Colleen's First Week, Refine Pricing, and Acquiring a Product

August 27, 2021

Colleen is a week into working with the client. Sean can't sleep, Aaron is having surgery. We talk about Refine + Laravel launch date, and Hammerstone acquiring a product!
Learn more →

Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:11
Okay. So we were just talking about Colleen's 1st week. So Colleen, you are, you're doing it for real now. You're in, you're in the slack. You're on you're getting tagged on everything.
Aaron
00:00:11 – 00:00:12
How's it been?
Colleen
00:00:12 – 00:00:36
It's been great. It's been great. I think I'm seeing that we don't have documentation surrounding how to implement a filter in rails, specifically. And so I've seen a few situations where people have just made their best guess, and there are a few nuances that I think it will be really important to document. For example, in rails, when you're when you're using an attribute, what we call attributes.
Colleen
00:00:36 – 00:00:58
Right? Relationship. A relationship attribute, It makes a difference whether it's the plural form or the singular form because we use, rails reflect on association method, which is not, like, super common. You don't usually use that out in the wild. So it makes a difference if you're coming to it from one side, like the belongs to side, you know, it has to be one way.
Colleen
00:00:58 – 00:01:24
If you're coming to it from the other side, it has to be a different way. So stuff like that is great to see because that stuff, 1, it's great to be able to fix these problems for them really quickly. And also, it really, you know, solidifies in my mind the kinds of kind of things we have in our documentation. Like, I think it would be super cool if a relationship is not found, you could actually dump all the relationships so they could figure out what they did wrong. Stuff like
Aaron
00:01:24 – 00:01:42
that. Oh, that's interesting. So give me can you give me an example of where like, what they're doing and where they're going wrong? So are they calling it, like so let's say a, company has many employees. Is that one word?
Colleen
00:01:42 – 00:01:44
One that yeah. I can use that
Aaron
00:01:44 – 00:01:44
as Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen
00:01:44 – 00:02:05
Yeah. This. So you have you have contacts, and they have a there has many through course enrollments to courses. So you want your contacts that have a course with name, awesome course. So the court when you actually put it in your attributes, it has to be courses, plural, dot whatever you're trying to filter on, name.
Colleen
00:02:05 – 00:02:28
And that's the way their particular application is set up. But if that is not intuitively obvious to you, you could have put course dot name and then we throw an error. And then it's like, why the heck is there an error? I know there's a relationship between contacts and courses. So it's like just a tiny, tiny it seems like an insignificant detail, but it could be incredibly frustrating to the developer.
Colleen
00:02:28 – 00:02:33
No. If they don't realize that. So I don't know if it's the same way in Laravel. Is it?
Aaron
00:02:33 – 00:02:34
Yeah. I mean
Colleen
00:02:34 – 00:02:34
Yeah.
Aaron
00:02:34 – 00:03:03
It's yeah. So it's up to the developer what they name you know, what they name their relationships. You could name them FUBARs and Laravel, and they're still the course model. But, yeah, that and that I mean, that's a great one because that's the kind of stuff, like, that's the kind of stuff that I think we want to be really worried about. Like, because if our whole if our whole spiel is we can worry about it more than you can, Cause like, this is our whole thing then being able to like have good errors around that.
Aaron
00:03:03 – 00:03:09
Like, Hey, you put course, but you do have one that is named courses. Did you mean courses?
Colleen
00:03:09 – 00:03:11
Right. Wouldn't that be awesome?
Aaron
00:03:11 – 00:03:13
That would be amazing. Yeah. So we
Colleen
00:03:13 – 00:03:25
do that. So that's, like, you know, not I don't have time to do that right now, but, like, in the future, be so great to be, like, yeah, exactly like you said. Like, here are all your your relationship attributes, or you put this, did you meet this? Mhmm.
Aaron
00:03:26 – 00:03:32
So I think you buried the lead there. Are they implementing Hammerstone Refine on their own? Are they building filters?
Colleen
00:03:33 – 00:03:35
They are. Yeah. It's really cool.
Aaron
00:03:35 – 00:03:37
Tell us about that. That's incredible.
Colleen
00:03:38 – 00:03:57
It's good. I mean, right now, it's it's basic filters. They're having I think because they're having me do these relationship filters because the crux of this application, like many applications, is querying relationships because that's where things get tricky. But, yeah, they they, you know, they've implemented some basic filters, and it's pretty cool to see.
Aaron
00:03:59 – 00:04:01
And it it's working?
Colleen
00:04:01 – 00:04:28
Yeah. Oh, could I just tell you one thing I'm really excited about? You know when something should work and but you really wanna see it in practice? So in Rails, if you don't you don't typically specify a foreign key, it just automatically gives you, you know, contact underscore ID. But because this application is using so such deep level name spacing, they're specifying the foreign key, and the foreign key does not necessarily match the model name.
Colleen
00:04:28 – 00:04:34
So although I wrote the code to take that into account, that is not something that I had actually tested. So
Aaron
00:04:35 – 00:04:35
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:04:35 – 00:04:36
It works. Yay.
Aaron
00:04:38 – 00:04:42
That's amazing. Yeah. Good for you. That's gotta that's gotta be a nice feeling.
Colleen
00:04:42 – 00:04:52
It was pretty exciting because I was like, oh, no. Did I do that? Because I haven't you know, it was like 6 months ago I wrote this. I was like, I hope I pulled out the foreign key, and I didn't assume the foreign key was x y z. I did.
Colleen
00:04:52 – 00:04:53
It's all good.
Sean
00:04:53 – 00:04:58
It's so exciting when they start using your feature, but do you also feel terrified at the same time?
Colleen
00:04:58 – 00:04:59
Little bit.
Aaron
00:04:59 – 00:05:01
Yeah. For sure.
Sean
00:05:01 – 00:05:02
I always talk to me.
Colleen
00:05:02 – 00:05:08
Pretty good. I feel like I'm pretty good at sequel, but, like, I'm, like, looking at it, like, okay. That's right. Right? Like, I'm the join is right there.
Colleen
00:05:08 – 00:05:10
Right? Mhmm. Yeah. There's a little bit of that.
Aaron
00:05:12 – 00:05:21
Yeah. Man, that rules. I didn't realize I'm not, you know, I'm not in there day to day. I didn't realize they were actually implementing stuff. That's huge.
Aaron
00:05:24 – 00:05:29
Wow. Good for you. So is it has it been fun to, like, see it, like, come to life?
Colleen
00:05:30 – 00:05:44
Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like, it's really cool, and I'm I'm really excited to, you know, be back into it. This week was really getting back into, like, what do we do here again? And, you know, their their dev setup is really complicated with with It
Aaron
00:05:44 – 00:05:44
is. It's
Colleen
00:05:44 – 00:05:58
all the services they're running. So Yeah. It was nice to kind of feel like by today, maybe by yesterday, I felt like I could really sink my teeth into it again and that's a good place to be because I'm excited about it.
Aaron
00:06:00 – 00:06:09
Yeah. Cool, man. Yeah. This is this is the first I think Sean and I are hearing that they're actually implementing the real deal. And you were just like, yeah.
Aaron
00:06:09 – 00:06:11
So they're implementing it, and they ran into this
Sean
00:06:13 – 00:06:13
issue. I'm like, wait. Wait. Wait. Hang on.
Sean
00:06:13 – 00:06:14
That's the exact reaction that I had.
Aaron
00:06:17 – 00:06:21
You gotta keep you gotta you gotta sell it a little more. That's exciting for Sean and I.
Sean
00:06:24 – 00:06:30
Yeah. I felt like for the last however many months, we're just building this thing and I'm like, somebody's gonna use it someday. I don't know.
Aaron
00:06:30 – 00:06:49
I know. I know. We're just kinda like building it and we're gonna throw it over the wall at some point and hope it works. And then here comes Colleen making everything work. I think you also talked with Andrew about, like, implementing it through models instead of through some other method.
Aaron
00:06:50 – 00:06:51
What was that about?
Colleen
00:06:52 – 00:07:15
Oh, so they're using Postgres Timescale DB, and we had talked about maybe writing some kind of DSL interface. But what we decided to do for now, and this is not necessarily the long term solution, this is a Mhmm. We need this to work solution, The events model, like, the events table in the Postgres DB or no. They use MySQL, actually. I always use Postgres, so I just forgot.
Colleen
00:07:15 – 00:07:36
The events table in the post in the MySQL DB is gonna have all the foreign keys right on it. So so all the relationships are gonna be in the MySQL database. So for now, we don't have to worry about Timescale DB and, like, the format that that dumps events in, they have some kind of adapter that's gonna dump it into the events table.
Aaron
00:07:37 – 00:07:38
Great.
Colleen
00:07:38 – 00:07:40
Yeah. Which is It's good. Huge
Aaron
00:07:40 – 00:07:54
because that's how refine is built. Like, the whole the whole premise is we sit on top of, you know, whatever frameworks active record implementation. So we don't have to go make up a new DSL at this point. We may I mean, we may end up
Colleen
00:07:54 – 00:08:02
We might eventually, which is fine, but I really like the idea of getting the implementation rock solid before we start doing that kind of stuff.
Aaron
00:08:03 – 00:08:22
Yeah. Then we can have something to compare it against. Like, once we know the filters and the setup and everything works, then we can move it to either, you know, Elasticsearch or whatever they eventually land on. That's great. Anything else in almost said the client's name.
Aaron
00:08:22 – 00:08:24
Anything else in in client world?
Colleen
00:08:24 – 00:08:26
No. All's good.
Aaron
00:08:27 – 00:08:35
How's it feel to be back on, I mean, back on the freelancer schedule? Contractor schedule. I mean Yeah.
Colleen
00:08:37 – 00:08:39
I was just adjusting to the other schedule.
Aaron
00:08:39 – 00:08:40
I know.
Colleen
00:08:41 – 00:08:45
And now I'm I'm back doing this. It's good. No complaints.
Aaron
00:08:46 – 00:08:46
Good. Good.
