Builders Gonna Build

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Apr 2025

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Interviews with people who build awesome products. Hosted by Metacast co-founders Ilya Bezdelev and Arnab Deka.

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12 recent

April 14, 20254 min

Moment: Ditching unlimited pricing for a B2B SaaS (ep. 9)

Co-founder of Honeybadger Ben Curtis talks about unlimited pricing, its deficiencies for a bootstrapped startup, and how they ditched unlimited all-you-can-eat buffet in favor of usage-based pricing. Full episode: 9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood Where to find the badgers Honeybadger FounderQuest podcast Ben: Bluesky, LinkedIn Joshua: Bluesky, LinkedIn Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

March 25, 20251 min

Moment: It took us two years before we switched to our business full-time with Honeybadger co-founder Ben Curtis (ep. 9)

Co-founder of Honeybadger Ben Curtis discusses freelancing before switching to work on the product full-time. Full episode: 9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood Where to find the badgers Honeybadger FounderQuest podcast Ben: Bluesky, LinkedIn Joshua: Bluesky, LinkedIn Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

March 22, 20252 min

Moment: How we got first customers for our SaaS with Honeybadger co-founders (ep. 9)

Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood discuss getting the very first customers and making first sales for their app and error monitoring SaaS Honeybadger. Full episode: 9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood Where to find the badgers Honeybadger FounderQuest podcast Ben: Bluesky, LinkedIn Joshua: Bluesky, LinkedIn Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

March 19, 202543 min

9. Bootstrapping a SaaS for 13 years | Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood

Honeybadger co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood discuss the origins and growth of their app monitoring product, challenges of bootstrapping, calm work environment, evolution of co-founder relationships, and buying out a departing co-founder. Chapters 01:27 - Introduction of Honeybadger 03:50 - The genesis of the company 10:40 - The first customers 12:26 - How much money do you need to feel like it's real? 14:37 - Switching to the business full-time 16:42 - Moving from unlimited to usage-based pricing 21:14 - Stress about revenue 23:40 - When do you start paying ourselves? 26:29 - The evolution of founder relationships 31:14 - Dealing with a co-founder departure 34:49 - Is a calm company possible? 36:30 - Who does what in the company 41:25 - Advice for entrepreneurs 42:12 - Where to find Ben and Joshua Where to find the badgers Honeybadger FounderQuest podcast Ben: Bluesky, LinkedIn Joshua: Bluesky, LinkedIn Links Honeybadger meme Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

May 9, 202453 min

8. Growing your LinkedIn and newsletter audience | John Crickett

John Crickett is the creator of Coding Challenges, a newsletter for engineers that has over 54k subscribers. John’s LinkedIn profile grew from 3k to 150k+ followers in a year. In this episode, we dive into the process and mindset that allowed John’s following to grow so quickly. Chapters 00:58 - Introduction 03:18 - Spending a million Euros and a year on an MVP 05:54 - Coding Challenges 08:15 - MVP for an info product vs. software 13:51 - Growth on LinkedIn 17:32 - Post structure 19:48 - Comments on posts 21:48 - Twitter/X 25:15 - Coding Challenges newsletter 27:12 - Building a personal brand 34:09 - Nicheing on LinkedIn 41:50 - Selling B2B vs. B2C 47:18 - Tangent on car salesmen 50:13 - Book recommendations Where to find John John’s LinkedIn Coding Challenges Coding Challenges newsletter Coding Chats podcast 30 Day LinkedIn Personal Branding Challenge for Software Engineers (starts on May 20, 2024!) Links Advent of Code Carrd website builder AirChat Podcasts My First Million (Jason Cohen episode) Books Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

April 24, 20241 hr 15 min

7. Jason Fried on building products, calm companies and the Jeff Bezos investment

Jason Fried is a co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY. Together with his business partner David Hannemeier Hanson, Jason co-authored seminal entrepreneurship books Rework, Remote, and It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. This episode was originally published on the Metacast podcast, episode 28 in July 2023. Chapters 03:17 - Introduction of Jason and 37signals 05:38 - Founder role vs. CEO role 08:37 - Working with the same co-founder for 20 years 11:10 - Disagreements between founders 13:31 - Disagree and commit principle 15:14 - The business side of things (numbers, accounting, etc.) 18:17 - On costs and profitability 21:01 - Intentionally keeping the company small 24:01 - Managing risk 26:11 - Jeff Bezos' investment 32:34 - Working on several products at the same time 33:31 - Six-week cycles vs. long-term projects 38:50 - Evolution of 37signals 44:45 - Keeping products until the end of the Internet 47:28 - Calm companies 48:38 - Listening to customer feedback 54:25 - Jason's email is public. Is this a good idea? 58:07 - Employee performance reviews and fixed salaries 59:45 - Can the "calm company" mindset work in big companies? 1:05:51 - How does one find a calm company to work for? 1:08:46 - Publishing books 1:11:38 - On being contrarian and no politics at work Podcasts Rework #496: Marc Randolph on Building Netflix, Battling Blockbuster, Negotiating with Amazon/Bezos, and Scraping the Barnacles Off the Hull on The Tim Ferriss Show Books Rework Getting Real It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work Shape Up Maverick by Ricardo Semler Blog posts Founder & CEO is kinda a BS title by Jason Fried Basecamp's new etiquette regarding societal politics at work by DHH But what if you're wrong? by DHH Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

