Mostly Technical · Sep 13, 2023
Ian & Aaron discuss DHH & TypeScript, Once & the success of outrage marketing, Aaron's rules for Twitter, & more.
Sponsored by LaraJobs & HelloQuery.
Sent questions or feedback to mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com
Ian
Hello.
Aaron
Good morning, Ian. How are we?
Ian
Hanging in. Yeah. Busy. Busy. Crazy weekend.
Aaron
Are you caught back up from the week the 1st week back at home?
Ian
Yeah. I'm mostly caught back up. But it's 1st week of, 1st day of school for the kids, different schools, but this week passed and then today for 2 of them. So a lot of running around and
Aaron
So you have your whole house back now. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty awesome.
Ian
Yeah. I actually work in the office, so I usually leave the house most of the time. But, like, this is an actual office outside the house here that I'm in.
Aaron
Okay. So you're telling me this green office that you just spent all that time painting and making beautiful, I thought this was in your house. That's not in your house?
Ian
Not in my house.
Aaron
Where is it?
Ian
Office. In town, like, 3 minutes from my house. But right in town, me, actually, and my brother and my cousin. My brother and my cousin have a consultancy, and we split an office. So
Aaron
I'm a senior. Consultancy and the software products
Ian
that you've been doing for 19 years? Clarify. No. No. So my my brother and my cousin have a consultancy.
Their own thing. I'm not involved.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
Okay. Then I have Userscape. We share this office space. Then yeah. So we get to hang out, which is cool.
And I get to get out of the house, which is cool. That's nice. Yeah. So, I mean, I've worked from home forever. So it's like every I work from home about half the time that I've been doing user escape.
So about half of the 20 years, I was just only home and then half I've had a office.
Aaron
So And which one's better?
Ian
I like the office. Yeah. I like the office. Especially because my brother and my cousin are here. So it's also, like, creates, like, a little crew.
Like, we have a Yeah. An actual little office environment. I mean, home is great too, but you just get, you know, caught up in things with little kids. You know how it is. Like, there's always
Aaron
so many kids. So
Ian
when you wanna have, like most
Aaron
of the
Ian
time, it's even fine, but it's just, like, sometimes when you're really trying to be in the zone on something and then get interrupted or whatever, it's just, like, it's just nice to be
Aaron
all know I can go on video
Ian
call or whatever.
Aaron
If there were a place 3 minutes from my house that I could have a good setup and especially have friends there, oh, I would do that in a heartbeat. Right.
Ian
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And we got the coffee shop. We got, like you know, there's just, like, restaurants.
So we can just walk places for lunch and whatnot.
Aaron
Yeah. We don't do a lot of walking here in Texas. But if I could find
a spot
if I could find a spot like that, that would be amazing. I would love that.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. That's good. But you're in the new the new setup there is different than your, what do you you had a name for your your cage.
Aaron
The Shep Quarters.
Ian
Shep Quarters.
Aaron
Yeah. It's all branded and everything. Yeah.
Ian
I know. You
Aaron
The Shep Quarters actually was maybe the the best of both worlds save for
Right.
No no friends being there. But it was physically separate from the house. It was a, you know, a literally a shed that I had delivered and then finished out into a quarters. And so it was physically separated from the house, but still I was home. So I could just, you know, walk out the back door across the deck, and then I'm at work.
Yep. So that was ideal, I think. But in this rent house, they don't have a separate space, and I'm not gonna buy a new shed and put it in the rent house backyard. So
Ian
So why didn't you bring the shed with you?
Aaron
Yeah. I think it added too much value to the house. Oh,
Ian
you sold your other house. You weren't renting before. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we sold it, and I think it didn't, like, technically count in the square footage. But it you know, in people's minds, it counted as an AD and an accessory dwelling unit because it was heated and cooled and insulated.
Ian
Oh, I know.
Aaron
And so somebody could rip out the cabinets and turn it into, like, a mother-in-law suite without, I guess, without plumbing, which kinda sucks, but still.
Ian
Yeah. But just even more space for whatever. Even more space. Yeah. Shop or whatever.
It could be anything. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly. And it would have been a huge pain to load that thing back up on a trailer. I mean, it was 10 by 20.
Ian
Yes. That's a that's a yeah. That's a real
Aaron
It's a house.
Ian
That's a big that's a big size room. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. And then once it was, like, once it was all finished out, I felt less confident about it being on a trailer on the road Right. Around. And
Ian
Is it gonna be the same once it lands in the spot? Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly. So plus, you know how when you do a project, you finish, and you're like, oh, that was that was good. I would do it a 100% differently next time. Right.
Yeah. That that's kinda how I feel. It's like, oh, yeah. That was that was fun. I did a good job.
I'm proud of myself. There are so many things I would do differently. So I'll I'll just do another one. I'll just rebuild it whenever we get a new house. Yeah.
Ian
We, we built our house, and that's how I feel about our whole house. It's like, oh, it's great. Like, we got everything we wanted as we built it. And then it's like, oh, but we should have done all these things differently. And we only had one kid, like, when we built it, but then now we have 3 kids and all
Aaron
that stuff. Such a brutal part about building a house. Like, it sounds really fun, and I would love to do it someday. But I want to build a second house because of that exact reason. I don't wanna a house and be like, I'm gonna live here forever.
Also, I know every single mistake we made because I built it. It's like, that kinda sucks.
Ian
Why do we let that electrician get away with not putting outlets in, like, in these spots, and now we need outlets. So, like, yeah, there's we have a million of those things where, like, we just look around and, like, oh, why did we do that? Or why we let somebody get away with that? Or whatever.
Aaron
Like We're just out of emotional fortitude
Ian
at the end. A lot of that at the end.
Aaron
And now I'm so mad we don't have a plug there.
Ian
Yeah. Yep. Exactly.
Aaron
Exactly. Yep. Alright. Well, I wanna go first.
Ian
I don't know. What do you think?
Aaron
You know
what I wanna talk about, Ian?
Ian
Yeah. What do you got?
Aaron
I wanna I wanna talk about DHH.
Ian
Oh, favorite. We haven't done DHH on here.
Aaron
Haven't done DHH. So
Ian
DHH.
Aaron
Lot of good things to talk about here.
Ian
Man of the hour.
Aaron
Man of every hour for the past 20 years.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Alright. So I do wanna talk about Once, which is his new him and Jason's new manifesto about SaaS. I think that's,
like, I think that is actually, interesting
and and discussion worthy. So we'll save that. We'll save that. We'll save
that. We'll save that. We'll save that. Yeah. We'll save that.
Yeah. We'll save that.
Yeah. We'll save that. We'll save we'll
Ian
we'll save that.
Aaron
Yeah. We'll save that for a second. Sure. I wanna talk about this freaking TypeScript thing. How much of this did you follow?
Ian
I mean, I'd say, like, I was only, like, somewhat following it. I didn't realize it was blown up totally, I think, till a little bit after it started blowing up. Because I'm not really actually super into the TypeScript circles even though I did Yeah. Learn it, you know, recently. So, yeah, I wasn't totally following it, but then I started to catch on.
They're like, oh, people are, like, totally freaking out on DHH. So Yes.
Aaron
That guy's kid. It's getting rid of that script. Here's a little recap of what happened. They've got this turbo this turbo library, which from my understanding is very much like, h t m x or I don't know how it's different from Hotwire, actually. But I think it's like, HTML over the wire and then they swap out DOM nodes.
So kind of similar to Livewire, but way less feature rich. Right? So it's like it's like it's like a JavaScript library for people who don't wanna use JavaScript,
first of all.
Ian
One of those. That's like the that's the main point.
Aaron
Yeah. And so he unilaterally decided, I don't wanna use TypeScript in this library because I don't like TypeScript. And it's my it's my library. Like, yeah. Alright.
Whatever. Wrote this little manifesto as he does.