Colleen
00:08:46 – 00:08:47
Yeah.
Aaron
00:08:48 – 00:08:55
Well, I have tons of complaints, but I don't want to air my grievances about my, back right now. So, Sean, what's going on with you?
Sean
00:08:55 – 00:08:58
I'm gonna air my grievances about sleeping.
Aaron
00:08:59 – 00:09:03
Okay. You air your grievances, and then I'll air mine. So you go first.
Sean
00:09:03 – 00:09:26
No. I'm doing I've had trouble sleeping for like the last 7 years, which also not so coincidentally happens to be exactly as old as Isaac is. But it it started then, and then it just never went away. And I've gotten slightly better over the years. Actually, it was initially a really bad, like, full blown insomnia problem for a couple of years.
Sean
00:09:26 – 00:09:55
And then I was sleeping, like, fairly normally where I could at least count on a night of sleep to be, like, pretty consistent and, like, good enough, and I can, like, function mostly like a person. Some days I was a little tired, some days not. But I was sort of getting to the point where it was like, I'm really tired of that. Like, I spent a lot of time and money and focus on my health, and it was sort of frustrating to be like, why do I do all that? And I still just feel tired and drag my ass through the day, like, most days of the week.
Sean
00:09:55 – 00:10:24
So I'm like, I gotta fix this sleep thing. I didn't feel like I was an insomniac anymore, so I just sort of, like, stopped thinking about it. But still my sleep quality was just terrible. So, anyway, I finally went I also during, with my at my day job, like, I work with elite military guys, and I was talking to one of them, and he was like, yeah. For some reason I was telling him about my sleep stuff, and he was like, for some reason, we have a higher incident of we being those guys, not me.
Sean
00:10:24 – 00:10:32
Those guys have a higher incident of it's like sleep apnea stuff, like sleep breathing disorders. So he travels with a CPAP machine.
Colleen
00:10:32 – 00:10:33
And he
Sean
00:10:33 – 00:10:43
is not Wow. Yeah. He's, like, super fit, like, you know, dude that you just would not expect that has this problem. But apparently, like, half of them do. Wow.
Sean
00:10:44 – 00:10:53
Yeah. So they started, like, kind of requiring them to go get these sleep tests, go to a sleep lab. And he was like, you gotta go. Go do it. So I finally, I was like, enough things came together.
Sean
00:10:53 – 00:11:01
I finally decided to just go get the sleep lab test. And then I also talked went to a couple ENTs. I went to a dentist too, because there's some connection with,
Colleen
00:11:02 – 00:11:02
like,
Sean
00:11:02 – 00:11:06
your jaw and stuff and breathing. And I have no problems breathing.
Aaron
00:11:06 – 00:11:08
Oh, great. Fantastic.
Sean
00:11:08 – 00:11:09
Yeah. I know. I was like
Aaron
00:11:09 – 00:11:10
It's all in your head.
Sean
00:11:10 – 00:11:44
Oh, well. Well, kind of. But anyway, so that with that ruled out, that meant that it was like, okay, now it's time to just do this thing called sleep restriction therapy, which is like you figure out how much time you're actually sleeping, and then you cut back the number of hours you're in bed to that time or less. And that's that's what I'm that's what I'm in the middle of doing now. So the idea is I probably am spending too much time in bed, so I probably only sleep 6 and a half to 7 hours a night or something like that on average, which is a normal, perfectly healthy, acceptable amount of sleep.
Sean
00:11:44 – 00:12:01
But I was trying to do it in, like, 8 and a half hours. So you try to get that much amount of sleep, and it sort of spreads out thinly across this time that you have in bed. And so then I would, the pattern is I'd fall asleep and then toss and turn and toss and turn. Anyway, so I'm now trying to compress that, and it's brutal. It's, it's brutal.
Sean
00:12:01 – 00:12:23
I'm in bed for 7 and a half hours, which is like totally normal amount of time to be in bed for like a normal person. And I know I'm capable of, you know, I I in a previous version of me, well, that's about how long I probably would have spent in bed and how long I would have slept. So I know I can do it, but it's on, like, week almost through week 2 now. And it's very tiring.
Colleen
00:12:23 – 00:12:24
What does that look like?
Sean
00:12:26 – 00:12:27
The the sleep restriction?
Colleen
00:12:27 – 00:12:31
I mean, do you like you're like, I cannot go to bed till 11, and I must get up at 6?
Sean
00:12:31 – 00:12:32
Yes. Exactly.
Colleen
00:12:32 – 00:12:34
Oh, that sounds terrible.
Aaron
00:12:34 – 00:12:35
Good guess, I mean.
Sean
00:12:36 – 00:12:58
Yeah. So I'm on a very strict schedule right now. And I have to right now, my schedule is 10:30 to 6 o'clock. And waking up at 6 o'clock well, I had one day where I slept and it was almost perfect, and I woke up and I was, like, right before my alarm, and I felt great. I was like, what?
Sean
00:12:58 – 00:13:03
I haven't done that literally in 7 years. So it's the first time that's ever happened. Yeah. Wow.
Aaron
00:13:03 – 00:13:04
I couldn't
Sean
00:13:04 – 00:13:13
believe it. I felt fine the whole day. I felt awake. So that was pretty motivational. Of course, then the next the last 3 nights have just been like, you know, terrible.
Sean
00:13:14 – 00:13:22
But that's to be expected. So I just gotta I think it's gonna work though. I think I just gotta push through it. Just do it. Have you
Colleen
00:13:22 – 00:13:23
done it before?
Sean
00:13:24 – 00:13:38
Yeah. I did. In fact, I was that 8 and a half hour window that I was sleeping in was me having compressed it, down from, like, 9 and a half hours. So because when you're in an insomniac, your inclination is like, I need to get more sleep. I'm so tired.
Sean
00:13:38 – 00:13:51
I need to get more sleep. So you end up spending more and more time in bed, which makes your problem worse and worse and worse. I mean, that's one factor that goes into insomnia. So I'd already compressed a day and a half.
Colleen
00:13:51 – 00:13:55
It's like you're anxious about not sleeping, so you spend more time in bed being anxious about not sleeping.
Sean
00:13:56 – 00:14:02
Yeah. And it gets even worse. If you go to, like, the level that I did, you actually start to become afraid of sleeping itself.
Colleen
00:14:02 – 00:14:03
Wow.
Sean
00:14:03 – 00:14:22
So it would go where I would go and I would be I had a 2 I had 2 years, it was just like torture. I maybe got 5 hours of sleep a night for and scattered throughout the whole night. I mean, I was trying I was trying to sleep for like 11 hours a night. For like 2 years, I did that. And, it was, in the end, that one, I got out of that because that was just psychological.
Sean
00:14:23 – 00:14:41
That was that was I mean, I just say just psychological, but, like, my brain has been trained to be afraid of sleeping, so you have to, like, retrain yourself to, like, let go of that. I went through, like, one process. There's a few different ways of going through that process and working that out. But yeah. So I would fall asleep.
Sean
00:14:41 – 00:14:48
I would get in bed, and I'd be, like, finally falling asleep, but then my brain would notice you're falling asleep and then be, like, wake up like I'm scared.
Aaron
00:14:48 – 00:14:49
Oh, geez.
Sean
00:14:49 – 00:15:00
And just do that over and over and over again until I was just so exhausted that then I would eventually fall asleep for a few hours. And then, you know, some point in the morning realize I'm sleeping and wake up.
Aaron
00:15:01 – 00:15:02
Well, that's devastating.
Sean
00:15:03 – 00:15:12
Yeah. I'm not doing that anymore. That's that's long gone. That's way in the rearview mirror for me. But at some point then, I was I was no longer, like, afraid of sleeping.
Sean
00:15:13 – 00:15:22
And I would still go to sleep, but I still just didn't have very good, sleep. Like, my sleep window was too long, and I think I was afraid of shortening it.
Colleen
00:15:22 – 00:15:22
Yeah.
Sean
00:15:22 – 00:15:55
And then once you have insomnia, you kinda have these, like, mental patterns forever. So it's like a memory. So then, you know, you it's hard to then make yourself sleep less because then you start feeling tired, which then triggers all of that trauma again, basically. So I've I've the reason I felt confident doing it this time around is because I'm past all of that, and I'm I'm not afraid of being tired or sleepy anymore, and this it's not a I had initially the 1st week, like, a little bit of it come back, and then I realized, and I I got past that, and so I just I'm still going. So it's overall, it's fine, actually.
Sean
00:15:55 – 00:16:10
It's a it's not like it's not a scary or stressful thing doing the sleep restriction right now for me, but I am I'm tired because I'm not sleeping great. So it's hard to be, you know, super motivated. So, yeah, that's me.
Aaron
00:16:10 – 00:16:11
Yeah.
Sean
00:16:12 – 00:16:15
Alright, Andrew. Do your back. Because your back is worse.
Aaron
00:16:15 – 00:16:27
Well, my back is bad. I will say that. So I'm getting surgery, Monday. I thought I was going to be so today is Friday. I thought I was going to be getting a second shot today.
Aaron
00:16:28 – 00:16:47
But so I I got 2 I got several opinions, but I got 2 opinions from 2 different surgeons on my back along with a neurologist and an orthopedic. So I got, you know, 4 official opinions and then several, like, friends of family who are orthopedics. Got ton of opinions. So I got these two opinions from these 2 surgeons. Right?
Aaron
00:16:47 – 00:17:08
One of them, the first guy I went to was a little bit sloppy. It seemed like he knew what he was doing, but was a little bit, like, disheveled. The office was not great. The environment was not great. And then the second one I went to super clean, office was totally, like, state of the art put together.
Aaron
00:17:09 – 00:17:31
The surgeon was, like, very buttoned up, and I really trusted him. So I got the shot done by the first guy, the disheveled guy, because he could get me in faster. And, I mean, he's, you know, 55 and has a spine surgery practice, so he's he's not a dummy. And then I want the 2nd guy to do the surgery just because his practice seems more put together. Right?
