer to what I was pushing you to do, but in a, in a kinda off-the-shelf way.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's an off-the-shelf way. I feel like using the spreadsheets is kinda nice too because I feel like... I don't, I didn't check this. I don't know it's for sure, but I assume that it's highly-

Speaker 1

Yeah, we have no idea if it works.

Aaron Francis

I assume it's very optimized for querying.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Whereas like it initially just like made a page and was just putting stuff in a table, and I was like, "Well, I just got to look through that every time I..." But like if this does get to thousands of items, I'm presuming there's some way that you can be like, "Search this column for this value," and like the spreadsheet-

Speaker 1

Right.

Aaron Francis

-will be able to bring it back very quickly, right? 'Cause it, it's making tags and stuff.

Speaker 1

It is, it is structured data instead of-

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

-just a doc that has a listing.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, so it's got some abilities there. It's cool because like I can go in and look at the index page, and it's not just a huge HTML page, but it's a spreadsheet, and I could do spreadsheet-y stuff in there if I want to. I could use the App Script, right?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

We could wire up some stuff if we wanna do something fancy. So that seems kinda cool.

Speaker 1

You know what you could even do-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

-is you could tell Claude, "Write an App Script for this Google sheet, and every time a new row is added via the App Script, go fetch the doc-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

-and then send it off to some AI somewhere and pull out like the search terms." And so then you have a column full of search terms that your AI can then use later to narrow down.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Like you could do the... You could have it pull the-

Aaron Francis

It's doing that the other direction, but yes, it could do that. Right now it's doing that on the way in.

Speaker 1

So when it creates a new doc, it puts the keywords in-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

The... Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Exactly.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's cool.

Aaron Francis

It's like we got Firecrawl hooked up, so like Firecrawl can go out and like go grab. Like if I give it the link, it crawls it, it gets it. It like... 'Cause a lot of times if you don't use something like Firecrawl, like it can't actually get the links 'cause it's blocked.

Speaker 1

Right.

Aaron Francis

So like we use Firecrawl. Okay, so get that.

Speaker 1

So did you connect-

Aaron Francis

Parse it.

Speaker 1

-Firecrawl to Claude?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that would be, if I had a tweak, and of course I do for content.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

If I had a tweak, I would say centralize that in the Google Drive process.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

So that then when you inevitably switch to Dot or-

Aaron Francis

Something else.

Speaker 1

Grokbot or something-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

-you don't then have to recreate your proce- That's why I like the personal software angle.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

'Cause then you're not like, "Oh, I gotta go to Dot. I gotta hook up Firecrawl. I gotta teach Dot how to do all this."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

It's kinda just like a process that happens inside of Google Drive.

Aaron Francis

Eh, I guess so. It is really just a couple skills, and like the Firecrawl MCP, so I don't think moving it would be too big a deal.

Speaker 1

For now.

Aaron Francis

But I don't-

Speaker 1

For now it's just-

Aaron Francis

I don't hate that.

Speaker 1

-the Firecrawl-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

-MCP. It will grow.

Aaron Francis

That's true. It could grow.

Speaker 1

I guarantee you it will grow. The factory must grow.

Aaron Francis

That's possible.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Aaron Francis

I'm hoping to never really think about this, and like I just use it in the couple ways I wanna use it. But inevitably I will come up against some rough edge and be like, "Oh, it'd be cool if it did this." Um, yeah, and the email part-

Speaker 1

The best part about having all of this-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

Regardless of how you, dear listener, decide to set this up, the best part about having all of this is you can literally call, in this case Dot, you can call Dot on the phone and be like, "Hey, can you look through my old documents and find..." And it's like, "Yep, here it is. Great, there you go." And it's just having all of your stuff plugged in is really awesome.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I think that will be nice. That's where like I haven't found these tools particularly useful in this way, but I think I haven't had enough of my stuff in there, right? So I think now that my stuff is in there, and same with email, right? I can now be like, "Hey, go through and find this ancient email-

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

-from whenever," and it'll go find it.

Speaker 1

You can put your AirPods in, get in the shower, and just burn through your emails.

Aaron Francis

Go full Aaron Francis and-

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

-go through the emails.

Speaker 1

Get a glass of wine.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

It's great.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, all that.

Speaker 1

The shower is becoming a, an office of productivity.

Aaron Francis

See, this is the thing that's most annoying about email for me, is that I don't even have that much email. Like, I don't have a much real email that I must respond to. So I don't... I have like one minute of shower time email, m- less than that probably. It's like, oh, there's like one email, and even the one email is often like something I have to do, not even an email I have to write.

Speaker 1

Right.

Aaron Francis

It's not like an email where I have to respond. It's just like, well, I gotta go do this thing. I gotta pay this invoice. I gotta do whatever. It's like not a, a task, so...

Speaker 1

Well, you can use the rest-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

-of your shower time to create a fantasy universe then. You'll do one, one minute of email and then like 19 minutes of lore.

Aaron Francis

I don't even think we're gonna have time today for the fantasy universe. It's crazy. Um-

Speaker 1

We'll see.

Aaron Francis

All right, hold on. Before we go any further, let's pay some bills. Post Shiba. Oh, we, I have some Jesse Hanley takes. Man, we got a lot to do. All right, Post Shiba. You've heard us talk about Bento for ages, well, Jesse and team are launching a new product called Post Shiba, the transactional email platform that powers Bento's amazing delivery rates. Password resets, login links, receipts, the emails your users are sitting there refreshing their inbox for.

You can even build Bento on Post Shiba. It's all the raw sending power. Jesse is currently gathering interest, I mean, technically it's released now, I think, and customers to test this out. So if you're looking to replace SendGrid, Mailgun, Resend, or SES, then, uh, join the waitlist or just go sign up. I think you can just go sign up and, uh, he'll reach out. So we should update this ad, but, uh, thank you, Post Shiba.

And, uh, and Bento. Hey, we'll do back to back. The email marketing and CRM platform built for the AI era. Send your product marketing and transactional email with Bento. Check out their new transactional email pricing with rates as low as nine cents per thousand emails. So if you want more of a, like, full on interface for your email, it's gonna be Bento. If you wanna just build your own thing and fire out a million emails a day, that's Post Shiba from the, uh, Jesse Hanley universe of products.

Thank you, sir, for, uh, sponsoring the show. Okay. So that was my weekend of AI construction. We got too much to talk about. Let's move on, unless you have any other hot takes for that, but seems like you're on board.

Speaker 1

Hmm. I'm, I think I'm, I think I'm on board. I'll be curious to see how this evolves. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... I am, I am very, very on board. I hate to give you credit for this-

Aaron Francis

Ah

Speaker 1

... a- as you'll, as you'll know.

Aaron Francis

I love credit

Speaker 1

... but I do think all of these, like, uh, personal agent use cases where it's like, "Book me a flight, book me a dinner reservation," I think those are incredibly stupid.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

But I do think, I do think this, like, let me build up my own set of tools that then this very convenient agent can go and, like, do things that are relevant to my life, I think that is-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... incredibly valuable. So I'm curious to see how it evolves.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that's the thing. We're so early. People don't get how ear- we're so insanely bleeding edge early. It's like maybe there's gonna be somebody who releases an app that, like, does all this stuff and it's super magical and we'll wanna go over there, or maybe this just stays in your Claude or your ChatGPT forever and you're just gonna keep bolting onto it. Who the heck knows?

Speaker 1

Who the heck knows?

Aaron Francis

But I think I don't wanna be the developer in the middle of it. Yeah, like it, yeah. These, like, one-off little product, they, like, they're all gonna be gone one way or the other most likely at some point here, those, like, just AI wrapper type products. So-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... yeah.

Speaker 1

I think, I think the move is continue to build up your corpus of tools and knowledge and data, and then give an easy way for the new hotness to connect to it.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I think that's, I think that's the move.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

All right. Where are we going next?

Aaron Francis

I don't know. What else you got going on? Let's do an Aaron, Aaron segment. You got some stuff in here.

Speaker 1

Um, we could do the Laravel offsite, or we can-

Aaron Francis

Oh, yeah

Speaker 1

... stick with AI and do Less Annoying CRM.

Aaron Francis

Uh, up to you.

Speaker 1

Let's, let's do the Laravel offsite just for a second.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Uh, so we did a marketing team offsite, which we talked about the planning of last week.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm, yep.

Speaker 1

Now it has happened, and so we can talk about, uh, we can talk about how it went. It went great.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 1

It was awesome.

Aaron Francis

It looked like it went great. I was very jealous. I was like, "How?" They should've had me as special guest at the offsite just to hang out, like-

Speaker 1

Executive producer Ian.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, but it looked really cool. Everybody seemed like they had a good time, so yeah-

Speaker 1

Oh, man

Aaron Francis

... give us the details.

Speaker 1

It was fantastic.

Aaron Francis

So you're in the penthouse, all this stuff.

Speaker 1

We were in the penthouse.

Aaron Francis

You got food. You're hanging out, like, wow.