Ian
He likes the manifesto.
Aaron
He loves a manifesto. Loves a manifesto. And, you know, bid farewell to TypeScript in a very poetic fashion. And people lost their gosh dang minds. And I was like so I'm of 2 minds about this.
1 is I don't really care I don't really care for TypeScript. Like, it's just I I've never used it. Don't really care for the syntax very much, but also don't really care about it very much.
Ian
Yeah.
Aaron
I'm like, oh, yeah. Do whatever you want. So that's my first thing. And then my second thing is, like, why must everyone care about everything so much?
Ian
That's what
Aaron
I couldn't understand. It's like these people who have never heard of turbo, who had never used it, who'd never touched rails Right. Suddenly felt the need to opine on why this was such a foolish decision and so user hostile. Like, what's going on, man?
Ian
Well, I mean, that's second part. I mean, that's just, I think that's a kinda standard Twitter play. Right? Like, that's, like, the The outrage bait. The outrage.
Yeah. Look at the outrage, the outrage marketing, the outrage bait. I don't even know if he was intentionally marketing it. I would have what he thought about the controversy level. I assumed he figured there would be obviously pushback because
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
You know, it's sort of he's making a stand or whatever, but it does seem like it went beyond kind of standard levels of yeah. He changed it. But that you know, this is the JavaScript world, though, it's so, like, intense over there. Like, that's so intense. The the, like, big brains are.
Right? They're all in there, and they're, like, making their new frameworks and the new every day, there's a new thing. Right? And so do you think that the TypeScript is somewhat foundational to a lot of that or at least they think it is. And so, yeah, I guess that ruffled ruffled some feathers, which is sort of interesting because I feel like all these same people to me, the interesting part is, like, I feel like none of them could give 2 hoots about turbo.
Aaron
People care
Ian
about people who want to not think about JavaScript. Right? Like, that is not their world. Correct. Care about that world.
Right? So, like, kinda who care? I mean, this is where I've been.
Aaron
Who cares?
Ian
This is where I've been with DHH for, like, almost 20 years. It's like, who cares? Like, it's everybody. It's so hot in DHH and what he's doing and what he's driving and Yeah. What is what base camp's doing?
And I'm like, who cares?
Aaron
Who cares?
Ian
Their advice has been bad for a long time. This is my hot take. Okay? This is the landsman DHH hot take that you may not have heard as much
Aaron
as some go and we're going super super way back.
Ian
Yeah. Because their advice has been bad a long time. And, like, so if you're on board with that, like, this is just more bad advice if you love TypeScript. Right? Then fine.
What do you care? And, like so, yeah. They keep building these things for people who aren't like most of the JavaScript people. So I don't know why they care. Like, this wasn't for you to begin with.
It's still not for you, and everybody should just move on with their lives. Like, it's fine. You can use TypeScript if you want. You could still use TypeScript, I presume. I believe this is possible that, like, in your parts of the code that you could use TypeScript, then you could use turbo and it's not TypeScript, then it all works out.
So great. There you go.
Aaron
God, man. You know, I was worried I was worried that we had lost you to the React world, and you were gonna become a you were gonna become a JavaScript crackhead, but you still gotta you still gotta get that on your shoulders there.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not totally gone.
Aaron
So the other thing is, like, DHH and Jason Fried wrote this book called Rework. And in the book which I read, and it's, you know, it's good. I liked it. In the book, one of the chapters is about how picking a fight can be good marketing.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Right?
Ian
I mean
Aaron
And so, you know, I think the example they used was, like, picking a fight with the App Store about hey.com or or whatever
it was.
I don't remember. They're always picking fights. Who can say for sure? And so then I think he comes on here, and he's like, I don't wanna use TypeScript, which I genuinely believe is true in his heart. He doesn't wanna use TypeScript.
Ian
Yeah. I agree.
Aaron
But who can let a good fight go to waste? And so he picks a fight and then then his, you know, his Twitter impressions, I think he got, like, 4,000,000 people to look at that one tweet. And if you look at the stars on turbo, the repo, just like through the roof. And I don't know. I I I feel like a I feel like the only sane person, or I feel like a mega brain.
Because I'm watching this happen, and I'm like, y'all, he told you that part of his marketing strategy is to pick a fight, and he's picking a fight, and you're taking the bait, and you're giving him you're giving him exactly what he wants. Like, can't you see what's happening? Everybody's like, no. We must crusade for TypeScript.
Ian
Well, it's especially weird now because I feel like DHE, she doesn't, I don't know. It's sort of like, you know, in the in The Godfather. Right? Like, there's a scene where, like, guys like, the Don doesn't have it anymore. And I kinda feel like that's it with DHH.
Like, he he's not who he was in a sense of, like I don't feel like he dominates technical discussion the way they did now for a period of time. Right? Where it was, like, rails everything had to be rails. Everybody was on board with rails was the best thing out there. And DHH, whatever he said was just absolute, you know, God Yeah.
Speaking to you directly. Right? And so it's like yeah. I mean, really, who cares now? And, also, yeah, with their I mean, if you just watch these guys, we've all watched them for however long you've been in this industry.
Aaron
Yep.
Ian
You know that that's their playbook regardless of if they told you in their book, which they did. Like, this is very clear their game, and so yeah. I mean but people, you know, you're cruising Twitter, and you got nothing else to do for 5 minutes. So, you know, you throw down
Aaron
a little and get mad. Yeah. Yeah. Why why not? Why not just get mad as a treat?
Yeah. Right.
Man, I muted so many people. Like, I don't care. Yeah. I don't care if you like TypeScript. I I really don't.
Right. But if you're gonna be a jerk about it. Yeah. It's like, how did you end up in my in my Twitter feed, and how do I make that not happen again?
Ian
I don't use the blocking that much. I should block more, but I don't know.
Aaron
I only block for, like, very egregious things for people that are, like, harassing. I mute for people that are, like, incessant shit posters. Just want to stir up drama or rage or just tweet memes all day every day. I'm like, I just don't wanna see that. So I just I just mute those people.
Ian
The other so what do you think about this with the with outreach marketing, though? So I think I definitely agree with the concept of whether it's outrage specifically or it's even just trying to do something against the grain as being good marketing. Like, I mean, this is pretty even, like, almost standard marketing. Like Mhmm. You know, purple cow, 30 years ago, Seth Godin wrote this book kind of about standing out and all these things.
And so that's one way to stand out. But, like, in their case, I don't think it really works that well for them anymore. Like, I think they had their moment in the sun, and it worked great, and they built this huge audience. And, listen, they can release anything, and they'll make money. They could release a line of toasters.
Right? And they have a huge audience now, and they could probably be profitable with a line of toasters. But are they gonna reach the the heights they did with base camp? Like, they've never gotten back to base camp. Right?
Like, they've literally never gotten back as high as rails in base camp. Like, that was the peak. They tried to do all the other things. The other things, I'm sure most of them are profitable, but they don't reach the heights of base camp. Yeah.
And so you know? I don't know. It's fine. Like, I feel like there's a little bit of desperation in there nowadays of, like, how do we get back? We gotta try something new.
Like, how do we get that juice we had of when we were on the kings of the world with Basecamp?
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
It's hard. It's hard. That second product, you know, very elusive for most founders to make the second product that outdoes the first. So
Aaron
Yeah. I don't know. I have a hard time I have a hard time judging accurately because of the way that they either do their manifestos or the way that they spin things. Right? So when it was when it was we're 37 signals, and we're going we're just gonna drop everything and go down to just being base camp because base camp rules.
It was like, oh, okay. Are the other ones doing poorly? Because they would talk about, you know, these other products are making 1,000,000 of dollars a year.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And in in my little pea brain, I'm like, that seems awesome. You should keep those. But then they're like, well, you know, we just wanna have this certain lifestyle, and we wanna focus on these certain things and have this type of company that's not very big. And in my head, I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah.