Aaron
00:17:32 – 00:17:59
So I had to break up with this first doctor, which was horrible. Like, how do you get a second opinion and then break up with the one that you you don't go with? So I was gonna get this second shot today, and I called the office and was like, hey. You know, I'm getting I'm trying to get this shot on Friday. I'm also turns out I'm having surgery on Monday, but not by your doctor, and I wanna make sure that those 2 don't, like, aren't at odds with each other.
Aaron
00:18:01 – 00:18:27
And she's like, oh, you're having surgery not by doctor what's his name? And I was like, yeah. I'm going with this other doctor. Turns out when I was at the surgery center the first time, all the nurses right outside my little station were talking about how they were just talking about opinions that I don't agree with, and it would affect my health personally. And I was like, oh, I don't know if I wanna be in a surgery center where all the nurses are, like, militantly anti vaxx.
Aaron
00:18:27 – 00:18:41
It's like, that doesn't make me feel super comfortable. Like, if I'm gonna be cut open and you know? So I I told, like, the lady on the phone, hey. I'm, you know, I'm going with this other doctor. I feel like their practice you know, I kinda like their practice a little better.
Aaron
00:18:41 – 00:18:52
And she put the doctor on the phone. Wow. She went and got she went and got the spine surgeon and was like, hey. Well, you talked to this nobody patient. And I was like, no, you gotta be kidding me.
Aaron
00:18:53 – 00:19:07
So he comes and gets on the phone and I'm like, Hey, man, I'm really sorry. It's I'm I'm literally breaking up with a spine surgeon who has who's, you know, has no business talking to a single patient. Like, I'm really sorry. I really liked you. I got a second opinion.
Aaron
00:19:07 – 00:19:19
The guy said exactly what you said. I trust you. Here's the deal. The people at your, you know, your surgery practice made me feel a little bit uncomfortable, and that's all that it is. I'm gonna go with this other squad.
Aaron
00:19:19 – 00:19:37
And he was like, he was gracious, but it was the worst. I mean, I was just so uncomfortable. I thought I could get away with just talking to the scheduler and say I'm going with somebody else. But I'm to the point now where, like, I I can't I can't walk. I'm I'm laying in bed all day long.
Aaron
00:19:37 – 00:20:06
Like, if I'm not sitting in this chair, I'm sitting on a heating pad right now. So I'm sitting on a heating pad, and this chair is, like, raised up and tilted such that it takes all the pressure off the bad spot. If I'm not sitting in this chair, I'm laying in my bed inside the house. And it's just it's brutal. It's gotten, like, depressing because we have, you know, 2 children that are 3 months old that I wanna be, like, picking up and hugging and playing with, and I can't.
Aaron
00:20:06 – 00:20:22
And so it's it's pretty dark. So Monday is the surgery. They say it's just gonna be, like, 30 minutes. They're gonna trim off 5% of the disc, and I'll wake up and be as happy as can be and walk out. So So there's no recovery?
Aaron
00:20:22 – 00:20:25
No. That's No. Same same day. Woah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:20:26 – 00:20:27
Go home the same day.
Sean
00:20:27 – 00:20:30
Oh, I just assumed we were gonna be in Sanz Aron for, like, 2 weeks.
Colleen
00:20:30 – 00:20:31
Yeah. Me too.
Aaron
00:20:32 – 00:20:42
No. He was like, just don't jog or lift anything. I was like, bro, not a problem. But, yeah, it's it's the same day. It's an outpatient, I guess.
Aaron
00:20:42 – 00:20:47
And so I show up at 5:30 in the morning, surgeries at 7, and I'll be home same day.
Colleen
00:20:47 – 00:20:48
That's wonderful.
Sean
00:20:48 – 00:20:50
Jogger lift anything forever?
Aaron
00:20:51 – 00:20:52
No. Just for, like, a couple weeks.
Colleen
00:20:52 – 00:20:53
Couple weeks?
Sean
00:20:53 – 00:20:53
Oh, okay.
Aaron
00:20:53 – 00:20:53
Yeah.
Sean
00:20:53 – 00:20:57
Yeah. And what prevents it from coming back?
Aaron
00:20:58 – 00:21:22
I don't know. So he's gonna trim off the part that's impinging the nerve. So he's gonna take off just a little bit. They all the opinions have said the disc is never gonna, like, suck back in to where it should be. I think the the course of action from here is core stabilization, basically.
Aaron
00:21:22 – 00:21:56
Like, I've become pretty weak and my posture's pretty bad, and so I think I need to, at this point, focus on, like, strengthening my body, because if I don't, then it gets weaker. You know, when I was 25, it was like, if I don't do anything, it's my body's still gonna be awesome, because I'm 25. And apparently at 32, that's different. So I'm going to be once I can do stuff, I'm going to be really focusing on like core strength, flexibility, and posture because I don't have any of those things. So yeah.
Aaron
00:21:57 – 00:22:04
So I am hoping that Monday, I'm gonna have a new lease on life, because it's pretty grim right now. All of
Sean
00:22:04 – 00:22:08
a sudden, I'm, like, really, really hyper aware of how uncomfortable I am sitting in my chair
Colleen
00:22:08 – 00:22:08
right now.
Sean
00:22:08 – 00:22:12
My back is like, you should move, Sean.
Aaron
00:22:12 – 00:22:23
Yeah. So that's the back drama. Okay. There are other things we can talk about. I put a list in in Slack, and I'll read out some potential ones.
Aaron
00:22:23 – 00:22:36
We can talk about Hammerstone's first acquisition. We can talk about Vue and Laravel, or we can talk about Torchlight. So what do you guys think?
Sean
00:22:36 – 00:22:39
Let's talk about launching the Vue Laravel side.
Aaron
00:22:40 – 00:22:42
Alright. Let's do it. I throw it to you, Sean.
Sean
00:22:42 – 00:22:48
Though I know probably people listening are like, what's this acquisition thing? We should probably like Yeah.
Aaron
00:22:48 – 00:22:50
We should definitely follow that one up.
Sean
00:22:52 – 00:22:58
Yeah. Okay. So I wanna launch this thing. I wanna launch this thing before the retreat. Okay.
Sean
00:22:58 – 00:22:58
The retreat
Aaron
00:22:58 – 00:23:00
is I love that. The retreat
Colleen
00:23:00 – 00:23:03
is October 9th? 10th? Columbus day.
Sean
00:23:03 – 00:23:05
7th, 8th, 9th. Yeah. Somewhere in there.
Aaron
00:23:05 – 00:23:07
Yeah. Oh, Columbus day. Yeah. So we got,
Sean
00:23:07 – 00:23:14
like, a month, October, 5 weeks, 6 weeks. That gives us, like, 6 weeks. It's doable.
Aaron
00:23:14 – 00:23:21
Yeah. 6 weeks. Okay. So where are we at, where are we at on the Vue side?
Sean
00:23:21 – 00:23:31
I haven't where we at? Where we're at is I haven't looked at it for like 2 months or something. So I have no idea. I have to, like, remember what it is. Okay.
Sean
00:23:31 – 00:24:10
Where we're at. But I like, vaguely, what I remember is I had started adding in different sorry. Now be also having a job, my brain is now mixing terminology between the 2, because I was just working on input types in our React app for my job. And the thing I'm thinking of is our criterion types, like the, like dates and inputs. So I have I remember I was knocking out the rest of those, like dates and numbers.
Sean
00:24:10 – 00:24:12
I don't know if you remember that,
Aaron
00:24:12 – 00:24:12
but I
Sean
00:24:12 – 00:24:29
was Mhmm. Just knocking those out. And then the idea was, okay, let's just get it to work in builder mode. Because remember, it has, like, 2 modes. You can, like, go on your own on the front end to build queries that are static and not dynamically built from our blueprint.
Aaron
00:24:29 – 00:24:29
Mhmm.
Sean
00:24:29 – 00:24:50
And then, the other mode is like the builder mode where it's fed our configuration on our on our blueprint. So the idea was finish up the the blueprint mode, and then just launch it with that. And then I can do the extra work to make it more of like a full featured useful front end library that we could Colleen,
Aaron
00:24:50 – 00:24:53
are you lost on the builder mode versus the
Colleen
00:24:53 – 00:25:05
I well, that reminded me that our client reminded me to ask you a question about that because our client wants some links to render filters automatically, and it sounds like the builder mode. That sounds like what I need.
Aaron
00:25:06 – 00:25:07
Yeah. Right?
Colleen
00:25:07 – 00:25:10
Is that what you're talking about? Like, a static blueprint builder?
Sean
00:25:10 – 00:25:18
Static blueprint builder is the opposite. Yes. The blue the builder mode is what we already have, but, like, a static Yeah. Blueprint, a static filter.
Colleen
00:25:18 – 00:25:19
I can do it.
Sean
00:25:19 – 00:25:23
Yeah. That's what I'm building for the view thing. See, Aaron, I told you people would want that.
Aaron
00:25:23 – 00:25:23
No. You're right.
Sean
00:25:23 – 00:25:27
Told you. I told you. Yeah. And Yeah. No.
Aaron
00:25:27 – 00:25:28
I Totally agree.
Sean
00:25:29 – 00:25:37
So, yeah, we don't have that with Hotwire. I don't know. We'll have to talk about that, Colleen. I can help you we can come up with some ideas. Yeah.
Sean
00:25:37 – 00:25:45
Let's think that through. That makes so much sense that they would want that. I kind of annoyed that they're thinking of it now already.
Aaron
00:25:45 – 00:25:58
For them, we might build, a blueprint on the back end and send it down. Like, you know, when you hit the controller or whatever, you have your blueprint template built and we send that down because that's gonna be impossible to do with Hotwire otherwise.
Sean
00:25:59 – 00:26:18
Exactly. And and it could be it's a little it's awkward though because instead because what you really want is just to give your front end guy, like, they could just write the write the filter, and then it maps to your query on the back end. That's what you want. But they're gonna have to work with our blueprint data instead. So they'll have to, like, build that up manually and then send that down.
