Aaron Francis

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Transcript

Aaron

00:00:03 – 00:00:05

I'm ready. Start it. Yes. Start it, mister Big

Chris

00:00:05 – 00:00:12

Talk host. I think this is it. I don't think I'm editing this out. Okay. Alright.

Chris

00:00:12 – 00:00:19

I'm here with Aaron Francis yet again for my first guest who is repeating. So I'm just gonna call Aaron my unofficial co host.

Aaron

00:00:20 – 00:00:29

Love it. Happy to be here. Glad to be back. I was the first I think I was the first guest and the first returning guest. So double double the honor.

Chris

00:00:30 – 00:00:35

Alright. So we have things to talk about both of us. I think they're sort of interesting at least.

Aaron

00:00:36 – 00:00:37

Alright. Let's talk about your stuff first.

Chris

00:00:38 – 00:00:42

Okay. I was actually gonna tell you to do your stuff first. What would you wanna do?

Aaron

00:00:42 – 00:01:01

Let's talk about let's talk about chipper CI pricing. Let's talk about cloud casts and I think that might be it. But you've been on a chipper CI, you've been on a chipper CI pricing journey for quite some time now. So where are you at right now?

Chris

00:01:02 – 00:01:15

Yeah. That feels like forever. Jeez. Pricing is so hard because it's so strategic. I went coincidentally, not coincidentally, but the journey has been long and, like, ever changing because I just keep getting feedback from people.

Chris

00:01:15 – 00:01:21

So I've gotten almost overboard with that, like, way too much feedback, but I do like where I ended up with it.

Aaron

00:01:22 – 00:01:23

So you ended up somewhere?

Chris

00:01:24 – 00:01:25

I ended up somewhere.

Aaron

00:01:25 – 00:01:26

You have a final plan.

Chris

00:01:29 – 00:01:30

Final final.

Aaron

00:01:30 – 00:01:50

Final final. Because I listened to the episode you did with Matt Wintzing, and y'all talked about pricing a whole bunch. And I thought that was good. And then I know you've been thinking about, like, builds versus build minutes versus tiers. And then, like, where does open source fit in?

Aaron

00:01:50 – 00:02:06

And you wanna capture people at the lower end and let them grow into it. So you've had all these, like, different, not competing, but, like, all these different things you've been trying to accomplish. So what is final final v 2? Where did you end up?

Chris

00:02:06 – 00:02:33

Right. And all along the way, there's, like, all these little details that I need to fit in. So it's also, like, threading the needle to, like, get certain features in or or do certain ideas or or capture or get pricing that makes sense for certain personas, if you know what I mean. So, like, originally, I was just like, yeah. I'll just, bump it up $10 a month to $49 a month from 39 without really giving it any strategic thought.

Chris

00:02:33 – 00:03:03

And then I started realizing, maybe I should give this some strategic thought. So I started asking around. That was right around the time where we started the podcast also. So, like, when you were talking about Laravel's stuff in general, having this kind of, like, downward price pressure thing that we were talking about, that got me thinking about getting the kind of maybe the lower end of the market, which I don't I don't really like that wording because it sounds bad. But what I mean is two things.

Chris

00:03:03 – 00:03:26

1, people who are not, like, a business necessarily who don't wanna pay 40, 50, 100, a $150 a month, but still might pay something. Because Tripper CI as a service supposedly is very nice and easy for Laravel developers, so some people might wanna actually use it for their side projects or whatever. Mhmm. You know, maybe they make revenue, maybe they don't. I don't know.

Chris

00:03:26 – 00:03:37

I talked to Matt Wencing, and he had that idea too. He said it a different way. He was really like to get a wedge in the door. Mhmm. He was thinking kind of like AWS metered pricing a little bit, but it still applies.

Chris

00:03:38 – 00:03:58

It's the idea of, you know, someone puts a payment method down, which is the big hurdle. That's, like, the point of friction. And their bill could be, like, 12¢ a month or something. And it's small, but once they start using the service more and more, the payment stuff is already on file, and you get more value. You get you get more revenue from them as they grow if they grow in user app more.

Chris

00:03:59 – 00:04:12

So I really like that idea, and I I ended up thinking of 2 kind of user personas, like the solo dev or very small teams versus a actual business that has, you know, like, a bunch of revenue and pay or are paying dev salaries.

Aaron

00:04:12 – 00:04:13

Mhmm.

Chris

00:04:13 – 00:04:40

And from there, I started thinking about pricing tiers, but I ended up with these really kinda grim gaps where it would be, like, $15 a month and then $99 a month. There's really no in between. And there's all sorts of kind of things I got back and forth on. In addition, I was at well, I should say at one iteration. I was also pricing not just based on number of builds per month, but also kind of the number of private projects, like private GitHub repositories you could hook up.

Aaron

00:04:41 – 00:04:41

Sense. Okay.

Chris

00:04:42 – 00:05:07

I decided it didn't make sense. I mean, it it sort of does on a high level or maybe it's it does until you think about it more, and I think it could be I don't like any of that wording. It does, but I thought about it more, and I don't like limiting a number of projects because it's as it feels self limiting, and I I really had to decide, and some people helped me with this too, to decide what the actual kind of value metric of the application is, and there's really number of builds per month.

Aaron

00:05:08 – 00:05:08

Chris

00:05:08 – 00:05:22

And, I mean, that could be also number of build minutes per month, but I just don't wanna build to that granularity. Mhmm. I don't I don't think it makes sense for this app specifically. I do know there's, like, an average of 5 minutes per build. And some people are higher, some people are lower, obviously, because it's an average.

Chris

00:05:22 – 00:05:40

Mhmm. And there's a cap of 1 hour maximum on builds, but about 5 minutes built. So I can kinda use that average and decide, you know, what makes sense to charge per build and what that might end up being, as a permit. But I don't care. Charging per build makes more sense, I think, for this app.

Aaron

00:05:40 – 00:05:55

So you have I think that was important. You've decided the value metric is number of builds, which means the more builds a user is doing, the more value valuable they're finding chipperci.

Chris

00:05:56 – 00:05:57

Right. And it could be

Aaron

00:05:57 – 00:05:57

done by that.

Chris

00:05:58 – 00:06:08

Across multiple projects. Right? So typical customer right now is a business with a team. They hire or they invite team members into the app. They have maybe 3 to 6 projects.

