Ecosystem of Cards

Ian

Hello. Hello. La la la. I think I think we're both

Aaron

in a Seinfeld mood. It's we it just came out.

Ian

This is the timing's unbelievable on this.

Aaron

Man. So Justin Jackson, what a guy.

Ian

What a guy.

Aaron

Had to had to have spent hours clipping that together. Right?

Ian

Hours and hours and hours. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. If you haven't seen, we'll post it up and everything, but Justin Jackson, friend of the show, friend of mine for many years, did a supercut of the podcast with Seinfeld, and it's it is

Aaron

It's uncanny.

Ian

It's uncanny. I was in tears laughing. It was It's

Aaron

so funny. Dying laughing.

Ian

So good. It's so well done. It's just spot on. So, yeah. Thank you, Justin, for that.

But, yeah, just wow, blew me away.

Aaron

I I just walked into the living room where, my wife and my mom and the au pair were and I was like, hey. Can I put this thing on the TV and show you this this video? Like, what's going on?

Ian

Like, what is this?

Aaron

So freaking funny. It

Ian

is. And, I mean, we've talked about that that it is kinda like that, but then when you see

Aaron

it. When you see it side by side. Yeah.

Ian

And I even posted this to Justin. I was like, now it now I'm questioning if I even have any of it.

Aaron

I'm just

Ian

like, maybe maybe we're just channeling, you know, millions of hours of Seinfeld into, into the show here. I don't know.

Aaron

Yeah. My I after I showed my mom, she was explaining Seinfeld to our au pair, and my mom was saying, like, we grew up on that. Like, our whole family, you know, me and my brother grew up watching so much Seinfeld, and I think it is like it's just been internalized.

Ian

Yeah. That's that's great. And it's funny because, like, you're probably a little young to have seen it live. Right? Or were you guys watching it the end of it's still live?

Aaron

Know if I was watching it live. What was the last season?

Ian

Oh, jeez. I think it was, like, 99.

Aaron

I think that's right. I think it was 98 or 9. Friends and sides

Ian

of the list are

Aaron

pretty close, but I think it was 98 or 9. Yeah. And I would have been, I think, 10 in in 99. So Yeah. I don't think we were watching it live, but I think we I think my brother and I watched, the reruns over and over and over.

Ian

Reruns, man. That's where, like, it just got into my brain from the room. Because, like, 11 so before it was streaming and all that, like 11 pm on WPIX in New York here anyway, like it would just be on every night and just obviously a random rerun and it's like, just watch that every night. Just Yep. Every single night.

It's so good.

Aaron

Yep. Somebody once asked on Twitter, like, how do I get better? They weren't asking me. They're just asking the void. And then the question was like, how do I get better at, like, low stakes casual small talk?

And my, like, unironic answer was watch Seinfeld straight through. Like, watch it fully straight through, and you will start to internalize, like, the you can basically make a conversation out of anything.

Ian

Out of just a few words.

Aaron

Yes. Exactly.

Ian

So You're a big straight through guy. This is a theme. This is one of your themes. For sure. Straight through.

Aaron

Very much very much a completionist.

Ian

Seinfeld. Yes.

Aaron

Big time. Yep. Love love to have love to have the full set. Love to love to know the full canon.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Seinfeld, especially, I think is really good in that it pays off a lot. Like, a lot of sitcoms, you know, they're just, like, they're really isolated, like, every episode or maybe there's an arc of a couple episodes, but that's it. But like, especially from midpoint on like Seinfeld, like each season would have an arc and then, yeah, like there would be arcs that cut across even multiple seasons to some, you know, not full arcs, but like people would return and whatever there would be things they go back to and re reference.

So, yeah, like if you watch the whole thing through, you really do get a lot of payoff.

Aaron

Yeah. It does compound because then you start to get a catalog of, like, the close talker, the low talker, the loud talker. You get all like, oh, they're doing a they're doing a running bit here. And and, honestly, the the learning how to do a good callback joke, I feel like I learned a lot from Seinfeld. Yeah.

Like, how do you make the joke? And then, you know, 21 minutes later, at the end of the episode, how do you make the joke again as a callback? And yeah.

Ian

And their character like, they stayed in character so well. I feel like that's, like, that's the only thing people can pick up on. Yeah. Whether it's on Twitter or a podcast or whatever, there is, like, this element of entertainment that you're doing, and it's like Seinfeld is just the master of that. Like, they're just so those characters are just so fully realized.

I feel like that they really

Aaron

And one of their tenants, one of their Jerry's core tenants on the show was no growth, no learning. And so that helps. Like Which

Ian

does help. Right? It helps a lot. The same people.

Aaron

You're not becoming a better person.

Right.

The last, you know, the last argument or the last observation of the series is the first observation of the series about the button being too high. Yeah. It's like, no. No growth. We're just who we are for 9 seasons straight.

It's like, well, yeah, that that worked pretty well.

Ian

That did that did you when you got something that works, stick with it. Yep.

Aaron

Don't mess it

Ian

up. Oh, man.

Aaron

Thank you, Justin. Incredible, incredible work. I laughed so hard.

Ian

Wow. I was in that. It's just, like, almost scary now. It's like, oh, man. Why do it's like a pressure.

I'm like, I feel pressure. It's like, well,

Aaron

it's signs, though.

Ian

Apparently, it's

Aaron

signs, though. Out of our minds. But Yeah.

Ian

We gotta, like, create this thing.

Aaron

You're a little you're a little bit on the male body being grotesque. I just made me laugh

so hard again when watching it. Oh, that's true, though. I definitely

must have got that one.

Ian

True, though. I definitely must have got that from Seinfeld. Like, that's

Aaron

Must have. That was word for word. Yeah.

Ian

That was word for word. Like, he was just like, oh, here's the Seinfeld version of it. It's like, oh, the exact thing. Just me having watched that episode a 1000 times. Yeah.

I mean, I I think I believe it too, but who knows? Maybe I

Aaron

Who knows at this point? Yeah.

Ian

It doesn't know. I just might be regurgitating Elaine. But Yep. Alright. We got a couple of updates.

We could stay on that the whole time, but we'll do some updates and then topics topics and all kinds of stuff. But, 2 things from last week. I want to follow-up on our JSON talk that I actually know the guy who added, JSON to PHP, Omar Kolani. He's also a friend of mine who does, remember the milk. Yep.

The the the support until he added it. So he added JSON encode and JSON decode.

Aaron

Wow.

Ian

I don't know if they've been they've probably been rewritten since then or whatever, but, he did the original implementation. I don't remember. I think it was 2014.

Aaron

Or

Man, I remember remember the milk. That was that was big for

Ian

a while. They're still going. He's still out there.

Aaron

That's amazing.

So they're

Ian

doing the to do list. And then a very small update on slippers. So I said only my middle kid was into the slippers and me and my wife are in the slippers. All of a sudden, just like it must be in the air, they come home from they had to go to the mall for something, and my daughter has nice L. L.

Bean slippers. No. So all 4 of the 5 of us are on the slipper bandwagon now.

Aaron

Wow. Okay. It's going around.

Ian

Yeah. So we gotta get you on.

Aaron

Yeah. It seems it seems like that is my least popular opinion.

Ian

Yeah. People didn't didn't care for your opinion there. I was kinda surprised. I thought there would be a lot more pushback, on people who are like, no way shoes in the house were all about it. I was I was pretty surprised.

It was quite universal on the no shoes in the house for the most part.

Aaron

For the most part, except for boss Holly, my boss at PlanetScale.

Ian

Yes. Your boss. Yes. Oh, you think, You think, you think she's being honest there? Maybe she just she was maybe she just wants to stand with you.

Is there any chance of that? She's just being loyal?

Aaron

No. Because she has all the power. She doesn't, you know, unless

Ian

she's like do that. But

Aaron

Yeah. Unless she's reaching down to the little man. I don't I think she really does she really does wear shoes in the house, I think. Hey. She lives she lives out in the country.

She lives, you know, who knows where, like, out in the country, and she probably has, like, scorpions in her house or something, and so she doesn't wanna she doesn't wanna be taking her shoes off all day long. You know?