I guess, like, maybe that maybe that is right. I guess if you were to continue to grow these products, you'd have to grow your company and maybe you don't wanna do that. And then they'll talk about, you know, how many people signed up for hey. Com. And, you know, you do the numbers and you think, holy crap.
That's they're making a lot of money on that one too. So I don't know. I have a hard time judging accurately because they are so good at, like, telling their own story, which I think is, you know seems, like, it's top of the world. Nobody nobody knows because they're so good at telling their story.
Ian
Yeah. I don't know. I think it's pretty clear to me just generally that base camp dwarfs all the other ones.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
I would be very surprised if anything it was I think I think people underestimate how huge base camp is.
Aaron
I think they do.
Ian
Yeah. I think Basecamp makes 100 of 1,000,000 dollars a year. And so, like, how do you make, you know, I don't think HEY makes 100 of $1,000,000 a year. No. Definitely don't think any of the other stuff makes anything like that.
So, you know and I was thinking none of this stuff is you know, when you have 100 of $1,000,000 a year. Right? Because you're making that year after year after year. They have all the money. Right?
So so what gets you up in the morning? Right? Like, more money, like, to some No. No. No.
No.
Aaron
No. Race cars for sure.
Ian
Right. Right. So that was it for a while. Right? And then, like and the money is, the scorecard.
Right? So there is an element to the money being the scorecard. And so having a bigger hit monetarily, maybe you don't need the money, but that's the, like, winning. You know, not that's not true of everybody. Right?
But in terms of if this is I mean, they're they're my impression of them is they're a fairly big ego kind of group and that there's an element to that that they're trying to outdo you know, they want the next thing to be bigger than the last thing, and I don't think they've ever really accomplished that. And so I think that there is this kind of, like it's like, we're gonna be base camp. No. We're going back to 37 signals because we got bored at base camp, and now we wanna do other stuff. And having a base camp do other stuff doesn't really make any sense.
Aaron
So
Ian
now we're 37 signals again. Right? And now we're gonna do this email client, and that had its, you know, 2 minutes where it was on CNBC for a day or whatever. And Mhmm. You know, whatever.
There's people who use it, and they like it, but I don't ever see Hey anywhere. I mean, absolutely, I mean,
Aaron
I don't
see there.
Ian
I don't see people using it.
Aaron
A lot of I don't get a lot of emails from Hey.
I mean,
Ian
there's a couple people I know who use it, and they've used it since the beginning, and that's pretty much it. So it's not replacing Gmail anytime soon. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know.
I feel like they're, like so they're they're on to the next thing of how do we outdo what we've
Aaron
done. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe maybe once is their new way to try that. So before we move to once, my last point, you asked about outrage marketing.
Ian
I think
Aaron
it I think it does. Listen. I think it does work. I mean, we see Yeah. If we take if we take marketing and swap out social media growth, we see people on Twitter that grow their following just by being mad all the time.
Like, it absolutely works. But I have, like, a moral opposition to it. I just think it is fundamentally it's fundamentally unhealthy and bad for whatever ecosystem you're in to be a rage a rage bait marketer. I just Yeah. I know that it works.
Like, I'm not a rube. I know that it totally works, and I watch people do it all the time, but I have no respect for those people. And I don't think I'm alone. Like, I don't think I'm alone
Right.
In that. And so I never, like, I never would it be that, because I don't think it's worth it. But I also have, like, a moral opposition to to doing that.
Ian
There is also, like, variations on it, which I think you do a great job with, which is, like, if you think about the there's a sort of to go out there and actively rage market. Right? Not where you're the kind of person who's just inherent to you, but, like, you are making a decision to do it. Right? Mhmm.
It's very similar to just that general decision of, like, I'm gonna put myself out there in a risky way, which obviously you've talked about a lot. Like, I'm gonna take risks with my ego, with my standing in my community, whatever community that is. So there is, like, a lot of similarity there, and then you can take that just in different ways. Like, you obviously just go like, well, here's a button I can push that gets everybody worked up. But, usually, there's other buttons you could push that are maybe you wouldn't you wouldn't describe them as outrage, but it's like a different take or it's a unique take on something or something like that, which is like you're not necessarily, like, attempting to create outrage, but you are attempting to, like, make people think differently about something or get their interest in in in that kind of way in that engagement.
So these are actually very similar to me. Like, they're very, like
Aaron
It's interesting.
Ian
Same coin. Same coin.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
But just like, yeah, you're gonna go that route of, like Light side or dark side. Right. It's a little bit light side or dark side. Yeah. So
Aaron
Yeah. I get that. Like, there's a there's a way to be countercyclical or, like, against
the
current conversation, and I think there is a way to do that in a light way and in a dark way.
Ian
Right. Yeah.
Aaron
And, hopefully, hopefully, I've chosen the light way.
Ian
I think so far.
Aaron
Okay. Good. I'll try to stay on that path.
Ian
Maybe I'll just lose it one day, though. You know, maybe just, like, wake up one morning. Slipping. You'll Just choose violence 1 morning.
Aaron
Gonna yeah. You you'll know you'll know when I
Ian
need to
Aaron
get a quick hit of followers or something if I start rage baiting. No. At that point, it's all over,
and I
just need to log off. Alright. Let's talk about this once thing. Do you know anything? Did you read this manifesto?
Mhmm. Yep. Yep. And as as our resident, as our resident on prem expert
Ian
That's me.
Aaron
Okay. So Basecamp's wants thing is like, hey. We invented SaaS. We invented SaaS software, and now we're gonna undo it. And you can buy a product and own it forever, but you gotta host it.
So it's like, wait. What?
Ian
So So, I mean, I'm glad we did this order of the conversation because I feel like this is the absolutely perfect. The the conversation we just had is maps this perfectly, which is like, we are gonna write something to try to be outrageous. Like, that's that's the whole point of this page, right, is, like, to try to generate outrage and clicks and marketing. Yep. That's the only purpose of it.
And, I mean, whatever. I don't care what they're doing. I mean, fine, build on premise software. It's great. But it's just sort of a little bit infuriating to me that much like everything that they're involved in to me.
Like, almost every single sentence in there is incorrect about how b two b software works. And if it wasn't about
Aaron
b two b software I gotta pull this up. Okay. I need I need to put the documents
Ian
for me. Every sentence is wrong. The the first of all, I will just say, because I usually talk not very nicely about the h h and 37 signals. But
Aaron
this is
the first I've been learning of this. This is great. I'm so glad we tapped into
Ian
constant envy of the domain game. The main game is unrivaled. I'd love I I'm in constant envy of the domain game. Domain game is unrivaled. I love that they spend the money.
They spent 1,000,000 of dollars on Hey. I'm sure they spent 1,000,000 of dollars on OneSearch. They're out there. They're spending the money to get the amazing domains. Yep.
I'm totally
Aaron
up to you. Race cars you can buy. At some point, you gotta switch to domains. They're way more expensive.
Ian
So many developers out there, they're jealous of DHH. He's smarter. He's better looking. He's got race cars. He's got more money.
I don't care about any of that. I've never been jealous of any of that with 37 signals. The only thing I'm jealous about 37 signals is how strong their domain game is. Their domain game is so strong. And I'm like, damn.
Aaron
That is ridiculous. Letter with k and a 4 letter with once, both dotcomsets. Yeah.
Ian
And both pretty good names. Like, solid names for the service or, you know, we don't know exactly what once is yet, but, like, you know, good names, base camps, good name. They got the doc. I know they spent a lot of money for that because it wasn't on basecamp.com
Aaron
for a
Ian
long time. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, very jealous of their domain game. Big props to DHH and the crew for the domains for sure.
Aaron
Alright. So now you now you get credit for being even handed. You get credit for complimenting. So now let's run through the manifesto. Alright.