Sean
00:26:18 – 00:26:44
That'll be the, like, short term solution. Mhmm. Long term would be, I think, because they got React in the stack, we can give them components that will and in fact, the way I'm building it with Vue is their renderless components, and they'll do the same thing in React. It'll just give them some hooks that they can work with, so they can like build their own little pieces, figure out how they're gonna make sure that they're rendering the same thing in the Hotwire thing and the React thing, and then they can they can do it. But that that's down the road.
Sean
00:26:44 – 00:26:57
Otherwise, I don't know what we'll do for them. I'll have to think about it. But yeah. So, Aaron, that's that's where where I was thinking with the launch. It's like, basically, it's just waiting on me for the technical side, and there's not much work.
Sean
00:26:57 – 00:27:08
I don't know how much I need to look at it. Okay. A couple weekends. And then we have to start sort of ginning up a little bit of anticipation for
Aaron
00:27:08 – 00:27:10
it. Mhmm.
Sean
00:27:10 – 00:27:32
And thinking through how if we wanna have a launch strategy, how much of a launch do we wanna do? How much appetite do we have for doing, like, a big launch? Or do we want to sort of soft launch and then plan a bigger a bigger launch later? Because we could do you
Colleen
00:27:32 – 00:27:33
know, we
Sean
00:27:33 – 00:27:33
can launch it.
Colleen
00:27:33 – 00:27:39
Sean, when you say big launch, what do you mean by that? Is that like a product hunt deal? What does that mean?
Sean
00:27:40 – 00:28:00
Well, I mean, it could be part of it. But, like, how do you the question that you're answering with the big launch is how do I build anticipation for the product? Okay. And so, like, all of the ways that you could go about doing that. So for us, it's gonna look a little different.
Sean
00:28:00 – 00:28:24
We don't have much of an email list. We have but but like in the past, when I've launched products, I have an email list, and that's a big part of my strategy is building a sequence of emails that let people know it's coming, that are starting to, like, talk about the things that they're gonna care about the most with a product to start building the hype train, as they say in the YouTube gamer sphere or whatever.
Colleen
00:28:24 – 00:28:24
It's
Sean
00:28:24 – 00:28:42
like, let's get the hype going. So it's basically that. And there's lots of different ways to do it. And then and then there's also like, do we want we could try to, like, make it look like we're everywhere all at once. All of a sudden, we're just, like, in all these different places.
Sean
00:28:42 – 00:28:56
Right? So the way you do something like that is you try to, like, schedule a podcast tour all at the same time. You'd figure out where you wanna run ads and sponsorships. You figure out content. So you get some content lined up and you get it ready to post in, like, different sites that are everywhere.
Sean
00:28:56 – 00:29:24
I mean, there's a whole you could do all these things, and you sort of schedule it so it all happens at once in addition to your launch, in addition to you're trying to, like, coordinate with other influencers in your area to, like, say that, hey, this is launching today, etcetera. Right? So there's, like, all these things you can do, different forms. I'm, like, gesturing with my hands. Like, there's different sizes of this that you can pick, but the launch is basically build anticipation.
Aaron
00:29:27 – 00:30:03
So and let's Colleen, did you have anything to follow-up on that? So one so I think some of that, if not a lot of that, is gonna come down on me because it is the Laravel ecosystem. And, somehow, I've managed to get, like, 350 people on an email list for a syntax highlighter. So I think this whole, like, work in public show what you're building, like, talk about what you're up to, and, like, share behind the scenes stuff. I think that's really useful and valuable.
Aaron
00:30:03 – 00:30:24
And so once we get to the point, part of why I haven't wanted to do that with refine is because we did that a long time ago, and a lot of people really loved it. But I don't wanna do that until we have, like, some notion of when we're going to ship it. Because I don't want to continually be, you know, showing stuff that people are never able. Because then it feels like, alright, man.
Sean
00:30:24 – 00:30:24
It's vaporware.
Aaron
00:30:25 – 00:30:39
Yeah. And I don't, like, I don't wanna waste any goodwill by, like, ginning something up for nothing. So if you think we're at the point where it's like, alright. It's August 27th today. We're shooting for October 9th or whatever.
Aaron
00:30:40 – 00:31:07
That's a month. Like, you know, that's a month and 2 or 3 weeks. I can start I can start showing more of that publicly. Like, our docs are still not linked from the home page, and I can start linking to those and talking about it and showing behind the scenes how it works, and put up a email capture, which we don't currently have for refine. We only have for Torchlight.
Aaron
00:31:09 – 00:31:24
So I can I can start doing that? And, I mean, maybe it gets to a 100, but that's better than 0, and that's at least that's at least something. People people are aware of it because every time some sometimes I'll tweet about Torchlight, and they're like, hey, man. Where's where's refine? I'm ready to start using it.
Aaron
00:31:24 – 00:31:42
I'll be your 1st customer. I'm ready to pay I'm ready. Literally, I've had DMs that are like, I'm ready to pay you to get this implemented in Laravel. So I've heard you talk about your Rails client on the podcast. If you want, like, us to pay you to help get this implemented in Laravel, we can do that.
Aaron
00:31:42 – 00:31:46
It's like, oh, gosh. People really want this. At least some people really want it.
Sean
00:31:46 – 00:31:52
Yeah. It's brutal to, like, have to split our time the way we have. It's so challenging.
Aaron
00:31:52 – 00:31:57
Yeah. But I think we're in a spot because I think you're mostly out of client land.
Sean
00:31:57 – 00:32:05
Yeah. I'm not going to think about it unless Colleen needs my help. So I'm devoting like no brain cycles to that, which is awesome.
Aaron
00:32:05 – 00:32:24
Okay. So if you can turn the canons back towards view, then I can start working on there are a few minor pieces left over on the Laravel side that I've just not really done anything with because it hasn't been necessary. So if you can get the Vue stuff done, then we can
Sean
00:32:24 – 00:32:24
Right.
Aaron
00:32:24 – 00:32:41
You you and I can, like, get the integration part. Like, we can get a sandbox where we can play with both of them at the same time, which is, of course, vitally important. Then at that point, you and I can both kinda start tweeting about, you know, hey. Here's a screenshot. Here's a animated GIF.
Aaron
00:32:41 – 00:32:44
Like, look how easy this is. That kind of stuff.
Sean
00:32:44 – 00:33:01
Okay. So to that end then, how I'm looking I was looking at my calendar while we were talking, and there's only, like, 5 weekends. So because I'm 5 days a week now, basically, I have my weekends. And I would say I have nights. Forgot.
Sean
00:33:01 – 00:33:24
But nights are, at the moment, with the sleep restriction therapy, you know, little bit extra challenging. So not probably a great idea to have me doing, you know, work that matters for people while I'm sleep deprived. So but that's like it lasts forever, but I'm just still looking at it. And it's like, only only got 5 weekends. Also, randomly, I'm going pheasant hunting for one of those weekends.
Sean
00:33:25 – 00:33:29
So the very randomly, because I don't know anything about about hunting.
Aaron
00:33:31 – 00:33:34
But you know a ton about pheasants, so you're gonna be fine.
Colleen
00:33:35 – 00:33:38
Yeah. Are you coming to see me, Sean? Where are you gonna come out here?
Sean
00:33:40 – 00:33:40
To Coronado?
Colleen
00:33:41 – 00:33:43
Yeah. You said you were coming in August.
Sean
00:33:44 – 00:33:45
I did?
Colleen
00:33:45 – 00:33:50
Yeah. You did. So Okay. I'll take that as a no.
Aaron
00:33:50 – 00:33:54
Yeah. It's it's 27th, so it's looking like a no.
Sean
00:33:55 – 00:34:13
Yeah. So I gotta get out there at some point. I am not sure when that'll happen. And then also COVID stuff is changing how comfortable I am personally with traveling and stuff with the with the kiddo not being vaccinated still. So that's pretty frustrating.
Sean
00:34:15 – 00:34:23
So, yeah, I don't know. That that would be cool though. I gotta I I am gonna get out there. I have to get out there for for reasons. So anyway
Colleen
00:34:23 – 00:34:24
To see me.
Sean
00:34:24 – 00:34:32
Yeah. I know. Should we if yeah. Just to see you. That's should we Eric, so I think we should soft launch it.
Sean
00:34:32 – 00:34:42
This is what I'm getting at. Like, I'm looking at this. Let's just goal is it works before the retreat, and then we can reach out to a handful of people, see what we can pull together that way.
Aaron
00:34:42 – 00:34:43
K.
Sean
00:34:43 – 00:34:43
And then
Aaron
00:34:44 – 00:34:54
just so I'm clear, is soft launch different than anything that I described about tweeting about it and building the email list? Yeah. That it is different?
Sean
00:34:55 – 00:34:55
Yeah.
Aaron
00:34:55 – 00:34:56
Okay. I
Sean
00:34:56 – 00:35:03
mean, we could do that too if you want, but I don't want to commit to yeah. It's definitely, like, you can buy it on this day.
Aaron
00:35:03 – 00:35:06
Got it. Okay. Okay. So
Sean
00:35:06 – 00:35:07
you're start.
Aaron
00:35:08 – 00:35:15
You're saying soft launch versus, like, opening the doors for anyone to buy on October 10th or whatever?
Sean
00:35:15 – 00:35:20
Yeah. You know, like, when a restaurant opens and it's like they have a few nights of, like, friends and family
Aaron
00:35:20 – 00:35:21
Friends and family.
Sean
00:35:21 – 00:35:22
Test drive everything.
Aaron
00:35:22 – 00:35:22
Okay.
Sean
00:35:23 – 00:35:26
Yeah. Exactly. Let's go let's go for that before retreat.
Aaron
00:35:27 – 00:35:53
Okay. So if I agree. If that if it's okay with y'all, I think I would still like to once we have it integrated and I can show because right now, it's hard to just show the back end because it's not it's like, what does this do? And if I can show both at once, I would like to start, like, building up anticipation even if on 10th or whatever, we let friends and family in. At least we're still building the lists as we go.
Sean
00:35:54 – 00:35:56
Yes. Definitely. Okay. Absolutely.
Colleen
00:35:58 – 00:35:59
So, oh,
Sean
00:35:59 – 00:36:00
go ahead.
Colleen
00:36:00 – 00:36:14
A friend who listens closely, actually an internet person who listens closely to my podcast, and coincidentally now starts listening to yours, he was like, this is just like how they started Tupelo. Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you guys.
Sean
00:36:14 – 00:36:14
Oh, really?
Colleen
00:36:14 – 00:36:24
He was like, it's looking to the exact same thing. Ben took a job, then he, like, left the job because he had this opportunity to build Tupel and people are gonna fund it. And I was like, oh, that's exciting. Uh-huh. So, you know.
Aaron
00:36:24 – 00:36:36
Well, that's good. I would I would love to follow that route. So thank thank you for that generous comparison, Internet person. Okay. Okay.
Aaron
00:36:36 – 00:36:40
So Sean, you said soft launch and then I interrupted you. So keep going soft launch.
Sean
00:36:40 – 00:36:53
Yeah. Soft launch. And then we could talk about that more. Something that I do wanna bring up is I want to then, at that point, consider hiring a Vue developer. Okay?
Sean
00:36:53 – 00:37:13
Like like a contractor. Okay. Yeah. Pulling up we can decide some budget, and then I wanna start getting somebody up to speed to do that because then I'm starting to feel like like, I I gotta be around we could hire somebody mid level. Like, we don't necessarily need to have somebody really experienced because I can guide them and help them
Colleen
00:37:13 – 00:37:14
Mhmm.
Sean
00:37:14 – 00:37:39
You know, make choices. But then I feel like the most value like, what's the most valuable thing I could be doing on I think it's like these marketing related things, that nobody's paying attention to right now, which will be the big long term growth for us. That's what I'm thinking. I'm gonna bring it up today, and we can have this conversation over the following weeks. There's no rush on this.
Sean
00:37:39 – 00:37:41
I'm I'm not married to doing that.
Aaron
00:37:42 – 00:37:48
Yeah. 1st pass, that seems reasonable to me. Okay. We'll talk about it more. But, Colleen, what do you think?
Colleen
00:37:48 – 00:37:49
Yeah. That's fine.
Sean
00:37:50 – 00:37:53
Alright. Cool. We'll talk through what that looks like then. And Okay.
Colleen
00:37:54 – 00:38:03
That's good then. If we are thinking of having this done in the next 3 3 ish weeks, right, with Sean devoting his weekends, have you guys talked about pricing yet?
Aaron
00:38:04 – 00:38:06
Yeah. Well, hang on. 3 ish? Is that right?
Colleen
00:38:06 – 00:38:06
I don't know.
Sean
00:38:06 – 00:38:07
It's 4? 5.
Colleen
00:38:07 – 00:38:08
5. But
Sean
00:38:08 – 00:38:09
I didn't gosh. It's like 5
Aaron
00:38:09 – 00:38:09
weeks ago.
Colleen
00:38:09 – 00:38:12
It's not very much time, which is gonna be stressful
Aaron
00:38:13 – 00:38:15
for you, Sean. 5 5 is more than
Colleen
00:38:15 – 00:38:17
3. Yeah. I guess it's 5.
Sean
00:38:18 – 00:38:25
Yeah. And also, all that's why I wanted a soft launch, man, because I gotta coordinate with Beth because I'll have to be, like, hey. I'm gonna disappear this weekend. Right.
Colleen
00:38:25 – 00:38:27
Yeah. Or, like I love that.
Sean
00:38:27 – 00:38:29
Yeah. They do. They're gonna figure that out.
Colleen
00:38:29 – 00:38:35
They love that. Yeah. So what have you guys set a price? Have we talked about that?
Aaron
00:38:36 – 00:38:45
Yeah. We've talked about that extensively. There's a lost episode where Sean and I talked about that for an hour and a half or more. Okay. So
Colleen
00:38:45 – 00:38:48
We can talk about it later or offline. Okay.
Aaron
00:38:48 – 00:38:49
No. We can talk about it now. No.
Sean
00:38:49 – 00:38:50
We can talk about it.
Colleen
00:38:50 – 00:38:56
Yeah. Okay. Because I was just relistening to Michelle's episode on pricing, so it's on my mind. So So what do you think?
Aaron
00:38:56 – 00:39:00
What's on well, what's on your mind? You you I don't wanna tip my hand. What's on your mind?
Colleen
00:39:01 – 00:39:08
What's on my mind is the price you had told me, like, 2 years ago is way too low. This was probably 2 years ago. It was $500.
Sean
00:39:09 – 00:39:10
Oh, yeah. No. That's Hey.
Colleen
00:39:10 – 00:39:12
Wait. Wait. You're low. Right? Okay.
Colleen
00:39:12 – 00:39:12
Yeah.
Sean
00:39:13 – 00:39:18
But we're still probably too low then based on the way you're saying this. We're we're thinking, like, $1,000 a year.
Colleen
00:39:19 – 00:39:20
$1,000 a year?
Aaron
00:39:20 – 00:39:21
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:39:22 – 00:39:26
Okay. And how did you come to that? Is that just a
Aaron
00:39:28 – 00:39:31
Yeah. I just just made it up. Of the air. Yeah.
Sean
00:39:32 – 00:39:59
No. So I mean I mean, based on value, that that's here's the problem. In the we would I think it we should charge more. I think that it's like a $5,000 a year license, personally. Like but the problem is in Laravel, we are price anchored by Taylor Otwell's stuff, which is super ridiculously cheap.
Aaron
00:39:59 – 00:40:01
There's I don't have pressure for sure.
Colleen
00:40:01 – 00:40:02
Got it.
Sean
00:40:02 – 00:40:27
And so trying to, like, figure out the right price that's based on value because you could you're not gonna build this for $5,000. There's no chance. Like, there's a number in between a 1,005,000 where you, to me, most people are gonna look at it and be like, yeah, we can't we should just buy it instead of build it. Like, that's that's where that number comes from. But but lower than that is too little.
Sean
00:40:27 – 00:40:41
And and I think that we don't have a big enough market to support lower than that. Yeah. Higher than that, I'm open to. But I am also, like, will it will we be able to? It's easier to move I mean, like, I I don't know.
Sean
00:40:41 – 00:40:57
It's it's gonna be easier to get initial customers at the lower end of that range, so that's one way of thinking about it. But then we can raise it as we kind of, like, gauge how people react to that to that price. So yeah.
Colleen
00:40:57 – 00:41:04
Yeah. Because from a value perspective, that seems low to me. I mean, think of what we are being essentially paid by a client to implement this. Right?
Sean
00:41:04 – 00:41:05
Like It's super low.
Colleen
00:41:06 – 00:41:07
Feels really low.
Sean
00:41:07 – 00:41:17
But but there Colleen, there is you don't have to have our the way like, if somebody's gonna make this choice, they don't have to have our solution. They could be, like, we could just build, like, some custom reports. That's one way they could do it.
Colleen
00:41:17 – 00:41:17
Yeah.
Sean
00:41:17 – 00:41:23
Or we could just keep doing that as we go. Or they could be like, we'll just build, like, a crummy form for this one, like, type of
Aaron
00:41:23 – 00:41:24
Mhmm.
Sean
00:41:24 – 00:41:37
Query that they're asking us for all the time. Like, there's a number where then you start thinking, yeah, we'll just do that. Like, it's not worth paying this other thing. And that's assuming that you have even accurately figured out, like, how long it's gonna take you to build something that
Colleen
00:41:37 – 00:41:38
Which no one ever does.
Sean
00:41:39 – 00:41:44
Alright. So that's that's why, like, the value based pricing is tough there.
Colleen
00:41:44 – 00:41:44
I see.
Sean
00:41:44 – 00:42:12
Because, like, I think if we price it if we if we priced it too high, then we're we're restricting this is all wild ass guess. Like, who knows? But, like, I feel like we're restricting the market too much to be, like, only people that want a query builder, a full featured query builder, and need it. You know? Like, absolutely, we're gonna, you know, have a query builder like client, is doing versus you've talked about how, like, everybody could use it.
Sean
00:42:12 – 00:42:35
Well, what's the everybody can use it price, which is different. So the, like, oh, we should add this because this and, you know oh, turns out if we add this, we can do all these other cool things. You know, like my job even. Like, we're looking at it as a potential thing to add, but it's not like a crucial feature to the app. But if it was a $1,000 a year, it'd be like, no.
Colleen
00:42:35 – 00:42:36
No brainer.
Sean
00:42:36 – 00:42:46
I know for sure they would bock at, like, higher than that. Like, there's there's a range, but if it was $5,000 a year, it would be like, we don't need that.
Aaron
00:42:46 – 00:42:55
Yeah. We can just build it into this one controller in the one place that we use it with, you know, 8 known criteria that we need versus by query builder.
Sean
00:42:55 – 00:43:02
So but then it's, like, maybe, oh, a $1,000 a year? Like, we pay for other stuff that's a $1,000 a year. No problem.
Colleen
00:43:02 – 00:43:08
Like Yeah. Well, maybe that's the answer is you start we start there and kind of we can gauge as we go.
Sean
00:43:09 – 00:43:13
Yeah. But I totally agree with you. Less than that is definitely wrong. Yeah.
Aaron
00:43:14 – 00:43:25
Yeah. I I yeah. I think 500 is crazy. I think a1000 is, like, not objectively crazy, but close in terms of being too low. Too low.
Aaron
00:43:25 – 00:43:49
Like and I think it I think that'll change. I think once we establish some credibility, we'll be comfortable changing, augmenting that price up. Yeah. I think once, like because Colleen, I don't know how much, like, 2 years ago, you would have said, oh, 500 is insane. But now that you have done it, you're like, 500 is insane.