Speaker 1

Yes. So we went to Fort Worth, um-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... which is about an hour from, from me, so me and Sam Chavez drove over together. We stopped at Costco on the way. Um-

Aaron Francis

Love Costco

Speaker 1

... so I had a, I had a work call, and so I trailed, like, 30 feet behind Sam while I was on the call. And we were just walking through Costco like a old married couple where I'm way behind her. Um-

Aaron Francis

You're wandering off, yep.

Speaker 1

Yeah. So we stopped at Costco, uh, picked up a bunch of snackies and a few drinkies, uh, and then made it over to Fort Worth. Now, I told you last time that I thought my best idea ever was rent the penthouse as-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 1

... the office space. Turns out-

Aaron Francis

You were very proud of that

Speaker 1

... it was my best idea ever.

Aaron Francis

Ah.

Speaker 1

It was my best idea ever.

Aaron Francis

I thought it might be. I, I was very optimistic about that one. I was-

Speaker 1

So we had 13, 14, something like that, people, um, in the hotel who all, of course, had their own rooms. This is not-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... you know, this is not a college retreat. We're adults.

Aaron Francis

Ah.

Speaker 1

We all have our own rooms.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, Laravel Inc., doing it right.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Let's go.

Speaker 1

Dude, if you send me on a work trip and you're like, "Oh, you're gonna share a room with your coworker," I'm out.

Aaron Francis

It's the worst.

Speaker 1

I'm sick. Oh, I have a cough. Oh, I can't go. There's no way-

Aaron Francis

No

Speaker 1

... I'm sharing a room with a coworker.

Aaron Francis

No, can't do it.

Speaker 1

Get serious.

Aaron Francis

It's the worst.

Speaker 1

I'm 37.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1

So obviously everyone had their own rooms.

Aaron Francis

Nice.

Speaker 1

And then we had a bonus room, which was the penthouse. Turns out-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... the penthouse was two stories. Um-

Aaron Francis

Oh, okay

Speaker 1

... and the downstairs-

Aaron Francis

That's good

Speaker 1

... the downstairs was the residence.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And so there was a bed, of course, 'cause you're, you know, people are expected to stay there.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Um, but we lived in the upstairs, and so we had-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... we had the kitchen, we had the living room, we had a big, like, big table where probably eight people could sit around, the couch where probably eight more could fit. Um, and it really did-

Aaron Francis

How many people were there?

Speaker 1

I think 13 or 14-

Aaron Francis

12, you said

Speaker 1

... something like that.

Aaron Francis

Oh, okay. All right.

Speaker 1

Um, it really did feel like a college ski trip-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... because, you know, we're all in this room. It's cozy. We've got our-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

... snacks. We've got our drinks. We're laughing. We're having fun. We're bumping into each other. That part, like, the working part in the penthouse was ideal.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Of course, there's a giant TV. I brought an HDMI cable-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... and so we plugged directly into the TV and we did, you know, some screen sharing up there.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Which if you try to rent a TV at one of these hotels for the office, it's, or for the conference room, it's, like, another $500 to roll the TV in-

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

... and so we got away without doing that.

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

Um, it was very nice 'cause there were two bathrooms, like one upstairs-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 1

... one downstairs.

Aaron Francis

That's very nice.

Speaker 1

Right?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So there's one directly off the kitchen, and you're like, "Oh, my coworkers are right here working."

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

"Oh, let's go downstairs and use the restroom."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So that worked out incredibly well.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So the working setup was ideal.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Just totally awesome.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Everybody got in on, like, late Monday, Monday night, and we worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and everybody left Thursday morning. So renting the penthouse for work, if that's where it stopped, would've been one of my better ideas.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

That's not where it stopped.

Aaron Francis

No, we got more to do.

Speaker 1

No, of course not. The after party, right?

Aaron Francis

Oh, after party.

Speaker 1

So we work, we work all day. We work all day.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And then we went out for lunch, but just kinda like across the street, uh-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... 'cause the, the point during the day is to work, so it's not like-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... let's go have a two or three-hour team-building lunch. It's like, let's walk over to Corner Bakery, have lunch, and walk back. Worked great.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

At dinner we went out to two, uh, one Fort Worth staple and one Texas staple. We went to Joe T. Garcia's-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... which is, like, a pretty honest-to-goodness Tex-Mex. Fantastic.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And then one night-

Aaron Francis

Sounds delicious

Speaker 1

... we went to Terry Black's Barbecue, of course.

Aaron Francis

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1

Had to get some barbecue.

Aaron Francis

That sounds good. Yeah, you gotta get barbecue in Texas.

Speaker 1

So we, we had these two nice dinners, um-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... or at least local dinners, and then after that it's like, "Well, what are we gonna do? Let's go back to the hotel."

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

So we go back to the hotel. The first night-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... about half the team, you know, we get back at, like, 9:30, 10:00, something like that. Half the team is like, "Let's go upstairs and play Settlers of Catan."

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And so we go upstairs and we play Settlers for a couple hours. I mean-

Aaron Francis

Wow

Speaker 1

... I didn't go to bed till 2:00 the first night-

Aaron Francis

Oh, geez. Okay.

Speaker 1

... because I'm up playing Settlers of Catan, just having a blast.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Second night we go out, uh, we come back to the hotel, we walk across the street, get some ice cream. We're all standing on the sidewalk eating our ice cream, and I'm like, "Guys-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... let's go up to the penthouse." So the entire team, because it's the last night and we've got ice cream-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... you know, the entire team goes up to the penthouse.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

We're all sitting around eating ice cream, making some drinks, and then we decide, let's play Mafia. You know, the-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... the strategy/card game Mafia.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And you know, I won't- without naming names, we have some-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... people that like to sneak off and go to bed early.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Not tonight.

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 1

They stuck around. They stuck around.

Aaron Francis

Mafia kept them in. Okay.

Speaker 1

They... Yeah, and so we were up till, we were up till 1:00, you know, stabbing each other in the back- ... and having a great time. And it was-

Aaron Francis

How many rounds did you play? One... Is it-

Speaker 1

Oh, we probably played-

Aaron Francis

I, I never played it, so-

Speaker 1

We probably played five, six, seven rounds of-

Aaron Francis

Oh, okay

Speaker 1

... of Mafia.

Aaron Francis

Oh, wow, okay. That's awesome.

Speaker 1

Oh, it was so fun.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And one of the great things is when people do decide, like, "All right, this is my last round. I'm outta here"-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... all they have to do is walk downstairs and go to bed-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... or take the elevator down and go to bed.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

It's not like this big thing-

Aaron Francis

No Ubering back

Speaker 1

... of like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... yeah, oh, I'm gonna get an Uber, and then everybody's like, "Oh, you're getting one? I'll get one too." Oh, and then, you know, it kills-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... the party.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

It's just like, "All right, I'm out. See ya." Um, so one of... I think, no, I think definitely the most fun, like, company retreat offsite gathering that I've ever been to.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 1

Such a freaking blast. So great.

Aaron Francis

That's amazing.

Speaker 1

Flawless.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Wow. I love a flawless, uh, executed in-person event.

Speaker 1

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Not easy to do.

Speaker 1

No.

Aaron Francis

So and it was just two nights? So two nights. Did you do anything the third day, or everybody just kinda took off or...?

Speaker 1

Uh, it was one arrival night and then two hang nights.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

So the first night nobody really did anything. People were still-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... kinda like getting in. We just grabbed-

Aaron Francis

Come in

Speaker 1

... some dinner. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... the, the final day, whoever was around, we just ate breakfast in the hotel lobby. Uh-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

... and then one, one person was like, "All right, I'm outta here. I'm gonna go find a cowboy hat before my flight." And we're like, "Great, have fun." Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Must've been a European.

Speaker 1

Yes, it was a European. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So it worked out, it worked out just great.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 1

It was so much fun.

Aaron Francis

That's fantastic. That's so cool. The... I love this idea of getting the individual teams together. Like-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... I think that's a really good idea, right? Just in general, and, uh, the penthouse, I love this idea-

Speaker 1

The penthouse

Aaron Francis

... of the penthouse.

Speaker 1

The penthouse, and on a-

Aaron Francis

Base of operations

Speaker 1

... on a work front-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... we just got so much more done in person.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Like it was-

Aaron Francis

Ah, in-person's where it's at

Speaker 1

... of course it was high intensity. I don't know that you could do this all the time.

Aaron Francis

Sure.

Speaker 1

But I, I did try to convince everyone they should move to Dallas, and I was immediately rebuffed.

Aaron Francis

Oh, no.

Speaker 1

Even the... Even Sam, who lives in Dallas, was like, "Y'all, don't move here. I'm trying to leave." I was like, "Damn it, Sam."

Aaron Francis

Oh, man.

Speaker 1

Um, but the first thing-

Aaron Francis

You get an 80% raise, no taxes

Speaker 1

... Yeah, I know. The first thing-

Aaron Francis

Come on

Speaker 1

... we did was, uh, a few little AI sessions. So, uh-

Aaron Francis

Ooh, okay

Speaker 1

... Haley taught everyone how to orb, and then I-

Aaron Francis

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

I've never orb'd.

Speaker 1

And then I, I showed the laggards, uh, how to use Solo if you're still, like, you know, way behind and using-

Aaron Francis

If you're daring

Speaker 1

... local development. Yeah, crazy.