So this this says you pay for
it once.
Install once.com. You pay for it once, install it, run it, server or you're on computer server for everyone. It felt like you owned it, and you did. He's talking about the days of old. Right.
Yada yada. Today, most software
Ian
is business software. That's the very
Aaron
first line.
Ian
So they're talking about business software here. K. And I've sold business b to b software for 20 years. So I do know a little something about it.
Aaron
But And they're talking directly to you 20 year. For nearly 2 decades, that's you, Ian. The SaaS model benefited landlords as a pejorative, I assume. Landlords handsomely with with routine prayers and payers, clever, to the Capital Church of Recurring Revenue, valuations shot to the moon and on the backs of businesses subscribed at luxury prices for commodity services they had little control over. So a lot of adjectives, lot lot of slander.
How do we feel?
Ian
I mean, it's entirely incorrect. It's sort of unbelievable. It's, like, it's really remarkably wrong, and I just can't express to you how wrong it is, everything they're saying there. Oh, it's
Aaron
my favorite.
Ian
It's just totally correct. Because here's the thing. Let me explain for how b two b on premise software works. Okay? So first of all, let's just get out of the way the idea.
Aaron
You don't even know where
Ian
to start. That's so wrong. So, like, we're gonna we're gonna just disregard, first
Aaron
of all.
Ian
If they're making some product that's actually for developers and there's couch me as b to b, that's a whole separate thing. I'm not we're not talking about Caveat.
Aaron
That's a good caveat.
Ian
You're going to a health care provider. You're going to a bank. You're going to a manufacturer. Okay? Like, some
Aaron
of the stuff super normy business.
Ian
Yes. Okay? If we're talking about that kind of b two b and even, you know, Internet b two b, but, like, real sizable company. It's not just, you know, one person business to business. Just a little bit different thing.
You're talking about a big company. They got a CEO. They got whatever all these different departments. So here's how it's worked forever. This is how it's worked.
Okay. So, yes, you used to have to download the software. Great. First of all, you paid a lot of money for the software. You pay a lot more than a lot of SaaS is charged.
Let's just start there. Just the software cost you a lot more money. It might be 20,000, 50,000, a $100,000 a year. Right? K.
Fine. Or $1,000,000. Right? Go away. There's no upper limit.
Like, lots and lots of money for the software. And they're just totally wrong that there was no recurring revenue. They're just complete there's no other way to say it. They're they're I assume they're lying of recurring revenue. I assume they're lying for the outrage aspect Mhmm.
And that they know better, but I guess it's possible they don't know better. But nobody ever sold on premise software, b to b, that didn't have support as a yearly fee. And so right there, you and usually that's somewhere between 25 to 35% of the licensing cost.
Aaron
Oh, dear. So you pay
Ian
a big chunk up front. And then every year, you're gonna pay 25 to 35% in support on a recurring basis. And the thing is it was essentially a subscription because, yes, the software didn't stop working if you didn't buy support, but literally nobody's gonna run this. You're not running your bank on some software and then saying, you know what? Screw the support.
Like, yeah, we got a 100000 people using the software, but if something goes wrong, we'll just see if we could figure it out. Like, no. Nobody did that. They bought support every year. They budgeted for it.
It was in the budget. If If they stopped paying that support, it's because they stopped using the product and they moved to a different product. And on that product, they paid support. So there was this whole inherent recurring model. In addition, you also had recurring revenue that would come from new seat licenses.
You know, they expand your usage, so you have all that stuff. So and then on top of that
Aaron
You're calling foul on this whole premise.
Ian
It's just straight wrong. And then and then also you have to have IT department, which is not
Aaron
for me.
Ian
So now you have very expensive IT employees. And here's the thing. So I still am in this world. It's still about 25% of our new customer sales are on premise.
Aaron
Really?
Ian
Yeah. So it's still pretty high for HelpSlap. And partially because now we're there are not that many, you know, kind of actively developed supported on premise help desk applications out there. So you have a need for that, Like, we're one of us shrinking market of that. So what's 75% are cloud?
And the people who go cloud, like, they don't even have IT departments. So there's this whole idea of, like, well, you know, the IT department's just waiting there. They're not waiting there. Like, they either don't have IT anymore at all, or it's the IT department who wants to outsource it. They're like, yes.
We wanna run, like, the big chunky things that we have to run.
Aaron
And if
Ian
we don't wanna run, this random, you know, reporting app or this help desk app or the stuff that is once a year, we have to get around to updating it. It's a big pain in the ass, and nobody remembers how the server is set up. And nowadays, with all the security concerns, you know, nobody wants a server just sitting there that nobody is really on top of. So the whole thing is just wrong. It's just straight wrong.
Like, that's all there is to it. I mean, definitely, there's that. It made different people rich, SaaS, and things like that. And so there is those elements, but yeah. I don't know.
But that's where they get down into, like, the the second part, which is, like, you know, self hosting is simpler and improved and all that stuff.
Aaron
So let's let's keep going.
Ian
We haven't made we
Aaron
haven't made it very far.
Ian
Yeah. Let's keep going. We did the first half.
Aaron
Let's do the first half.
Ian
The second half is right.
Aaron
Let's read this one sentence. Add up your SaaS subscriptions last year, and then here here's the punch. You should own that shit by now. Like, oh, wow.
Ian
It's so edgy. It's outrage, baby.
Aaron
So as edgy to say a curse word like that.
Ian
Okay. Exactly.
Aaron
Let's see. Yada yada yada. IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again, which according to whom, tired of being subservient to Big Tech's rain clouds. Oh, rain, r e
Ian
Oh, I didn't notice that the first time.
Aaron
Man, rain clouds. That's that's okay. Alright. Introducing Once, a new line of software products from 37 signals, formerly Basecamp, formerly 37 signals. Pay one time, own forever.
K? We write the code, you get to see it. I thought that was interesting. We give you the software, you get to host it as a kindness. You get to.
You don't have to. You get to. Simple and straightforward, not enterprise y and bloated, for one fixed when you get get when you get into food about something.
Ian
It's it's my
Aaron
favorite it's my favorite thing in the world. Your voice goes to this different, like, Seinfeld register.
Ian
Right. Gets up there.
Aaron
A little
Ian
Kramer maybe. You know, sign you know, Seinfeld when he gets that Uh-huh. Angrier. Yep. I mean, there's just the whole premise of this.
Again, it's just it's just wrong. I mean, the biggest driver of IT services to the cloud is IT departments. Like Yeah. They don't want to be managing all these servers. There's definitely cost pressure on them.
Like, people wanna cut their budgets and stuff, so some of it is about, like, outsourcing. But, also, it's about like, they have this line here, which I think you just summarized, but I think it's kind of important. Like, you controlled what you depend on, and your privacy and security were your own business. And we think that it we think it's that time again. I mean, privacy and security is literally the reason why they want to not manage themselves.
Like, because the security threat is so complex right now that the only kind of industries that want to take this on are ones where they're extremely privacy focused and have the money to do it. So, like, your finance industry, for example. Or, like, okay. We'll run these banks. This data is just super critical.
They still do a lot of cloud stuff too, but they are then willing say, listen. We're gonna run our own data centers. We're gonna have top people run these data centers. We're gonna spend the money to have security teams. Right?
We're doing all that stuff. They're not just like, yeah. Let's spin up a server and throw it something on there. Right? Like, it's a huge undertaking to secure these things, especially with, like, ransomware and all these things that are going on in security, especially at big companies.
They're not dying to, like, have some random piece of software to run, and your average IT department is definitely not. They're, like, you know how to search for
Aaron
to run their own IT. You don't think so.
Ian
No. If you're, like, at some k twelve school. Right? Are you hungry to, like, be the secure the frontline of security on every single app. Like, maybe there's a few that you know you have to be responsible for, and that's your job.