Aaron
00:43:49 – 00:43:56
Yeah. And I think the more people that we have out there, they're like, no, no, no. Like, just pay the 25100 for it.
Sean
00:43:56 – 00:43:56
Yeah. Exactly.
Aaron
00:43:56 – 00:44:14
We'll feel we'll feel better about it versus trying to tell people, like, no. I promise you even at 25100, it's cheap. So I don't I think I'm with y'all. I don't feel bad about charging a 1,000 in the way I would feel bad about charging 500, but I don't think that's where we'll live forever.
Colleen
00:44:14 – 00:44:16
No. Okay. That seems reasonable.
Aaron
00:44:18 – 00:44:31
Yeah. I mean, I just did I just did the math. It's $83 a month, which when you put it that way, it's like, well, that's less than 1 hour of developer time a month. So now I kinda feel like it's objectively insane, but still
Sean
00:44:31 – 00:44:36
A $1,000 is like, you know, one day of an experienced developer's
Aaron
00:44:36 – 00:44:37
I know.
Sean
00:44:37 – 00:44:45
That's ridiculous. You can't you can't build this in a day. That doesn't Oh, man. That's so ridiculous.
Aaron
00:44:45 – 00:44:45
I wish.
Sean
00:44:45 – 00:44:48
So, yeah, based on value, that price is super super cheap.
Colleen
00:44:49 – 00:44:50
Yeah. It feels low.
Aaron
00:44:50 – 00:45:17
So this this is one of the things we talked about, Colleen, is the Laravel ecosystem has Taylor Otwell, who's the creator of Laravel, and he makes, he makes incredibly good, like, polished software, and then sells it for, like, pennies and dimes. So Okay. Like, for example, Sidekick, you know, Sidekick, what's his name's thing that y'all use in in Ruby and Mike's thing?
Sean
00:45:17 – 00:45:18
Burnham. Burnham.
Aaron
00:45:18 – 00:45:46
Taylor built that and released it for free in Laravel. I mean, it's not, you know, 1 to 1, but it's it's Redis queue worker balancing, monitoring, failovers. Like, it's that, but it's free. It's just open source. And then he's got an entire, like, an entire admin panel that you can add into your Laravel app that's just, like, unbelievably great and customizable, and it's $99 one time purchase.
Colleen
00:45:47 – 00:45:47
Wow.
Aaron
00:45:47 – 00:45:49
Come on, man. Yeah.
Sean
00:45:49 – 00:45:50
It's killing
Aaron
00:45:50 – 00:46:01
me. Of course. Of course. He's got, you know, he's got the entire mind space of Lara Laravel developers. So he's making and he said this publicly, he's making 1,000,000 of dollars a year.
Aaron
00:46:01 – 00:46:10
Right. And so it's like, yeah. I'll release it for it's like if DHH released something for $99 a year, that was a Ruby thing instead of, like, Basecamp or whatever. People would be
Colleen
00:46:10 – 00:46:11
like,
Aaron
00:46:11 – 00:46:19
yeah, hell yeah. I'll buy that. So it does create some downward pressure, but I think we can overcome it because this is a little bit, this is a little bit different.
Sean
00:46:20 – 00:46:22
Yeah. And it could be like in our imagination that there's
Aaron
00:46:23 – 00:46:23
It could be totally.
Sean
00:46:23 – 00:46:24
Price occurring.
Aaron
00:46:24 – 00:46:32
Yep. Yeah. That's a good point. And it could be that our customers end up being agencies. Yeah.
Sean
00:46:32 – 00:46:32
For sure.
Aaron
00:46:32 – 00:46:33
Let's do it.
Sean
00:46:33 – 00:46:34
Well, before we set a price, we will
Colleen
00:46:34 – 00:46:45
have a whole conversation. Talked to because I I don't know. I see what you're saying with the downward pressure and the if they just wanna implement it on one model, it's not worth it. But $1,000 is a no brainer. But I don't know.
Colleen
00:46:45 – 00:46:51
It's easier it feels like it's easier to adjust down than to adjust up.
Aaron
00:46:53 – 00:46:55
Yeah. I mean, you you have the precious take.
Sean
00:46:55 – 00:46:58
It's pretty easy to just grandfather things in, like, prices.
Colleen
00:46:58 – 00:47:10
You could say, yeah. As of this date, we're yeah. We can go either way. And I guess at the lower price point, we will get a wider swath of people, because you're absolutely right, Sean. The the companies that are like, oh, I just need a filter here and here.
Colleen
00:47:10 – 00:47:20
$1,000 is easy. Right? But if Mhmm. But, you know, maybe 3 k or 25100 is more like, oh, I don't know. I'm just gonna write some scopes on my model and make a little form for it.
Colleen
00:47:20 – 00:47:21
Mhmm.
Sean
00:47:21 – 00:47:32
And we could capture some of that value via contracts, like integration contracts. That's not that's you know? So, like, fine. It's a $1,000 a year for the license. But, like, oh, yeah.
Sean
00:47:32 – 00:47:51
You want a maintenance contract? So we'll, well, anyway, that would be the like, if you want, like, an integration license, like what we're doing for client x, our current big client, like, yeah. Okay. Fine. We'll help you with all these different things that you want, and we get a little extra money.
Sean
00:47:51 – 00:47:54
And then also support. Sorry. That's what I was looking for. Support contracts.
Colleen
00:47:54 – 00:47:55
Yeah.
Sean
00:47:55 – 00:48:15
That's the other place where we can so, like, a bigger company, that so we're you know, we could maybe collect $5,000 a year pretty regularly, but, like, some companies just don't care about the support. Like, we can offer some really low level, like, support. Here's our docs. And, like, that's basically it for free. But then, okay, you want actual support?
Sean
00:48:15 – 00:48:25
Like, you wanna talk to us in Slack or email or whatever, then that's an extra $1500 a year. Or and then and then, of course, there's big integration contracts possibilities.
Colleen
00:48:27 – 00:48:29
Okay. Cool.
Sean
00:48:29 – 00:48:51
I don't know. But you so that's the other can of worms, which is, like, do we charge upfront? Do we charge, like or let people just trial it for free? Or do we have, like, a charge upfront and then do, like, a 30 day or 40, 60 day, like, trial period.
Aaron
00:48:52 – 00:48:52
Guarantee.
Sean
00:48:52 – 00:48:53
Yeah.
Colleen
00:48:53 – 00:49:02
Yeah. I think you have to charge them upfront because the setup I mean, the thing about this product is the integration effort is not 0. Right?
Aaron
00:49:02 – 00:49:03
So Agreed.
Colleen
00:49:04 – 00:49:07
That's my my first instinct is to say you charge them upfront.
Sean
00:49:08 – 00:49:22
Or do you handle that with support contracts? It's like So so I I the example that I gave with Aaron, because I'm on the other side where it should just be free until you actually are gonna use it.
Colleen
00:49:22 – 00:49:22
Okay.
Sean
00:49:22 – 00:49:52
And the which I and Aaron and I have talked about this. Like, I'm totally good going with, like, charge up front. I don't think it's a mistake to do that. That's absolutely fine. But the reason that I'm more like, we should just let them use it is because when you're making this, like, build versus buy choice, if you're on, like, a weird if you're at a bigger company and bigger and even not even necessarily a bigger company, even smaller companies, like my company now, we recently did this whole decision with Highcharts, which is like another, like, component library, kinda similar business model to what we're gonna have.
Sean
00:49:52 – 00:50:06
And it took us, like, a year to decide we're gonna use it. But the whole time, we had Highcharts installed as a package. But it was just like because, like, it we're like, yeah. Okay. If we're gonna prioritize this work, and it's gonna need a charting library.
Sean
00:50:06 – 00:50:22
And then it was like, we have to do something else right now, so forget about it for 3 months. And then come back to it, and we're like, okay. Let's build out a couple things with highcharts, you know, as, like, examples for us on our little back end, like a demo board thing that we have and see if we like it. And then be like, okay. Cool.
Sean
00:50:22 – 00:50:42
We like it. Let's investigate pricing and then, we got other stuff coming up. So, you know, get back to that. So anyway, it was just like it took it took a while, like, for us to to, like, mess around with it to make sure that it was what we wanted, like and it was also spread out over a long amount of time. I feel that that's really normal.
Sean
00:50:42 – 00:50:55
I've done that on a lot of other a lot of other places too. That's just one example. And then the way Highcharts does it is it's free until you start using it, which was great for us. It was perfect. And then they have support contracts and they have licenses.
Sean
00:50:55 – 00:51:10
So if you buy a license, you don't get any support at all. If you You have to buy the support contract to actually go get support. And And that worked fine for us. So we're, like, bought a license and bought a little support contract as well. So that's that's the way it worked for us.
Sean
00:51:10 – 00:51:20
That's why I was like, it should just be free. And because, like, because precisely because of what you're saying, the integration thing is, like, a big part of it. And as a developer, you're gonna wanna, like, see if this is actually gonna work.
Colleen
00:51:20 – 00:51:35
But isn't that like going to the gym? Right? Like, you wanna pay for it, so you go. So we wanna charge them so they actually integrate it. I mean, I kinda like the if it's a like, you could do a money back guarantee, and then then they'd have to reach out.
Colleen
00:51:35 – 00:51:40
And then we could be like, hey. Is it because you didn't wanna you couldn't figure it out? Or, like, is it because you need more support?
Aaron
00:51:41 – 00:51:41
Yeah.
Colleen
00:51:41 – 00:51:46
How much was do you remember how much, like, a high charts I'm not familiar with them. How much are they? It
Sean
00:51:46 – 00:51:47
was similar to our pricing. I mean,
Colleen
00:51:47 – 00:51:47
it's one
Sean
00:51:47 – 00:51:57
of the reason why our pricing was was is what it is because we kinda leaned on that a little. But it was like a 1,000 $1500 a year for support, and it was like a certain level of support.
Colleen
00:51:57 – 00:52:02
And how did they know when you were actually using it in production?