Ian

Yeah. Then the things get into the shoes. If you just put the shoes on all the time, you don't have to worry about stuff living in there.

Aaron

Yeah. And then I saw I saw, I saw people wearing their slippers outside on Twitter, and I'm like, you just that's just shoes.

Ian

That's just

Aaron

worse. That's worse shoes.

Ian

So I will wear the slippers, like, onto the driveway, but I try not to leave the driveway with the slippers. I'm definitely not leaving the house zone with the slippers ever for sure.

Aaron

Yeah. Walking outside with slippers on, you're just doing the same thing, but in reverse.

Ian

But I do think you want the slippers to have, like, some grip and the

Aaron

and the

Ian

actual bottom. So they are very shoe sneaker like. Yeah. You don't want those, like, it's just a cloth bottom. Those things are you know, then you're You know

Aaron

what I could you

know what

I could be sold on? And this may this may be, like, this may be a terminology you may think I'm insane. I could be sold on house shoes. I could be sold on that. Yeah.

Like, a pair of maybe maybe they're not slippers, and maybe they are just shoes, but a pair of shoes that you wear in the house only.

Ian

Dedicated to the house.

Aaron

Yeah. I could I could be sold on that.

Ian

So I feel like if you're gonna go that route, then I wouldn't go sneakers. I would go like UGGs or like something like

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Something like that that's got a little slipper ness, but isn't all the way down to a slipper perhaps.

Aaron

You know, we don't need to retread the whole thing, but it just feels a little bit like giving up to put on some UGGs and, like, toot around the house. You know? I just I can't I don't think I can

get there.

Ian

There. Yeah.

Aaron

I don't think I can get there. No.

Ian

You gotta clear 40. Maybe when you

Aaron

hit 40? Yeah. When I when I hit 40 and I have, you know

Ian

All your best days are behind you.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. I

Ian

understand. I understand. Yep.

Aaron

Maybe I'll maybe I'll give up. But until then, I'm gonna I'm gonna fight the good fight.

Ian

Alright. I'm with you. Alright.

Aaron

Alright. Alright. So Topic.

Ian

So I guess we'll do the big one first is the the Laravel people, crew, release pulse, and you have been pulse. Deep into it. So why don't you take us through?

Aaron

Pulse is very good. Yeah. Pulse is very, very good.

Ian

So Love the idea.

Aaron

They released Pulse first party package. It is it is interesting how it's being pitched and how it could be used. So it's being pitched as, you know, lightweight APM, basically. Vital signs in real time is is the h one on pulse.laravel.com. And there's, you know, an image of users making requests, queue backlog, cache hits, slow queries, etcetera.

Right? So that's how it's being built as is, like, keep an eye keep an eye on your server at a high level, whatever whatever. It's all written in LiveWire. Very dashboard. Yeah.

I know the year of LiveWire continues. The year of LiveWire. Very, very dashboard centric. Yeah. And the customization story is pretty good, in that you can create your own cards.

And so I've dug in I've dug in quite a bit in, you know, 30 minute hour increments that I have. I've dug in quite a bit to look at how it works, and it's basically a dashboard framework. Like, yeah, you can use it to monitor vital signs in real time or whatever. You can also use it to do just about anything else, and that's kinda where I that's kinda what I've been working on is, making cards for a bunch of other providers. I'm gonna try to drop them all at once.

But, like

Ian

I like that.

Aaron

More of like a more of like a social or business dashboard than a server dashboard. And it's kind of cool the way they've done it. They've separated it into, like, recorders and display. So, like, you have one thing that's responsible for recording data and the other thing that's responsible for displaying it. And the infrastructure for recording the data is really robust in that you can record time series data as aggregates only without storing all of the entries.

Ian

Right. The underlying

Aaron

got, you know, 5,000,000 requests an hour or whatever, you can just store that as, like, you know, 4 or 6 different rows instead of 5,000,000. And Pulse handles all of that. Like, it abstracts all of that away from you. So if you dig in deep enough and look at it and I need to do some videos and write about it because I don't think anybody's gonna dig in that far. But if you dig in deep enough, the way that they're doing automatic roll ups and aggregations is very, very good.

So lot of potential here, and I think it's gonna be a little bit of, like, a a land grab to to build out some of these cards.

Ian

Well, I I mean, I've always wanted a dashboard, excuse me, like thing, and it's like I've tried some of those services, but Mhmm. I don't know. It's just never really stuck. And I just feel like, oh, you have. It's just, like, in your Laravel app already, and you're already using Pulse for, you know, what it's meant for.

But then you can also, if it's all abstracted nicely, which it sounds like, you know, I'm sure there'll be more stuff to do there, but that it's already is at a pretty good level for, being able to customize. And and the thing that I think I saw from you is that you can multiple dashboards. So that really opens it up. So it's not just like, well, here's my Stripe stuff mixed in with my slow queries and whatever.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

Like, kind of annoying. It's like, no. I could just have, like, my finance one, and I could have my, you know, APM one, and I could have Yep. Maybe internal app stuff and whatever, and they can all just be in their own little zone, but in the same same place. So

Aaron

that Yep. So I so out of the box, you cannot have that with Pulse.

Okay.

But I have created a way You've

Ian

hacked it.

Aaron

I've hacked it.

Ian

Yes. Put that out

Aaron

of the package itself. Because I think I think, like and I don't know if it was a strategic decision for them to not say, like, universal dashboard builder. You know? Because it's like, who cares? So I don't even know what that means.

But I think that's what it's going to turn into. I think this is going to sit a little bit in the middle of or on one side or the other of a filament or a nova, honestly.

Ian

It does have those vibes.

Aaron

Yeah. To the extent that it's monitoring and not necessarily fully wired crud, pulse makes way more sense than setting up one of those 2 things, I think. Right.

Ian

Yeah. If you don't need the forms and everything and you just want the display, like, yeah, it's gonna be a much nicer, cleaner way to do it, it seems like.

Aaron

Yep. And I'll I'll scoop myself because this probably won't come out until tomorrow, and I can probably get some of these done before tomorrow. But having cards for Fathom Analytics, for Transistor, for Lemon Squeezy,

for

Stripe, for YouTube, having cards to, like, monitor all of that, that's what I'm going for. Because I want, like, my own personal dashboard of alright. What's going on in the business of, you know, the Aaron Empire? And having those things would be great. And so I'm, like, working furiously to get those things finished enough because I think I have a really good handle on the data storage layer underneath because I worked with Jess a little bit before they transformed it into what it is now.

She went away and just, like, drank a bunch of coffee. I don't know if she drinks coffee.

She drank

a bunch of coffee and stayed up for, like, 5 days straight and rewrote the whole thing, like a mad scientist. But, I wanna knock some of these cards out to to, like, kinda show, hey, this is this could be your business dashboard as well.

Ian

Yeah. That to me, that definitely the in the thing I thought of instantly. I think you're totally on the right track there, and people are gonna really love that Yeah. And and use that a lot. Hopefully, things like the multi dashboard could just get absorbed in.

You'd love to see that in the core. And then, obviously, then you can just have everybody the whole, you know, ecosystem of cards then come about around it. Exactly. Yep. All the big players and then down into the niches and everything.

Yeah. It's really exciting. I'm really excited to use that. I thought it's great too that they give you the option to, like, use a separate database. So if you don't wanna have it hitting your main database and all that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, I mean, it seems pretty straightforward. I

Aaron

have an also have an interesting intermediate layer between so on the recording side, you can decide to record everything in a separate database. You can also send all of your, like, to be written events through an ingest engine. So, like, you can just dump them into Redis and then run a command to more slowly or more methodically put them into whatever database you choose. And so if you're like, I don't really want any of my pulse stuff to be, you know, blocking or in in a critical path, you can just dump it all into Redis and then work it out later, which I think is pretty smart.

Ian

Yeah. That is. So, yeah, you can just have a log, and it'll then aggregate from the log. Yeah.

Aaron

I think it drains out the events from Redis in a in a command. It's like if you get a huge burst of requests, you're not trying to insert all of those into the pulse database. You just

Ian

put

Aaron

them in the Redis storage locker, and then it'll put them into the database in a little bit.