Chris

00:06:08 – 00:06:22

And those projects, if you look at them, the names, it's all kind of obvious that they're various different parts of their main business stuff. So, like, their back end API, they have a back office app, they have a front end repository, or, you know, all sorts of

Aaron

00:06:22 – 00:06:22

Sure.

Chris

00:06:23 – 00:06:36

Schemas that you can think of. And then, you know, there's a few who act obviously have clients also where, like, the repository name is, you know, very different. Each repository name, and they sound like specific projects marketing campaigns.

Aaron

00:06:36 – 00:06:37

Or something.

Chris

00:06:37 – 00:06:47

Right. Yeah. Or that kind of setup. Some of some of them are like that, but most of them are are not the agency setup, which is based on me looking. So I could be wrong at some, but just based on what I can see.

Chris

00:06:47 – 00:07:10

So the value metric and number of builds makes more sense. And the number of projects, like, that just doesn't matter so much because it varies a bunch also. But, also, you know, if you have some projects that aren't used a bunch and some that are Mhmm. Then, you know, you're building a lot in one project and not the other, and you might need but you might need to occasionally run builds on, like, another project for maintenance or something. So I think it makes sense to just do number of builds per month.

Aaron

00:07:11 – 00:07:24

So this is this is the transistor FM pricing model because they don't price on number of shows or I I don't think they even price on number of episodes. I think it's number of downloads.

Chris

00:07:25 – 00:07:25

Right.

Aaron

00:07:25 – 00:07:43

And I think this is also the Fathom. We would have to double check that. I think this is the Fathom Analytics pricing model where they don't price on number of sites, but rather aggregated page views across however many sites you wanna have. I think. I'm not quite as sure on that one.

Chris

00:07:43 – 00:07:49

I think they're tiers, so you fit within a range and you get tiered. So it's not, like, metered. Well, Well, I guess in both cases. Right?

Aaron

00:07:50 – 00:08:03

Yeah. Both are tiers, but neither are separated by property. So you could have a 100 sites and pay the same that you would if you had 1 giant site or something like that. So, right. Seems reasonable.

Aaron

00:08:03 – 00:08:11

You're not like, you're not inventing something new. So that's probably a good sign. So keep going. You decided to do it based on builds. So

Chris

00:08:11 – 00:08:28

what Okay. So this brings into, like, do you do tiers? Is it meter billing? Like, what makes sense? So the competing factors are kind of I don't know if they're competing, but the factors are getting people in cheaply and quickly and with reduced friction at the low end so that they can don't have fear of big bills going into it.

Chris

00:08:28 – 00:08:57

You don't have to jump right up to 40, 50, 50, $60 a month. You can just put a credit card down, and, you know, if you go over the free tier limit just a little bit, then maybe you're paying, like, a dollar per month. And then it grows with usage. So so the idea is getting in on the low end and then also getting more value on the high end, because right now, there are a lot of users on Tripper CI who are using it quite extensively and still only paying, like, that $40 a month. And I'm not getting anything for their, like, really high usage.

Aaron

00:08:59 – 00:09:06

So it's gonna be free tier credit card upfront. Is that right?

Chris

00:09:07 – 00:09:21

I don't think so. I think it's gonna be a free tier. It's gonna you you're gonna have probably, like, 25 builds a month for free. Okay. Right now, it's 50, which, in terms with for Chipper CI seems a little too generous because Seems like a lot.

Chris

00:09:21 – 00:09:26

Getting set up seems quick and easy for the most part, and then people are just, you know, getting a lot of rebuilds.

Aaron

00:09:26 – 00:09:26

Right.

Chris

00:09:26 – 00:09:39

And that was that was based on competitors that when we made the app, that 50 free tier limit. And they have higher ones, but I think they also have higher friction in getting started and you end up, eating away a lot of builds just getting started like that first month.

Aaron

00:09:39 – 00:09:44

Oh, yeah. I see. Okay. Yeah. 50 Sort of 50 seems like a lot to me.

Chris

00:09:44 – 00:09:55

I almost wanna do it, like, a week after sign up. You your builds don't count. So you could just, like, have a few days of, like, trying out getting your application to work without eating away your free builds. I don't know.

Aaron

00:09:56 – 00:09:57

That's a great idea. Yep.

Chris

00:09:57 – 00:10:20

Cool. So, okay. So with this in mind, a pricing scheme I made up is, like, trying to get people in the door at, like, $15 a month, and then, you know, the high the upper ranges, whatever. So I had this idea where the pricing would be kinda chunky. You'd buy chunks of a 100 builds for, like, $15, and that ends up being 50¢ a build or whatever, but that that point doesn't matter so much as you buy in chunks.

Chris

00:10:21 – 00:10:37

And every time you roll over, like, your 101st or, I guess, a 126 if you get 25 free builds, then you're charged $15 to get the next 100 builds. And if you go over, your next 100 builds, then you're charged another 15 to get another 100. Right? And then Okay. The builds can, like, roll over to the next month.

Chris

00:10:37 – 00:11:00

So it's not like you have to refresh every month. The builds you paid for are still yours to use, and maybe they expire in, like, a year, which is something similar to what, CircleCI does. And I was almost all set to go with this model. There's more to it. There's more to it because there's add ons, like, add ons for if you need to use Docker, if you wanna use Teams, if you need concurrency.

Chris

00:11:00 – 00:11:12

Like, every concurrent build is also an additional charge per month. So there's kind of like a you could add on these baseline amounts. So, like, 10, 20, $30 a month, you get these other features. And then on top of that, you pay as you go for your builds. K.

Chris

00:11:14 – 00:11:28

I got more this, like, almost started. In fact, like, we were a day, day and a half into development when I got some more feedback. And I was like, alright. We have to stop everything and, like, rethink this because I talked to Matt Wensing and Peter Soong just on Twitter DMs

Aaron

00:11:28 – 00:11:29

Mhmm.

Chris

00:11:29 – 00:11:36

Just to, like, kinda get this their final thoughts on it just because, they oh, I listened to their podcast, and they were talking about my pricing because Yeah.

Aaron

00:11:36 – 00:11:36

I heard that.

Chris

00:11:36 – 00:11:48

Talked about it with Matt and Peter on, like, Telegram and stuff. And I immediately just, like, DM ed them as I was listening to the episode. I was like, here's what I'm thinking. This is the new thing. And, they were both like, I don't like that.