But you wanna lower that surface area. You don't wanna have hundreds of random apps that like, you have to have all these servers spun up. You have to make sure they're secure. There's all these security incidents now. There's automated attacks.
There's all this stuff.
Aaron
And you've
you've never heard of Ruby on Rails in your life, and now you're hosting you're hosting a Rails app. You don't know what
Ian
that is. Exactly. And there's all kinds of other problems with it. Like, for the customers, we do have on premise. Right?
So there is all these more advanced security protocols now. So you have a lot of, like, active scanning of the code bases and things and things running on the server. And these things are very finicky. And they will often just keep apps from working because they're like, oh, we think this might be you know, something's wrong with the permissions on this file. We just take that file, and we move it, and we isolate it.
So now, like, HubSpot stops running because some security scanning quarantined
Aaron
one of the files we needed.
Ian
Right. Exactly. And it's not hacked or anything. Like, it actually was fine.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
But, like, it it doesn't like something about it. Okay. So fine. So, you know, there's just a lot of headaches like that that people are trying to get rid of for most of the types of software that I can imagine 37 signals is gonna build. People don't want to deal with it on premise.
So, like
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
I don't know. I'll be very curious to see what they actually ship.
Aaron
So let's let's, let's let's imagine what they could ship. So one, I think before we do that, one thing that I can see being true about this is not the IT departments are hungry. That seems crazy to me. Writing the code and getting to see it seems like a novelty that no real business would super care about.
Ian
No. Nobody cares.
Aaron
You you get to host it. I'm not interested in. Nope. Simple straightforward, not enterprising, bloated. That's nothing.
Ian
That's that's the UI. Like, that could just pass out too. Right? Like, that's not on premise.
Aaron
Could say that about anything. Oh, mine's simple. Yours is bloated. Who cares? Right.
I think one thing that is interesting is, like, the data governance, provenance isolation thing. And at PlanetScale, we we by the way, I saw you started using single source. We gotta talk about that. At PlanetScale at PlanetScale, we have a thing where we can host PlanetScale inside of your AWS account. And so you still have, like, you still have control over all of the data and Right.
In fact, all of the resources as well. Mhmm.
And
I think that's an interesting model. But importantly, we're not handing over we're not handing over operational complexity to their IT department. It is purely like, yeah, we're gonna run this inside of resources and networks that you own because your data, you know, you want it there or whatever. So I think that that is interesting, but that is completely different than this model that that you're talking about.
Ian
And that is a lot of who we sell to even with HubSpot. It's like, if you're in the EU and just, like, obviously, kind of tricky to host stuff in Americas still to some degree and things like that. It's like, well, we wanna just run it in Europe. Fine. We actually have a EU data center now for HubSpot for cloud customers, which people use.
So that's what the other thing is. Like, most of these big SaaS apps now that deal with enterprise b two b, they have that built in on some level where you can choose, you know, for your data to be hosted in certain regions and whatnot. So yeah. I mean, it that is again, that is absolutely a valid thing, and there are certain industries where that's important. And those industries still have big IT departments and security teams, and they're spending the money to do those things, for things that they don't want under any circumstances to be in another company's hands or not to go through another company.
But, you know, that's a very small part of the industry. And then on top of that, it's, not the kind of software I could ever see them building for the most part. So
Aaron
Yeah. Let's talk about that. Do you wanna do you wanna postulate what what they're actually gonna build here?
Ian
I I don't really know. I don't see
Aaron
get there?
Ian
I mean yeah. I mean, I I mean, to me, I would say maybe a help desk app would be something that someone's gonna say. Yeah. To build because they're probably not happy with the other help desk apps out there. And they're like, well, we'll build it ourselves.
We'll make it this. I could see that. I could see they've been super into, like, getting off the cloud for their actual physical servers. So are they gonna do some kind of new age server management?
Aaron
IT enablement kind of thing.
Ian
Yeah. Something like that. That would make sense. And that would probably do alright because, like, that kinda makes sense. Like, you need to run that yourself on your servers to some degree, potentially.
Usually, there's at least, like, clients involved. So, yeah, maybe just run the whole thing. I don't know. Besides that, like, email newsletter software type thing, that seems a little low.
Aaron
Seems a little low. Yeah.
Ian
For them. Seems a little low. Yeah.
Aaron
Prosumer for them.
Ian
Yeah. Something. So I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Aaron
I'm thinking help desk. I I feel like help desk is in the middle of base camp and email.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Like, if you were to do a Venn diagram and cross those two over, I feel like the answer is help desk. And I could see I could see them thinking help desks should be self hosted internally. Yeah. But I don't I I I can't I can't get to anything else besides help desk.
Ian
They do also make it sound like it's gonna be a series of products.
Aaron
They do. That's right.
Ian
Retention that seems like that.
Aaron
Product late 2023, more in 2024.
Ian
So I don't know.
Aaron
Yeah. Interesting.
Ian
I I can't really I can't really come up with too much that I think it would make sense for that people would actually want, or some kind of dev tooling thing. But that's not that's not the vibe of this page. Right? It's not dev tooling focused. So
Aaron
Yeah. And they said it was only They're also pretty anti dev tooling, to be fair. They may be built they built Rails, but then in everything else, they're like, no bundler, no build. We're gonna do every like, no cloud. No.
They're just, like, we're gonna do everything our own way. So Right. I don't know. Good topic, though.
Ian
Yeah. There we go. Jeez. I I
Aaron
got I got you. I got you. You got
Ian
me going there.
Aaron
Alright. Whoo.
Alright. What else
Ian
do we got? We should transition.
Aaron
Take a breath. Where do where do you wanna go next? I wanna talk about either, single store or this factory recycle thing, which I've never heard of in my life.
Ian
Yeah. I know.
Aaron
And then I also decided I think I wanna try to get, a 100000 subscribers on YouTube. So we can talk about any of those things.
Ian
Okay. Well, let's let's you give us your take on this recycle thing because I've
Aaron
been doing it all. Okay. That's yeah. So if you
Ian
wanna stop
Aaron
talking, this is no good.
Ian
Oh, man.
Aaron
I literally that's why I have it in the in the outline as factory recycle, question mark, because I saw you tweet about it, and then I saw Taylor quote tweet it that it was Jess Archer thing. And I saw, I think, Chris somebody tweet about it. And I was like, what are you guys talking about?
Ian
Alright. Let's let's just do 2, 3 minutes on recycle. Everybody has to know about this. Very important. And then we'll move on to to YouTube here, which I
Aaron
think,
Ian
I'd like to hear about. So recycle is basically on Laravel factories, right, that let you automatically build out, you know, models and whatnot. If so in any real ish application I've ever built, like, those are good. And they're obviously good for testing. Right?
It's like whatever spin up an instance of a model and do some tests against it. Great. But then I like to work with a lot of seeded data in my apps. And any real type app, they just it just needs more than usually that the factory can give it because you just have all these interrelations. You have things that maybe have to happen before another thing happens.
Aaron
The data model has gotten messy over the past 20 years.
Ian
Opportunity. Yes. Yeah. And even for a new app, I find it. I'm just building real apps, and real apps have complicated structures.
Right? They're not usually like the hello world. Look at it. It's a post with comments and these are just the two relations and it's super easy. Like that's messy.
And so you end up with a seeder that's got, like, all these loops. And it's got it's calling out to, like, application code to create something. And it's doing all this stuff so that we can actually get data in the app in the real state or at least real ish, in the ballpark of real. Not where, like, oh, I have a 100,000 posts, and there's a 100,000 authors to go with it, which makes no sense. Right?
Because I'm not gonna ever have one author per post. Like it would just happen if I just kind of did it the standard way. So I have to, like, do all this menagerie. Maybe there's always been a better way to do it. I don't know.