Ian

Yep. So Seems like a dynamo DB ish type of use case too. I'm sure they'll be able to Yeah.

Aaron

Don't bring that around here.

Ian

All the

Aaron

hood place. Wonder I do wonder the, the engine is pluggable, so you could write a dynamo engine and still have, like, your redis ingest, you know, buffer, but then go into Dynamo. And I wonder so I I bet somebody I bet somebody will will write that.

Ian

I would think so. There's all kinds of also, like, dedicated tools that people may already be dumping stuff into that then they wanna, dump more stuff into, but then use that so you don't have a whole separate setup for that. So, yeah, I think people I mean, it'll be interesting to see because I think people are gonna really push this, like, how it, how it performs when someone drops it in on, you know, one of these huge sites that's getting a lot of traffic and, and all that. And Mhmm. That was my pitch to Jess.

I was like, now we need to extract this into aggregate data functions into the Laravel database driver because that's really Cool. There's lots of use cases for that. Like, I mean, my own products, obviously, being fully selfish here. Yeah. We have all kinds of reporting and stuff where we do part of what I wanna do in new, version of things is to do more along these lines where you're not always especially for, like, really heavy things, like trying to query the database in real time, do millions and millions of rows, and that's always slow and so on.

It's like, yeah, you could just aggregate whatever. Help desk tickets. Right? Like, okay. You did millions of them over this year.

Certain types of reports are just like Yep. The counts of how many. And, yeah, it'd be cool if it was just, like, a nice way to aggregate that without, always hitting the database live every single time to count those millions of rows. So Yep. Yeah.

A lot of stuff like that. Yeah. I'll be cur it does seem like I mean, I I wonder what they I don't know. Taylor was just kinda like when I talked to him a little bit offline about it. It was just like, yeah, we'll release this thing.

You know, it's cool. And so I don't know. I'm I don't know how if you heard, like, what if they were expecting it to be so big, but I feel like it's I feel like people would really take

Aaron

the whole

All I've heard is public information, but he has sounded so laissez faire about it on Right. On their podcast. He's like, yeah. You know, I wrote a few paragraphs to the initial pitch, and then Tim and Jess went off and build it. And, and it just yeah.

When I talked to Tim and Jess, they were everyone has been so focused on the server monitoring story, which I think is a compelling story and a good, like, tip of the spear. But I don't know that I don't know that they or maybe they secretly did, but I don't know that they had the idea that everybody was gonna take it and be like, I'm gonna shove everything in here.

This is

now my business dashboard. I don't I don't know if that was, on their mind at all.

Ian

Yeah. I think that's what's gonna happen, though. I think that that use case. But I do agree. Like, I think that having, the set use case is sort of interesting.

It's like, oh, no. This is like the APM. And then that's just, like, what you can talk about, but then let everybody else then create the rest of that ecosystem without trying to do it all yourself or whatever. Whether they thought of it or not. It's, like, it's nice if that's flushed out by the the community, I think.

Aaron

Yeah. I think so.

Ian

Interesting. Alright. Along those lines, Christophe works at Laravel now.

Aaron

He does. Yeah. He's the new video guy at Laravel now.

Ian

Yeah. So that'll be cool. I've watched a few of his things. Seems like he's gonna be doing more there. So I don't think he's full time.

It's like top

Aaron

this year, man. Video. Gotta be on video.

Ian

The video is so huge. Even, like, with the podcast, like, just having this video, I feel like the video when you share audio snippets, it doesn't do anything. Nobody cares. Don't watch the whole pod. Some people do watch the podcast as, like, hey.

I'm watching an hour and a half of the podcast. But Yep. Even just having the video as a resource to then chunk up into interesting snippets is just, I think, gigantic for the podcast. Yes. I

Aaron

think so. I think it it it unlocks a lot more shareability than just audio. I mean, even the thing that Justin just did, he wouldn't have done that if it was just audio.

Ian

Yeah. I don't think so. Right? Like, it it would just wouldn't hit the same way to,

Aaron

like No.

Ian

Have the cuts, not to the actual Seinfeld videos and things. I think it just works so much better seeing that cut back and forth. So, yeah, opens up the virality, I guess. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's really smart of Taylor as always.

Aaron

Time, Christophe?

Ian

No. I think he's part time

Aaron

Gotcha. Understanding. Yeah. I think he's started to do a little bit more of, like, what's new in Laravel, you know, 10 dot whatever.

Ian

Right. Formalizing some of that.

Aaron

Yeah. That seems that seems good. It's just, man, YouTube is just a distribution engine unto itself. You really, like if you can figure it out in your business, you got you gotta be on YouTube. And I feel like for for Laravel, you know, LLC, that just makes the most sense in the world to have a dedicated person working on that stuff.

Ian

I've been trying to figure this out for the help spot end of things, and I can't really, like it's so hard. Like, it doesn't have the, like, plan that scale had this nice, yeah, I can teach people about the database, like, and that's a thing people are confused by. Whatever. And, like, we could do soft things like that, like, whatever, be a better help desk agent or whatever, but it just feels like generic. You know?

Yeah. It's, like, super boring, super generic. So I don't know. I haven't cracked that code of what we could do there, but I do have

Aaron

my eyes out. Because you gotta be, like it's gotta be entertaining. I mean Right. Even to the extent that you're teaching, it has to be, like, entertaining. And so and I don't know how many, you know, developers hang out on YouTube, but do a lot of either people who buy help desk software or help desk people themselves hang out on YouTube?

Ian

Right. Well, and the thing is they do. Right? But it's that they aren't looking for things in the same way that like a developer's on there being like, what the hell's a foreign key? Right.

And like, then they might look on YouTube for that, and then they're gonna find your thing about foreign keys or whatever. Right? And but they're not going home from their job. Like, so devs are doing that. Like, they go home from their job, and then they're like, hey.

I'm doing this side project or I have this thought or whatever. The help desk agents and help desk managers are not necessarily like I go home from my job, and I'm, like, querying about how to, like, be

Aaron

on there. Too.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'm not sure.

Aaron

There's some farming or mister beast. Right.

Ian

They're just on there too. Yeah. They're on there as humans, but they're not necessarily looking for stuff for their job.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

So I think that's a little bit trickier, but

Aaron

Must be nice. Sounds healthy to, like, just go home and watch videos about other stuff. No. I do your Yeah.

Do 4 more

Ian

hours of your job. Yeah.

Aaron

So you're telling

me I

can just log off? That's an option? Go. That's interesting.

Ian

A hobby? Do do something else? Never heard

Aaron

of that.

Ian

Hobby? My job also.

Aaron

Makes makes no sense to me.

Ian

Yeah. So Yeah. I don't know what your strategy

Aaron

would be.

Ian

Yeah. I don't know. If you think of anything, let me know. If anybody out there has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions.

Aaron

But,

Ian

this is where, like, the SEO has always been pretty good for us because it's like people are just directly searching, like, best help desk software or whatever. You know? Like, they're like, I'm buying right now. This is the thing I'm bought. I need this tool.

It's not like a sexy tool. I'm not, like, super excited about it necessarily, but I'm searching for it right now. And that's not the way people really use YouTube as much. For certain areas, it is, but not in general. You know?

It's more like product reviews somewhat and things like that. But, again, b to b is not so much like that. I don't feel like there's that, yeah, kind of mindset there. So, I don't know. But alright.

So why don't you talk to us more about YouTube? Because you've had some big success with announcements and

Aaron

Making it work. Yeah. Let's see what the numbers are right now. So planet scale has officially hit switching accounts to planet scale. 27 1,372 subscribers.

Ian

And when you start doing these videos, they had, like, 1,000 subscribers?

Aaron

1 or 2. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Something like that. Small amount.

Aaron

Yeah. Wow. So it's been, you know, it's been let's see. I think Sam, the CEO, posted something, but, you know, it's been less fewer than 6 months that we've been doing these videos, and we're up, you know, 25,000 subscribers.

Ian

His post was I think it was August or something. Right? It was like Yeah.

Aaron

It's Yeah.

Ian

So it's, like, 3 months or

Aaron

Yeah.