Chris

00:11:48 – 00:11:56

Oh, no. Which is like I was I was very close to just being like, I don't care what anyone's opinion is anymore. I've asked too many people for feedback.

Aaron

00:11:57 – 00:12:02

I'm afraid to ask because I like the plan you were about to go with. So why did they not like it?

Chris

00:12:02 – 00:12:24

Both for different reasons. Peter didn't like that it was still kind of uncertain in price. Matt was like, you're kind of wishy washy between 2 things. You don't have the granularity as true metered pay as you go, and you also don't have the set price that you would per month of it as a you know, using a tier. You're kinda, like, in this gray area in between.

Chris

00:12:24 – 00:12:48

It's kind of an odd pricing thing. And and that made me think of a few things, but what I ended up with is I I tweaked it based on that because I kinda agree with that. It's kind of a weird model. And I also didn't wanna code it, like, chunking and expiring credits in a year. They're not really credits, but expiring builds in a year and then rolling over month to month and all that kind of stuff.

Chris

00:12:49 – 00:13:10

Some of that felt like it could be a some of that just felt overly complicated, and I wasn't sure what that would do to the revenue, like, when people's Mhmm. Bills roll over month to month and all that stuff. So the thing I've finally landed on is actually more metered. You get a free tier. The free tier is 20 5 builds a month.

Chris

00:13:10 – 00:13:21

Every month, you get 25 builds. Some of these details might change. But so every month, you get 25 free builds. And when you go over, you start paying per build and per and it's $15 per a 100 still. So I'm in that price range.

Chris

00:13:21 – 00:13:55

Ends up being 15¢ a build. I might do something like you don't get billed until, you know, you're over, like, a dollar, whatever that is, like, 6 builds or whatever or, you know, less than that, but or more than that, I should say. So pay it's basically pay as you go, and that's, like, the easy way to get in and start paying for the app. And there's still the idea of add ons, so you can still add on Docker support for a charge, team support to invite team members, concurrency, so, like, you have some multiple of number of concurrent builds you want and pay some something like, maybe, like, $20 per concurrent build per month, something like that. Is there anything else?

Chris

00:13:55 – 00:14:07

Oh, and server size is the new thing too. So you have standard server size and large server size. So standard is that $15 per a 100 builds. Large server size will probably be $25 per server. Sorry.

Chris

00:14:07 – 00:14:26

$25 per a 100 builds, which was this thing. That was part of the the previous pricing plan too. So small versus large or standard versus large servers. You have the add ons if you really want them or not. You have the add ons if you want them, and that you could almost stop there.

Chris

00:14:26 – 00:14:46

It's sort of easy to get in on. It doesn't necessarily fix the price. It doesn't necessarily fix that you don't know what you're gonna pay per month, but I have an idea for that. But it does get you in kind of quickly and cheaply. It does get you more value from customers using the app at the high end.

Chris

00:14:47 – 00:14:52

And then there's some more interesting stuff you can do with that. So this is, another idea

Aaron

00:14:52 – 00:15:08

So is this is that is that the plan that you're gonna put into place? Mhmm. Okay. So that plan so I'm gonna try to say it back to make sure I heard it all right. Is some sort of monthly fee?

Aaron

00:15:09 – 00:15:27

No. You get 25 builds a month for free. And then you are paying in goodness. Why can't I remember this? Are you paying in tranches of a 100 with this with the new plan?

Aaron

00:15:27 – 00:15:42

Or are you paying no. No. No. You're paying per build and you're only gonna charge potentially if they reach, you know, some low threshold of a dollar or whatever. And you're still, and you're still Yeah.

Aaron

00:15:42 – 00:16:14

So they're paying per build. There are no more tranches of a 100. So you don't have to worry about any sort of rollover or expiration in the future of any sort of build credit. Every month, it resets to 25, and then they're gonna pay depending on server size, either whatever, 50¢ or 75¢ a bill, whatever it is. And those are the only 2 things.

Aaron

00:16:14 – 00:16:20

And then you have add ons for like Docker and teams. Is that an accurate summary?

Chris

00:16:21 – 00:16:25

In currency. Yep. And it's 15¢ a build or 25¢ a build. Okay.

Aaron

00:16:25 – 00:16:44

Cool. Okay. That makes sense. So 25 free paper build after that, no rollover, no expiration, much, much simpler. You were going to address, I think, the problem in air quotes the problem of variable bills to the end user.

Aaron

00:16:44 – 00:16:47

So go from there. There.

Chris

00:16:47 – 00:16:53

Yes. Okay. So more feedback I got with this was that teams, especially, or businesses, I should say

Aaron

00:16:53 – 00:16:53

Mhmm.

Chris

00:16:54 – 00:17:18

Often prefer more steady bills, like, you know, depending on the size of the company, of course. And maybe the size of companies that Chipper gets would care less about this, but it really depends, of course, on the company. But more stable bills is appreciated. So one idea that I have and I, I like this a bunch. This is kind of my favorite part about it is there's also tiers that you can hop into, and they're kind of prepaid tiers.

Chris

00:17:18 – 00:17:48

I'm not really sure what I'm gonna call them. They're sort of a volume discount. They are sort of prepaid, like, in concept. So I have 3 tiers planned where it's gonna be a low tier, kinda like a business tier, and then a high usage tier, like a growth tier, some whatever, you know, whatever we name them is to be determined. The low end and I'm I'm just gonna talk about the small server size, because the large server size has a has more expensive, but, you know, it's it's just a larger server, so you're paying a little bit more.

Chris

00:17:49 – 00:17:59

The interesting part is that there's 3 tiers. The low end is still $15 a month. Right? So $15 a month for a 100 bills, which is the same price as pay as you go, but you're promising to pay me $15 a month. K.

Chris

00:17:59 – 00:18:20

And you get those 100 builds. If you go over those 100 builds, you're still actually paying the pay as you go rate. But you're getting some features. You're gonna get at least Teams, maybe Docker also, but at least Teams, support with this. So if we pretend Teams is, like, $10 a month, which I think is what it'll be, you're gonna pay $15 a month for what would otherwise be $25 a month.

Chris

00:18:21 – 00:18:28

But it's, you know, it's in return for paying $15 a month instead of just a pay as you go rate. So you're saying

Aaron

00:18:29 – 00:18:29

Yep.