Aaron Francis

Daring to be on, on local development. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So that was the very... And Steve then showed, like, some of his creative process with, with Claude. Um-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... and you'll, you'll be, you'll be surprised to hear this. I'm happy to hear this. Steve just uses Claude inside of Ghoste. He just raw dogs Claude-

Aaron Francis

He just, that's, uh-

Speaker 1

... CLI inside of Ghoste, no tools, nothing

Aaron Francis

... for video stuff or whatever.

Speaker 1

Yep, 100%. So you're not behind-

Aaron Francis

Amazing

Speaker 1

... dear listener. But that was good because, um, the rest of the time-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... we had everyone just orbing. It was like-

Aaron Francis

Oh, wow

Speaker 1

... "Hey, here's, here's the list of 20 things we have to get done."

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

And I stood at the, I stood at the screen and was like, "All right, this one, you two take that. Work on that together. This one-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

... y'all work on that together. When you're done with this, you go work with them." And it was just like-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... boom, boom, boom, and everyone was just orbing and ripping PRs to this, like, launch branch that we had.

Aaron Francis

Man, we got Aaron orbing.

Speaker 1

It was awesome.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 1

It was awesome. I didn't personally orb. I, you know- ... I'm, I'm the manager, so I managed-

Aaron Francis

You should

Speaker 1

... by walking around, looking over people's shoulders and being like-

Aaron Francis

You should

Speaker 1

... "Ah, that's pretty good. Work harder," you know? Um, but it was, it was great to see people who are technically minded but not traditionally developers be like, "All right, well- I can do this too.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I think the orbs are great for that, um, for like letting less technical people in with like enough guardrails. Like, and then I'm not... It's not being so scary also of like, well, install the stuff on your local machine-

Speaker 1

Correct. Yeah

Aaron Francis

... and get all the stuff set up, and, "Oh, Laravel's not working," like if they're working on the website or something.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

The orb takes care of everything. It's always gonna work. It's always gonna set up correctly, and then yeah, just make this change on the page or do whatever and just do all that. And then do you guys use the, uh, team like that, letting people see each other's threads and work together-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... on the same threads?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, so that's the other huge benefit versus like the local dev. I'm sure there's probably some crazy way to do it local too, but like-

Speaker 1

No, this is the best way to do team-

Aaron Francis

It's, it's nice

Speaker 1

... collaboration for sure.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. It's just nice to be able to see the other threads, and then you have that whole history too of like now forever. It's like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... why did we change the pricing on that to that? Well, here's the thread where like somebody said-

Speaker 1

And Haley showed me-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... a way that like you can... So like if you're orbing together-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... you can switch out of talk to the AI mode and switch into talk to your coworker mode inside the orb.

Aaron Francis

Right. Is that the multiplayer-

Speaker 1

So you can like-

Aaron Francis

... I think or whatever?

Speaker 1

Yeah. You can like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... @mention somebody, and then-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... the two of you are having inside your main like thread, the two of you-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... are having a chat, and then you @mention Amp, and you go back to building. And I thought-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... that's really cool.

Aaron Francis

That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1

Like if you're like, "What, why is this person typing this thing?" You can do, you know, "@Haley, what are we doing here?" And then she can respond-

Aaron Francis

What's going on?

Speaker 1

... and then you go back to it. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. We haven't used that much 'cause, I mean, we're so small, it just hasn't come up that much, that direct at the same time interaction. But, uh, obviously I think especially in like a marketing case where it's like, "Hey, we're just like riffing on something together."

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

For... Especially once you're, again, you were doing this in person, but like soon you won't be in person, so then it's like rather... moving some of that Slack conversation-

Speaker 1

Exactly

Aaron Francis

... kind of lost in Slack.

Speaker 1

To the place, to the place where the work is happening.

Aaron Francis

Yes, and then this is the forever log of, uh, why, why we did things and-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... all that stuff. So I think that's, there's a lot of possibilities there. Like will it forever be Amp? We're all so early. Who knows?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Who knows?

Aaron Francis

I think there's something, this type of thing. Amp has shown me that this is very valuable, right? And I hope it's Amp.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I hope that they, they seem close to profitable and all that kind of stuff, so hopefully it's Amp forever. But, uh, regardless, this type of collaborative AI inside of threads and kind of access to code but not code required and being able to have like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... no project orbs, that's just like where you're doing something else, like just all those kind of things, and, uh, hopefully I think they'll probably lean into that more even. I think the more they can do on that front just for non-technical team members. But, um-

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But yeah, that's, that's amazing. So you got a lot of work done then.

Speaker 1

We got a lot of-

Aaron Francis

What work actually happened?

Speaker 1

We got a lot of work done. Yes.

Aaron Francis

'Cause sometimes it's hard to get the work work done at these things if it's ends up being too much on the fun side, you know?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It's like you're trying to thread that needle a little bit.

Speaker 1

Well, we have this good forcing function that in, you know, uh, like two weeks we have a big launch, and so there's-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... there's a lot of work to be done. I think if it was-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... just like any other time of the year where it's like we have standard marketing stuff, it would've been a little more low-key. But-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... I, I like the war room aspect of it.

Aaron Francis

I think that's better. Yeah. That's nice.

Speaker 1

It's so much more fun. Like even the-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... work part is so much more fun-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... 'cause you're all like, "Who's doing this? We gotta do that. Let's push this. Oh, what are we doing here?"

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

"We gotta finish that." And it's like, that's fun. I enjoyed that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that. I think that's... Otherwise, you just end up like, "Well, what are we gonna do during the day? Let's go do-

Speaker 1

Right

Aaron Francis

... something fun, and we'll go to a museum, or we'll do whatever." Which is good too, bonding-

Speaker 1

Let's do a team building exercise

Aaron Francis

... but, right.

Speaker 1

Kill me.

Aaron Francis

But, right. Team building, shipping stuff.

Speaker 1

You know what the best, you know what the best team building exercise is? Work.

Aaron Francis

Right. It has to-

Speaker 1

That's what the best team building exercise is.

Aaron Francis

Man, I know. It's, I think we talked about this last week, but if I did a new, new company someday, it would be in person I think would be the deal. Like, uh-

Speaker 1

I think I 100% agree.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. There's a lot of benefits to that. Well, all right, so that went, went great. We love to hear it. Everybody out there, penthouse suite, keeping this in mind for the future. Maybe do it in Vegas and get one of those big penthouses.

Speaker 1

Oh, man, that would be awesome.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. That'd be cool. Although maybe too much distraction. I feel like Fort Worth-

Speaker 1

Probably

Aaron Francis

... is a good level of distraction too. It's like, eh, there's not like that much-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... else going on. It's like a regular city. You know, it's got city stuff, but it's not-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... you know.

Speaker 1

There was, uh, there was like a, they do a cattle drive where they walk-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... the cattle from like the stockyards to somewhere else down, you know, one of the main streets.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

And we missed it. It was like-

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 1

... "Ah, this is gonna ha- this is gonna happen at 4:00."

Aaron Francis

Ah, too, too-

Speaker 1

We would have to Uber over there.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

And then we would watch. Somebody called it, they were like, "I wanna see the Running of the Bulls," and I was like, "Oh, brother, I think this is like the walking of the cows." "This is, this is not the Running of the Bulls."

Aaron Francis

Oh, yeah. If it was the Running of the Bulls you missed, that would be a bummer.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But yeah.

Speaker 1

That would be a bummer. So we, we missed. Some people had seen that 'cause when Laracon was in Dallas, they did their full team offsite in Fort Worth.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

And they were like, "Yeah, I've seen it. It, it's, it's fine. Like we don't, we don't need to waste half a day getting over there- ... to watch the cows walk down the street." So we did miss that. Apologies to the team, but we got a lot of good work done.

Aaron Francis

Is it just... It must be more than once a year even that it happens then, right? 'Cause that's Dallas-

Speaker 1

Twice a day.

Aaron Francis

Oh, twice a day.

Speaker 1

Yeah. They walk the cows twice a day.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

So it's very, it's a, it's a non-event for sure.

Aaron Francis

All right. Yeah. So any time you happen to be in Fort Worth, you can-

Speaker 1

Correct

Aaron Francis

... you can make this happen.

Speaker 1

You can go see the cows walk. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Okay. So yeah. If it's like a once a year thing, a big deal, but it's not a big deal in, in that sense.

Speaker 1

Not a big deal. No.

Aaron Francis

All right. All right. Maybe pay the final bill here, and then we'll, uh, hit some of these.

Speaker 1

Let's pay the final bill. This final bill is paid to you by our friends at TypeSense, open source, lightning fast search engine for your site or app, natively integrated with Laravel Scout. So if you need search across any corpus, check out TypeSense at typesense.org.

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Aaron Francis

I went to Philly this week.

Speaker 1

You did?

Aaron Francis

I was in Philly. So we both had trips this week. Mine was a, uh, partial work, partial play

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

Um, I was initially going down there for, uh, Boss Man Chris-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... who's doing a PHP meetup, and had, like, kind of a fun element where people are doing these sort of, uh... It was, like, uh, it was like reverse Shark Tank. Um-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... so you're pitching a funny idea that you don't expect to actually make any money, which one's kind of the best idea. And, uh-

Speaker 1

Did you pitch outro?