It's crazy. Yeah. So, like

Ian

And how long have you worked there, though? You haven't you worked there a little longer than that. Right? Because didn't

Aaron

you go

Ian

to start with that big prod okay. So you were doing other stuff first, or you were just working on that big course first?

Aaron

Or

I worked on the big course first. I did some other little stuff. Like, I was, you know, writing articles, and

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I built, like, a demo. I actually built it in LiveWire. I built a demo for, like, our boost plan, skill boost product for our sales people to use. And so then I launched the course in February and kinda that was, like, the big the first big public thing I did, and the course was, you know, big success. Great.

Totally worked. And then kinda just, like, did content and did the, you know, did the stuff for a while. And then I think it was in, maybe June, I posted, like I was like, hey. What if I post a planet scale YouTube video? And I posted 1, and I was like, hey.

This is kind of fun. I could do this. I could make more of these. So then I just kinda started, you know, playing around with it, and then it started to, like, it started to hit. And then I basically went to Holly and was like, what if I just make this my full time thing?

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Like, what if I am solely responsible for growing, you know, the the top of the funnel through YouTube? She's like, great. Let's do it. And after that, it's off to the races.

Ian

Because the big course, the big MySQL course wasn't, on YouTube. Right? Like, that's just on the website or whatever. Right.

Aaron

So So we get we get our, you know, whatever they're called. MQLs or marketing qualified leads. People come to the course, They, like, watch your videos, and we get their email, and then we follow-up with them. That sort of thing.

Ian

Right. Right. So that's amazing. So 3 or 4 months to go to, you know, have 20, whatever, 1000 I know. 25,000, new subscribers.

I must

Aaron

I'm getting that silver plug, but

very happy.

I don't know if that's too good. Yeah. They're very happy. We're all very happy.

Ian

So what's your personal channel at, though? Is is personal almost stripping you?

Aaron

Yeah. It is. Yeah. Because I'm able to put out more videos there.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Because, you know, the main thing is that PlanetScale pays me money. So That is that is motivating. It is motivating. I think let's check the let's check the personal channel. I think so I'm at 14732.

So from Okay. The beginning of this year, fewer than a100 to Wow.

Ian

15,000.

Aaron

That's pretty good. Man. And I have in the to Wow. 15,000. That's pretty good.

Man. And I have in the last 28 days, I've earned $186 off of YouTube. So you can see where why why planets go 5400 x, you can make

Ian

a okay salary.

Aaron

Yeah. Making many tens of dollars for all of my efforts. But, yeah, this is growing this is growing very well. I'm very happy about it.

Ian

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. They must be super happy. I mean, I don't know.

I obviously can't share super details, but I guess just, like, ultra high level, like, it is it effective marketing? Like, do they feel like it's effective, the powers that be in the marketing?

Aaron

High level, everyone is very happy.

Ian

Okay. That's great.

Aaron

We have a long term strategy of, like, how it's going to work. Mhmm. And we're in phase 1 of the strategy, and everyone is very happy with the results of phase 1.

Ian

Awesome. Yep. So cool.

Aaron

Yeah. It's a good thing. It's a lot of fun. It's it's it's a whole lot of fun. And bringing on Steve the editor was a huge

Ian

Oh, yeah. That's great.

Aaron

Huge unlock for me. Yep. Because one, he's really, like, he's really talented. First of all, he just can make better stuff than I can. But 2, it, like, it releases a lot of the pressure of me having to edit everything personally.

And so Is he And he can do, like, motion graphics and everything. I think he's still contract,

but

I think he works for us pretty much exclusively. But,

Ian

so do you have to give him a lot of notes, or how does that whole relationship work?

Aaron

That's the thing that is shocking is he's a developer. So he's one of those that's, like, building a sass on the side and, you know, is a Vue. I don't think he's Laravel, but he's a Vue developer and primarily has used Postgres historically, but is also a video editor. And so when, you know, we were interviewing him and he was like, yeah. I edited videos for bodybuilding.com and, you know, helped grow their channel to 4,000,000.

Also, I saw that y'all use Table Plus in a lot of your videos. I use Table Plus. I'm, you know, developing my own SaaS, and I use Table Plus. And I'm like you're a video editor for bodybuilding.com, and you know what Table Plus

Ian

is? Right. How does It's like you're hired.

Aaron

People. Right.

Ian

Yeah. Tired on the spot.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly.

Ian

Yeah. So Wow. That's great. Yeah. Oh,

Aaron

no. I don't give him a lot of notes. He, like, knows

Right.

He knows the content.

Ian

He gets what you'd wanna see there and whatever. Yeah.

Aaron

It's it's doubly helpful because he's like a he's like an odd he's the avatar of the audience because he's not a database expert.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

And so I can go to him and be like, hey. Is this, like, general topic interesting to you? And he's like, yeah. I would I would wanna know how that works. You're like, no.

That's too in the weeds. I don't care about that.

It's

like, okay, cool. So he's a, you know, a smart person, but kind of a database normie. And it's like, that's who I need to target.

Ian

Right. Those are the people we're after.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. So That's crazy. It's working, man. Just gotta keep it going.

Ian

Well yeah. Well, that's the other thing. I mean, how has it been since you've been out? And I don't think I've have the has there been a video since you've been away? Okay.

They

Aaron

haven't been They've posted 2 since I've been out.

Ian

Because I know you had some of the key in there. So I guess I guess we haven't seen what it's like if you're not posting really, but it's like Yeah. Once you reach a certain level, you will still gain followers even

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Without, obviously, new videos help, of course. But, once you're kinda in the algo and and the plant scale ones are so, you know, they're long term valuable there. They're not just, like, views for today. They're like, hey. This is how this thing works.

Right? And so that's gonna be good forever. So Yep. A long time anyway. So, yeah.

Aaron

They've posted it looks like they've posted 3 since I've been out.

Ian

Oh, wow.

Aaron

And one of them has 97,000 views just looking, you know, the only revealing public information. You could go to the PlanetScale page and see this, but it's Yep. 97,000 views, 23,000, 37,000. So it's crazy. Those are big numbers.

Ian

Yeah. And those are all your those are all you?

Aaron

Those are all through me. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. And and then they have some more. Are you are you out of canned ones yet? Or they're still No.

Aaron

No. No. They're still yeah. They're still probably

Ian

You got it. You got it.

Aaron

There's still probably 4 or 5 more

Ian

that Beautiful.

Aaron

They have in the can. And I think Steve the Ed Steve the editor is working on one that's, like, a fully animated explainer video, which I think will be a really interesting, experiment. But I I don't, honestly, I don't even know what it is. So I'm excited to see it along with the rest of the world.

Ian

I saw you. I saw the boss Holly is also, up in her video game. So just, like, get get into the YouTube streets a little bit here at some point.

Aaron

I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to introduce more of the characters on YouTube. So I talk about Steve the editor. I talk about boss Holly and so that we can start bringing more people on the channel and it not be yeah. Kinda, like, maintain the consistency.

Ian

This is really interesting, though, because, like, I feel like I don't know if you you know who Doug Demeros?

Aaron

Like one

Ian

of the biggest car YouTube channels.

Aaron

So

Ian

it was just, you know, it was him doing YouTube videos about cars, new cars, old cars, whatever reviews. And, then he got, you know, really big. He has, like, millions of followers, blah, blah. He started this website called Cars and Bids, which is, like

Aaron

Oh, yeah. I know that.

Ian

Car auction website. Yep. So okay. So that's his thing.

Aaron

Okay.

Ian

And then he's gotten, you know, investment for that, and I think that that is profitable already anyway. And so that's all great, like the platform and blah blah, the the audience and everything. But then what he did recently is he likes to he got this investment of, like, a lot of money, like a 100 and something $1,000,000 or whatever. And so he added more people to the To the content side? To the content side.

Interesting. Oh, man. It's really I feel like it's very much hurt the channel. Like, I don't know if it's I don't know if it's actually hurt the channel. Like, maybe it's fine.

Right? The numbers might all be great. But for me as a viewer, like, I watch way less like the mirror. Because there's, like, all these mixed in ones now where, like, it's somebody else. I'm like, I love Doug.

I don't want this other random person,

Aaron

and they might be great.

