Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

179: It's Tough to Iterate on Nothing

January 25th, 2016 | Season 5 | 58 mins 32 secs

Ben resolves to cut back on dashboard checkins, makes progress on Formkeep's Ember extraction, and struggles with product-market fit. Meanwhile, Chris tackles some analytics issues, opens up Upcase landing pages from behind the paywall to improve marketing and SEO, and steps up his marketing and social-media game.

178: No-one Wants Form End-Points for Christmas

January 18th, 2016 | Season 5 | 1 hr 5 mins

Ben and Chris both struggle with cancelations coming into the new year, Formkeep continues to strip out Ember and focus on content marketing, and Upcase resolves a major issue in the exercise system and improves the checkout flow.

177: I Forgot There Would Be Follow-On Tasks

January 11th, 2016 | Season 5 | 52 mins 47 secs

Chris tracks new members after the release of the new Mastering Git course from Upcase, launches a drip e-mail campaign to attract more members, and focuses on increased content output. Ben continues removing Ember from Formkeep, rethinks an activation sequence A/B test, conducts user tests to improve the checkout flow, and adopts a mindset of continuous improvement.

176: The Pricing is Right

January 4th, 2016 | Season 5 | 54 mins 34 secs

As Ben transitions from Upcase to Formkeep, so too will the podcast transition to an open discussion around growing thoughtbot's internal projects and maintaining them as businesses, highlighting our hopes, experiments, tactics, failures, and success along the way! Today Ben and new co-host Chris discuss finding that magic feature or metric around which to structure pricing, selecting the right framework for your app, and customer acquisition tactics.

175: Broaden Your Worldview (Ashe Dryden)

December 21st, 2015 | Season 4 | 30 mins 4 secs

Ben talks with Ashe Dryden about ways to approach diversity in the tech community from workplace, conference, and personal perspectives.

174: Building Character (Laura Roeder)

December 14th, 2015 | Season 4 | 29 mins 43 secs

Ben and Laura Roeder, founder of Edgar, chat about anthropomorphizing your brand to build better engagement, going the extra step to care about customer success, and some tips for social media marketing best practices.

173: Obsessed With Helping (Hiten Shah)

December 7th, 2015 | Season 4 | 30 mins 28 secs

Ben talks with Hiten Shah, co-founder of Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics, on the value of helping others, frameworks for a better life, being an infovore, and tips for finding a successful product niche.

172: Go After the Hard Stuff (Eric Normand)

December 1st, 2015 | Season 4 | 41 mins 27 secs

Ben and Eric Normand of LispCast and PurelyFunctional.tv talk about the pros and cons of Haskell and Clojure, empathize on some of the pain points of running an educational coding platform, and hypothesize on how the next great programming "killer demo" will present itself.

171: Always Be Hustling (Steli Efti)

November 23rd, 2015 | Season 4 | 37 mins 39 secs

Ben talks with Steli Efti, CEO and Co-founder of Close, on maintaining energy and passion in speaking, why engineers make great sales people (and how they can be even better), and managing your emotions to be more productive and happy.

170: Make Things People Want (C. Todd Lombardo & Trace Wax)

November 9th, 2015 | Season 4 | 39 mins 38 secs

Chad talks with C. Todd Lombardo & Trace Wax about their new book, co-authored with Richard Banfield, Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products, as well as the process and benefits of design sprints.

169: Purpose Driven Development (Sara Chipps)

November 5th, 2015 | Season 4 | 36 mins 2 secs

Brenda talks with Sara Chipps on the desire to educate in code, her inspiration to work on hardware, and the troubles of manufacturing.

168: 'Unpronounceable' (Star Simpson)

October 27th, 2015 | Season 4 | 31 mins 52 secs

Chad Pytel and Laila Winner welcome Star Simpson to discuss PLIBMTTBHGATY (Programming Languages I’ve Been Meaning To Try But Haven’t Gotten Around To Yet), fostering community through meet-ups, and the finer points of taco delivery via drone.

167: A Place For Both (Brenda Storer)

October 12th, 2015 | Season 4 | 36 mins 46 secs

Ben talks with thoughtbot designer Brenda Storer on fitting both development and design in her job title, tips for public speaking, and introduces a new change to the show.

166: Refactoring Health Care (John Norman)

October 5th, 2015 | Season 4 | 40 mins 13 secs

Ben talks with John Norman about his process and modified approach to the delivery, payment, and tech of modern managed health care. They also touch on age bias in the programming world, living a purpose-driven life, and dealing with startup growth.

165: Everyone's Welcome Here (Adam Stacoviak & Jerod Santo)

September 28th, 2015 | Season 4 | 43 mins 5 secs

Ben talks with Adam & Jerod of The Changelog Podcast to discuss their personal interviewing modalities, doing full-time media creation, and a new video project aimed to explore the actual people behind your programming heroes.

164: Transcribing at 260 wpm (Mirabai Knight)

September 21st, 2015 | Season 4 | 36 mins 50 secs

Ben talks with Mirabai Knight about the technology and uses of modern stenography; including using steno with Vim, and her work on Plover, the open source Steno engine.