Aaron Francis

Hey. Hey. Oh.

Speaker 1

Uh, uh.

Aaron Francis

Who's the jokester now?

Speaker 1

Hey, got him.

Aaron Francis

Uh, got him. I did not. Uh, Joe T was supposed to be there, but he had some thing come up, so Joe T couldn't come. So I was a judge, and then we grabbed Alex Hillman and, uh, oh, Andrew, I believe, uh, was the other guy's name. It's, uh, escaping me, but, um, yeah. So we, uh, were the judges. It was great.

Um, friend of the show, Mary Perry, uh, won-

Speaker 1

Love Mary Perry

Aaron Francis

... with this-

Speaker 1

Oh, she did?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, she won with the site effm-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

... uh, which is eff.fm, which is an... Of... Amazing that that was available. Um, and it's kind of an app-

Speaker 1

Effm

Aaron Francis

... that-

Speaker 1

Great, great domain

Aaron Francis

Great domain. Um, yeah, so it's, like, an app that, like, teaches you about all the, uh, swear words in, I think, only English. My contribution was like, "Why not in other languages?" So blow it out. Um, so fun, and but, and her presentation was great. Like, it was hysterical. She obviously is, like, a very, um-

Speaker 1

Yeah, great content there

Aaron Francis

... you can work with this, right-

Speaker 1

For sure

Aaron Francis

... content. So a lot of funny stuff in there, but all the presentations were really good. Um, yeah, so that was great. Um, my brother was with me on the trip, so my brother went to this, which he never does stuff like this, so that was fun to have him there. He met the crew. We went out for 1-900 Ice Cream after, which is the greatest ice cream. Uh, Producer Dave was with us, 'cause Producer Dave was there, and, uh, yeah, so that was awesome.

I always, whenever I'm in Philly, gotta get 1-900 Ice Cream, and then the rest of the time we were playing poker. We poker'd up.

Speaker 1

I, it... I, I don't know what you started with, but your photos made it look like you had a lot of money.

Aaron Francis

Oh, we got the cash, Aaron. Cash.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So good. Uh, so yeah, Philly is kind of taking over poker. This is, I would call it, like, the East Coast hub of poker at this point. Um, uh, the Connecticut places are still big too, but I don't know. I don't care for those as much. I much prefer being in Philly over that, and there's tons of good games in Philly, so-

Speaker 1

Did, uh-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, so we're in Philly

Speaker 1

... fellow, fellow D-Gen and friend of the show, Daniel Colborn, play poker with you?

Aaron Francis

Yes. So my brother was there, then my cousin came down the second night after the business stuff, which was the first night. So it was me, him, and then that night, uh, Daniel Colborn showed up. We started, uh, Daniel Colborn didn't come till a little bit later, but we started at one-three, which is, you know, $1, $3 blinds, and then that game was absolutely terrible. But, so I'm trying to make the game fun.

Sometimes I do antics to make the game fun-

Speaker 1

Sure

Aaron Francis

... if the game's not fun. So I, for example, play... Any time I had a hand with a four in it, I played, and I told everybody this. So seven-four off-suit, king-four off-suit, two-four off-suit, whatever. I'm playing it. So I'm having fun. Every time there's a four on the flop, I'm making jokes. I could have two pair.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Blah, blah. Then I said, "You know what? That's not even enough. I'm gonna play every hand." I played every hand for an hour. So if there was a hand dealt, I played that, in that hand, no matter what cards I had. Okay? And these people at this table, they would not even crack a smile.

Speaker 1

What?

Aaron Francis

I could not even get them to smile. Like, I'm just throwing money around at this one-three table. I'm playing every hand. Nobody's raising me. Nobody's smiling.

Speaker 1

What?

Aaron Francis

Nobody's talking. It was crazy. I'm doing all kinds of antics. So we leave that game finally. We can't take it. So we played two-five.

Speaker 1

This is like when we went to Vegas, and I'm at the table. I'm at the blackjack table with Justin Jackson-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

... trying to get the party going, and the dealer says, "You're being too loud. It hurts my ear."

Aaron Francis

Exactly. Like-

Speaker 1

Come on.

Aaron Francis

No, we're here for fun. But this was early. It was, like, 11:00 AM. I'm like, "Why did you people get up out of bed to come here to play poker just to sit and be miserable?"

Speaker 1

Oh, okay. It's all making sense. Because they have a disease. If you're getting out of bed to come play poker at 11:00 AM in Philly-

Aaron Francis

On a weekday

Speaker 1

... you, you have a disease

Aaron Francis

On a weekday in Philly

Speaker 1

That's why.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It's a Thursday in Philly. You got nothing better to do at 11:00 AM but play some poker.

Speaker 1

It's a workday.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

It's 11:00 in the morning in-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... Philadelphia.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Okay. No. All right. I get it.

Aaron Francis

Well, that might explain part of it.

Speaker 1

I get it now.

Aaron Francis

So we ended up playing two-five, and then later in the night, by the time Daniel got there, it turned to five-10, so it was a nice, juicy game. A lot of money. No pros at the table. Uh, it was great. So had a great time, and, uh, yeah, I was up till, like, 4:00 that night playing some poker. Played again the next day a bit.

Speaker 1

You played 11:00 AM to 4:00?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. That was a long one.

Speaker 1

Dude.

Aaron Francis

That was a long one. We got a lot of poker in that day.

Speaker 1

That's so long.

Aaron Francis

We had, uh, Uber Eats bring us, uh, Angelo's cheesesteaks, which are some of the best-

Speaker 1

Cool

Aaron Francis

... cheesesteaks in the city. It was... I mean, they were spectacular. Very good cheesesteaks. Highly recommended.

Speaker 1

Do they travel okay, a cheesesteak?

Aaron Francis

So this is what we were worried about, you know? We were like, "Ah." Like, people were like, "You should go there to get it," but, like, you can't get up from the poker table. We're playing poker here.

Speaker 1

That's a bit... Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

I'm not getting up and going somewhere else, right? So we're like, "Ah, screw it. Like, let's just... We'll roll the dice," right? And we're gambling, so let's gamble on this food.

Speaker 1

Different game, but sure.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Sure. Uh, so it turns out it's on a nice bread, like a really good bread that's, like, a little bit crusty-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

... and, like, just held up perfectly. Like-

Speaker 1

That is shocking to me

Aaron Francis

... no problem at all. Yeah. I always pay for the direct-to-me thing, so we got the, like, the direct-to-me thing.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

So, and it's not far away, so I think it, like, it wasn't sitting around long. It was maybe five minutes in transit, and it was great.

Speaker 1

'Cause, 'cause normally, normally the steam ruins any bread-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... container that is, uh, that gets soft.

Aaron Francis

I think that, I think what they did that kind of smart is they wrap it in, um, like, uh, craft paper-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... I would call it, something like that. So I think maybe it was a little-

Speaker 1

Butcher paper probably

Aaron Francis

... breathability. Yeah, it was, but it wasn't butcher paper where it's waxed on this one end.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Um, yeah. So it wasn't contained. It was definitely just, like- You color on it kind of pa- like, but the big sheets, like a school-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... sheet of coloring on paper. It was that consistency, and they were wrapped up in that. So it was probably a little more breathable. Um, but yeah, it was not steamed at all. It was, like, perfecto.

Speaker 1

That's pretty impressive.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. It was very good. Uh, yeah, and then we played some more the next day. So I did win five grand, which was nice. Um, I've been losing, so this is like now we're kind of back to even, which is like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... about a downswing, so now we're going back up. Um, but yeah, it was great. Drove home, which, uh, is not too bad a drive back up here, and had a nice little time in Philly. Uh, and thanks for everybody who came out, and there was a lot of listeners, of course. Everybody says hi to Aaron. And, uh, yeah, it was great. The folks at, uh-

Speaker 1

Well, h-hello to all the listeners. Congrats to Ian and crew on-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... well, at least to Ian on being up.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And congrats to Mary Perry for winning the show where the points are made up. The rules are made up- ... and the points don't matter. There you go.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

That's just the old-

Aaron Francis

Check out effem.

Speaker 1

effem, E-F-F.-

Aaron Francis

effem

Speaker 1

... .fm.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, it was a cool, cool, uh, cool app. All right, Less Annoying CRM. What the heck do they do? I have not, uh, I don't, I don't even know what this is.

Speaker 1

All right. I want you, I want you to approach this-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... with a spirit of understanding and acquiescence.

Aaron Francis

Oh, boy.

Speaker 1

Okay?

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Tyler King has a podcast-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... called, I think, "Startup to Last." There you go.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Uh, Tyler runs Less Annoying CRM. Uh, his friend runs, uh, Leg Up Health, which is like a individual and business health whatever, insurance thing-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... brokerage. Uh, they have a podcast, which I've listened to for years.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And they'll often say on their podcast they have three listeners. I am one of those listeners, okay?

Aaron Francis

There you go.

Speaker 1

So hello, hello Tyler, I know you listen to this.

Aaron Francis

There you go.