Ian

I don't want that. I don't want that random person. That is

Aaron

a risk. You go

grow and

Ian

balance. Yeah. It's a balance. I mean, I just 3rd. Characters is one thing, but then when they, like, take over, I feel like that's a different thing.

And it's like Yeah. Obviously, it's a corporate channel, so it's even totally different there for, like, a planet scale. But still, it is very interesting, the, like, personal relationship you get with the YouTuber and how that impacts what you can do and how it affects things.

Aaron

Yeah. Somebody was talking recently about some of these creators that have, like, leveled up and gone pro and how the content has suffered because of it. And I'm curious. Like, I think Ali Abdaal was one that was mentioned. Like, it just became so, like, polished and highbrow that people were just like, this isn't anymore.

Right. And it isn't it it seems like there's, like, some sort of life cycle or arc to this kind of stuff. And if you can retain if you can retain what originally was compelling but scale it up, that's the ticket. But I see it seems like that might be hard to do.

Ian

I do think it is tricky. I don't know. It's it's hard to say. I mean, there are obviously other channels where it works too, where it is like a team or whatever Mhmm. People, but it is an interesting challenge.

Even for Mhmm. I think the business aspect of it is very interesting too of, like, investing in somebody. And from a business perspective, it's like if I make this person the face of my business, like, what that implies and, the the economics of that are very interesting. And so, like, there's a lot there, which are obviously I'm not gonna put you on the spot for,

Aaron

but Please don't put me on

Ian

the spot. But as a business owner, when I think about doing it, it's like, wow. If I hire somebody to do this, it's like yeah. Then and it's a huge success. Like, that's, like, a good problem, but it's it's a potentially tricky problem in many other ways and, you know, and that's whatever keeping them happy on one hand.

And when they go on, at some point, just do it something else. Like, now you've lost, like, the face of your YouTube channel, which is a big thing. So, but, I mean, it's all good. You'd much rather have that problem than not have that problem. Of course, it's like, oh, I've built this huge YouTube channel and whatever.

If, like, I have to find a new face, then I could do that. Like, that's a good problem. But, but still, it is is very interesting in this world of social media to Mhmm. Have a corporate face be a person, in that way, It's kind of a different thing than you really had in the past.

Aaron

Many interesting questions, Ian.

Ian

That's right. What else would

Aaron

you like to talk about?

Ian

So let's move on. Should we go should we go on to my sage advice? We'll do some sage advice

Aaron

section Yeah.

You've been mixing it up, man.

Ian

D h h corner. Can we do d h h corner?

Aaron

You've been stoking you've been stoking the fires with some, with some reductive takes,

Ian

I think. Reductive.

Aaron

Reductive. You're reducing it. So tell us tell us your hot take.

Ian

Alright. So DHH was on the interview, which I actually think was really good on this interview. And, I didn't watch the entire thing yet, but, I agree with actually quite a bit of what he says. But, yeah. But, you know, he's talking about the new ones.com thing, which we've covered on here before.

In some ways, I don't even have that much to add. I feel like what we covered before is still my complete validate. But,

Aaron

and this was DHH on Jason Calacanis' this week in the startups. And we'll put a a link in the show notes.

Ian

Yeah. We'll get that linked up. But, but, yeah, he basically just revealed that the first product is a Slack competitor. Okay. Then there was not, like, a lot of other details around it, But, you know, he implied that it's gonna be, like, I guess, just an actual one time fee.

I mean, definitely, some of this thing asterisk here, maybe

Aaron

some domain, it seems like it's a they're caught leaning

Ian

in on the blank. Yeah. So and his example was, like, shop you know, he knows Toby of Shopify, and Shopify spends 1,000,000 of dollars a year on Slack and that he they'll be able to replace that with the Slack competitor for a $1,000 one time. And so I just think the whole thing is ridiculous. Like, that's just what it comes down to.

Like, it's just ridiculous. That's not an that's not an argument. Lot. Okay. Here's the thing.

So I have sold on premise software

Aaron

for

Ian

20 years. Yep. I know a lot about on premise software. Mhmm. Alright.

We sell a cloud version, and I I think I tweeted this out, but, like, we have had 100 and 100 of customers move from the on premise version to the cloud. In HelpSlots case, you can go both directions. You can also go cloud to on premise. Mhmm. I literally I can't even I think I we've I can only actually remember one customer actually doing it.

I think there's probably been a few others, so I said, like, less than 5. K. But this is just not a direction businesses wanna go, for many reasons, and those reasons are all tied into the why Shopify can't replace their Slack installation for $1,000 because you need support. You need updates on I mean, I guess they're gonna give updates forever. I'm assuming.

They're saying they're imagine they're doing support.

Aaron

No.

Ian

So this is gonna be a unsupported Slack product that my whole Shopify is gonna use this thing. Right? And the business critical application that's way beyond just like the geeks. Like, it's gonna be in marketing, and all these different departments are going to be in their slack and like, you're just going to have a huge group of people and servers and costs involved in running this $1,000 Slack installation. Right?

You're gonna have at least 1, probably multiple dedicated expensive engineers to it. Then you're gonna have 3 or 4 other ones that are, like, round the clock, you know, uptime because Shopify is not closed, you know, at 5 PM. I'm sure there's people working 24 hours a day there, and the Slack needs to be up 24 hours a day. So you're gonna have them. You're gonna have lots of servers.

Like, you're not gonna just run this on some digital ocean. This is an Aaron Francis dotcom where you a static site or or Ian landsman.com where you can throw it up on a digital ocean. Like, you're gonna have to have

Aaron

Or vapor

or layer of elevator.

Ian

I mean, they could use vapor, but it's gonna be a big vapor install and they're gonna pay AWS a lot of money. I I think great use for vapor. You know, if, I don't know, vapor probably can't run the rails app or whatever. The idea being you're gonna have tons of costs and tons of responsibility, and you gotta secure it, and you gotta keep it from getting hacked and all this stuff that nobody wants to do anymore. They don't wanna do it.

And the people who want to do it are very particular use case people. It's like I'm a bank and I have I already have all this infrastructure. I already have all these people, and I have a certain set of regulations and different things that I have to deal with. I have no choice. Yes.

I want it on premise. Fine. Fine. But that's, like, not that's, like, 5% of the market. That's not

Aaron

That's enough of the market. Okay. So here's

Ian

here's what people here's why. Those people don't want an unsupported version of Slack either. They do not want unsupported Slack. They do not.

Aaron

I I don't know.

Ian

Okay. So here's here's here's why it's reductive, I think. Alright. Give it

Aaron

to me. Your tweet is something like I don't I don't even need to look it up. I'll make it up and and it'll still be I'll make it up and it'll still be right.

Ian

Make it up.

Aaron

No. Nobody should run their own Slack to save a $100 a year. That's Right. Basically your tweet.

Ian

I can write myself. Yeah.

Aaron

That's your tweet.

Ian

That's, like, amalgamation of 2 different tweets. But, yes, that's the the core idea.

Aaron

That's the reduction of your reductive test. So I agree. I agree with that.

Ian

Everyone should

Aaron

run their own Slack to save a $100 a year. The people I think the people that this would target would be would be people that are paying 100 of 1,000 of dollars a year to Slack. And so I think the reason I think the reason why Slack is a good starter for them is because Slack does become prohibitively expensive for very, very large companies. Even at PlanetScale, we only have a 100 people, and I think our Slack bill is very expensive if you want, like, message retention over, you know, whatever it is, 10,000 messages or user or

something, I mean I don't know.

Ian

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know the pricing. But so

Aaron

take somebody take somebody like, Shopify, thousands of of users.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Potentially, thousands of engineers. I don't know. I would imagine they've got at least several 100 engineers. And what is Shopify really good at? We're running a freaking Rails app.

And if this, like, if this Slack thing is a Rails app, which Mhmm. It is I'm

Ian

sure it is. Right? Yeah.

Aaron

They have the operational expertise to, like

Mhmm.

You know, spin up a new Kubernetes cluster or whatever, and, like, that's pretty much their bread and butter at this point. And so they could throw some other service on it. Maybe they do hire 1, you know, individual to babysit, you know, the once Slack or whatever, they could still come out several $1,000 ahead. And, presumably, this isn't just like a one to one clone. Maybe DHH and at Al have some sort of, like, special thing where you can customize it for your org, and it's like, that makes it really cool, and that makes a lot better.

