Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

240: Handing Over the Reins

June 5th, 2017 | Season 6 | 55 mins 38 secs

Ben outlines his next steps, reflects on his time at thoughtbot, and hands the proverbial podcast reins over to Chad.

239: Change is in the Air

May 29th, 2017 | Season 6 | 35 mins 51 secs

Ben bids adieu to thoughtbot, and outlines his plans, hopes, and fears for the future.

238: The Graph is Beautiful

May 22nd, 2017 | Season 6 | 19 mins 51 secs

Derrick gets technical about Drip's performance optimization, and reflects on pre-conceived opinions in regards to tactical & strategic planning after receiving some constructive criticism.

237: Steve Jobs Used Slides

April 28th, 2017 | Season 6 | 34 mins 13 secs

Ben and Derrick recount their experiences and lessons learned speaking at MicroConf.

236: Care For Customer Support (Spencer Fry)

April 21st, 2017 | Season 6 | 37 mins 38 secs

Ben is joined this week by Spencer Fry, founder of TypeFrag, Carbonmade, Uncover, and Coach, to discuss carryover lessons of successful startups.

235: Meta Talk Process

April 12th, 2017 | Season 6 | 31 mins 1 sec

As we prepare for MicroConf, Ben takes a new tact on his talk after giving an early demo, and Derrick recounts a positive pair-programming experience.

On FormKeep, Ben implements custom redirects on form submissions and starts a test to remove up-front credit card collection, as well as discusses evaluation of feature requests. On Drip, Derrick walks through the app with new devs, considers on-boarding automation, and continues his refactoring project.

233: Insert Mode is the Worst Mode

March 27th, 2017 | Season 6 | 27 mins 34 secs

Derrick welcomes new Javascript and Rails developers to Drip. Ben prepares a content deal and interviews a Content Manager for Upcase, discusses the benefits and methodology to Vim proficiency, works on an integration with Wistia, and ponders growing / selling apps.

232: Don't Be Boring

March 22nd, 2017 | Season 6 | 27 mins 24 secs

As Ben and Derrick prepare their talks for MicroConf, Ben shares his tips and habits for talk preparation and public speaking.

231: Who Likes Using Ugly Software?

March 14th, 2017 | Season 6 | 33 mins 1 sec

Ben & Derrick reflect on the S3 outage and how it affected their services, and muse on managing user perceptions. Derrick submits a talk to MicroConf on what it means to be "customer driven", and begins a refactoring effort to rework Drip's integration system. On Upcase, Ben integrates a referral widget, and enables subscription pausing, while on FormKeep he fixes a trial plan selection bug.

230: Sales Through Education (Anna Jacobsen)

March 6th, 2017 | Season 6 | 32 mins 55 secs

Ben & Derrick welcome Anna Jacobsen, Education Director at Drip, to discuss customer demos / onboarding, sales and retention strategies, customer success, and best practices within Drip.

229: We Need More Counters

February 27th, 2017 | Season 6 | 33 mins 33 secs

On FormKeep, Ben runs an A/B test on trial length and adds a short onboarding survey, meanwhile wrapping up team signups and working on a content licensing deal for Upcase. Derrick reports back from his machine learning class, and discusses an issue in quality assurance testing.

228: Start in Beginner Mode

February 20th, 2017 | Season 6 | 24 mins 59 secs

Derrick travels to Portland to visit fellow bootstrapper friends, Ben recounts his recent conference travel, and a discussion of their most pivotal hires as well as account rescue techniques.

227: We Don't Do Fractional Pennies

February 13th, 2017 | Season 6 | 30 mins 26 secs

Derrick celebrates a great shipping week, completing both 'live segments' and a Drip certification course. Ben recounts the rollout & results of the Upcase + Tapas promotion, and reflects on its successes and possible pitfalls.

226: There Are So Many Edge-Cases

February 6th, 2017 | Season 6 | 22 mins 44 secs

Ben presses to meet the Upcase & Tapas launch deadline, and shares some lessons learned from its preparation, promotion, and launch. On Drip, Derrick rolls out more UI updates, is looking to hire JavaScript and Rails engineers, and details his hiring & interview process.

225: Abuse the Sunk-Cost Fallacy

January 30th, 2017 | Season 6 | 31 mins 43 secs

Ben halts the search for a marketer to instead hire a sales consultant and focus on growth himself, and announces a collaboration with Ruby Tapas. Derrick enrolls in a machine learning class, and contemplates Drip team & work structure.