Speaker 1

I also listen to yours. Good vibes all the way around. Okay. I just wanna s-

Aaron Francis

Is, uh, one, one question here. Is this less accounting related, or this is unrelated to less accounting?

Speaker 1

It is not. Un-unrelated.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Totally separate. Okay.

Speaker 1

Totally separate.

Aaron Francis

Go.

Speaker 1

Less Annoying CRM is a B2B company-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... that primarily serves not indie hackers and-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... not developers, okay?

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

We're talking, like, travel agents-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... insurance companies, like-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... real, like, salt of the earth, "We are companies."

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Speaker 1

Not, like, hipster doofus, "I'm on the internet" things, right?

Aaron Francis

Right. Yep.

Speaker 1

Been in business for who knows how long, a dozen of, dozen years maybe.

Aaron Francis

Dozen years.

Speaker 1

Um, thriving company.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

On his podcast this past week, he said that they've been flat for a while, and they're-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... starting to see a little bit of a downturn.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And some of the cancellations-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... many of the cancellations are not necessarily explicitly, "We rebuilt this," but rather-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... "We're gonna, we're gonna do this in-house."

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And so what, what he is seeing in his American business serving, serving Main Street companies-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... is he is seeing the effects of AI, where people are taking what used to be off-the-shelf software, Less Annoying CRM-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... and building their own versions in-house.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

We also-- I also saw Laura Roeder just tweeted, and she's more technical, so this is less relevant to the ongoing-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... discussion we've been having.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

Laura Roeder just tweeted that she replaced, I forget, something. So it was like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, Descript

Speaker 1

... this, this, this morning, Descript.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

She replaced Descript with something else that she built.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So my stipulation is-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 1

... this AI is eating SaaS narrative that you and Jesse Bentley fight about all the time-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... is, is a little bit broader than just indie hacker losers trying to save $9.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

That is, that is my stipulation to you-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... because Tyler King, a real businessperson serving real businesses, is seeing this-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... reflected in his numbers.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

What do we think?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I, so I would say, uh, oh, I would say a couple things. First, on the Laura Roeder, I think that's totally in the, like, your wheelhouse.

Speaker 1

That's in your wheelhouse, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Right? Like, you, you... My line on this, right, to be fair, 'cause Jesse always falsely claims I said that this isn't happening, which is not at all true. I think the interesting line to watch, where I will consider myself very wrong, is if a significant portion of these companies that end up building their own tools for things are not, like, founder-owned and run, because that's the line, right?

Like, if I can save $300 and I'm the founder, that's $300 back to me, right?

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So, like, that, there is a h- much higher level of motivation there to take on those risks, 'cause now I have 4,000 more dollars a year-

Speaker 1

Right

Aaron Francis

... literally in my pocket.

Speaker 1

We love $4,000.

Aaron Francis

Whereas, like-

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Right? Once you... Right, yeah. So once you have a manager who making the decision, it's a totally different thing with totally different trade-offs involved.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So to me, that's, like, the line of people below that line who, like, get going with AI and are like, "Ah, like, I can replace this with AI. I can replace that with AI," I think they will place, replace a lot of that stuff with AI. Um, now, I don't know anything about Less Annoying CRM. Like, a quick look at their website, it seems fairly focused on what I would probably think are mostly founder-oriented businesses.

Speaker 1

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Like, bigger than just a person, but, like, I am a travel agent with three agents who work for me, right?

Speaker 1

Yeah, 5, 10 people, something like that.

Aaron Francis

Right. Like, that's, like, the focus and probably is going to be more susceptible. Um, but, like, he also said he's been flat a long time. I think that's, like, a general SaaS thing of smaller SaaSs. It's like- All these spaces have gotten super ultra-competitive, right? So like h-he's in a similar boat to me of like this has been an ultra-competitive space way before AI.

And so there's been lots of CRMs, because even though people pretend now that you couldn't build software before AI, you actually could build software before AI, and lots of people built CRMs, and lots of people built help desks. So I think we'll see, right? I think it's unknown. For some- I think he's a little more susceptible than a company that has some bigger businesses or departments in larger businesses where they can't move so efficiently.

Like we have a friend, and he shall remain nameless 'cause I don't know if w- he wants us to share this.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

But we have a friend, and at their company, they track the cost of meetings, right?

Speaker 1

They do.

Aaron Francis

And he occasionally posts a meeting he's in, the cost of it, and it'll be $30,000 is the cost of this one meeting. The people who are in this one meeting-

Speaker 1

As estimated by salar- salary divided by time multiplied-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 1

... by number of people there, yeah.

Aaron Francis

So you have $30,000 of people in this meeting, right? So my premise is that to replace any product that's currently you're paying for a SaaS, you're going to have many meetings. But even if it's not, let's say it's five meetings. You're gonna have five meetings 'cause you're a bigger business. And let's go not the extreme example, let's go with a smaller example where every meeting costs you $2,000 or $3,000.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

Like right there you're at $10,000 of time. That's before you've built anything, before you've done anything, before you've decided the procedures, before you've decided who's responsible, who's gonna build it, who's gonna maintain it, all the stuff. Like you're at tens of thousands of dollars very quickly in any type of bigger than founder-led organization. And so I don't know. Like I just think that those people are looking at the trade-offs very differently.

And so to me that, the main trade-off there is like can I replace this CRM and get, go from something that's fa- somewhat generic, right, just by its nature, to like my own custom one? And the difference there is so valuable that it more, it has to more than make up for the time and cost and effort. So like if I just, if it costs me 20, $30,000 a year to replace this CRM, like it can't just be that like I get, I save the $500 a month I pay, right?

It has to be way above that. It has to be more than the $30,000, and it really has to be like three, four times the $30,000 to actually make it worth it. So are we gonna get hundreds of thousands of dollars of value? And sometimes you will, right? Like I can totally concede that. There are gonna be places where like, ah, if we build this thing, it's gonna give us competitive advantage. That's fine, and when the people see that they'll do it. I'm just dubious that most companies are gonna look at like a CRM or a help desk or an accounting system or whatever, name all the various big SaaS categories, and be

like, "You know, if we build and manage our own, we're gonna save this $500. And not only are we gonna not have to spend that $500, but we're going to get all this big outsized return." So we'll see. Maybe they will-

Speaker 1

Two, two points

Aaron Francis

... and I'll be old man.

Speaker 1

I think you are old man.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Which again, happy belated.

Aaron Francis

Sure.

Speaker 1

But I think, one, I think you continue to believe that people are rational economic actors.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Which I don't think is true. I don't think as person are-

Aaron Francis

People aren't, but a company is.

Speaker 1

I don't think that is true. People are just-

Aaron Francis

I think it is

Speaker 1

... companies are just people.

Aaron Francis

It, it-

Speaker 1

It's just people

Aaron Francis

... but I think the irrational part is-

Speaker 1

The Supreme Court would say differently, but a company is just a group of people

Aaron Francis

... the irrational part is the other direction in a company. It's to be more risk-averse. Like w-well, I'm not going to take on this risk without outsized upside. What's in it for me-

Speaker 1

Disagree

Aaron Francis

... as the middle manager?

Speaker 1

Disagree. I don't think-

Aaron Francis

What's in, what's in it for me?

Speaker 1

I don't think every- I don't think everyone is a rational actor. That's my first-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 1

... point of contention.

Aaron Francis

But I think they're irrational in the other, other direction than you're saying, but continue.

Speaker 1

My second point of-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... contention is-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... I don't think the only value metric is money. And I think that is-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... that is a big thing of what's-

Aaron Francis

Eh

Speaker 1

... what's getting lost.

Aaron Francis

I don't know about that.

Speaker 1

I think, let's say-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... I don't use Less Annoying CRM, I don't use any CRM.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

And so let's just say you need 10% of what Less Annoying offers.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

But you need that same amount of stuff. So we'll say you need 10 units of what Less Annoying offers, and you need 10 units of what Less Annoying does not offer.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

And so you look at it and you say, "Well, I don't need this entire product."

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

"I need a portion of it, but I do need additional stuff that Less Annoying can't do because they're not in the property tax-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... game, for example."

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

So I'm going to now... I know that people could always build software. You and I-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... must hopefully agree it is way cheaper to build software now.

Aaron Francis

Way cheaper.

Speaker 1

So now that the economics of building software have changed, I'm gonna take the 10 units of utility from Less Annoying, add my-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... extra 10 units for my specific use case, and I'm gonna cancel Less Annoying. So I, I think-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 1

... people aren't rational actors, and it's not just a price. Uh, the only metric in the value is not price.

Aaron Francis

Uh, I agree it's not price, but it is money. Because like the, the reason to do that is not because they like building software, right?

Speaker 1

I don't think any of them-

Aaron Francis

The reason why we would do that-

Speaker 1

... are saying-

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 1

... they like building software.

Aaron Francis

Right. So the reason to say, "I'm gonna take the 10% of this CRM, and I'm gonna take 10% of this other app and put it together," is because I think if I do that, I'm not just saving the money on those two different services I pay for now. I'm getting something more valuable than that.

Speaker 1

Correct. Agreed.

Aaron Francis

Right? So that has to be the metric of like it's, it's... And that's like pretty much what I just said, right? Like it's gotta be way more valuable. It's not just that like, "Oh, we saved the money." 'Cause that's not... First of all, it's gonna cost you more 'cause you have to maintain it and deal with it, right?