Chris

00:18:29 – 00:18:34

Give me you know, prepay for a 100 bills, and then, you know, for free, you get the team feature.

Aaron

00:18:36 – 00:18:37

Yeah. Okay.

Chris

00:18:38 – 00:19:00

The next higher ones are for business and growth, I think, is what I'm gonna call those tiers. So that's jumps up to $99 a month for a a businessy tier. I think we're gonna do 500 builds, and then you get team support, Docker support, 2 concurrent builds. And and it's more if you get the larger server size, but the the standard server size is $99 a month. So you're saving money there.

Chris

00:19:00 – 00:19:07

And then also if you go over, you have a discount. You're not gonna pay 15¢ per build. You're gonna pay, like, 10¢ per build.

Aaron

00:19:08 – 00:19:08

Chris

00:19:09 – 00:19:34

So $99 a month, you get 500 builds. You get all these features just included, including 2 concurrent builds. And then your overage charges is kind of what I'm calling my head, are cheaper. So it's discounted all around. The higher tier is interesting because, originally, I did a 1,000 builds for some amount, and then some customers are are rated a 1,000 bills or even a little over.

Chris

00:19:35 – 00:19:57

And someone in someone recommended to me that I just actually make this, like, the the the unlimited tier almost. So it's actually gonna be 2,000 builds for 3.49 a month. So 3.50 a month, 3.49 for 2,000 builds, and you get all the features. You get 4 concurrent builds instead of 2. This is kinda like the I probably won't go over this number of builds per month plan, but, you know, it it has everything I need.

Chris

00:19:57 – 00:20:01

It's almost like a bit of a test to see if any businesses just do

Aaron

00:20:01 – 00:20:02

that. Mhmm.

Chris

00:20:02 – 00:20:20

There's, like, there's 2 or 3 in Chipper CI who I suspect might find that attractive. So that is it. That's the price plan. So it's kinda like prepaying, and you get extra features, and you get a discount all around. And that highest tier also gets even more of a discount, per build for over if they happen to go over 2,000 builds.

Aaron

00:20:21 – 00:20:32

Okay. So you've got the pay as you go thing, which we talked about. Then you've got 1599349 for a 100,502,000.

Chris

00:20:35 – 00:20:35

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:20:35 – 00:21:04

Okay. So the benefit here, the well, I guess there are a couple benefits. One is you get predictable pricing, which is easier. I'm thinking from the customer's point of view, you get predictable pricing, which is easier to sell up the chain to your boss or to purchasing or whomever. You also don't feel because that because that is, you know, that is one problem with pay as you go.

Aaron

00:21:04 – 00:21:35

You're gonna like Yep. Potentially feel like you have to limit yourself because you're like, oh man, this, you know, this costs me money every time I do this. So you get to eliminate those two things and then you also get, you know, a couple of features thrown in which I would imagine most people, most businesses will go for the 99 which gives you 2 concurrent builds which is pretty valuable. I don't know. I'm trying to think back when I was at my previous company.

Aaron

00:21:36 – 00:21:50

I think each, I think each developer had their own chipper account. I think we properly, like, invited them to Chipper versus sharing a password. And if you find out otherwise, sorry about that. But

Chris

00:21:50 – 00:21:50

No worries.

Aaron

00:21:51 – 00:22:08

I I think what we did was Yeah. We invited each developer. But honestly, the thing that would have like the thing that we would have cared most about at the old job was concurrent builds. And so I think you're right. I think you're right to offer that as a business tier feature at the $99 a month.

Chris

00:22:09 – 00:22:25

The team invite thing is interesting because at first, I was like, well, teams almost don't matter. It's kind of a thing we could share a user. But user it's some teams have users who set up specific projects. So it's like their GitHub OAuth that they use to set up Uh-huh. A specific project.

Chris

00:22:25 – 00:22:42

And they have the knowledge at their company of, like, what needs to happen to set that project up in their CI environment. It's not necessarily that everyone knows how to set up every project or one person does all the project setup. That makes sense. So team members do become, actual valuable valuable things to have and chipper in those in those cases.

Aaron

00:22:43 – 00:22:51

Okay. That makes sense to me. So riddle riddle me this. Are most people just gonna choose a tier? Do you think?

Aaron

00:22:51 – 00:22:52

Like how much I

Chris

00:22:52 – 00:22:53

have no idea.

Aaron

00:22:53 – 00:23:00

How much do you think this pay as you go is gonna do anything? Because it feels like these are pretty good tiers.

Chris

00:23:01 – 00:23:18

Right. The $15 a month tier especially is good to get started because you get in that team thing for free for so it would otherwise be $25 a month. Right. And then, you know, the other tiers is, like, kinda easy to hop into if you're a business. Because if you're paying developer salaries, the $99 a month isn't super crazy.

Aaron

00:23:18 – 00:23:18

Right.

Chris

00:23:20 – 00:23:28

So I'm gonna see. It's all an experiment, really. This threads the needle and solves a bunch of problems of things I've had to think about for months.

Aaron

00:23:28 – 00:23:29

Right.

Chris

00:23:29 – 00:23:52

It's not where at all where I would have started at. I'm still not a 100% confident in the pay as you go model in terms of, like, developers signing up and not feeling like it's kinda grim. It is very close to, what most other places do anyway, though. And they charge per build minute, and then they have credit systems and all that kind of stuff. So, like, other places are still kinda more crazy than even this setup.

Chris

00:23:53 – 00:24:12

So it is a bit of an experiment. I'm happy with it. I'm happy to start here with with this. And if it needs to change, then it needs to change. But this is kinda, like, the basis I need to get in place before I do, like, real marketing pushes and that kind of stuff next, which is really the more important work, but I still need, like, a pricing model that works better for the company than what I have now as a basis.

Aaron

00:24:13 – 00:24:38

Right. Yeah. I like it. I think I I wonder I just wonder if the pay as you go is worth the developer time to implement right now because that is 2 fully separate pricing, like, not not even pricing models, I guess.

Chris

00:24:39 – 00:24:46

Yeah. I don't know if I agree that it's difficult. I mean, actually, a lot of this work is is in development right now. So it's well, like, some of it's done.