And you can have single sign on for not, you know, amputating an arm and a leg, and it's like, oh, maybe maybe this is better. But I think people saying, like, hey. You're a bootstrap company of 5 or 10 or 30 people, and you should host your own Slack instance. That seems silly to me. But it's also it feels similar, almost kinda like to Vitesse, which is the open source, you know, database that PlanetScale runs.

Like, HubSpot, for example, runs Vitesse. It's open source. They have 5 engineers that are, like, dedicated to running Vitess.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

And it's like, yeah, you don't really get any support at all with that because it's, you know, it's open source, but there's a whole community built around it or whatever. And you could make the same argument that, like, hey, HubSpot. You really shouldn't be in the database hosting game. Like, messaging is even more ancillary, of course, but

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I don't know. It just feels like there is a company or a size of company or some set of factors where it's like, this makes perfect sense to me.

Ian

I mean, I definitely think it makes sense for the, the free Slack communities where it's, like, free or semi free Slack cities. Right? Where it's like, yeah, you can't have over 1, whatever. There's all limits. Slack has, I don't even know what they are, but like people have these big communities and they have to pay something and they can't obviously, because it's like a free community or whatever.

So like instead of going to a forum or something like that, like, yes, here's this slack thing that you pay them a $1,000 one time, or maybe it's less if it's that kind of use case and totally makes sense. I think that's great. Works. Totally works. See, I don't think big companies think about it at all.

Like what you're describing is the issue is that, like, it's not first of all, like, even a $1,000,000 is not a lot of money to a big company. And like, so and the other and they're gonna want all the other stuff when the big company says, yeah, we wanna buy this tool That we're even when we're gonna host ourselves, like, they want support. Like, they are not gonna dedicate all these people to this thing and not have support unless they have no choice. So, like, yeah, like an open source Vitonist or whatever. Right?

Fine. Like, this is there's not a lot of ways to shard MySQL. Do you wanna use MySQL? You know, I'm sure there's some other options out there, but that's the biggest one I think or

Aaron

one of

Ian

the biggest ones. And so you do what you have to do to run your whole business, but the messaging, like, I could just buy Slack and never think about it again. Right? And even if it costs me $1,000,000, it's like, I don't have to worry about it. And I think people.

I don't know. I feel like they've even got kind of are thinking about it from the dev perspective, and I don't think that's the way businesses think about it. I think when I make this decision as a middle manager in a company. Right? And forget Shopify in the sense of, like, Shopify knows DHH super well.

So maybe Shopify really will do this. Right? Because whatever. They're best friends and whatever. Fine.

Great. But if you're just a generic company and you're just like, alright. We spend $500,000 a year on Slack. I'm the guy in charge of making this decision. This is not my money, and we have 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars in revenue or 100 of 1,000,000 dollars.

Aaron

Be 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars.

Ian

Right. So what what if so if I have a $500,000 Slack bill, that implies I have 100 of $1,000,000 in revenue. Right? I can't really have a

Aaron

Slack bill that big without a lot of revenue. Your headcount has to be pretty big.

Ian

So it

Aaron

has to be huge, which means my which means my salaries.

Right.

Ian

Exactly. It just implies that. So so then the downside for me is I get fired when I move us to this unsupported $1,000 one time payment thing. Right? That's the downside.

The upside is I saved us half a $1,000,000. That's not a good trade off. There's not a lot of managers who look at that trade off and they're like, man, that's an awesome trade off. Like the upside is I get a little win for 1 year. I saved us a few bucks and then everybody forgets it forever.

And the downside is I get fired if this thing ever goes wrong. When it gets down in the middle

Aaron

of the night. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. And somebody's like, why the hell were we doing this when we could just be paying Slack and they manage the uptime and we don't have to think about it? We had to hire these 3 people to manage it, and now they're after 3 years, their salary has grown to where we're paying 700 $50,000 for these 3 people to run this Slack thing that was supposed to save us money. Like, it's just I I don't know. Like, now listen.

Maybe the actual offering is different. Maybe they're gonna have a big support thing, and they're gonna really go after it. Right? And and try to be enterprise y, but I that's no. He doesn't ever talk like that.

So I don't think that's the case.

Aaron

I don't think there's that.

Ian

I just don't know.

Aaron

I don't know.

Ian

I feel bad. I don't know.

Aaron

A lot

Ian

of people are gonna buy it because everybody wants to see DHHS code. Like, nobody's seen DHH's code. I think they're gonna sell 10,000 copies day 1 on people who wanna see a production DHH's product. Boom. That's for sure.

And they're gonna have fanboys. They're gonna have people who run their own stuff and are super into hosting

Aaron

Yeah. They're gonna they're gonna sell make they're gonna make They're

Ian

gonna make $10,000,000 off of this. I'm not saying they're not gonna make money. I'm not saying they're not gonna sell any. They will sell some. They will make some money.

But that's also because they just have a huge audience and they have a very devoted fan base and all those things. But I just don't think these big companies are gonna be like, yeah, let's use this Slack replacement. Like, to me, if anything, it's gonna be more than small companies because they're like, whatever. I'm the owner and I make the decision. I'm willing

Aaron

to take the risk.

Ian

Right? Like, I don't if it goes down, it's on me. I said to use this thing, and we're gonna use it and fine. But I don't know. Slack is just so much bigger than just messaging too.

Like, I mean, it has hundreds of integrations, thousands of integrations. I don't know. A lot a lot of integrations

Aaron

I don't think the once the once version of the of it will. And I think that's part of can't.

Ian

Right? Not day 1. Like, maybe it has a few core ones. Right? But it can't have 300 in integrations day 1.

I think that's very unlikely. So

Aaron

No. I don't I don't think so. And I think part of, I feel like part of what you're saying is, like, it's gonna be so operationally complex to run, and I don't I don't know if that's gonna be the case. Like, is this the kind of thing that you could just, like, push to Heroku and have a, you know, a Postgres database on Heroku and it just, like, it works? If so

Ian

For Userscape, yes. But for Shopify? Not for Shopify.

Aaron

Not maybe not for Shopify.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

But, again, Shopify has already got hundreds of engineers that know how to run and scale rails apps. Right?

Ian

But they all have other things to be doing too. Like, they're not

Aaron

Do they? Who does anything? Like, what they don't always nobody's doing they gotta do these. People are

Ian

siloed in those big companies.

Aaron

No. No. No. You know

Ian

what I mean?

Aaron

When you have that many people, everybody's got slack. They're Yeah. Down downtime. I mean, they're just hanging out.

Ian

Somebody's responsible when it goes down. You know? If it's down at 2 AM on Christmas, who who's in charge of that? I don't know. Like Yeah.

Somebody's gotta be in charge of it.

Aaron

I feel like they're they're simplifying my guess. My guess is they're gonna simplify the piece of software to where you don't have 100 of integrations. Maybe you receive webhooks and everything else you gotta figure out. Right? You don't have screen sharing.

You don't have Huddles. You don't have themes. You don't have all this stuff that Slack continues to bloat up with. Mhmm. And it is, operationally ready for Heroku or Maersk, which I think is their deployment thing they've invented.

Ian

And so you can whatever thing Yeah. Whatever in there.

Aaron

Yeah. Presumably, you know, point it at a digital ocean box, and it'll self set up. That would be my guess. And I think

Ian

Not for Shopify.

Aaron

Well, no. You're you're saying Shopify is a big deal. Availability.

You've got

Ian

some fine.

Aaron

Right? You need

Ian

to get all kinds of stuff to it.

Aaron

Let's talk small SMBs then. So you're talking 50 people.

Ian

Fine. Yeah. 50 people. Fine.

Aaron

And you throw it up on Heroku, and suddenly you own all of your data, which who cares about that? I don't care about that. You own all of your data, and you're not paying Slack these exorbitant fees. And I think the problem with doing Slack first is everybody's gonna have Slack open anyway. So now my company my company Slack is in, like, this once.com thing, and all my other Slacks are over in this other thing.