But I always did all the menagerie. But apparently, in Laravel 9, yeah, Jess Archer added to the framework this recycle method on, on the on the factories. And so it's very simple. You pass it in, you know, a factory of, like, let's say, like, an organization factory or author, and it will just remember that. And then anytime it calls for an author to be created anywhere else farther deeper into the tree that you're kicking off of the factory creation, It'll just use that one you passed in.
So now you can say give me
Aaron
I see.
Ian
500 posts, but use this author for all of them. And now I have one author and 500 posts. And now my data is just as it would be in real life, and I'm very happy. I don't have to write any loops or call out to any application code to set anything up, and it's all magical and wonderful. And even for testing, I think it's gonna be useful because a lot of times in test, there's spots where I wouldn't mind having things be more real in certain ways.
And it's like, well, then I gotta set it up and blah blah blah. But this way, I don't have to set it up. So it just makes it easy to pass that through and and, and you can pass through multiple, I think. So you can have, you know, 10 authors and Mhmm. 10,000 posts, and it'll distribute them across and things like that.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
So a lot of people seem to not know about this.
Aaron
Yeah. Me included. That's, of course of course, very well named as everything is in the framework.
Ian
And naming.
Aaron
Love it.
Ian
Naming is so good, Maribel.
Aaron
And very, very helpful. Good job good job, Jess Archer.
Ian
Yeah. So good. So double check out that if you haven't seen that. I think a lot of people don't know about it. It's my impression.
I just discovered it, and I was, like, brought to tears essentially by it. So it's just gonna simplify my cedar so much in the future. I'm very excited.
Aaron
I love it.
Ian
Yeah. So alright. So personal goals here you got.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Alright. Let's hear it.
Aaron
I wanna get one of those plaques. You know those silver Oh, the black. YouTube play buttons? Yes. I want 1.
In fact, I'll I'll be frank since it's just you and I, I want
2. 2?
I want 2. I think I
Ian
have one for our podcast here.
Aaron
I okay. Let's do 3. 3. I want I want one for PlanetScale, and I want one for personal.
Ian
And where are you at on those?
Aaron
PlanetScale is up to 12,000.
Ian
Okay.
Aaron
And personal's up to, like, 10.8, I think. So I'm a 10th I'm a 10th of the way there, which
Ian
is not the thing. It's inevitable if you are able to keep it up that, like, you know, 10,000 people liked it. I feel like you can get to a 100,000. It's just that
Aaron
That that's kinda how I feel.
Ian
Do the work.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I started this YouTube thing a few months ago, and it's like, people are talking about Laravel finally. People are talking about Laravel on Twitter, you know, not us. And maybe I'll make a video about how Laravel is awesome.
And I did, and it was it did great. And I was like, oh, okay. This is fun. Maybe I should do more videos. And then I started making videos for PlanetScale's YouTube, because, you know, I had done the whole course for them.
Right. And
I thought the course was really high quality, and it got very good reception. But YouTube's like a totally different game. It's it's just it's a beast unto itself. Yeah. And so I started making YouTube videos for PlanetScale, and they started doing well.
And I was like, this freaking rules. I could do this forever. And so I think I wanna I think I wanna go for it. Like, I think I wanna increase, you know, production output and try to hit a 100,000 on 2 channels, which
Ian
That would be crazy.
Aaron
Would be crazy. Right?
Ian
That would be crazy. And you're not I don't really feel like I don't think you necessarily are cross populating them too much in on YouTube itself anyway. I know in Twitter you probably are, but not in YouTube itself. Yeah.
Aaron
So No. YouTube, they're not linked. They're not linked at all.
Ian
Where did you start out here?
Aaron
My personal started at, like, you know, 30 or 60 or whatever because I had some from
Ian
That's it. Like, really? Like
Aaron
Yeah. 30. That's it.
Ian
Oh, wow. Okay. So you really have grown it fast. Yeah.
Aaron
That's great. And then I think PlanetScale, when I started posting, they had, like, I wanna say, like, 1 or 2,000, something like that. So negligible as well.
Ian
And the PlanetScale one's not, like, reposting your course. The Sound of News are new videos.
Aaron
This is all new material. That, again, is like more tailored to what YouTube desires, which is, you know, punchier, funnier, faster. The course is very much like, hey. You're gonna sit here and you're gonna listen to me because you need to learn this stuff. Yeah.
And so I have thought that, like, a good a good vein of content for the PlanetScale one would be basically take the course and redo it, but for YouTube.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Because I've already done all the research and all the hard work, and I just gotta go back and redo it and make it more fun and, you know, punchy. I think that's, like I don't know. That's, like, 65 videos or something.
Ian
That's a lot to work from.
Aaron
That's a lot to work from, and the hard part the hard part is the research.
Ian
I mean and that's probably 200 YouTube videos or something. Right? You know, in terms of,
Aaron
like gotta be a lot shorter and yeah.
Ian
Yeah. And then you're gonna be may probably maybe a little more focused. You might be able to, like, tear in one course video into a few different chunks or whatever and different tangles on it and whatnot. So Yeah. Wow.
So that's that's amazing. What so what do you what's, like, the the kind of key that you found so far to it? So is it just like because your videos aren't short short. They're not, like They're not 2 minutes.
Aaron
No. They're, like, between, I think, 8 and 15.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. And so just like the is it that's the other thing. Are you is it your kind of people who know you, you think a lot of it, or you think it's the algo? Like, do you see it continually kinda go and the algo's pushing it?
Aaron
It is shocking how much it is not me and how much it is the algorithm. That's awesome.
Ian
That's great.
Aaron
Because I will look. They give you good breakdowns, and I'll look and see, like, where does the traffic for this video come from? And I sent this I sent this to, the PlanetScale CEO recently because we were both just, like, amazed by it. It's, like, 1 or 2% from outside traffic.
Ian
Wow. I would have never thought that, but,
Aaron
oh, Jeez.
That's amazing.
All of this, like, make a scene on Twitter about a new video barely matters at all. Now does it matter
Ian
took it off. Right? Exactly.
Aaron
Does it matter to, like, alert the algorithm that there's something to look at here? Potentially. So I'm, you know, I'm not gonna stop. But yeah, it's like, you know, 80% YouTube browse, 19% YouTube up next, and then 1%. And honestly the direct, I think the direct is maybe or or the outside of YouTube is you know 2% or something And, like, 50% or more of that is Google search.
Ian
I was just gonna say a lot of that won't even
Aaron
be you.
It will just be, like,
Ian
Google search or other links from other places or somebody else's tweet or whatever. So yeah. Like, wow. Yeah.
Aaron
It's crazy. That's why yeah. And it's so durable because, like, you'll have a video sit out there for a while, and then it finally starts to, like, get picked up. Whereas any other platform, you post something, and it's gone, lost
to
the winds of time. And so it's awesome for that reason.
Ian
Especially the stuff you're posting is a lot of, like, you know, fairly evergreen
Aaron
Mhmm.
Ian
Stuff. Eventually, it might be outdated, but it's not gonna be outdated, you know, next week or anything like that. It's gonna be useful for quite some time, which is is great. Like I'm
Aaron
still trying to develop, like, my personal rules for being on YouTube. Like, I have, you know, I have a vibe and a set of rules I follow on Twitter. I think for YouTube, one of them is, like, don't try or try not to do super of the moment stuff. Like, I don't necessarily wanna do here's what dropped in Laravel 10.2.3. And I'm like Right.
That's gonna 1, that's a very narrow audience. And 2, that's gonna be outdated next Tuesday, you know, when they drop the next one.
Ian
And more competitive to some degree too. There Totally. You know, a lot of sites and people doing that kinda, like, thing because, that's an, you know, somewhat obvious thing. It's like, okay. What's new?
We can talk about what's new. That's a good thing to talk about. But, yeah, for the longevity of it in terms of what YouTube wants, it may not be the best Yeah. Angle there. I'm I'm very interested in this whole personal personal rules thing.