Sean
00:52:02 – 00:52:03
They don't.
Colleen
00:52:03 – 00:52:06
They don't. Right. Okay.
Sean
00:52:06 – 00:52:07
We could totally cheat.
Colleen
00:52:08 – 00:52:11
Okay. It's just some things to think about.
Sean
00:52:11 – 00:52:25
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the big risk for somebody that's gonna buy this is the integration risk. And I feel like I don't know. Like, some companies might be willing to just pay $1,000 to, like, okay, let's go give this a try.
Sean
00:52:25 – 00:52:31
And a $1,000 is again that right number that lets them do that. Like, because it's not for most companies, a $1,000 is not shouldn't have to think about it.
Colleen
00:52:31 – 00:52:32
Not a big deal.
Sean
00:52:33 – 00:52:43
Yeah. But, like and so then you could just buy it, and then you could try it. And then, you know, you could be like, hey, this didn't work out, and we'd just give them their money back, or most likely just forget about it and don't renew.
Colleen
00:52:43 – 00:52:43
Right.
Sean
00:52:44 – 00:53:05
So that's fine. And so then that charging that license fee is helps us to justify whatever, like, support questions that they're gonna have, which is Aaron's big concern. It's like they're gonna have a ton of questions, like, while they're setting this up. So charging a $1,000 helps us and and, like, you have to in order to actually download it. That helps us justify spending time on when they come in.
Sean
00:53:05 – 00:53:16
But I'm like, why don't we just ignore them until they pay, and then they gotta pay a support contract, and then that's what justifies us helping them. Like, that that seems to be okay to me too. And then it
Colleen
00:53:19 – 00:53:30
The I mean, the crux of this responsibility is gonna fall on Aaron in the early days. Right? Well and you too, because it'll be front end questions. But yeah. So I mean, there will be there will be a lot.
Colleen
00:53:30 – 00:53:34
I think you're right. I think we're gonna have a lot of questions in the beginning.
Aaron
00:53:35 – 00:53:36
Yeah. And that was
Sean
00:53:36 – 00:53:39
in the beginning, it's different. You kinda wanna you want those questions.
Aaron
00:53:39 – 00:53:40
Right. Exactly.
Colleen
00:53:40 – 00:53:49
You want the high touch experience. Right? Like, we wanna provide that high touch experience, and it gives us fodder for all the dev op not dev ops, you know, dev real thingy.
Aaron
00:53:49 – 00:53:50
DX. Yeah.
Colleen
00:53:50 – 00:53:53
Yeah. Whatever they call it these days. Like, how do you use my software videos
Aaron
00:53:54 – 00:53:54
Exactly.
Colleen
00:53:55 – 00:53:56
We'll be making.
Aaron
00:53:56 – 00:54:42
That was this is basically the conversation Sean and I had a long time ago, and so it's interesting to hear your input on it. And that's kinda what that was my like, he accurately represented my position was I'm worried about making it free until you're ready to use. Obviously, the, like, the ethical thing is like, well, I mean, most people would pay, some people wouldn't, whatever. People can steal it regardless. But the thing about, like, if it's free, everyone's gonna download it, and then we can say that we'll ignore support, but, like, that doesn't feel that doesn't feel great to me to, like people DM me about it on Twitter, and then I ignore them, or they send me an email and I ignore them.
Aaron
00:54:42 – 00:55:00
And that's kinda like that was where some of the tension was. It was like, no. Just make them pay. And I was like, well, I'm you know, if our whole deal is, like, we make these really high quality components, I'm gonna wanna know what the sticky wickets are and be able to fix them and make it better, and I don't want a 1,000 people DMing me. I want people who have paid $1,000.
Aaron
00:55:01 – 00:55:05
So that's kind of that's kind of the whole conversation we had last time.
Sean
00:55:06 – 00:55:20
I think there's a compromise. Like, I was thinking about it because my my main thing is, like, okay. It's hard to there's a lot of integration risk with this. It's hard to know that, yeah, this is definitely gonna work with us in our data model and the way we're doing it. Like, we have seen this with our client that we have.
Sean
00:55:20 – 00:55:49
I know that's gonna be the same everywhere. So well, with there'll be plenty of places where they're just using, like, straight up up vanilla, Laravel or rails and not many choices otherwise, and it'll be not that crazy. But still people all wanna know. So my thing is, like, I don't wanna leave on the table bigger clients and customers that could potentially be worth a lot more to us down the road. I want to have to make sure that they can have, like, a touch point with us before they pay.
Sean
00:55:49 – 00:55:59
So something like schedule an appointment with us for, like, 15 minute. We could just have a book an appointment thing for, like, 15 minute demo. We'll show you.
Aaron
00:55:59 – 00:56:00
Love that.
Sean
00:56:00 – 00:56:16
And then Love it. You know, and if you're I guess, if our customers are listening to this, then, you know, if you talk to us and we're like, yeah, you could have you could have it for free for a bit, so you could try it out. You know? Like, that'd be a way that we could do that for people. Because I I feel like that's something that will make sense to people to not.
Sean
00:56:16 – 00:56:33
Because it's like even if it is only a $1,000, sometimes you gotta go through these stupid processes with, like, deciding who's gonna pay for it and, then it's easier to just like, hey, boss. Look. This is what we can do with this thing. Okay. Here's the credit card, and then they go for it.
Aaron
00:56:33 – 00:56:46
Yep. I'm on I'm much more on board with that. I think that's a great idea. I would love to talk to people in the beginning about what their objections are so we can either quash them or better quash them on on the landing page. I think that's a great idea.
Aaron
00:56:47 – 00:57:09
Mhmm. Another another middle ground would could be charging $100 a month. So instead of, you know, you have to, like, go through a process to get a $1,000 approval, you just charge a $100 a month, and people can just, like, try it for a $100 instead of paying a 1,000 and then getting their money back or whatever. So that that is an another option.
Colleen
00:57:10 – 00:57:11
I don't really like that.
Sean
00:57:12 – 00:57:13
I don't like it either, but I don't
Aaron
00:57:13 – 00:57:16
know why. Tell me why. Somebody tell me why.
Colleen
00:57:18 – 00:57:19
I like Well,
Sean
00:57:19 – 00:57:21
first of all, getting the oh, go ahead, Colleen. You were first.
Colleen
00:57:21 – 00:57:24
I liked the compromise Sean was proposing a little bit better.
Aaron
00:57:25 – 00:57:29
K. Oh, is that it?
Sean
00:57:29 – 00:57:37
Getting the money up front getting the money up front is way more valuable. This is super valuable to us in the beginning of
Aaron
00:57:37 – 00:57:41
the year. That's true. Just for our, cash flow reasons.
Colleen
00:57:41 – 00:57:45
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, okay. We can obviously talk more about this.
Colleen
00:57:45 – 00:58:00
We have 5 weeks. Right? But there there's tons of things we could do. But I feel like getting paid upfront is the way to go. We can have the high touch onboarding or the I think I'm interested onboarding kind of thing that Sean came up with.
Colleen
00:58:00 – 00:58:07
And if someone is like, hey. This is cool. I don't know if it's gonna work. We can be like, yes, for you. You can have it for free, and we'll check back in with you in 2 weeks.
Colleen
00:58:08 – 00:58:24
So the people who need high touch can get high touch. But I really feel like we should get paid upfront for this thing, especially since it's a piece of software, and we don't really have a way to control access in your more traditional Yeah. Yeah. In your more traditional ways.
Aaron
00:58:24 – 00:58:35
Okay. That's fine. I'm on board with that. So we'll do and, Colleen, one of the things we had talked about is this may change when we launch into rails. And so Yeah.
Colleen
00:58:35 – 00:58:37
I feel like we should charge way more.
Aaron
00:58:38 – 00:58:38
Yeah, probably.
Colleen
00:58:39 – 00:58:47
Like rail ecosystem is not, it doesn't, it doesn't sound like it is quite the same, pressure. Yeah. I mean
Aaron
00:58:47 – 00:59:16
So one of the things Sean and I talked about was, like, areas of responsibility, and part of my part of my deal with this is launching it into the Laravel community. I feel personally, like, responsible. And so that may change when we launch it into rails. I'm gonna have opinions, but they're gonna count for less because I'm not in that community. So that's gonna be more up to you and also Sean because he's a part of that.
Aaron
00:59:16 – 00:59:23
But I'll have opinions, but, like, they will be weighted, you know, 0.3 instead of 1.0. So
Colleen
00:59:23 – 00:59:36
Yeah. We'll have a lot of data too. I mean, we're still, you know, a a ways away from that. So we'll have a lot of data based on what we've seen with the Laravel launch, I think, which can inform some of our decisions. But, you know, you can always change your decision.
Colleen
00:59:36 – 00:59:44
Like, none of this is set in stone as we've discussed. You can always decide, you know, we'll just make the best choice with the information we have. And if we need to change it, we will.
Aaron
00:59:45 – 01:00:03
Yeah. I think so. And, also, last thing on this, I like charging upfront upfront because we're gonna have the most, like, developer integration issues in the beginning. Right? Because once people find them, they will become fewer and fewer as we fix them.
Aaron
01:00:03 – 01:00:35
And if we get to a point where we fixed the egregious ones and then decide, okay, let's go, you know, free to try, then we're not hit with a wave of support because we've spent 6 months fixing our early customers' issues. Whereas if we were to go free free from, like, free to try from the beginning, we're gonna have a huge number of people trying it multiplied by a huge number of outstanding sharp corners, and that's just gonna be a huge support load. So does that make sense? You look quizzical.
Sean
01:00:36 – 01:00:38
Yeah. Nope. Not quizzical. That makes perfect sense.
Aaron
01:00:38 – 01:00:50
K. So, yes, we've thought about pricing. K. A $1,000. Yeah.
Aaron
01:00:50 – 01:00:55
We'll see. Okay. Anything else on pricing, or do we wanna finish with the Hammerstone acquisition?
Sean
01:00:56 – 01:00:58
Oh, yeah. Tell about the Hammerstone acquisition.