Like, I feel like that's kinda that's gonna kinda suck a little bit.

Ian

You mean if, what do you mean?

Aaron

I mean, as a user, I'm logged into, like,

Ian

my friend's Slack, my open source

Aaron

Slack, and then I just switch over. Social

Ian

networky aspect to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. That's a big a big thing for sure. I mean, I don't know. The thing is a small, meaning business, like alright. 50 users at $12 a user a month on the top of that.

Aaron

What it is? Do we have do we have real numbers on that?

Ian

Yeah. I just looked at this the other day. I mean, there is, like, then an enterprise one that adds, like, really enterprise y, enterprise y stuff, but that presumably, if you're 20, 30, 50 users, you don't need that upper tier. So that one's a call me price, but the the highest

Aaron

12 to 15 months. For business.

Ian

So how do you get that $600 a month? I mean When

Aaron

paying once a year, so that's how they get you. So it's $15 a month, month to month.

Ian

Not expensive. I mean, I pay 8 a Hrefs a $100 a month, so I can go in there once a month if that and poke on our s e like, I have I have literally 20 apps. I pay a $100 a month, and half of them, I don't even use. So I don't know. And we're not that big.

So I just think that's not a lot of money. I I don't know. Everybody was like, it's so much money. It's not it's not much money.

Aaron

$15 a month times 12 months in a year. I knew that one. That one I had memories. Times 50 employees. $9,000 Yeah.

Ian

A year. Not even $10. I'm paying $10 per ton. That much money. 3 days to fix our database server.

Like, this is, like, for 50 users all year long to use Slack.

Aaron

Not that much money.

Ian

Never have to worry about down. I'll never forget that.

Aaron

A 100 users. 18,000. Wow. That got it doubled. Yeah.

That's not that much money.

Ian

Just not that much money. Everybody's salary's a $100,000 plus. And, but this thing that is that everybody uses all day long, it costs me $18,000 a year. If I have a 100 people, That's not even one person's health care. But so I'm just not making big biggest business decisions like this to save one person's healthcare.

I don't think that math makes any sense at all. You know, again, unless you, you will be people with special use cases. Fine. Like, you're running some high security thing where you have your own. Mhmm.

You want security beyond Slack. Like, you want everything in house because you're some military contractor. Well, fine. Great.

Aaron

They have gov slack at the very bottom. If you're a government college, they have that. Yeah.

Ian

Exactly. So but fine. Whatever. You're you have a culture in house of of security and wanting things done your way. There are definitely those people out there, but you know, this is a very edge case type thing.

On premise is now an edge case situation.

Aaron

And So what is the main what is your main what what's your main argument? Other people shouldn't pursue this as a business strategy, or this isn't going to work?

Ian

I mean, I don't think it's you know, again, this is so, like, because everybody's gonna be like, oh, you're an idiot. Look. DHA just said they sold 10,000 copies. And I told you

Aaron

That was what I was I had that in my show notes for the next show. I'm ready to say that to you. Yeah.

Ian

They're gonna sell 10,000 copies or a 100 whatever. They're gonna sell plenty. I'm not even saying they won't sell it because they are them. Right?

Aaron

But Yes.

Ian

I just don't think you're going what he is portraying it as, what the ones.com website says and what he is portraying it as, I don't think is what's going to happen. And maybe they'll be able to roll out a few companies and, hey. Look. Shopify uses it fine. Whatever.

Aaron

I do not think You don't think the industry is swinging. You are thinking this has no effect at all.

Ian

Swing. I think that Slack is not even gonna notice this thing. I mean, some sales reps inside Slack is gonna be annoyed that, like, they lost a Shopify account. Fine. Whatever.

But I don't think that it's gonna be like, you're gonna see Slack. I I don't know. Even, I mean, Slack, even if they did, like, slack could crush them in a second and just be like, we're gonna have slack on premise and people will pay half a $1,000,000 a year for that, for those very edge case uses where people want some, for whatever reason, need it to be actually internal. But yeah. I don't know.

I mean, it'll be fine. Whatever. It's like, they're never gonna I feel like it's definitely not gonna be base camp. Right? Let's put it that way.

It's not gonna be base camp. It's probably not even gonna be hay. It's a cool thing you're

Aaron

doing to do something. Money.

Ian

That's hey. I don't know. That came up in the Twitter thread too. I wonder I'd be very curious about how much hey actually makes

Aaron

me makes a lot of money.

Ian

I think it does. What we would consider a lot of money, but I don't think it's, like, a tiny percentage of base camp.

Aaron

I think everything is a tiny percentage of of base camp.

Ian

Yeah. So by mistake, I'll get up in the morning.

Aaron

What does it make? A $100,000,000 a year? Yeah. More.

Ian

I think more. 100 of 1,000,000 a year. So

Aaron

It's project management.

Ian

I know. So, I mean, they're just doing a cool thing they wanna do. It's kinda like Laravel released Pulse. Right? Like, I mean, I think I would be cool for them to do is just, like, release it free.

I mean, they're kind of doing that. They've been copping a lot of the Laravel game. I that this isn't the thing that came up on Twitter, but they've really been copped a lot. Like, the new rails is having a bunch of stuff that's very Laravel ish. Yep.

This whole one thing, it's like they can't bring themselves to actually do it for free like Taylor does, but, like, this is essentially that. Like, it's like, hey. We're not gonna support it, and we can't bring ourselves to make it free, but we know you all pay us anyway. So whatever. We'll make it a $100 or whatever, and there you go.

Aaron

Yeah. That's that's funny. They're basically doing open source, but not calling it open source. Right? I mean, what does the $1,000 mean to them?

Ian

Right. Nothing. Yeah.

Aaron

But it's no support. It's source available. It's yeah. Right. That's interesting.

Ian

I think that I think the, the it's flipped a little bit here in the open source framework world. I feel like the Laravel is the big dog, and Rails is having to catch up a little bit, and this is Yes. Kind of that, part of that part of that, I guess. It's like, here's a here's a way we can ship our production app. Yeah.

You know, all all that kind of stuff. So look at the help desk eventually. We'll see that once all possible.

Aaron

If you're listening, and if if you're not listening, Ian, you should tell Taylor this when you guys hang out next. You, Taylor, should do this. You should make production apps.

Ian

Right. And

Aaron

then not not just not just sell the code. Just be like, yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Just the code. Yeah. I mean, Taylor could definitely do the same thing. Right?

You'd love to see a Taylor Otwell production app. Like, they would love to

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

Go through that code with a fine tooth comb and, see how he does things and everything. And so chirp

Aaron

supposed to be that? Wasn't that a thing at some point?

Ian

He he built it. It was, like, built a

Aaron

It was done.

Ian

Like, fully built. Yeah. But he didn't release it. But it was a I don't know. I don't think it was a what's it gonna be?

Self hosted?

Aaron

It was, like, a SaaS app.

Ian

Maybe a lot.

Aaron

Gonna, like he was not gonna host and host it as a SaaS. He was basically just gonna, like, use it as a, yeah, as a reference material.

Ian

Right. I think you're right. Yeah. They could I mean, there is, like, a costume.

Aaron

Can you imagine how much people would freak out if Taylor's sold code?

People would be

like, what are you doing? You're supposed to be open source ethos. Like, it's against the spirit. Stuff. Oh, this is really cool.

I'm gonna buy this today.

Ian

I wanna see what he's doing. Yeah. I wanna see all the little helpers and little

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Makes it easy. He's built in. Although, I don't think I think Taylor's thing the thing with Taylor is I I think a lot of his stuff, it it really is just, like, very pure Laravel. Like, I mean, I'm sure he has his little things or whatever, but a lot of those little things just make their way into Laravel. So, like Yeah.

It's like, yeah. I I had to do this thing, so I put it into Laravel.

Aaron

But what

Ian

if you made, like, a Slack not as much

Aaron

money and sold it.

Ian

Like This is an idea.

Aaron

What if you made a Slack

Ian

clone do that.

Aaron

Back end. It had a native PHP, you know, desktop front end. And he was like, hey, man. I just you know, I made this.

Ian

A $1,000. I like it. It'd be awesome. Oh, man. I don't know.