Aaron

00:24:46 – 00:24:52

Well, if it's not yeah. If it's not difficult, then that changes that changes the calculus altogether. You

Chris

00:24:52 – 00:25:15

know, it is it is certainly stuff I need to build and test. Like, you have to make sure that pay as you go is in, like, the tiers correctly calculate all the, you know, number of gigs per month. Don't go and don't try to double charge you or anything. It only charge you for only charge you the metered pay as you go stuff for overages, not if you're under your I'm not trying to limit. And then just, like, a little weird because you get 25 free per month no matter what.

Aaron

00:25:15 – 00:25:15

Right.

Chris

00:25:15 – 00:25:18

At least that's my plan. But yeah.

Aaron

00:25:18 – 00:25:43

I mean, I think you've successfully, I guess thread the needle on all of the things you were trying to solve for. I'll be curious to see, like, I don't know if, I guess the pay as you go plan is kind of the free tier. Right? Because they get, they also, do they also get 25 free builds as on the pay as you go plan?

Chris

00:25:43 – 00:25:52

Right. Yep. And right now, I don't plan on doing credit card upfront. It'll be, like, once you hit that bill, do you get an email and, like, an alert in the app saying, hey. You're out of bills this month.

Chris

00:25:52 – 00:26:03

Do you wanna pay as you go and just start paying, you know, the small amount? And I might I think in the site, I might say it's $15 per 100 all over the place, and then instead of 15¢ per build.

Aaron

00:26:03 – 00:26:05

Yeah. I feel like that's easier to comprehend.

Chris

00:26:06 – 00:26:10

Yeah. It's super grim to be like here goes 15¢. Yeah.

Aaron

00:26:12 – 00:26:13

Yeah. That's not fun.

Chris

00:26:13 – 00:26:18

Even though it's actually it's like fairly equivalent to other apps charge per minute

Aaron

00:26:19 – 00:26:19

Right.

Chris

00:26:19 – 00:26:30

Depending on because the it's it's hard to calculate because they use this credit system, and your your build minutes might use anywhere from, like, 3 to 20 credits per build minute, and you're buying credits. So it's all hard to calculate. But

Aaron

00:26:30 – 00:26:47

Yeah. Yeah. I do like the I do like the idea of pricing on build versus build minute because then I'm not super worried about trying to trim, you know, 30 seconds off of each build all the time because I know it costs me money. So, I like that. I like that a

Chris

00:26:47 – 00:27:01

lot of times. Who it is too. Like, people and a team and a business won't care about that, but the on the lower side, I think, like, solo small team developers will. Right. So for them, I like the I like doing per build instead of per build minute for sure.

Chris

00:27:01 – 00:27:04

And people want faster builds because they don't wanna wait for their They

Aaron

00:27:04 – 00:27:08

don't wanna wait. Yeah. For sure. Okay. I I like it.

Aaron

00:27:08 – 00:27:47

I think it'll be interesting to see one one thing I think you might run into is, like, how do you display all of this? The tiers versus the pay as you go. And if you display it like a standard, you know, 3 tiered, you know, almost tail end UI pricing page. So you have the 3 tiers of 1599,349, and then underneath it, you have like a When in reality, like, the free tier is When in reality like the free tier is just not listed the same way as the other tiers, if that makes sense.

Chris

00:27:47 – 00:27:56

It's like kind of a matter of design. I don't Yeah. It's it's true. It's like it's something I have to it's certainly high in my mind to communicate that all clearly. Yeah.

Chris

00:27:57 – 00:28:04

So, like, the pricing page, I might need to get someone to help me figure that out because I'm not a designer at all. So I have to figure out how to do that.

Aaron

00:28:05 – 00:28:09

Yeah. So when does this when does this happen? I mean, it's been it's

Chris

00:28:09 – 00:28:11

been a while. It's in development now.

Aaron

00:28:11 – 00:28:14

Okay. With your, contract developer?

Chris

00:28:15 – 00:28:27

Yes. So, hopefully and I might have to finish up at the end tail end because I can't afford to just have them keep going on forever. You know, it's just kind of a big change. Yeah. So I might need to end up doing he's doing a lot of the work, and he's doing the right job.

Chris

00:28:27 – 00:28:38

And I might need to finish up some of, like, the Stripe integration y stuff at the end. Cool. So we'll see. So, you know, hopefully, in a few weeks. I think that seems realistic ish.

Chris

00:28:38 – 00:28:40

I'm recording this. We're recording this on April 13th.

Aaron

00:28:41 – 00:28:43

Yeah. So maybe by May sometime.

Chris

00:28:43 – 00:28:44

That sounds good.

Aaron

00:28:44 – 00:28:48

Well, that's exciting. I mean, I know it was kinda painful to get here.

Chris

00:28:49 – 00:28:50

Right.

Aaron

00:28:50 – 00:28:56

Every time you had a conversation with someone, it seemed like they had a differing opinion from the person before them, but I like

Chris

00:28:56 – 00:29:02

this thing. I think I like it. I'm still you know, we'll see how pay as you go goes.

Aaron

00:29:02 – 00:29:03

Yeah.

Chris

00:29:03 – 00:29:34

Like, true metered billing. Because I first started saying I'm absolutely not doing metered billing in my head, and then ended ended up there, which makes it like, every other CIF does a form of metered billing, and a lot of it ends up making sense in terms of pricing, complexity in the code, and also just the value, what, like, the value the true value metric that people are getting out of CI applications in general. I think I think they've all landed there. The other apps have all landed at some variation of this idea for a reason, like, a solid reason.

Aaron

00:29:35 – 00:29:49

Yeah. It almost become it's almost like every CI app just becomes a sort of surcharge on top of the their own compute price. And so they're paying for compute by the minute, and they charge you a little bit more by the minute.

Chris

00:29:50 – 00:30:03

I think that sounds right. And a lot of them are in addition to their main offering. Right? GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub, you know, the the Yeah. GitHub actions and all that stuff is a side part of, you know, of their whole business.

Chris

00:30:03 – 00:30:04

And so it's not even the main thing.

Aaron

00:30:05 – 00:30:11

Yeah. So they may pass it through pretty low cost just to lock you in.

Chris

00:30:11 – 00:30:22

Like, Microsoft owns GitHub. So, you know, they're gonna throw them on Azure and, like, who cares about what it costs them per month, which is why you can make an open source repository kickoff 70 builds whenever for one single commit.

Aaron

00:30:23 – 00:30:26

Yep. Which is why this is a tough business to be

Chris

00:30:27 – 00:30:33

in. Right. Right. Right. One of the things I had to decide is that I can't actually can't really compete in open source as it is right now.

