Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

220: Goin' Legit (For 2017)

December 6th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  33 mins 30 secs

Ben decides to hire a support firm, document support processes, completes the Hound pricing change, and prepares to make products their own division for next year. Meanwhile, on Drip, Derrick addresses a performance challenge.

219: Rails' Sidekick (Mike Perham)

November 28th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  31 mins 20 secs

Ben is joined by Mike Perham, author of Sidekiq, to discuss running a business solo, taking a side project from hobby to full time job, and scaling support as an app grows.

218: A Spark of Inspiration

November 21st, 2016  |  Season 6  |  35 mins 37 secs

On Drip, Derrick launches a free tier, and utilizes credit card anti-fraud measures. Ben publicly launches FormLinter, pauses exploring new product ideas in favor of giving attention to existing ones, and starts to rebuild the product team. They also discuss the merits of remote vs in-person collaboration, the pros and cons of open offices, and dealing with interruptions from notifications and meetings.

217: The Object Object Object

November 14th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  50 mins 51 secs

Ben and Nick get super nerdy this week and chat about Meetspace's architecture using Go, Postgres, and HMAC including custom cookie signing, rendering, error handling, tooling, and more!

216: The One With Laila & Brenda

November 7th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  38 mins 54 secs

Sadly, Ben is stuck in hammock somewhere, and we are without a new episode this week. However, we would love you all to check out thoughtbot's newest podcast, interviewing inspirational designers, developers, and other makers in tech, The Laila & Brenda Show!

Give their latest episode a listen here, and if you like it subscribe to their feed however you listen to podcasts!

215: SaaS is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

October 31st, 2016  |  Season 6  |  37 mins 11 secs

Ben and Nick chat about ways to pitch your product, working solo as well as sustainably, and the costs of doing business.

214: My Cat is VP of Marketing (Nick Gauthier)

October 24th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  42 mins 52 secs

Ben talks to Nick Gauthier, founder of MeetSpace, about the importance of validating ideas, reading through API documentation, and pricing surveys.

213: Madness Free

October 17th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  40 mins 59 secs

Derrick finds some new areas to improve after walking new hires through Drip's architecture, and discusses his custom billing engine. On Hound, Ben delegates the new-pricing project, and validates a new product idea.

212: Good Enough, Namaste

October 10th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  38 mins 23 secs

Derrick brings a few more new hires onto the team, and ships a change to make clients' Javascript snippets more performant. On Hound, Ben does some direct outreach sales, considers bringing on someone to help with marketing, and muses on the balancing act between product manager, developer, and marketing.

211: Battle Hardened Over Time

October 3rd, 2016  |  Season 6  |  39 mins 45 secs

On Hound, Ben sends out announcements for pricing changes, questions when a decision is the "right" decision when it comes to customer feedback, and toys with per-seat pricing model feasibility. Derrick has a successful first week on-boarding the new dev-ops hire, offers Ben some advice on balancing features with price, and discusses some customer acquisition campaigns.

210: s/Walden/Andover

September 26th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  32 mins 19 secs

Ben plans a camping trip, acquires a new Twitter account, releases his notes on giving great conference talks, and begins to tell users of Hound's new pricing. Derrick reacts to the announcement of Github Projects and what that means for Codetree, ships the new form design on Drip, and muses on the ramifications to Google's announced penalizing of intrusive mobile pop-ups.

209: Playlist Driven Development

September 19th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  33 mins 54 secs

On Drip, Derrick deals with a high-bandwidth customer and hires a new devops team member. Meanwhile, Ben brainstorms new pricing structures for Hound.

208: Efficiency Starts With a Haircut

September 12th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  40 mins 2 secs

Derrick switches domains from getdrip.com to drip.co, begins to update the design of the Drip widget, and tries to find balance in his varying roles as CTO. Ben hands off the reins of Upcase, switches to a low-tech project management solution, and mixes work and personal todos.

207: Database & Queue are Dirty Words (Derrick Reimer)

September 6th, 2016  |  Season 6  |  33 mins 21 secs

Ben welcomes guest co-host Derrick Reimer, co-founder of Drip, getting to know his background and products for our first outside-thoughtbot view on SaaS strategy (as well as Ben's arm-twisty methods for getting him on the podcast in the first place)!

206: I'm Glad We Talked About This (Chad Pytel)

August 22nd, 2016  |  Season 5  |  47 mins 13 secs

thoughtbot CEO Chad Pytel joins Ben to discuss our recent office closings and reasons necessitating this decision, what this means for the product team, and the future of thoughtbot. Also, a teaser of what to expect next from Giant Robots Podcast.

205: Bottling Calm

August 8th, 2016  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 59 secs

Fresh back from vacation, Ben shifts his attention to a Hound project, adding in tiered plans and pricing. Chris begins to build out a drip sequence for content recommendations, prepares to roll off to return to client work, and leaves us with some final reflections, takeaways, and lessons learned while on Upcase.