Speaker 1

I think the "we saved the money"-

Aaron Francis

It has to be way more than that

Speaker 1

... is a, is a red herring

Aaron Francis

Right. Uh, right. 'Cause it's, it's gonna cost you more money no matter what. Like, it is-

Speaker 1

If-

Aaron Francis

If you're doing it properly, it's gonna cost you more money

Speaker 1

... if people are saying, "I'm gonna cancel Less Annoying purely for price," then that falls into-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... my first bucket of they're not rational economic actors.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

I think for the rational economic actors-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... they're saying, "I'm gonna rebuild Less Annoying plus whatever, monday.com. I don't know what they do either."

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

"And I'm gonna do 10% of each, and-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... we're... I will get more value out of that than what it costs."

Aaron Francis

But tie this back-

Speaker 1

So I think there are two camps. There are two camps.

Aaron Francis

Sure. So tie, so tie this back to our... I, I think for, like, real ongoing businesses that are not founder-led, the first camp is totally relevant. Like, no real business is like, "We're gonna save this"... I mean, unless, again, you can save a huge amount of money, that's a different thing. So are... there might be people who are like, "We spent $5 million here on Salesforce," for sure.

Speaker 1

Cor- Corgy, the insurance company, is opening cafes.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

So we can't say that all businesses are rational economic actors.

Aaron Francis

For sure. That's fine.

Speaker 1

We can't say that.

Aaron Francis

But that's a startup that's trying to get attention.

Speaker 1

No, you can't-

Aaron Francis

That's a little bit of a different thing

Speaker 1

... you can't, you can't disclaim every example I bring up. We just have-

Aaron Francis

Well-

Speaker 1

... to have some that are h- held out as like, "Oh, maybe this is indicative"

Aaron Francis

I mean, the, the whole foundation of most businesses is that there's, right, somebody's responsible for the profit and loss and the balance sheet and all these things.

Speaker 1

Correct.

Aaron Francis

And there's, there's stakeholders who are watching them. There's a board of directors. You can't just go around being like, "We're blowing all this cash for no reason," right?

Speaker 1

But not every-

Aaron Francis

Like, people are gonna ask questions

Speaker 1

... discrete decision is purely rational economics.

Aaron Francis

Uh, I don't know. I think most of them roll back up-

Speaker 1

Oh, I definitely know

Aaron Francis

... to rational economics.

Speaker 1

I definitely know.

Aaron Francis

Uh, anyway, all right. So neither here nor there. Roll- Let's go and bring this back to the original conversation-

Speaker 1

Okay

Aaron Francis

... which is I'm gonna use Google Drive, and I'm gonna use Claude.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

I'm gonna wire them together, right? Like, so won't there just end up being quite a few solutions that are like, "I'm gonna use this Less Annoying CRM, the 10% I need, and I'm gonna use this other tool, the 10% I need, and I'm gonna use their MCPs, and I'm gonna wire them together," and then they still handle all the security. They still handle the data models.

They still handle the servers. I have one little sliver where I, you know, maybe I've put a little integration software in there where I've connected these two things, and they're talking to each other possibly, right? That makes sense. Um, I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe everybody's gonna build their own CRM. I will be very surprised if that happens because, like, the economics of that are just weird, and the, I, I don't see the upside for most companies in that.

But maybe many companies are not rational actors, and they want to become software companies. I don't think that's true, but maybe it is true. Maybe they want to become software companies.

Speaker 1

For all, for all of your old man yells at cloud, I admire your optimism about how people run their businesses. I admire you thinking-

Aaron Francis

But it's not about people

Speaker 1

... that they're gonna look at, "Well, it'll cost me this much to maintain, and it costs me this much to use."

Aaron Francis

That is what they do.

Speaker 1

That is not what they do.

Aaron Francis

That is what they do, Aaron. That is what they do.

Speaker 1

No.

Aaron Francis

Yes, because I'm the manager who's like, "I wanna get rid of Less Annoying CRM," okay? I'm getting... This thing costs us $6,000 a year. I have to go to IT, or if we have in-house software developers, I have to be like, "All right. I need X amount of your time. We're gonna build this." It's a whole big planning process, even with AI, to, like, get the resources and the budget to do all this. Yes.

Speaker 1

So why-

Aaron Francis

How do I do it?

Speaker 1

So why... You just do it.

Aaron Francis

Who-

Speaker 1

I think you just do it.

Aaron Francis

No, it's not true.

Speaker 1

I think it is true.

Aaron Francis

Not any company I... What, who, who just does it? Who just does it?

Speaker 1

I will say at Laravel Holdings Incorporated-

Aaron Francis

Uh-huh

Speaker 1

... we had a salesperson-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... who just built their own sales CRM. They just built it-

Aaron Francis

That's fine

Speaker 1

... internally.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

They just built it.

Aaron Francis

But you're a startup.

Speaker 1

They didn't talk, they didn't talk to, they didn't talk to IT. They didn't talk... We don't, I don't think we have IT.

Aaron Francis

Did, did they get rid of-

Speaker 1

They didn't talk to Taylor

Aaron Francis

... did they get rid of a sales CRM that you had?

Speaker 1

I don't know, actually. That's before my time. I'm not sure.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Um, so I, I think in, in like an Ernst & Young and you wanna build-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... an internal app, you go to IT, you suffer.

Aaron Francis

Got it.

Speaker 1

In, in, in most other companies, I think you just, like, build the app, and you're like, "Hey, guys. We're using this," and it's like, "Oh, this is cool. Let's use this."

Aaron Francis

I don't know.

Speaker 1

I think that is true for, for, not-

Aaron Francis

I don't think it's true

Speaker 1

... not for the big dogs, not for a university or a healthcare system, but for a lot of companies, I think that is 100% true.

Aaron Francis

But this comes down again to, like, if you have bad customers, right? Like, they're going to be more likely to churn and do for whatever reason.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 1

Disclaim, disclaim, disclaim, but I think it is true for some segment-

Aaron Francis

I don't know

Speaker 1

... of the economy.

Aaron Francis

I've never worked in a company that works that way myself. Like-

Speaker 1

That is the truest thing you've ever said.

Aaron Francis

Yes, that is true. But, like, I don't know. Office Depot wasn't running around being like, "People, come up with your own processes," about anything ever.

Speaker 1

No, they're Office Depot. They're a Fortune whatever.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

Most of the world does not work at-

Aaron Francis

But, like, where are these companies-

Speaker 1

... Fortune 100s

Aaron Francis

... that's fine. If you're, again, Todd's Manufacturing Widget Co. of Kansas-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... I don't know. Is everybody just running around doing their own processes for managing the widget production? I don't think so.

Speaker 1

I think so.

Aaron Francis

No, I don't think so. I don't think that's true.

Speaker 1

I think so.

Aaron Francis

Okay. We're gonna find out.

Speaker 1

And we've reached an impasse.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

This leads us to Operation, we love the name of f-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, an operation

Speaker 1

... we, we love to name things Operation.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

This leads us to Operation Batten Down the Hatches.

Aaron Francis

Which goes against everything you just said. That's why I love that these are together.

Speaker 1

This is a new segment, Ian.

Aaron Francis

So let's go through it.

Speaker 1

This is a new segment.

Aaron Francis

This is directly related. But continue.

Speaker 1

This is unrelated whatsoever.

Aaron Francis

Yes, highly related.

Speaker 1

Unrelated to anything I've said before-

Aaron Francis

Uh-huh

Speaker 1

... you're insane if you're running your own software, okay?

Aaron Francis

There you go.

Speaker 1

Okay? Listen.

Aaron Francis

I'm saying.

Speaker 1

It's not great out there.

Aaron Francis

It's very bad.

Speaker 1

I am... This is, this is an Aaron Francis operation, okay?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I'm battening down the hatches.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Um, I'm moving everything off of Forge onto Cloud.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Speaker 1

And this is not talking my own book. Both of those are held by Laravel Holdings Incorporated, so it's right pocket or left pocket, right?

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

I'm just saying I don't want to be responsible for a server.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

I just- And I am a very smart boy. I'm a very smart boy.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

But I-

Aaron Francis

You're not even a rational actor. You're an irrational actor, but you, even you see that this is dangerous.

Speaker 1

And I can't. I just can't do it.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Um, being responsible for any, any server on the internet right now is a liability. I want Chris Fidao-

Aaron Francis

I couldn't agree more

Speaker 1

... to carry that liability-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 1

... on my behalf.

Aaron Francis

I want Chris Fidao up all night scared-

Speaker 1

I want, I want him, yes

Aaron Francis

... crying, tears, sweating.

Speaker 1

Correct.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 1

I want him crying and throwing up because Kubernetes has a zero day. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I n- and I can't-

Aaron Francis

No

Speaker 1

... do any of that.

Aaron Francis

That's right.

Speaker 1

That is not my responsibility.

Aaron Francis

I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1

I am also, uh, I'm also ripping out some large packages that have had a history of finding some onesie, twosies. Uh-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... and I'm like, I just don't, I don't, I don't need, again-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... I don't need everything that package offers.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

I'm just gonna build it myself. I'm gonna have AI do it, which sounds crazy, right? 'Cause it's like instead of relying on this admin package, I'm gonna build admin. But I only need 5% of what that admin package does. I just need to be able-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... to write articles, man.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I don't need, I don't need temporary file uploads that turns out is a vector that's impossible to secure, right?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

So I'm going through, I'm going through all of like old side projects, content sites, anything like that, and I'm pointing Claude 5.5 at it and saying, "You have an army of Codex workers. Y'all figure it out to how to get this-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... how to get this off of Forge." And I got-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... one or two off of Vapor too.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

Um, so I'm keeping it all in the family.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

But off of Forge, off of Vapor, into Laravel Cloud, and then I'm gonna let the big brains stay up all night while I-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... live my life and don't have to-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... monitor Twitter for CVEs and then go ask Claude-

Aaron Francis

Right. Yes

Speaker 1

... What version of Ubuntu am I using? Am I vulnerable to this? I do not have-- I got a book to write. I got seven books to write. I can't be monitoring CVEs. This is crazy.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. That's like even my dev, uh, here, it was like, yeah, I didn't even know about this Chrome thing, which like Chrome-

Speaker 1

Yes

Aaron Francis

... has this big zero day that, like, puts everything at risk, including, like, your Playwright scripts and all that stuff-

Speaker 1

Including Claude Desktop

Aaron Francis

... in addition to your desktop.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Aaron Francis

Obviously Chrome Desktop.

Speaker 1

'Cause it's Electron.

Aaron Francis

All the stuff. Yeah. Right. So, like, it's crazy out there. That's why nobody wants to write their own software.

Speaker 1

It's crazy.

Aaron Francis

Nobody does. It's only crazy people who wanna do it.

Speaker 1

Crazy out there.

Aaron Francis

And the thing is, it's not even-- Laravel Cloud can only save you so much. Laravel Cloud will save you from a certain type of exploit, but Laravel Cloud cannot save you, for the most part, from your own code is screwed.

Speaker 1

Correct.

Aaron Francis

And, like-

Speaker 1

Correct

Aaron Francis

... right? And we-- You can already today, right, go out and buy, like from, what is it? What's My App or whatever. There's a few of these services that are like, "Give me every Laravel site in existence. Give me every Django site in existence," right?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Ner- Nerdy Data, something like that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, all those things, right? So I just get a huge list. Here's a million sites. Crawl them. Just crawl them-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... for like all kinds of weaknesses that are common in web apps. Crawl all of-

Speaker 1

And I see this in the Laravel Cloud logs.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

It's like-

Aaron Francis

They're just pinging it

Speaker 1

... blocked WP admin, blocked Livewire/upload.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

Blocked all of this stuff.

Aaron Francis

Yep. And today they just still go after those, like the easy exploits, right? Like, okay-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... WordPress, you know, it's got a million easy exploits. We're just gonna go out there and pound everything for WordPress, fine. But we're only a short time away from AI being cheap enough and all the stuff being cheap enough to just, like, pound everything fully all the time. Like go crawl around, try to post every form, try to do-- put weird shit in the forums, try to get in somehow. Like, that's all just coming where you're just gonna be under constant attack. And your vibe coded app that nobody's ever security tested, nobody's ever looked at a second time after you vibe coded it to replace less annoying CRM, is gonna get hacked, and they're gonna get ransomwared,

and there's gonna be 10 news stories about this, and that's-- They were already getting ransomwared before. It does-- But anyway, I-- Good job with your batten down the hatches.

Speaker 1

Batting them down.

Aaron Francis

I'm also battening down the hatches. G- This is-- I, I, I don't love saying this 'cause of where this, who we are in this podcast, but, uh, the local development, very bad. I don't like the local development. Gotta get off the local development, unfortunately. Gotta g- I don't want anything but a browser really at all running on my computer at this point. I don't wanna run any servers, uh, which I run hundreds of servers, but I'm trying to get out of that game and get that to Laravel Cloud too.

That's a longer process, unfortunately. But it's, it's gonna be bad. The next couple years-

Speaker 1

It's gonna be, it's gonna be bad

Aaron Francis

... are gonna be bad.

Speaker 1

It is bad already.

Aaron Francis

It is bad, and it's gonna get worse.

Speaker 1

Railway, Northflank, Trigger.dev, Ubuntu, Chrome, and that's in, that's in like the past three days.

Aaron Francis

That's over the weekend.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And, like, we're only getting worse. Like, I'm way more worri- Again, on my order of things that are gonna put me out of business, Finn and similar-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... number one. Uh, we get hacked and just something we can't handle and fix-

Speaker 1

Yep

Aaron Francis

... number two.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

People vibe coding their own shit, like way, way down below those top two. Like, because, yeah, the s- the security stuff is crazy. Like, it's scary out there. Like this-

Speaker 1

It is-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... so scary out there.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. If someone hacks you-

Speaker 1

I feel bad every time I see a CVE, I, like, put it in the Laravel channel, and I'm like- ... "Oh, this looks bad. Good luck, guys."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah. But, like, I just can't... Like, we have a whole team responsible for that, and I, I think it's-- I do think it's, like, bad for the open web that I'm, I am such a smart boy, and I'm like, "I can't, I can't win." Like, I cannot win against these people.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

I have to go to a managed platform.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I mean, I've just, side note here, but obviously I think you guys should be selling the hell out of that and, like, building-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... the security team and building everything. A lot of marketing around that, right? 'Cause, like, the fear is gonna sell. And it's not fear you're trying to sell fake fear. This is real fear.

Speaker 1

I know.

Aaron Francis

You should be scared because it's going to be bad and get even worse, so.

Speaker 1

I know.

Aaron Francis

There's so much code out there. I mean, just how big is PHP, right? Like just staying in our world, like PHP is a gigantic piece of software- That's very old, that probably has all kinds of stuff in it that's broken or exploitable or whatever. Presumably they've been going through it a lot. But still, you know, as the AI gets better at wiring together 15 or 20 little nitpicks-

Speaker 1

15 weird little things that don't matter turns into you just got pwned.

Aaron Francis

Yep. So like there's inevitably gonna be more of those. So, but you know, it is nice. They're trickling in kind of, so it's like I feel like Laravel Cloud, you know, it's like this was a little wake-up call, this last one, of like we need to be able to not just help people with this, but like we need to be able to act instantly. Like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... it's not even enough that like you have people, and the people are gonna look into it, and the people are gonna do the fix, you know, within a day. Like it's gotta be like, "No," like, "We are super on it. The minute it's out it's, it's secured."

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

And you know, I'm sure all the hosting providers are going through that kind of thought processes now and how you're gonna do all that. As you take on more platforms, you gotta do it for Ruby and PHP and Go and all the stuff, right? So a lot to do. Plenty of work there for the old dev team at Laravel Holdings Incorporated. Um-

Speaker 1

There, there are no, there are no laurels being rested upon- ... I'll tell you that.

Aaron Francis

Good.

Speaker 1

Everyone, everyone is teetering on edge of like what else can we do to be even more proactive, for sure.

Aaron Francis

Good job on your part getting in on the marketing end of the family rather-

Speaker 1

Dude

Aaron Francis

... than the dev end of the family. Good, good, uh, thinking there.

Speaker 1

Seriously.

Aaron Francis

Very happy for you.

Speaker 1

I will say that like after the, after the PHP one, we do have some new-- And these were stress tested because we, we didn't get the patch until it was like-

Aaron Francis

Right. It was all that stuff

Speaker 1

... "Everybody have fun."

Aaron Francis

Right. Didn't even download it.

Speaker 1

And so we, we built the playbooks and the stress test system to like patch everybody's running apps without forcing-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... them to redeploy.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

And that is now, that is now fully a baked playbook of like, all right, next time, not if this happens again-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... next time this happens again, here's the playbook for patching tens of thousands of pods- ... uh, without any downtime. And so like I think every platform is probably getting better at this, but if going on the vibes of like the internal Slack channel, the random channel, everybody's pretty like on edge of, "Oh, no, another one just got popped." Like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... this is terrifying. And it does seem, it does seem like every attack so far is after the environment keys. Like they want-

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 1

They want AI keys from hundreds of thousands of customers so that they can-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 1

... distill frontier models into-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... the next release of Kimi or whatever it is.

Aaron Francis

Right. It's just Kimi out there grabbing keys.

Speaker 1

It's just Kimi going for Kimi keys to make Kimi 3.5.

Aaron Francis

Which is something that's better than if they're trying to ransomware everybody and like, uh, there is an upside there-

Speaker 1

I guess, yeah

Aaron Francis

... you know, for now. But you don't want it to be when they start ransomwareing everybody, that's like a much bigger problem for the org. It's like, okay, if I get an Anthropic bill that's big-

Speaker 1

I didn't even-

Aaron Francis

... it's gonna be unfortunate, but-

Speaker 1

I listed five. I didn't even list the $6.5 billion Binance hack.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I just, it just, I forgot about it.

Aaron Francis

Ugh.

Speaker 1

There were so many, I just forgot.

Aaron Francis

Just the biggest hack in human history, that's all.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Aaron Francis

Um-

Speaker 1

That now the FBI and CIA are involved in, like this is-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, sure

Speaker 1

... this is real stuff.

Aaron Francis

I mean, I think it's just the North Koreans, unfortunately. I don't think you're getting any of those tokens back-

Speaker 1

Oh, yeah

Aaron Francis

... over there. But, uh-

Speaker 1

They, I think the FBI said it was a North Korean group.

Aaron Francis

Get your money out of the-

Speaker 1

Dude

Aaron Francis

... crypto people. Like the crypto is-

Speaker 1

Crypto, what the hell are you thinking?

Aaron Francis

I mean, come on. They're not... It's been 20 years, okay? Look how much you use AI after one year. It's been 20 years with crypto. You're not using it for anything other than illegal poker games, buying drugs.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

There's other ways to do those things.

Speaker 1

Than buying pictures.

Aaron Francis

Like whatever. Ke-keep your, keep your, keep your illegal drug money in the crypto, but like get the rest of the money out.

Speaker 1

Get the rest the hell out.

Aaron Francis

You don't need all your life savings in there. Like it, it's fine.

Speaker 1

By the way, decentralized money- ... let's all put it into Binance-

Aaron Francis

The easiest money to steal

Speaker 1

... and let them get... Yeah. Come on.

Aaron Francis

Irrecoverably stolen instantly and easily. Um, yeah, the whole thing, it's crazy. But uh, I'm with you. Batten down the hatches every corner. This is like pretty much all we talk about over here all the time, every day. And that, I think if you're a responsible software engineer right now, this is where the profession is still a profession. Like everybody's like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... "Oh, everybody's gonna vibe code their own stuff, and it's gonna..." Again, this is, uh, just another point against that. There are professional aspects to this job that are not so easily done by the, you know, accounting manager 'cause they want their accounting software a little differently. Like there's still a lot that's gonna go into it, and all those parts of the job are gonna be harder and more advanced-

Speaker 1

Correct

Aaron Francis

... than all those things, you know? So we will see. Um, all right.

Speaker 1

All right, I got eight minutes, so I gotta go-

Aaron Francis

You got eight minutes

Speaker 1

... do my day job.

Aaron Francis

New outro. What do you think?

Speaker 1

New outro.

Aaron Francis

It's out.

Speaker 1

So I'm looking at it.

Aaron Francis

Not out for anybody else, but it's out for you and me.

Speaker 1

I'm looking at it. It's fundamentally different.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Like it's, the UI at least.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 1

Um, I like it. I prefer it.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I do.

Aaron Francis

Let's go, Francis. Let's go.

Speaker 1

I do. And this is, this is, uh, this is closer to what it, it should be, frankly.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 1

Um-

Aaron Francis

Good

Speaker 1

... the rich text editor is nice. The sidebar is great. The arrow key up and down between segments, great. I think, I think this is... I, this, I, I can't say that this is your final form 'cause I know that it won't be. But I think this is close to the final form. I like this.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think we're getting close. Um-

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So obviously it'll be easier for people. Uh, you, if you go to outro.fm now, there are like real screenshots and stuff up there now, so you can go take a look at that. I will open it up here at some point, maybe by next week's show, maybe the week after. We will see. I wanna play with it a little more, let Aaron sit on it a little bit, let Eric and Dave, uh, give me th- their feedback on their end of this world.

But, um, I don't know if I'm ever gonna use it, but I do, I do think in the fake show running I was doing with it, I much preferred it. And then in our live show here, I much prefer everything super fast and instant now, which I like.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

I like the continuity.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I, I did notice that.

Aaron Francis

Roll down to the bottom, which I like, and you kinda see what's been done and what's to go.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Um, so I think I like it. Um, but yeah, I mean, I was, uh, I, I was up till like 2:00 AM 'cause I was like, "I said I'd get it ready for the show."

Speaker 1

I know.

Aaron Francis

Gotta get ready for the show. I had to move data because of the ad reads and stuff. So I was up till 2:00 AM, everything wasn't done. I was like, "All right, I'm gonna go to bed." Go to bed, wake up, bug fix all this morning.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Me and the Orbs got a bunch of stuff fixed up, so at least workable for the show. And, uh, it was all, like, stupid stuff actually. It was actually mostly, like, configuration stuff of, like, the AI had gone off the rails and done weird stuff, like made weird environmental keys, non-Laravel standard ones-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... named. And, like, so then when I moved it, didn't work and whatever. So fixing up little stuff like that. Um, so anyway, outro's out. Check out the homepage. Maybe sign up for it before the next show and/or, uh, after the next show. And yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1

It's crazy. I'm looking at the homepage. It's crazy that Mostly Technical has more episodes than Bootstrapped.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, quite a bit more now.

Speaker 1

That's crazy.

Aaron Francis

It's wild.

Speaker 1

That was, that was where I first listened to you on air, was Bootstrapped with Andrei Buteac.

Aaron Francis

And you came out-

Speaker 1

And somehow Andrei was more yell at the cloud than you are.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

If you can believe that.

Aaron Francis

He probably still is. He still is, I think. Uh, he's still, he's still yell at the cloud. He's gone. He's off the cloud. He's-

Speaker 1

He is off. He's fully off.

Aaron Francis

He's MIA.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Um, you gotta check... But in the-- In two minutes here, go i-into the episode and click the Canvas button at the top.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And just-

Speaker 1

So I saw this

Aaron Francis

... give that a vibe. Yeah.

Speaker 1

So you have a list view-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... uh, which is, which is the default. On the left hand-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... you see all the segments.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

On the right hand you see the content of the segments. So I can change from list view to canvas view at the top.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

And I get, I get... I don't know if my monitor's too dark or your dark mode is too dark.

Aaron Francis

I do think the dark mode's-

Speaker 1

I think the dark mode could use-

Aaron Francis

... a little too dark

Speaker 1

... a little more contrast. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1

So I see, I see all the segments we have in, like, a, in a freeform canvas. Not like a Trello, but, like, I can, I can, like, grab 'em and move 'em around. It looks like-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 1

... you've grouped up to... You just changed one to Aaron Is Awesome.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

We gotta get to that. Um, so you can have a group of segments-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 1

... uh, like a lightweight container. Um, the canvas mode is cool. Yeah, I like this.

Aaron Francis

I think it's probably people who think with the, what is it? Right side of their brain. I don't know. It's like-

Speaker 1

Sure

Aaron Francis

... let's just have a way to, like, blow it out and be like, "I just wanna put stuff everywhere and organize"-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... um, that's not a list. And you can go back to the list, and the list-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... is organized separately, so they can be organized separately.

Speaker 1

So the way that I change this canvas doesn't affect the way that the list is ordered?

Aaron Francis

Not the ordering of the list.

Speaker 1

Good.

Aaron Francis

Right. 'Cause I thought it would be weird-

Speaker 1

That's, that's what I want

Aaron Francis

... to do that.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So this to me-

Speaker 1

How, how do you convert a 2D into a, into a 1D? So yeah-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 1

... I agree.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So I figured let 'em be separate. I could see people just running the show off this if they wanna just group things and be like, even kind of how we run the show sometimes, where we're not, like, o- in order necessarily on this show. Um-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... you can also stack things, which I'm not sure about, but right now you can stack them too, so you can have stacks and groups. I don't know. I was thinking, "Eh, build some tools. Let's see what people do with them, and then-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... uh, get some feedback on it." But I thought it'd be something different, just a different way other than just every other rundown service that's like, "Here's a list of shit." Like-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... different experiment. So-

Speaker 1

No, this is good. Is this, is this all, is this all React with Reverb for, like, broadcasting?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm. And it seems to be... I don't know. I'm watching you move stuff around.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I'm moving stuff around. The AI did a pretty good job with that. It seems to work, um-

Speaker 1

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... pretty well with us collaborating on it. So-

Speaker 1

No, I think-

Aaron Francis

... I'm sure there'll be bugs, but-

Speaker 1

I think this is, I think this is better.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. More contrast, I agree. I feel like the cards don't stick out enough or something. It's like they can be a little invisible.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But, uh-

Speaker 1

It's too, it's too dark on dark. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 1

But no, I think this looks good. I l- I like the, the simplification of it. Um, I like that we finally have a mailbag. Um-

Aaron Francis

Al- almost. I haven't tested that yet, but we should soon.

Speaker 1

I like that we have a mailbag page

Aaron Francis

Yeah. We have a mailbag page.

Speaker 1

That hopefully works. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Um, no, this is, this is much better. So don't redo it again, just fix the dark mode and ship it, and call it done.

Aaron Francis

Um, yep. I have a... There's also a, uh, a scrolling, uh, a little scrolling, uh, what do you call it? Like a... At the end of a movie, when you go into a recorded episode, it, like, it does a little scrolly thing, so that's kinda cool. Um, all right. So, all right, let's just wrap it there.

Speaker 1

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Uh, you gotta go to work. All right. Thanks to the sponsors. Thanks, everybody, for listening. All our old episodes at mostlytechnical.com. Email us at mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail. Hopefully that'll make it into outro by next week, and we will see you next week later.

Speaker 1

See ya.

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