Chris

00:30:33 – 00:30:38

It's like, I just don't have the compute power to handle 70 builds when someone wants to

Aaron

00:30:38 – 00:30:39

Right.

Chris

00:30:39 – 00:30:47

Test, you know, 3 or 4 different PHP versions against 2 or 3 versions of the framework or against dev requirements versus not dev requirements. Right.

Aaron

00:30:47 – 00:30:47

You know,

Chris

00:30:47 – 00:30:49

and all all the other variations you can do.

Aaron

00:30:51 – 00:31:01

Yeah. Yeah. And that's fine. Like, GitHub actions has that handled pretty well. So you don't you don't need to compete against that.

Chris

00:31:02 – 00:31:22

We'll see. Hopefully. I mean, the customer base right now are all teams and customer. I think I think the real value of Chipper CI being easy to, set up and and keep going on for Laravel projects makes but still makes sense as, like, a business model. It's that's kind of the theory of the whole thing.

Aaron

00:31:23 – 00:31:37

I think it's a good theory. That's why I chose it in the first place. Because I knew I mean, I think I said this. I knew that it was gonna be easiest to set up with Laravel and I didn't want to spend 3 days fighting with circle or whatever the other options were.

Chris

00:31:37 – 00:31:41

Yeah. Especially if you're doing, like, browser testing and dusk and all that stuff gets so crazy to set up.

Aaron

00:31:42 – 00:31:44

Yeah. Do you highlight that? Like, do you

Chris

00:31:44 – 00:31:52

Not enough. I actually did we both did some positioning work with, Keith. What's his last name? Oh. Not Keith.

Chris

00:31:52 – 00:31:53

Zach.

Aaron

00:31:53 – 00:31:55

Not Keith. Zach Goldie? Goldman?

Chris

00:31:55 – 00:31:55

Yes.

Aaron

00:31:55 – 00:31:56

I think it's Goldie.

Chris

00:31:56 – 00:32:02

Goldie. Yeah. So I'm gonna I have some of that stuff to implement on the on the marketing side also.

Aaron

00:32:02 – 00:32:08

Good. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could hit that a lot harder, especially the desk stuff.

Chris

00:32:09 – 00:32:13

There's a lot of things. Yep. Yeah. Cool.

Aaron

00:32:13 – 00:32:15

Well, sounds great.

Chris

00:32:15 – 00:32:20

I don't wanna talk about Cloudcast because we're already 34 minutes into this.

Aaron

00:32:20 – 00:32:21

Okay.

Chris

00:32:21 – 00:32:38

Suffice to say, Cloudcast might lean and and go into a niche of Laravel or PHP instead of, like, just AWS in general. But who cares? K. Let's let's talk about what's going on with Hammerstone and what your life has been. When we last recorded, right, that was right after the Laravel conference, Laracon online.

Chris

00:32:39 – 00:32:49

And I guess a bunch of things have happened since. Like, where are you with opening things up to the public for sales and and all the other news that's going on?

Aaron

00:32:49 – 00:33:08

Yeah. A lot of things have happened. So on the job front, I now work at Tuple, which is super exciting. I don't think that was the case last time we spoke. But I left my job at a property tax company and I'm now a marketing engineer at Tuple.

Aaron

00:33:08 – 00:33:36

And this is my 1st week there and it's amazing and I'm thrilled to death about it. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. Right now I'm just in the phase of like read every Notion doc that exists and try to figure out like how the company works. Like, does this go in this tool or do I send an email or does this go in discord? And so, like, super just trying to get, like, trying to get integrated into the company.

Aaron

00:33:36 – 00:33:37

Right.

Chris

00:33:37 – 00:33:37

Yeah. It gets

Aaron

00:33:37 – 00:33:42

to the conclusion. Yeah. And every time I'm like, wait. Okay. This is yes.

Aaron

00:33:42 – 00:34:11

I'm supposed to put this in Discord and, you know, by by no fault of their own, it's just me being the new guy. I don't wanna, you know, burst through the wall like the Kool Aid man and be like, I've got a bunch of ideas and everything needs to change. So I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to fit in there. That's happened since we last spoke On the hammerstone side, there have been, some pretty big developments, at least one very big development. And we just Colleen and I just published an episode today about it.

Aaron

00:34:12 – 00:34:25

Sean is stepping back. So historically, it's been me, Sean, and Colleen. Well, it started with me and Sean. And then we brought Colleen in to pick up the rails side. And now it's just me and Colleen.

Aaron

00:34:25 – 00:34:57

So Sean is no longer active in Hammerstone. And that was kinda, like, I think it was a little while coming. We've been really bottlenecked by, his availability, basically. So he's the front end he's the front end guy, and he's got, you know, a family and a full time job and all this stuff. And just, like, we've just kinda been stuck on the front ends.

Aaron

00:34:58 – 00:35:45

And we had a me, Colleen, and Sean had a talk maybe last week and just basically decided like, this is like, this isn't working. And he was saying that he like can only dedicate so many hours and has realized that he doesn't like this part of building a company where it's like very much just grinding and it's brutal. And so as of this week, it's me and Colleen now. So that's a pretty, that's a pretty big shift. It is, you know, bittersweet because Sean and I have been working on it for awhile, but I do think it's going to unlock Colleen and I to like actually move at a much higher pace now.

Aaron

00:35:45 – 00:36:23

Cause Colleen is extremely motivated cause she is trying to, you know, make Hammerstone her full time work by August, I think. And I'm extremely motivated because I want, you know, to be independent in, you know, several years from now, which is, you know, no secret. I think in, you know, I see myself in 5 or so years not having a job and I feel like Hammerstone's my best bet to get there. So we're both like super motivated to make this happen. So, yeah, kind of kind of a big change.

Aaron

00:36:23 – 00:36:52

And so I think the next thing that's gonna happen is we're gonna start really pushing the Laravel Nova stuff because it's, like, done and ready to go. And we just haven't really been pushing it very hard. And so my task for this week is to get a Laravel Nova landing page set up and start driving people to that to like actually purchase the thing. So that's kinda where we're at now.

Chris

00:36:53 – 00:37:01

Cool. Yeah. I've been in situations where getting a blocker out of the way just like gives a lot of clarity. Right? Like, you kinda, like, go like, alright.

Chris

00:37:01 – 00:37:08

It's it's kinda maybe in your situation, it's more work in everyone's shoulders all of a sudden, but, like, being able to move forward is must feel pretty good.

Aaron

00:37:09 – 00:37:35

Yeah. It does. And, yeah, there's there's just a lot of, like, being actually blocked technically and then not wanting to, I don't know, not wanting to push too hard on partners. And so that leaves you in the situation where it's like, well, we're not moving very quickly, but I also don't feel like I can push on other people as hard. And then that kinda, like, that kinda hits your motivation.

Aaron

00:37:35 – 00:37:44

And so the whole thing kinda comes to a crawl, which I think is where we've been for a little while now. So Right. Yeah.

Chris

00:37:45 – 00:37:48

Makes sense. I mean, you're empathetic to your friend, Sean. Right?

Aaron

00:37:49 – 00:37:49

Right. Exactly.

Chris

00:37:49 – 00:37:55

He has all the stuff going on. It's not, like, you know, putting the whip out of it just doesn't help anyone. Right?

Aaron

00:37:55 – 00:38:00

No. No. Not at all. So yeah. I mean, I don't know, man.

Aaron

00:38:00 – 00:38:13

It I think, again, it seems so easy. I guess, like, looking at other people, it seems like, oh, this is super easy. And then when you're in it, you're like, man, this is not as easy as it seems like it is for everybody else.

Chris

00:38:13 – 00:38:25

No. Every yeah. We're all seeing everyone's highlights, which is what I just have to keep reminding myself. So we talked about another thing in the last time we recorded, right, about survivorship bias. And I I just keep getting reminded about how strong that actually is.

Chris

00:38:25 – 00:38:38

Like, I'm pretty sure every podcast we listen to is like, some people had, you know, the hard work, luck, and skill like Rob Rawlings says, but that luck part and the survivorship by part is easy to skimp over because it feels like it's totally out of our control.

Aaron

00:38:39 – 00:38:39

Mhmm.

Chris

00:38:39 – 00:38:54

And in some ways, it is. But I think that's a lot of what we hear is affected by that. Or, you know, but people also gloss over the hard stuff too because, you know, you grind for so long, but it's not really interesting to talk about the grind necessarily because it's the same thing over and over again day in day out.

Aaron

00:38:56 – 00:39:31

Yeah. I feel like we've even on the Hammerstone podcast have run into run into that in the past of like, man, there's just not a lot to talk about because we're just freaking grinding and it's not interesting. And, you know, historically, we were just stuck for so long, and it's not interesting. And it, like, it's not not interesting to other people. It's also not, like, it's not exciting for me, like, to be in that spot of, I don't know.

Aaron

00:39:31 – 00:39:37

I just felt like we were spinning our wheels for a long time and that of course is super discouraging. So Yeah. Yeah. It's

Chris

00:39:38 – 00:39:40

It's not energizing to talk about the grind.

Aaron

00:39:40 – 00:39:55

No. It's not energizing to talk about the grind without progress, like the grind and you're making a lot of progress. Sure. That's great. But the grind and you're just like, man, we still don't have the thing ready to be released.

Aaron

00:39:55 – 00:40:04

It's just, it's almost embarrassing. Like, I don't want to talk about that. Like, I don't want it. I definitely don't want to talk about it every single week. So, yeah.

Chris

00:40:04 – 00:40:11

What's the strategy you have next? Do you have one planned? Like, there's definitely gonna be, an overlanding page and a way to purchase that, it sounds like.

Aaron

00:40:12 – 00:40:30

Mhmm. Yep. And then Yeah. So the the near term strategy is get the overlanding page done and, like, peep drive people basically just to buy it and try it. For some reason, we've been funneling everybody through me and, like, oh, let's have a call and you can give it a try and see if it works.

Aaron

00:40:30 – 00:40:35

Like, just freaking have them buy it. Mhmm.

Chris

00:40:35 – 00:40:35

Aaron

00:40:35 – 00:40:59

we're gonna we're gonna do that and then shortly thereafter or in parallel is get a handle on the front ends. So view 23 and react. Unfortunately, we have contractors working on that. Some really, really good ones who are working on that. But I think we need to get, like, we need to get some timelines put on that.

Aaron

00:40:59 – 00:41:26

And then once we have those front ends ready to go, then we need to start selling the Laravel paired with the different front ends while Colleen finishes the rails back end. So that's kind of the near term plan is sell the crap out of Nova and then get a firm timeline for the other front ends and then start making the Laravel push.

Chris

00:41:27 – 00:41:35

Is August that time frame that, Colleen's pushing towards? Is that when your hammerstone's client is, like, finished?

Aaron

00:41:35 – 00:41:53

I think that is when her contract is like, that's when her contract ends, and I'm sure that they would love to keep her beyond that. But I think she's wanting to shift into, you know, product ownership versus contracting.

Chris

00:41:53 – 00:41:59

So that's the source of, revenue right now that lets you get contractors to do the front end stuff, though. Right?

Aaron

00:41:59 – 00:42:19

Yep. Exactly. So we've probably sold, I don't know, 5, 6, $7,000 of licenses, which doesn't go super far when you're paying, you know, professional developers. But we have a bunch of money from the past, I don't know, year or 2 of contracting. And then Colleen is, you know, floating.

Aaron

00:42:19 – 00:42:26

Like, she's billing the client through Hammerstone, so that's how she's, you know, paying for food and stuff.

Chris

00:42:27 – 00:42:30

Cool. Okay. Yeah. Neat. Okay.

Chris

00:42:30 – 00:42:33

And then Nova probably be the $1,000 price point also?

Aaron

00:42:34 – 00:42:53

Yeah. That's where it's at now. There is a conversation about should that be lower because you know, Nova itself is, you know, 99 or 299 or whatever. And truly the support is lower because there's no, like, there's there's just no front end options. Like, you get what you get.

Chris

00:42:53 – 00:43:07

It's interesting. Well, if you think about the value customers are getting out of it, like, does that make sense? Like, a thousand still kinda makes sense because the development time that they are skipping skipping out on for that could be huge, you know, multiplied by multiple developers even.

Aaron

00:43:07 – 00:43:23

Right. It's definitely more than like, it's definitely more than 10 hours. We're talking, like, for them to reimplement even, you know, 60 or 70 percent of it, we're talking a 100 hours or more. And so the Right. The value still makes sense.