Aaron
01:00:59 – 01:01:24
So we I'll put it in air quotes. Bought a company for 600 US dollars. So so you tell me if we actually bought a company. So all this stuff that I've been working on with Torchlight, which by the way, has exceeded my wildest ex expectations. It's going amazing, and I'm thrilled to death about it.
Aaron
01:01:24 – 01:02:24
All this stuff I've been working on with Torchlight, I've kind of been going down this rabbit hole of, like, documentation is difficult to produce, and so I've built a bunch of custom stuff around the hammerstone documentation so that we can keep it in GitHub alongside the libraries. So when people change library functionality, they can also change the docs at the same time, and that has turned out, you know, that's worked out really great. And then we have a system by which we will pull the docs, we'll clone the repo, just the docs part, build them from markdown, publish them on the website, looks great, obviously use a Torchlight for code highlighting, it's just a really nice process as a developer. So I've been wanting to productize that as I've been, you know, kind of just like keeping the hammer stone hype train going. That's been my whole deal for, like, the past year is I can't do any work on this client.
Aaron
01:02:24 – 01:03:05
I got to keep the hype train going. And so I want to productize that to where people can write their documentation in markdown in GitHub, and end up with, you know, beautifully rendered, almost like Stripe, not quite, but almost like Stripe documentation straight from GitHub. So we have that. I found this product called Unmarked Docs. So it's unmarkeddocs.co, and it is so their basic pitch is, like, write documentation in this, you know, superset of markdown where they've added a bunch of features and stuff.
Aaron
01:03:05 – 01:03:42
And it's basically it's it's not a very clear pitch on their website, but it's kind of the same deal that we're talking about here. So it's unmarkeddocs.co. Unleash the power of markdown to write better documentation. Let unmarked docs flavored markdown take your docs to the next level. So they're basically doing this, but it's been neglected for several years, and I don't think the final rendering is it's quite as good as it could be in terms of, like, what they build out of the markdown.
Aaron
01:03:43 – 01:04:06
And so I was looking around on product hunt for, you know, markdown related products that appeared dead, you know, that launched several years ago and appeared dead. And this was one of them that I found, and I scrolled down to, like, the footer of the website and found out that it was built by this kid in Laravel. I mean, actual kid. He's, like, 19 now. So, he was 17 at the time.
Aaron
01:04:07 – 01:04:14
And I was like, wait. I know this kid. Like, I follow him on Twitter. We're friends. I'm going to reach out to him and see if he's still working on this.
Aaron
01:04:14 – 01:04:25
And if not, I'm going to buy it. And I reached out to him and he's like, hey, I actually sold it to someone else couple years ago. I was like, oh, bummer. So I reached out to the other guy. His name is, Sven.
Aaron
01:04:26 – 01:04:38
And he was like, yeah. Miguel sold that to me, and I haven't really done anything with it since I bought it. So I'll sell it to you for what I bought it for. I was like, how much did you buy it for? It's like 600 US dollars.
Aaron
01:04:38 – 01:04:56
Nice. I will take it. And I ran before I did, I ran the domain by Mike and was like, Hey, Mike, how good is, you know, how good is this domain? And he ran it through h refs and was like, well, it's got a ton of backlinks, a ton of age, and this domain alone is worth more than $600. I was like, fantastic.
Aaron
01:04:57 – 01:05:25
So it comes with this full full Laravel application that's admittedly a little bit dusty because it hasn't been touched in a while. Full Laravel application, email list of maybe 300 people, and then, this domain with lots of great backlinks, including, like, product of the day stuff from product hunt. And so that goes out to all their, you know, aggregators and stuff. So we've got tons of backlinks there. So I bought it for $600.
Aaron
01:05:26 – 01:06:13
So we now own unmarkeddocs.co. And whether we keep that domain, I would have to talk to Mike about that, or redirect it to, you know, a different, perhaps better domain or a hammerstone subdomain or, you know, hammerstone directory or something. I think this can be I think this can be another inroad into the developer mind space, where we can kind of the same deal as Torchlight. We can do free for open source, paid for or paid for custom domains or or whatever, and give people the ability to write their documentation in GitHub, and then render and host these websites for them. And then when I explained all this to Andrew, he's like, yes.
Aaron
01:06:13 – 01:06:31
I want this, like, right now. This is such a pain. It's like, great. So it's kind of taking what we already have, just for us and turning it into something that other developers can use to to render their documentation. So that is the story we bought unmarked docs.
Sean
01:06:35 – 01:06:36
Nice work, Aaron.
Aaron
01:06:36 – 01:06:37
Thanks.
Sean
01:06:37 – 01:06:38
That was that was genius.
Aaron
01:06:39 – 01:07:02
Thanks. I'm I'm pretty pleased with it. I think I think the strategy is working, and I wanna keep going down. I wanna keep following this thread of things that is working. And I feel like this was an easy an easy way to get a pretty pretty long way down that road for very little money and no effort at all.
Aaron
01:07:02 – 01:07:02
So
Colleen
01:07:03 – 01:07:03
Awesome.
Aaron
01:07:04 – 01:07:38
Obviously, that's gonna slow down, like, the torchlight and, you know, documentation rabbit hole is gonna slow down as we're shifting focus back to the Vue Laravel products, because that's, like, that's always been my primary focus. There just hasn't been anything for me to do on it for so long. Right. So that'll slow down for a while, but I think I think long term, it's gonna be good for us to be in this very, very developer y space because everything we're selling is going to be very developer y. And so I think it's good to have a spot there.
Sean
01:07:38 – 01:07:49
That was so remember we did the sales Safari for Torchlight? Uh-huh. It was, like, not a lot turning up. I do remember Yeah. Feeling like, well, it's definitely a problem, but, like, who are the people that are gonna have this problem?
Sean
01:07:49 – 01:07:52
Like, only, like, the Dave Ceddias of the world. You know?
Aaron
01:07:52 – 01:07:53
Because Mhmm.
Sean
01:07:54 – 01:08:25
It seemed like okay. Yes. It's definitely solving a problem, but the research is saying, like, it's not really like a big wide reaching problem. And then it turns out that that's true, but the thing that I didn't realize is, like, how valuable it would be because of the specific types of people that are interested in Torchlight. Like, we are now on the radar of people that are gonna care about refine and share it with other people, like, have a built in audience.
Sean
01:08:25 – 01:08:41
That's sort of like this, extra bang for our buck that I did not even think about. So even if it's not a, like, a big it's never gonna be a pay the bills type of business, I don't think. But it's, worth it. Man, is it ever worth it for us? It's that's, like, so cool.
Aaron
01:08:42 – 01:08:56
Yeah. I'm I'm just so tickled. I'm I just I'm very pleasantly surprised. This week, we also got, Laravel Livewire documentation switched over to Torchlight, and we got Alpine JS, which is a
Colleen
01:08:56 – 01:08:56
Nice.
Aaron
01:08:56 – 01:09:17
Very minimal JavaScript framework by the LiveWire guy. We got that switched over to Torchlight. And so now at this point, because Torchlight's free for open source, people and I didn't do either of those. Somebody made PRs against their repos that were like, hey. We're gonna switch from highlight JS to Torchlight, and then DM'd me about it on Twitter and was like, hey.
Aaron
01:09:17 – 01:09:30
I just did this to LiveWire and Alpine. And I'm like, what is going on? Yeah. So it's really cool, and it's and it's very encouraging. So I think I think this will be in furtherance of that.
Aaron
01:09:30 – 01:09:38
So that's the acquisition. That's the acquisition. Is anybody paying for it?
Sean
01:09:38 – 01:09:40
Is what? Is anybody paying for Torchlight?
Aaron
01:09:40 – 01:09:44
No. For Torchlight, yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
01:09:44 – 01:10:11
So I actually got we got our first payment today. Somebody, yeah, somebody's card went through today. We have several people on the business plan, but I haven't enforced trial expiration yet and haven't, like, emailed them to say, like, hey. You're gonna expire, but somebody signed up for a trial and then independently put in their own credit card and has paid us. But Do we have MRR?
Aaron
01:10:11 – 01:10:19
We do. What is it? Hammer Hammerstone has $14 MRR. Wait. Let's all quit our jobs.
Colleen
01:10:21 – 01:10:21
Yeah. I'm
Aaron
01:10:21 – 01:10:23
gonna move to California.
Colleen
01:10:24 – 01:10:28
Dude, everything is better in California. I'm just letting you know.
Aaron
01:10:30 – 01:10:37
Yeah. We do. And I've had people DM me and be like, hey, how can I pay you for Torchlight? And I'm like, really?
Sean
01:10:37 – 01:10:39
Put your credit card in the Yeah.
Aaron
01:10:39 – 01:11:04
He's actually the one the one guy that did DM me that was the one that signed up before I was expecting people to sign up. He just, like, looked at my DNS and found the app domain and went and signed up himself. And so he doesn't have a corresponding Stripe customer because I hadn't implemented Stripe yet, and he went and signed up himself. So when he tried to pay, it was like it 500 because he didn't have a Stripe customer.
Colleen
01:11:04 – 01:11:05
I was
Aaron
01:11:05 – 01:11:18
like, oh yeah, I forgot that you cheated. And so, yeah. So, yeah, we have MRR. We've got a couple of people that are on the business plan and ready to pay, and I just need to, like, email them and tell them time to pay.
Sean
01:11:18 – 01:11:22
We're gonna do that so next podcast we can report that we, like, tripled our MRI.
Aaron
01:11:22 – 01:11:30
That's right. Yeah. I will. And then we can get investors and that'll be it. Show hockey stick growth, and we're done.
Aaron
01:11:30 – 01:11:41
So there you go. That's kinda all I wanted to talk about on on the acquisition. I just thought it was kinda fun. Yeah. I think that's it.
Aaron
01:11:41 – 01:11:47
Anybody else have anything? Okay. I'm gonna hit end there. Cool.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos , and generally try really hard .

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical .