The Art of Product

Ben and Derrick are joined by guest Adam Wathan, an esteemed software developer, writer, speaker and entrepreneur from Ontario, Canada. He is the creator of Tailwind CSS, author of Refactoring to Collections and host of the Full Stack Radio podcast. Listen in as he shares how he built his own products over time and became an independent entrepreneur, and talks about his new project Tailwind CSS. Today’s Topics Include: Starting his first side projects and products Adam’s successful marketing channels and strategies Lessons learned from past product launches Experience with pricing plans and tiers Adam’s current projects and products, including Tailwind CSS CSS programming, utility and presentation If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Tailwind CSS Test-Driven Laravel Refactoring to Collections Full Stack Radio Adam on Twitter @adamwathan The 30-Day Code Quality Challenge RefactoringRails.io Drip

Ben keeps us posted on the Refactoring Rails course launch progress and shares his continuing sales metrics and marketing strategies. He is considering experimenting with free samples, bundling and cross-promoting going forward. For his next project, Ben is creating a new course called The 30-Day Code Quality Challenge, which goes live on November 13, 2017. He has received a lot of feedback on the idea and is iterating on the outline, including content and pricing strategies for the future. He shares his plans for the course and Derrick gives his advice on the project. Today’s Topics Include: Refactoring Rails launch progression and marketing strategies Ben’s new project: The 30-Day Code Quality Challenge Comparing course formats and iterating on ideas using targeted feedback The power of building your audience and list Lead generation versus sales value Programming language agnostic course strategy If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Tiny Marketing Wins course The 30-Day Code Quality Challenge RefactoringRails.io Drip

Ben’s course sales are still going strong, and he shares his updated sales metrics and the purchasing trends of his customers. He also spoke on the Ruby on Rails podcast recently to discuss the course and his experience making it. Ben is scheduled to give a talk at the DC Ruby Users Group on February 16, 2018. He is now trying to think of what’s next for himself in the big picture. Derrick and the Drip team are preparing for Black Friday. They built models to predict peak hours and optimize their servers. As a result they had a super successful test send at over 4,000 emails per second, putting them in a great position leading up to the big day. The team is still working on load testing to search for more unknown factors in simulation to shore up the system even more. Today’s Topics Include: Screenhero shutting down Refactoring Rails launch progress Selling products versus services Work-life balance and project madness Salaried jobs and optimizing work experience Drip prep for Black Friday If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Use together - Screen Sharing Tool Ruby on Rails: Episode 236 featuring Ben Orenstein Seeking Wisdom: Episode 95 featuring Brad Stulberg The Tropical MBA Podcast SendGrid RefactoringRails.io Drip

Ben has officially launched his course Refactoring Rails. He is pleased with his choice of back-end tools including Gumroad for fulfillment. Ben shares his course launch metrics including email success rate, sales numbers and revenue. Early feedback has been positive and the Ruby community has been very supportive. He also discusses his expectations and take away lessons from the overall launch. Ben will be continuing his Ruby tour in the coming weeks. Derrick announces Drip’s new project teased last episode: a visual email editor. Due to Drip’s widening customer base, there is an increased demand for visual and polished marketing emails. Their designer has been working on mockups and the team is analyzing the current tools available and have some great ideas for improving usability. Drip is still looking for a front-end engineer with Elm experience to help build the tool. Today’s Topics Include: Refactoring Rails launch and email strategy Ben’s launch metrics Ruby speaking tour The new visual email editor project at Drip Building out a new project Learning new skills as a developer Choosing programming languages Derrick’s review of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code Editor If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Gumroad Heroku Elm "Teaching Elm to Beginners" by Richard Feldman Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code Editor RefactoringRails.io Drip

Ben is set to launch his course and is using the looming deadline as an efficiency booster. He recently spoke at Rocky Mountain Ruby, and spent time prepping the talk with a friend at a beach house but unfortunately lost his data due to a hardware malfunction. The talk was still a great success, but a very stressful experience. The next week he spoke at Southeast Ruby in Nashville and it was a much smoother experience. Otherwise he is finishing up launch strategy details and looking forward to shipping the project. Drip.com is now live after a long process, and the Drip team is thrilled. Derrick has also found an opportunity to use Elm at Drip, and is looking forward to implementing it in a new project he can’t yet discuss. Drip is currently looking for a front-end engineer in the Minneapolis area, with Elm experience if possible. Derrick has been travelling recently and even had a flight cancelled due to the California wildfires. Today’s Topics Include: Deadline pressure and work efficiency Ben’s recent speaking engagements Last minute details for Ben’s course release Time-pressure and discount strategies for launch Drip.com domain acquisition Elm programming language If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp by Jason Fried Elm RefactoringRails.io Drip