I don't know. Can we take a side detour on the personal rules?
Aaron
Yeah. Let's pull up the rules.
Ian
Yeah. Oh, you have, like, written down rules. Oh, it's public.
Aaron
Are you
Ian
kidding me? Public? Okay.
Aaron
Yeah. It's public and pinned. Alright. Let's go to twitter.com/aarondfrancis. My personal Twitter guidelines, September 4, 2021.
Here we go. So these have these have morphed morphed a little bit over time, and maybe there are, you know, more or slightly different takes on them, but these are these are fundamentally the exact same as I operate today. So rule number 1 is encourage other people, which is, like, if you think something is cool, tell them that you think it's cool. Because so the whole thing my whole thing is, like, I want to be a positive force for good on Twitter and not someone who's being cynical, mean, and obnoxious. So first one, encourage other people.
2nd one, be positive. A feed full of negativity is 0 fun to follow. This is, like, this is, core to my being and also strategically optimal. Like, if you complain if you complain about everything all the time, nobody's gonna wanna follow
you. Alright.
Like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that they got your coffee wrong. I do not care.
Ian
Especially those things are are cut
Aaron
around. Yeah. I don't care. Like, not every offense is is directed at you personally. Like, sometimes things just
Ian
happen. Do do you think there's a balance there? There is a sort of interesting aspect of the the Twitter providing an insight into somebody's actual life. Uh-huh. So to me, there is a difference between, like, the person who's continuously negative about everything and the person who's, like, normally fine, but then, hey.
This, like, weird thing happened, and I'm
Aaron
just, like, waiting about it. I don't normally do this, but the the streets. Yeah. Yeah.
Like, I'm
Ian
a little insight into, like, who they are, where they are. Like, so sometime, I'm okay with some of that, potentially. I'm okay with some of that. Ongoing is not.
Aaron
There are there are people who it seems like Twitter is their source their their way to vent their frustrations with the universe.
Ian
There's lots of people.
Aaron
That's that's a hard no for me.
Ian
I've been that person. I feel like I've been that person. I've been trying not to be that person in this newer age group, but I've been that that person.
Aaron
I'll let
Ian
you know.
Aaron
I'll keep
you on the straight line.
Ian
Go. Yes. Good.
Aaron
Yeah. I I I feel like it's totally fine to do that from time to time. And if the question is insight into, you know, the person, the life, whatever. I think you can get that other ways without complaining. I feel like I provide a pretty transparent look into my life without, Mhmm.
But there are definitely times that I think, yeah, that's totally appropriate to, you know, express frustration or whatever. It's just the pattern of, man, this person just moans about everything. Right. I'm like, nah, next. And then the last one is share what you're working on.
People are drawn to other people in motion. And this is what I feel like a lot of people I feel like a lot of people miss this is they think, okay. I gotta grow my Twitter or I gotta grow my following. So I'm just gonna comment on everything that happens.
So I'm
gonna comment I'm gonna comment on TypeScript. I'm gonna comment on, I don't know. I can't even think of anything besides TypeScript. Anything of the moment, I'm gonna have an opinion on it, and I'm gonna put myself at the center of the conversation, because that's what you have to do. And I'm like, no.
Just tell people, like, you're doing like you're doing things. Like, I made this. I made that. I read this. I watched that.
Like, just comment on what you're actually, like, working on and what you're building. Yeah. That will that will be the thing that people coalesce around instead of coalescing around the fact that you have hot takes on everything that happens every day. Right. So those those are the rules.
Ian
I like them. Now how do the rules change for YouTube?
Aaron
So they do change because YouTube is inherently a different medium. Right? So Right. Twitter Twitter is text, and it's hard to interpret tone or nuance on Twitter. Yep.
And so then when you go to video, you have a lot more freedom, because you can explain a thought more fully. Now Yeah. Will people listen to it? I have no idea. But that that part's not my responsibility.
Like, my responsibility is if I'm gonna have, let's say, a hot take, I need to explain I need to explain my reasoning behind it. And so I feel a little bit more freedom. I feel a little bit more freedom on YouTube to have more, nuanced opinions, which can sometimes veer into the hot takes. But I always try to, like, keep it nuanced and advocate for the things I like instead of bashing the things that I don't like. Yeah.
And then the other ones don't super change, honestly. Like, I'm not gonna do rage bait YouTube videos. And so I think the only thing that does change is the ability to more fully explain and have nuance. So that gives you a little bit more freedom to talk about some more edgier things. Also, I don't share I don't share anything really personal on YouTube.
People there don't know me.
Ian
That's so that's a little different.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. Like, Twitter Twitter is friends. YouTube is media. And I just put out a piece of content and expect, this is the only thing anyone here is ever gonna consume.
I don't I don't imagine them getting to, like, know me personally.
Ian
Kind of interesting, though. It's like, do you because obviously, on YouTube, you see kind of both sides, right, of people like, this is informational. I'm sharing information. And you have people who build huge audiences, and they're just basically sharing information. Obviously, you're getting
Aaron
some of their personality just Mhmm.
Ian
Inherently in that, but then they're not necessarily doing going
Aaron
above and beyond. And then
Ian
you have the then they're not necessarily doing going above and beyond. And then you have the the other end where you have, like, a Casey Neistat or whoever. Right.
Aaron
Totally.
Ian
It's all personality. And it is what they're working on, but it's, like, all kinds of other stuff too. And it's a day in the life and all these things. So yeah. I don't know.
Do is there even a middle ground, or do would or you think just keep it keep it kind of focused on the Yeah. Informational content?
Aaron
I think for me, the middle ground is do the informational content without being afraid to be yourself. Right. And so for me, like, everything that you see on Twitter or in real life, you'll see on YouTube. Like, same humor, same jokes, same rules, same ethics, morals, all of that. You'll see it on YouTube.
You just don't like, I just don't really go into the reasoning behind it
Right.
Or explain, like, here's how I operate. But if I were to do a vlog, like, if I were to do, like, a, you know, a a different channel or, you know, do a series of vlog videos, I could totally see myself doing that. I just don't think my personal connections are gonna be on YouTube. I think they're gonna continue to be on on Twitter. And so I don't feel the I don't feel like it I don't wanna do a vlog, basically.
I don't wanna do a day
Ian
in the life.
Aaron
I don't wanna be Casey Neistat. Right.
Ian
I could see you doing a vlog of, like, a, like, a Laracon. Like, you're hosting Laracon, and you're, like fun. It's 3 days. Yeah. What happened to you in and around Laracon or something like that?
That could be That
Aaron
would be fun. I could
do that. Yeah.
I could
Ian
do that. Like a one time Yeah. Like a one off like that. Drop, something like that. Oh, jeez.
Now I I interrupted my train of thought with that, and I forgot I had another question here. Oh, have you done any are you kinda big on the researching of YouTube and how to like, have you researched the business of YouTube, I guess, is my question, or has it been more organic than that?
Aaron
I don't know how this will make me sound, Probably like a rube. I have done zero research
Ian
into, like Interesting.
Aaron
Into, like, the business of YouTube. So the question I guess, my answer stands, but I still don't know what the question is. But the answer is the same for both. The business like the back end, how do I make money long term? Or the business, how do
Ian
I grow?
Aaron
How do I
Yeah.
Ian
How do you What does the algorithm want? What are the what's the algorithm want? What are the tricks? What are the, like what should your profile what should your image be on the the thumbnail image? Like, whatever.
All that kind of stuff of, like, building up channel and things like that. And, well, and also, like, is are you do you have ads on on your personal channel and things like that?
Aaron
Like on the personal channel, and I make literally tens of dollars. So it's pretty awesome. Yeah. Just rolling in it. So the answer to both is no.
I haven't done research into the back end. I from what I understand from just, like, being online, the on on the business back end, like, making money, the money comes from sponsorships.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Sponsored content.
Ian
Figure. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Because I I think I've literally made, like, $200 this past month off of YouTube. Right. And then from what I understand just from being online about how to grow is, like, you gotta hook them in the beginning because if they, you know, if they click away, it's game over.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
You
gotta get them to click. And that's where all the, like, like, stupid faces and the thumbnails come in. And that's another rule that I have is I'm not gonna, like I know that people fall into that because that's what the algorithm wants. I just don't feel I don't feel comfortable doing, like, the pretend to be shocked about something and then Right. Click through and it's just a video about Yeah.
Ian
A title
Aaron
that's totally
Ian
unrelated, really, to the content.
Aaron
Come on, man. At what cost? You know?
Ian
Right. So,
Aaron
you gotta get them to click. You gotta get them to stay. You gotta get them to watch. And that's like you know, I'm learning as I go that you gotta tighten everything up. Everything you're gonna say, you gotta tighten it up, shorten it up, add an animation or whatever.
And so but, yeah, beyond that, it's just like, alright. What if I I feel like the the midwip meme where you've got the simpleton on the left and the Jedi on the right,
Ian
and the
Aaron
both of them are saying make good videos. And I'm like Right. I don't know which one
I am.
Ian
That's perfectly fine.
Aaron
Jedi, but I'm probably the simpleton. And I'm just like, I'm just gonna make a good video. So
Ian
I like that. I'd be a double getting into the idea of videos and things. It's just the editing time just seemed brutal. That's I mean, luckily, you're getting paid as part of your job for one of the channels at least to do it, which is awesome and to get better at it, which is also benefiting your personal channel. But to really make a good video, I feel like obviously, there are people who have just straight talking head and there's no edits and whatever, and they have a 1000000 followers.
But I think you're you know, for most videos would be greatly enhanced by having good editing and and all that. So that's a lot of work there. I know you said on your recent video there, we had a bunch of transitions. I mean, that timeline flow looked insane. Yeah.
Thousands of don't I don't
Aaron
super like the
Ian
I'm just gonna turn on the camera and
Aaron
talk to
Ian
the camera. I'm just gonna
Aaron
don't I don't super like the I'm just gonna turn on the camera and talk and then chop out the words and sentences. Like, I don't like that that style of video. I don't watch these videos
Right.
Where it's like, you can tell, like, every other word is chopped out and the camera's jumping around and it's I'm like Yeah. Just, like, just rehearse it a couple times and give me give me some better takes. So yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm developing a style that I am comfortable with.
Yep. And I'm hoping that the the algorithm continues to prefer
Ian
it. And alright. So what's your do you have a a date for the 100,000? Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. I think
Ian
A goal?
Aaron
I think I want to do it in I think I wanna do it in less than 1 year.
Ian
That's what I was thinking. I feel like 1 year is, like
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
If you're trying to be ambitious, that's that's, like, a solid goal, 1 year.
Aaron
So we'll say we'll say September because today's Monday, September 11, 2023. We'll say by September 10, 2024,
Ian
I would go.
Aaron
I was shooting for 2. If I get 1, I'm gonna be thrilled beyond right.
Ian
Those plaques are awesome. And what's their next plaque? Is it 500,000 or I
Aaron
don't know. I don't know.
I think there's a gold one at a1000000, but I don't know if there's any in between.
Ian
The plot is that's a whole another fascinating thing. It's just, the the motivational factor of awards and things like that that make, you know, there's no economic incentive. There's no rational reason to want this award. But, yeah, I know that for me, like yeah. I won it.
Like, there's this, whatever. There's a couple poker tournaments that Mhmm. I would like to win someday. Not because of the money. Not because they because they have, like, in in a couple of places in Vegas, they have these really elaborate trophies.
I'm like, I would just love this really elaborate trophy that's just, like, on my You can
Aaron
take it everywhere. Mantel. Take it to the next tournament.
Ian
Be like,
Aaron
oh, this whole
thing? Yeah.
Ian
So this whole giant glass thing. Don't worry about this. And it's just, like, so cool and motivating more, you know, more than the money for me. It would be like, oh, this is, like, cool. It's like a real solid thing.
Or, like, the WSOP. We haven't talked much about poker on here, but it's, like, the big poker tournaments. It's like, you get a bracelet if you Oh,
Aaron
yeah. Yeah.
Ian
And it's like, oh, and the bracelet's hideous and ugly and terrible. Nothing near as nice as, like, the YouTube one. But it's like, oh, if you had a bracelet that is, like, just signifying that you are Or
Aaron
green jacket.
Ian
Right. Right. Or green jacket. Yeah. All those things.
So is it the power of those type of awards and
Aaron
some of the other things that I think. Justin Jackson, if you're listening, which will know if you are or not, so I hope you are.
Ian
We should start testing community members.
Aaron
We should.
Yeah. So, Justin, if you're listening, you should be sending out patches or stickers or emblems or something when podcasts reach certain listener
marks.
Like, I know that in in the Transistor FM dashboard, you get, like
Ian
This is a great idea.
Aaron
Badge or whatever. Those should be those should be
Ian
physical patches
Aaron
that, like, you know, you get you get a patch Total at a 100,000 listeners, and then you get little, like, little, like, Colonel toppers that go on top of it. It's, like, 200, 500, a 1,000,000. Like, come on. It doesn't cost $4.
Ian
I so love this idea.
Aaron
Thrilled. You know how thrilled I would be to, like, have a patch that's like you got, you know, quarter million downloads. Yes. Yeah. I did.
Ian
Oh, you know what I mean? You could literally charge for it. It could cost you nothing.
Aaron
It's
Ian
like when you earn it when you earn it, you can click it in the transistor, and then you can buy it.
Aaron
To our bill because you're paying the bill.
Ian
Our bill. Right. Whatever. Like but you can't buy it until you've earned it.
Aaron
Yes.
Ian
And there's a very like, we have the Slopes app that does something similar. And it's like, yeah, when you have a certain amount of time, you can buy the sweatshirt or whatever. And, like, yeah, they should totally do that. People would totally line them up. We'd have them lined up.
We'd have them behind us or on something or whatever.
Aaron
I I have it to this little tree on my hand. I'd have, you
Ian
know, a quarter of a
Aaron
badge or whatever.
Ian
Yeah. Oh, wow. Justin, that
Aaron
one's free. That one's free.
Ian
Just doling out, though. Amazingly place out there.
Aaron
Hear from you, Justin. Your loss, first
Ian
of all. No. You made it to to into the second hour with us here. Come on, Justin.
Aaron
You you endured the DHH stuff, and
Ian
now we give you we
Aaron
give you this treat at the the
Ian
end. Oh, geez.
Aaron
And let that be a lesson, dear listener. You may get called out at some point. You gotta listen you gotta listen all the way to the end. So we we may we may give you a tip for your business. Is this
Ian
breaking your rules? I feel like this I might be corrupting you a little bit here. This feels like it might be a a little a little breaking the
Aaron
rules,
call No. People. This is
Ian
long form. Okay.
Aaron
We we can
be a little more folksy in the long form. You know? It's audio. It's not text. I think we're okay.
Ian
Oh, jeez.
Aaron
Alright.
Ian
Well, that sounds good.
Aaron
Shall we wrap it there?
Ian
Any advice? Yeah. Let's wrap it. Alright. If you're looking for us, mostlytechnical.com, mostly tech pod on the very happy Twitters, and mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com.
If you wanna email us anything, follow-up with us. I want some more follow-up, people. This is
Aaron
what I'm talking about. Too.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. Give us a mailbag. I know people contact us on Twitter, which is kinda the same, but give us some give us some mailbag. We want something to chat from the community with, so send us your ideas.
Aaron
Alright. Alright. Great one. See you. Have a
Ian
good one. Bye.