I don't know, man. Are you gonna use this thing on any projects? How about that?

Aaron

Am I gonna use what?

Ian

1 the ones.com/ I don't know anything about Rails.

Aaron

I'm not gonna sign up to host that.

Ian

Okay. Yeah. Not that excited about it. Not gonna do it.

Aaron

That excited not that excited about it. I am excited I am excited to see how it does. I'm excited I'm excited to see, you know, rejuvenation in the rails ecosystem. I'm excited to see a return to simplicity. I feel like that is for all of his faults and foibles, DHH is very much like, y'all are making this too complicated.

And I Yeah. I vibe with that for sure. Very much on board with that with that take from him. And I will say the the the rehabilitation of DHH has been strong. I mean, I don't know if you listened to that whole podcast with him and to his and Calcutta.

Ian

But yeah.

Aaron

But he

did say, like, I used to be IDHH used to be a hardcore cynic and fighter, and I would just argue with everyone about everything. And I've just realized that's not what I wanna do with my life. And I'm like, hey. Cool. Good good for you,

Ian

man.

Aaron

So I I'm I'm here for the He's

Ian

on the comeback trail.

Aaron

Yeah. I'm here for the rehabilitation of DHH. I think that's great. Yeah. But not not gonna use it.

Ian

Weird character. Yeah. Yeah. I can't. I can't.

Yeah. I can't. Just the rails part of it, obviously. Like, every time I ever tried to do anything with rails, I'm like, this whole, like, getting it going stories. Getting it going.

Maybe it's tough. Now, but I don't know. I never liked the getting it going story. It's like

Aaron

No. They don't have a clean onboarding story.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. When are they gonna get their herd? You know, herd herd for rails is coming at some

Aaron

point here. It's got to. Man, I have said so many times, if I knew the first thing about rails or wanted to, you know, find a niche in the in the industry, I would just copy everything that Laravel has done for rails. I really would.

Ian

I feel like that's, like, that's a solid game plan.

Aaron

Like, 4 or 5 friends together and start a little agency and be like, alright. What do we do? Pulse? They came out with something called Pulse. What is it?

We're doing it. Like, you don't even have you don't even have to have an original thought.

Ian

No. It's so fun. Like, that's the way business has work forever, really. Right? Like, people would go overseas and, like, oh, we discovered this thing in Europe, and we brought it back here.

Now we do it here. Like, and nobody knows that

Aaron

it's like but smaller, and we call it espresso. It's like, oh, that's a great idea.

Ian

Exactly. Like, we'll just bring it here and make it a thing and brand it with a cool brand name. And now, like, people are all about it and mix it with whatever. And it's like, yeah, like, just take, this is a whole other conversation, but, like, repurposing ideas and remixing ideas. Like, this is the way you do things.

Like, if you're out there trying to start a business, that's how you start a business. Like,

Aaron

but Yes.

Ian

Tech ecosystem is so, like, you must invent AI. Agreed. Nothing short of that. But it's like, that's the dumbest thing ever. Like, just do something that already exists, but put your, you know, your sensibilities into it.

Not like not, like, straight copy it, but, you know, you just put your sensibilities.

Aaron

That restaurant down the street, it makes a lot of money. Maybe I'll make one I'll make a restaurant

Ian

top and over.

Aaron

It's like, wow. Who's not that hard?

Ian

Right. And

Aaron

it's, like, look at

Ian

5 recipes. But

Aaron

What do we have? We've got Horizon, Pulse, Nova, Envoyeur even. Like, if you wanna do full on SaaS, you could do something like Envoyeur. There's just so many things, Herd, native, PHP. There's so many things that we have that Rails does simply yeah.

Ian

Shift, I think. I mean, shift for Rails, like, that would be something that I think.

Aaron

I mean,

Ian

maybe some of this stuff exists. But

Aaron

Yeah. Like, passport, socialite, all of that stuff. You know, there's there's a question of, like, how do you get rich doing it? And I think, you know, reinventing socialite feels like a lot of work for just, like, an open source

Ian

product. Yeah.

Aaron

But if

you were to reinvent pulse in Rails, you can see a hybrid model there for sure. Yeah. For sure. You do the open source thing, and you also have a hosted version where people can add cards and stuff like that. Like

Ian

Yeah. Or there's, like, ultra premium cards or something. Like, more complicated ones are are paid add ons or something like that. Like yeah. I don't know.

I I you don't see that as much as I think you should, for sure. I don't know why that is. Even like a Laracast. Like, I mean, there's lots of Ruby on Rails video courses and things, but I don't think there's, like, a Laracast that's, like

Aaron

There's a

Ian

the facto standard.

Aaron

There's Chris Oliver's thing. Yeah. Rails cast. Rails cast.

Ian

So maybe it is.

Aaron

Is that him or no?

Ian

I haven't looked at rails in so long. I I honestly don't know what's going on there in the last, like

Aaron

Go rails.

10

Ian

years. Go rails. Okay.

Aaron

Yeah. So that's

Ian

the least out there. But, yeah. I I don't know. It does seem like you're you're always ahead when you start with an idea you know works and then build off that versus, like, trying to invent an idea that you don't know if it'll work. And then if you wanna do that, then that's when you definitely gotta have, like, VC money and all that.

That's

Aaron

why For sure.

Ian

You need to risk other people's money with those ideas you don't know are gonna work and

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

You give up the equity. But

Aaron

but Yeah.

So if you're listening and you know rails, everything we talk about, just steal it and build it.

Ian

Steal it. Steal it from Laravel. All this cool stuff. I've got this list. This is

Aaron

your stuff. Dotcom and just, like that. Just start copy and pasting. Just feed it into chat GPT and say, turn this from Ruby to or from PHP to Ruby.

Ian

The the next thing I want to take over in PHP slash Laravel land is it's super annoying to me that, like, all this AI stuff. I don't know if you've how much you've dug into account the AI ecosystem, but and a lot of other areas too. Like, it's all Python. Yeah. Oh, man.

I want PHP. I want PHP to be the default. Like, why gotta be Python? I don't wanna

Aaron

Nobody wants Python. Nobody likes Python.

Ian

Python actually is yeah. They've I have a whole Python story. But anyway, yes. I don't I'd I want PHP to be or like and tons of these sites also, like, they don't like to have all these SDKs. They don't have PHP.

I'm like, I don't have PHP.

Aaron

I know.

Ian

Why? You have all these esoteric languages. I didn't talk about this before, but anyway. Alright. What else is up there?

I don't think there's everybody should just go back and watch the original take if you want more on that because I feel like it's all the same. Like, the one time changes

Aaron

I think I think it's gonna work.

Ian

Everything and

Aaron

fabulously well for them.

Ian

And Yeah. I think they'll sell a lot

Aaron

because they're gonna sell a lot. And

Ian

That's what I saw on Twitter. He could do if you if there was a 37 signals toaster, people would buy that toaster. It's sell out of the toaster. People would be very excited about the toaster because it's CHH, and he put his thumb on a toaster, and, you know, it would have some cool button that did something or is a weird shape or whatever. You know, and it'd be awesome and people would buy it on.

But Yeah. Like, he could sell anything because he had a big audience. That's the that's one of the upsides when

Aaron

you get the audience. Meta takeaway there. You guys

Ian

I think big audience. You can sell anything. Yes. You could sell. You only need a few percent of a large audience to make it the dollars add up to a large number.

Yep. So, yeah, I don't know. We've had we're what is that? 105. I know.

We have one other card that we haven't got to. You wanna should we touch on this one quick?

Aaron

Oh, no. That's a long one.

Ian

That's a long one.

Aaron

I feel I feel like that's a yeah. That's a ranty one. We can't go there yet.

Ian

Alright. We'll keep this a nice short while we're giving the people a long ones. Next week's probably gonna be a long one. So, we will wrap it. Thanks everybody for joining us.

Definitely make sure you check out Justin's, video. Yeah. He's super good. We'll have it linked. So check that out.

Follow us on the Twitter, Mostly Tech Pod, Mostly Technical dotcom, and, email us at Mostly Technical Podcast at Gmail. Talk to you next week.

Aaron

See you.

Ian

See you.