This week Ben Orenstein is interviewing guest Avdi Grimm, Founder of RubyTapas, which is a subscription service that provides screencasts of “gourmet” ruby programming. Avdi discusses the topic of his talk at Southeast Ruby in Nashville, which was the value of avoiding code and strategies to bypass the need to write unnecessary coding. Join us as he shares his advice on optimizing workflows and his experiences building RubyTapas. Today’s Topics Include: The value of avoiding code Hidden complexity in building out content platforms Using Wordpress for publishing content Code as a liability Episode production and future of RubyTapas Finding leverage in business and creative work Delegating workflows Views on side-hustling and product development If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RubyTapas WordPress Spacemacs, Emacs, Vim, Neovim Side-hustle mindset versus product-business mindset by Avdi Grimm Avdi.codes VirtuousCode.com RefactoringRails.io

Ben has finalized the logo for his Refactoring Rails course and is currently getting the intro/outro animations and the sales site designed. He also finished the notes for all the videos and was very pleased with the final edit quality. The launch date for RefactoringRails.io is October 16th, 2017. He is still considering options for his post-launch speaking tour. At Drip, Derrick is deep in the backend scaling challenges with a lot of attention towards Black Friday for their ecommerce customers. They are looking to historical data in order to anticipate peak volumes and simulate high loads. One particular initiative they’re working on is “fair queuing” to improve Drip’s user experience under periods of high load. Today’s Topics Include: Refactoring Rails course development Scaling challenges and Black Friday volume High-load simulations Amazon auto-scaling groups Fair queuing Open source libraries If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Elm Boston Elm Meetup Refactoring Rails course logo Gumroad Rocky Mountain Ruby GraphQL Narro.co Drip RefactoringRails.io

Ben is coming back from a restorative vacation in Martha’s Vineyard and loves the vibe there. He is enjoying his Vitamix blender and the Dr. Rhonda Patrick micronutrient smoothie. In Refactoring Rails news, Ben is committing to a launch date of October 16th. He is also scheduled to speak at three different conferences before the launch, and is looking forward to the challenge. He got feedback regarding a premium course tier, and is weighing his options on developing these materials. He has a proposal for the design element work and is close to wrapping up on the content. Derrick attended ElixirConf in Seattle and now feels more confident to use the language in Drip in the future. He’s feeling the pain of running a large Ruby application and is looking for a higher power language. They are heading into using auto-scaling groups and other ways of optimizing the system. He was also interested in the code formatter that Elixir is developing. Today’s Topics Include: Health and nutrition in smoothies ElixirConf and the state of the Elixir language Erlang Programming language Scaling Drip, speed and hosting costs Code formatters Launch of Refactoring Rails Premium tier survey and material options Hiring a designer for the course graphics Ben’s upcoming speaking engagements: Rocky Mountain Ruby, Southeast Ruby Conference and Boulder Ruby Group If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Vitamix Blenders Dr. Rhonda Patrick micronutrient smoothie ElixirConf Elixir Erlang Rocky Mountain Ruby Southeast Ruby Boulder Ruby Group Drip RefactoringRails.io

Ben and Derrick are back from vacation this week are feeling refreshed. Ben tweeted something that went viral and has dealt with some people’s misinterpretation and bias. He is working on hiring a designer for some of the course finishing touches and is honing in on the premium tier offerings. Ben also has two side projects, Briefs and Trail Mix, that he is thinking of doing a tour about. RefactoringRails.io is set to launch the end of September. Drip has been onboarding a new developer onto the core-product team and Derrick discusses his interview and hiring process. He also shares how Drip is doing as a customer-driven product team, inspired by David Cancel’s top ten criteria in a recent Conversion Cast episode. Today’s Topics Include: Going viral and dealing with public reaction Ben’s side projects, Briefs and Trail Mix Finishing and preparing to launch Ben’s course RefactoringRails.io Hiring process at Drip Allocating time for housekeeping tasks to avoid ‘noise’ David Cancel’s top ten items to determine if you’re doing well in a customer-driven product team If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RefactoringRails.io Briefs Drip Conversion Cast - Episode with David Cancel Drift

This week Ben is on vacation and Derrick is here to share some fresh knowledge behind the scenes at Drip. They’re experimenting at Drip with how to scale the system to handle more customers and what changes are needed to make the architecture support all their customers and future large customers in the sales pipeline. Derrick goes over his team’s recent brainstorming session and plans to repeat the exercise for more subsystems at Drip. Today’s Topics Include: The many seasons of scaling a SaaS business Starting with simplistic architecture Arriving at bottlenecks and incremental evolution of the system How to have brainstorming sessions with engineers Reevaluating assumptions and tradeoffs If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: Drip

This week Ben has been managing his projects and to-do list with OmniFocus, which helps as his business and stress level continue to increase. He has outlined and will be recording his last video about form objects and is glad to be approaching the finish line on the course. He also experimented with adding a Call to Action button in his emails but wants to get more data comparing metrics to get the best strategy with different email clients. Derrick has been in the trenches working on scaling Drip this week by strategizing on architecture with the backend team. They have onboarded one of their biggest customers and are working with them to segment and filter subscribers to be more efficient. He discussed the importance of legacy code base and how it is re-invented and improved over time. While their backend has become more complicated and fast-paced, he and his team are committed to keeping high quality and continue shipping things out quickly. Today’s Topics Include: Working around a schedule and dealing with notifications Email data metrics and call to action tests Scaling backend architecture Brain-dumping to address issues Defining legacy in a code base and continuous re-evaluation Consistency in a code base Moving fast and increasing complexity while maintaining high quality If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RefactoringRails.io Drip Omnifocus Pocket Final Cut Pro Github AdBlock