Aaron

00:43:23 – 00:43:36

But again, it's the well, we paid a $100 for this whole admin interface, and you want us to pay a 1,000. But frankly, I that may be a false fear because the people that have paid have been like, yeah. It makes perfect sense, and I love it. Thank you so much.

Chris

00:43:36 – 00:43:52

I think it is, and I think the challenge then becomes the marketing page positioning and then, you know, getting quotes and and showing examples that show some, you know, someone how powerful it can be. Yeah. I mean, I think that's great. Customers. All of our our all of our favorite.

Aaron

00:43:52 – 00:44:07

Totally. Fortunately, we we have we do have a Slack where, you know, most of our current customers are, and I can get I mean, I can get quotes from them pretty easily, so that that should be fine. Cool. But, yeah. I think you're right.

Aaron

00:44:08 – 00:44:16

I think $1,000 makes sense. I just need to convince other people that it makes sense when standing against a $100 for,

Chris

00:44:18 – 00:44:20

the Nova's 300 now, I think. Right?

Aaron

00:44:21 – 00:44:27

Oh. I think that's a 100. I guess you're right. The Nova 4, let's see what they came in at.

Chris

00:44:27 – 00:44:30

299. Oh, you're right. It's a 100 for a single project.

Aaron

00:44:30 – 00:44:32

Yeah. 99 or 299.

Chris

00:44:33 – 00:44:48

But I think you're going after people are gonna pay a $1,000 for it at that 2 99 price point anyway because it's probably not solo developers when they're single projects. Yeah. Awesome. It might be a business might buy a single project license, but they're still a business, and the 1,000 is also cheap. Like Right.

Chris

00:44:48 – 00:44:51

This is Laravel. Right? So it's underpriced because it's Laravel.

Aaron

00:44:51 – 00:45:02

Exactly. Also, this copy is kinda ruthless, and I love it. On the single, on the Nova, it says single 99 for a single project budget conscious. It's like

Chris

00:45:04 – 00:45:05

I love that psychology.

Aaron

00:45:06 – 00:45:11

Yeah. So that's I almost wanna click the other one, because I'm not budget conscious. I'm rich.

Chris

00:45:11 – 00:45:13

Of course. Yeah. That's right.

Aaron

00:45:13 – 00:45:24

That's genius. Waco, guys. Yeah. I think you're right. I think anyone that is gonna need this type of thing, well, anyone that's gonna pay anything for it is probably gonna be a business.

Aaron

00:45:26 – 00:45:26

You

Chris

00:45:26 – 00:45:38

want people to complain? Complaints about price is kind of a good sign. Like, that's that's for the right price to be. You don't want no one to buy it, but some complaints is also, I think, a good sign. This is advice from the sage wisdom of Ian Landsman.

Aaron

00:45:39 – 00:45:48

Well, and he know he he knows what he's doing, so I will take that advice. Yeah. We had somebody with that was like, oh, I can't pay that. This is a side project. And I thought, you know, that's okay.

Aaron

00:45:48 – 00:46:01

Like, I'm okay with that because you probably wouldn't want to pay a $100 or anything like that. So Right. Yeah. I think I think you're right. So that's that's kind of where we're at now.

Aaron

00:46:01 – 00:46:25

This, I mean, this happened days ago, so we're still in the very early part of, you know, phase 2.0. And it like, it feels really good to kind of be unblocked, but it also feels like, like, this is our moment, and we have to seize it, and we have to work really hard for the next Yep. Couple months to make it happen.

Chris

00:46:25 – 00:46:30

You gotta perform. You have to not fall down at a new job. Yep. You haven't built up that years of trust.

Aaron

00:46:30 – 00:46:50

For real. For real. Yeah. Like, I need to and I'm very conscious of that. Like, you know, I objectively, like, spending my time well as it relates to Tuple, but in because it's my 1st week in my 1st month, like, they need to know that I'm spending my time well.

Aaron

00:46:50 – 00:47:21

So there's, like, you know, there's a difference between what are you actually doing and what is it perceived that you're doing. And, like, I'm spending all day, like, you know, reading Notion docs and trying to get plugged into the company and, you know, setting up Google search console and all this at at Tuple. But they don't know me. And so I'm constantly having to think about like, okay, I need to communicate. Like, I need to make sure that I'm doing the things that are, like, expected of me as it relates to communication with the team.

Aaron

00:47:21 – 00:47:43

And so, yeah, there's a whole, like, there's a whole background process in my head going to like, okay, you have to build, you have to build up your, your trust with all of these people here. So, yeah, it's a lot. I mean, there's a lot going on and a lot in, in my head right now. And the funny thing is it's all good stuff. Like it's, it's all positive.

Aaron

00:47:43 – 00:47:55

Tuples is an incredible company, and everyone there is just been wonderful so far. This opportunity with hammerstone is great. I just can't get crushed. I can't get crushed by the opportunity.

Chris

00:47:57 – 00:47:58

Good problem to have.

Aaron

00:47:58 – 00:48:07

Yeah. It's like, this is the I don't know. Pick a sports metaphor. This is the last whatever of whatever game. And you just have to, like, you just have to perform.

Aaron

00:48:07 – 00:48:10

Like, this is your moment. So

Chris

00:48:10 – 00:48:16

As always, lots of work to do. Yep. I feel you there. Okay. Let's wrap up.

Chris

00:48:16 – 00:48:23

Give people a quick pitch of what Hammerstone is making, what the product we're talking about even is for Nova and other stuff, and then tell people where they can find you.

Aaron

00:48:24 – 00:49:11

So Hammerstone is making a product called Refine, and Refine is a visual query builder for your end users. So if you want your users to be able to filter, let's say, customers, for example, you would set up refine and then your users would be able to say show me customers in Texas where the pricing plan is starter and the name is Chris, and they could just like keep building out conditions. And then we will handle the front end, the back end, the querying, the validation, and the storing of filters so you could readdress them. So visual query builder for Laravel and Rails. And you can find me on Twitter, Aaron d Francis.

Chris

00:49:13 – 00:49:16

Cool. Alright. Let's stop it there. Thanks for coming on.

Aaron

00:49:16 – 00:49:18

Yep. Thanks for having me.

Hammerstone changes, Refine, and finalized Chipper pricing

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