Ben Orenstein

94: Seeking Clarity

July 4th, 2019  |  34 mins 28 secs

Summer is in full swing. Ben spent a fun and productive day talking about work at a Red Sox game. It was an own-your-own business startup moment.

Derrick can see clearly now, thanks to SMILE laser eye surgery. But he’s still seeking clarity on whether to make the masses happy, or stick to core concerns to attract specific customers when creating a new product.

93: Company of One with Paul Jarvis

June 27th, 2019  |  48 mins 48 secs

After a QuickTime error eradicated Paul Jarvis’s conversation with Ben and Derrick for an Art of Product episode, he’s back with an update on his recently published book, Company of One.

92: Slack Leaves the Market

June 20th, 2019  |  30 mins 13 secs

The world received amazing news in the form of a great gift: Slack is making a major change in the market—it’s leaving!

Ben and Derrick share their thoughts on Slack’s reasonable and rational decision to remove remote control functionality. What happens now? Try Tuple! Just sayin’, actually that’s what Tuple customers are suggesting.

91: Feeling Superhuman with Rahul Vohra

June 13th, 2019  |  41 mins 44 secs

Today’s guest is Rahul Vohra, co-founder and CEO of Superhuman.

90: The Mom Test with Rob Fitzpatrick

May 30th, 2019  |  47 mins 43 secs

Ben and Derrick welcome Rob Fitzpatrick, author of The Mom Test: How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. It’s not your typical non-fiction business book, but short and straight to the point. It should be a mandatory prerequisite for anyone embarking on the startup journey.

Derrick’s Level Retrospective describes how Rob’s book had a major impact on his most recent startup experience. People want to be supportive, so it’s difficult to get unbiased feedback during customer validation. Derrick already knew this to be correct, but underestimated the degree to which everyone lies. So, he felt betrayed by early validation efforts proved to be radically different from reality.

89: Go Big, or Stay Small?

May 23rd, 2019  |  35 mins 37 secs

Ben announced a medium-sized step forward for Tuple. A bug where the video portion would freeze at the start of or during a call was replicated and resolved. It was a double bonus: Fixed the bug and made the Tuple app faster.

Derrick’s contemplative mode continued as he tried to figure out the future of Level. He retreated to think and disconnect. He sought clarity on what to do and is confident that he has made the best decision.

88: Will They Make the Jump?

May 9th, 2019  |  29 mins 30 secs

Recently, Ben felt gloriously empty and described how nice it was to have nothing going on. In his stomach, that is. He successfully finished a 48-hour fast. It was difficult, but pleasurable. Now, he’s back to craving calories, eating, and work!

Derrick had a challenging week with feelings of uncertainty. He invited more people to try Level, but got similar results. He fears that people may not progress with the product. Will people actually make the jump to Level?

87: Meta Podcasting

May 2nd, 2019  |  47 mins 11 secs

Ben boldly admitted to doing a “weird” thing. He started listening to “us.” Not necessarily for quality control, but to spark his memory about topics Derrick and he talked about in previous AoP episodes. As a result, Ben’s become addicted to listening to people building companies podcasts. Unfortunately, there’s just not that many of them.

Derrick also admitted to listening regularly to previous AoP episodes. But more so during the early days of the podcast, when he was apprehensive about his own ability on the microphone and wanted to find ways to improve.

86: The Importance of Paying Customers in Product Feedback

April 25th, 2019  |  51 mins 36 secs

Ben had another good week. He signed up 25 new trials and about five conversions for Tuple. Are you one of the 500 chosen by Derrick to get access to Level? Be sure to check your Inbox on Monday for an email from him to find out.

Also, Ben and Derrick welcome Adam Wathan as a co-host for this episode. Adam’s working on getting release 1.0 of Tailwind out the door with awesome documentation.

85: The Hype Is Real

April 18th, 2019  |  33 mins 10 secs

The hype about Tuple is real! Ben’s been busy adding a bunch of new customers. He’s selling and delivering the dream.

Derrick is back after mentally struggling in the midst of moving, which meant a week of zero productivity on Level. Now, he’s in a better place, mentally and literally.

84: Developer Mindset with Brian Casel

April 11th, 2019  |  40 mins 38 secs

Who’s the mystery voice that only gets better as you listen to this episode? Actually, you’re probably already familiar with the work of the man behind the microphone.

Derrick is busy moving to a new home, so Ben’s co-host is Brian Casel of BootstrappedWeb, ProcessKit, Audience Ops, and Sunrise KPI.

83: The Biggest Lever to Pull in Your Business

April 4th, 2019  |  31 mins 58 secs

Ben and Derrick are back from MicroConf. There were plenty of solid talks and takeaways to help them think, theorize, and hypothesize about moving forward with their products.

Also, Ben presented two Starter Edition sessions: Q & A with Rob Walling and Idea to Validation to Launch: The First 365 Days of Tuple.

82: Idea to Validation to Launch: MicroConf 2019

March 28th, 2019  |  25 mins 6 secs

Derrick and Ben have descended upon Las Vegas for MicroConf and an audience hungry for valuable tips on how to successfully start and grow a business.

Ben will have two Starter Edition sessions: Q & A with Rob Walling and Idea to Validation to Launch: The First 365 Days of Tuple.

81: Sane and Sustainable Growth with Ben Curtis from Honeybadger

March 25th, 2019  |  41 mins 50 secs

Derrick is still traveling. So, Ben’s co-host for this episode is Honeybadger Co-founder Ben Curtis. Honeybadger offers an application health monitoring tool featuring an easy-to-use platform with exception, uptime, and check-in monitoring.

Since its creation about seven years ago, Honeybadger’s three founders - Curtis along with Starr Horne and Joshua Wood - cranked out all the work. However, the company added a marketing person a few months ago and recently hired its first developer.

80: Rediscovering Deep Work

March 21st, 2019  |  29 mins 37 secs

Derrick’s been traveling and finding inspiration from re-reading Deep Work, a kind of manifesto of what Level stands for. He’s discovering how to position and market Level, as well as recognize things in his own work patterns that need to change.

Ben’s been feeling anxiety and thinking about Tuple’s broader mission and impact on the world. He believes deep work can be accomplished through the powerful practice of pair programming.

79: Moving out of Alpha

March 18th, 2019  |  28 mins 11 secs

Ben shares that Tuple is now out of alpha and into beta, which is an arbitrary marker of stability and feature ability. The move is working as planned by serving as a way for customers to choose to opt in or out, depending on if they want it now or wait until it’s launched.

Derrick choose to steer away from such labels with Level, but understands they might have been beneficial to clearly denote the product’s progress.