This past week Ben has hit a mental slump in the final phase of his course. However, he is moving through it and will be recording another video today towards the new final goal of 8 total course videos. He is tentatively scheduling the course launch for the first week of September. He has also scheduled his first Meetup event of his tour, on September 13th at the Atlanta Ruby Users Group. Derrick brings up a recent Giant Robots podcast episode with Seth Godin, which talks about the dips experienced in business, “crossing the chasm” by moving from innovators into the mass market, and the personal transparency of the host Chad Pytel. Derrick relates what he heard to the phase Drip is in at the moment, and where he wants it and himself to go in the future. Today’s Topics Include: Finishing a project and psychological momentum Ben’s Ruby Meetup tour and launch sequence Giant Robots podcast episode with Seth Godin Being real and transparent as a podcaster Reflecting on business and choosing what market you want to serve Drip’s current stage and market Deciding the way you want to work while growing a company Innovation versus mass market Admin and internal dev tools If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RefactoringRails.io Drip Atlanta Ruby Users Group Giant Robots podcast Seth Godin Episode Thoughtbot Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Scaling SaaS

This week Ben discusses his experiment live-streaming a practice recording of his next video. He received helpful feedback and saw a spike in email subscribers, so it was very successful. He now has six videos done in the course and is considering a multiple tiered pricing model for his course release. On a personal note he has decided to move from his apartment in downtown Boston and will soon relocate to a hip area outside of the city. His goal this month is to finish and launch the course before the move and start his Meetup tour in September. Derrick has been working on the Drip free trial to help clarify the product plans. He debated split testing this move, but in talking to his team they decided to just go for it. There was a bit of user confusion during the onboarding workflow for the free plan so this should clear things up. On the backend, this week the team is upgrading to Rails 5 and working to replace Capistrano with Amazon’s CodeDeploy. Derrick is also reviewing his code review processes and Ben weighs in on his thoughts on this problem. Today’s Topics Include: Regular yoga practice and posture Ben’s live-stream experience and results Relocating living space and minimalist lifestyles Multiple tiered course pricing models Changes to the Drip free trial program Keeping up with Rails versions Amazon CodeDeploy Code review processes If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RefactoringRails.io Drip Twitch Ruby on Rails Capistrano Amazon CodeDeploy Heruko

Derrick is coming back from a much-needed vacation in San Francisco and enjoyed walking tours thanks to the Detour app. He returns refreshed and was able to get back into the swing of things and even into his yoga classes. It was also officially announced this week that Clay Collins, Founder and CEO of LeadPages is stepping down and will be replaced by former COO John Tedesco. Clay had a great amount of self-awareness in his announcement and this brings up the topic of The Founder’s Dilemma and best management practices for startups. Last week Ben published a new sample course video on speeding up slow test suites. He is improving his recording and editing processes using Final Cut Pro. He is now working on the fifth video and nearing the halfway point on the course. He is also going to try live streaming the practice run of his next video and incorporating early feedback into the final recording. To market the course, he is looking forward to traveling the country and speaking at Ruby meetups. Today’s Topics Include: Taking real vacations and disconnecting from work in order to recharge The restorative power of yoga Company history and leadership changes at Leadpages The Founder’s Dilemma and knowing what you are optimizing for Freedom, wealth and ambition as a startup founder Outsourcing and the value of having a personal assistant Video editing processes, software and live streaming Ruby meetup tours as a marketing tool If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RefactoringRails.io Drip Detour - guided walking tour app Leadpages The Founder’s Dilemma by Noam Wasserman Rich vs. King in the Real World: Why I sold my company by Jason Cohen Don’t Build a Business Because You Want Freedom by Jeff Goins Startups for the Rest of Us podcast Final Cut Pro

Today Ben’s guest is Brennan Dunn, co-founder of RightMessage, a tool that allows you to personalize your website based on user information and behavior. This allows you to customize your messaging to each user’s unique story and needs. Brennan explains the value of customer targeting, shares his ambition for Right Message, his personal journey and advice for other software startups along the way. Today’s Topics Include: Brennan’s experiences and genesis of RightMessage Targeting with ads and website content Technical details on customer targeting Most profitable targeting activity Onboarding hesitant customers with course material Current status and future plans for RightMessage If you’re enjoying the show please give us your ratings and reviews in iTunes. Links and resources: RightMessage Double Your Freelancing Drip Pro Tools Master Drip Email Automation Course - Brennan Dunn Bounce Exchange Webpack Planscope Churn Buster Baremetrics Open Startups