April 10, 20241 hr 14 min

6. Creating a niche of your own | Corey Quinn, The Duckbill Group

Corey Quinn is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group and a big celebrity at the AWS circles well known for his sense of humor and unrelenting focus on making some good fun of the cloud providers. In our interview, we are learning Corey’s background, how The Duckbill Group got started, and how he runs the media side of his business. As usual, we talked about bootstrapping and running consulting services while building a product. This episode was originally published on the Metacast podcast, episode 32. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 01:49 - Meet Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist 06:16 - What does a cloud economist do? 08:08 - From sysadmin to independent consultant 11:53 - Starting The Duckbill Group 13:00 - Choosing a business partner 15:59 - Finding your authentic voice on social media 17:08 - Route 53 as a database and early Twitter fame 19:01 - Audience growth and depth of engagement 22:15 - Navigating humor and legal boundaries 25:16 - Naming The Duckbill Group 25:52 - Team structure and bootstrapping a services business 27:01 - Why cloud cost optimization is a people problem 30:28 - Bootstrapping and managing founder psychology 32:59 - Who does what at The Duckbill Group 34:04 - Producing a podcast and outsourcing operations 36:30 - Getting first customers through your network 39:47 - Evolution of Corey's media empire 42:55 - Sponsorship revenue and the media business model 43:44 - Starting the Screaming in the Cloud podcast 49:09 - Attributing business value to content 51:59 - Usage-based vs. subscription pricing 56:09 - Advice for bootstrap founders on consulting 57:49 - The power of niching down 1:01:11 - Comparing AWS, GCP, and Azure 1:05:54 - AWS losing its customer obsession 1:06:33 - Using ChatGPT for content creation 1:09:32 - Book recommendations and how Corey learns 1:11:50 - Keeping up with the pace of AWS releases 1:13:07 - Where to find Corey Where to find Corey Screaming in the Cloud (podcast) Last week in AWS (newsletter) AWS Morning Brief (podcast) X: @QuinnyPig Duckbill Group Books Practical Monitoring: Effective Strategies for the Real World by Mike Julian Never Eat Alone by Tahl Raz Keith Ferrazzi Other references Route 53, Amazon’s Premier Database Writing New Editions and Ticking All the Boxes with Andreas Wittig Metacast Ep. 8 - SquadCast Founders on Remote Collaboration in Podcasts Yes, I Test in Production (And So Do You) by Charity Majors Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

March 13, 202459 min

5. Don't do agile, be agile | Co-author of Agile Manifesto and Pragmatic Programmer | Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer and Agile Manifesto, on the true spirit of being agile (vs. "doing agile"), mistakes engineering teams make, and common practices of successful teams. Chapters 10:29 - The genesis of The Pragmatic Programmer 11:41 - People don't know what they want, importance of feedback loops 22:17 - Doing Agile vs. being agile 26:36 - Practices of successful engineering teams 36:35 - Being pragmatic at an early stage startup 44:10 - Things that are still true 24 years after the book was published 55:25 - How does a book define its author's identity? Show notes The Pragmatic Programmer The Pragmatic Bookshelf The Agile Manifesto Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

February 28, 202459 min

4. Henry T. Kirk, entrepreneur, ex-engineer at Google & Amazon

For 10 years, Henry built mobile apps at Google and Amazon. Now he is a partner at a software development agency studio.init(). Henry shares his thoughts on using cross-platform frameworks vs. native languages, argues that Apple’s 30% cut of the in-app purchases is acceptable, and tells us how Google layoffs became a blessing in disguise. Chapters 01:31 - Introduction 04:03 - Viral LinkedIn posts about layoffs 08:13 - Google layoffs 17:36 - Cross-platform app development with Flutter vs. native languages 30:12 - Getting apps into app stores 31:43 - Apple's 30% in-app purchase fees 42:09 - Building apps within Google and Amazon 50:30 - Starting studio.init() and finding first customers 56:58 - Book recommendations Show notes Where to find Henry LinkedIn studio.init() Books Permission to Screw Up by Kristen Hadeed Crucial Conversations Getting More by Stuart Diamond The New One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johnson Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn

February 14, 202448 min

3. Dennis E. Taylor, author of best-selling sci-fi series Bobiverse

Dennis E. Taylor built software for 35 years before trying himself as a sci-fi author. His first novel Outland earned him some “Starbucks money” on Amazon, but his second book We Are Legion made him a best-selling author. Dennis retired as an engineer and became a full-time writer. In this episode, we talked about the parallels between writing software and writing books, Dennis’s process of coming up with ideas and turning them into reality, working with agents, and writing audio-first books. Chapters 02:30 - Introduction 04:42 - Transition from software engineering to writing 07:37 - Primer on Dennis's books 12:02 - Parallels between writing software and writing books 16:10 - Where do ideas come from? 19:41 - The process of writing 22:38 - Writing for an audio-first format 27:28 - Narrating a book 30:43 - Engaging with fans 32:06 - Doing research for sci-fi 36:17 - Making money with books 38:58 - Dennis's favorite authors 41:04 - On following the best practices in writing 44:22 - How writing has changed over time 46:06 - Advice for aspiring authors 47:10 - Where is the Bobiverse series going? Show notes Where to find Dennis Audible profile Amazon profile Twitter/X Books Bobbiverse #1: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Bobbiverse #2: For We Are Many Bobbiverse #3: All These Worlds Bobbiverse #4: Heaven’s River Outland Roadkill Listen to this podcast on our app! Metacast, a podcast app with transcripts: metacast.app Builders Gonna Build on Metacast Metacast: Behind the Scenes on Metacast Get in touch! Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn