
Ben Orenstein
Co-Host of The Art of Product
Ben Orenstein has hosted 113 Episodes.
-
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.
-
78: Ultraworking with Sebastian Marshall
March 14th, 2019 | 47 mins 1 sec
We all freak out about things from time to time. Ben becomes neurotic about feedback, but fellow Tuple team members have different triggers that put them into a tailspin. Fortunately, Ben has found ways to better handle stress.
In this episode, Ben and Derrick are joined by Sebastian Marshall, co-founder of Ultraworking. In previous episodes, Ben has mentioned Ultraworking and how he has benefitted from it.
-
77: Reset Your Perspective
March 7th, 2019 | 1 hr 25 secs
Ben’s been checking in with Tuple users to find out how things are going. Things aren’t working perfectly with the product. Before this feedback, he was feeling pretty good about things. It’s not the feedback’s fault, but Ben focusing too much on it.
Derrick can empathize with Ben because of his experience with Level. It takes just one negative outcome to have an irrational impact on your mental state. Reset your perspective!
-
76: The Scotch Budget
February 28th, 2019 | 28 mins 55 secs
Derrick’s been on a startup roller coaster. It’s been one of those weeks for him. So, he’s grateful for Scotch! He just factors it into Level’s budget.
Along the same lines, Tuple bought lunch today for its staff. It feels free, but Ben doesn’t think you can write off such expenses, even if you talk about business between bites.
-
75: Lots to Be Grateful For
February 21st, 2019 | 35 mins 35 secs
Ben is thankful for Tuple’s success so far. It is helping companies improve efficiency and countries improve the quality of their residents’ lives.
Derrick also expresses gratitude for companies being interested in his product, Level. He is setting up a specific team in Level and addressing concerns to convert them. -
74: The Only Way To Learn
February 7th, 2019 | 35 mins 19 secs
Do you lack energy or motivation at work? Ben tried a new service called, Work Gym from Ultraworking. He found it worthwhile and got a lot of work done on Tuple that he had been putting off for quite awhile. Tuple is about to reach a major milestone - recent PR deployments mean no more global list of online users.
Derrick has also been addressing how to set up companies, teams, and individual users interested in trying Level. So, he hasn’t intentionally built any billing model into the backend of Level, yet.
-
73: Helping Early Access Customers Get Value Quickly
January 31st, 2019 | 40 mins 22 secs
Ben has been experiencing a mix of emotions. Thanks to Tuple, his calendar is packed, and he’s getting more emails, people, and trials. It feels nuts, but it feels like things are working with the new product. It’s a crazy spot to be in, but it feels good. Every day, Tuple gains a little steam.
Derrick feels the same way. He has started doing onboarding calls for Level. Now that he has done the Level demo a few times, his anxiety has subsided. Overall, people seem impressed with the product and interested in trying it.
-
72: How to Know If a Product Is Ready
January 24th, 2019 | 45 mins 56 secs
Derrick set Jan. 21 as the date to start onboarding some pre-order people for Level. He is trying to keep things in perspective when it comes to both positive and negative feedback. So, he is preparing answers to address questions and concerns about the product’s features and functions, or lack of.
Ben’s thirsty for more feedback, customers, and interaction. Fortunately, overall feedback for Tuple has been strongly positively. However, any negativity can be brutal. It’s a mental game. So, he tries to not fear feedback or let it derail progress. Instead, he focuses on celebrating successes.
-
71: Beyond Alpha
January 17th, 2019 | 42 mins 55 secs
Ben has been busy. The alpha launch date for Tuple was Jan. 7. He was nervous about it, but so far, it’s going well. One participant said, “I’m sort of surprised you’re calling this an ‘alpha,’ because everything seems to work!” Ben was glad to hear it, but admits that’s not totally true. He’s still far from where he wants to be with Tuple, but is definitely on the right track.
Derrick has been hard at work, too. He continues to develop Level and knows that there will be ups and downs with customers, functionality, etc. But, he continues to move forward and strives to help others solve problems associated with team communication.
-
70: Refactoring UI: Concept to Launch
January 10th, 2019 | 1 hr 15 mins
If you listen regularly to the Art of Product podcast, then you’re probably familiar with the ongoing joke: How long does it take before we mention Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan? Well, today is your lucky day because not only do Derrick and Ben mention them, but Adam is once again their special guest.
Adam is a software developer, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. Also, he is the creator of Nitpick CI, host of the Full Stack Radio podcast, and author of Refactoring UI and Refactoring to Collections. He describes the process of successfully making, promoting, and selling courses on the Internet. Plus, Steve makes a special appearance to share his side of the story!
-
69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen
December 27th, 2018 | 1 hr 10 mins
Derrick is away, so Ben welcomes Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine and four-time entrepreneur. Jason knows a thing or two about startups and mentoring them to achieve profitability and growth.
Jason is a straight talker and tells it like it is to get to solutions sooner. He encourages bootstrap founders to find an advisor who aligns with their goals. You need to know how to take advice and use advice that is right for you and your business. Even if you get great advice, think for yourself!
-
68: Creating Differentiating Features
December 20th, 2018 | 30 mins 45 secs
Derrick continues to make progress and work toward his self-imposed deadline for Level. He was able to implement and ship batched notifications for the product, which replaces the instantaneous push notifications you would get from a chat tool. It’ll probably be one of the key features to sell as part of the “Level” way. But he’s wondering how to leverage interesting features in marketing.
Ben has been thinking about the same thing with Tuple. He wants to make some features of his product be a seperate, discrete entity that deserves its own spotlight. Capitalize on features!
-
67: Refining Level Notifications and Tuple Alpha Users
December 13th, 2018 | 36 mins 23 secs
Derrick had an interesting week with Level. He focused on important features that will be a part of the product, including notifications dependent on team members’ jobs. Some may want more asynchronous and unobtrusive notifications than others. Level distinguishes configurable notifications based on different roles on a team. Notification policies seem simple on the surface, but are actually very complicated.
Ben announced that November was Tuple’s best month ever for marketing! But now, he is approaching the alpha for Tuple and will focus his attention on product management. Ben wants to figure out what works and what doesn’t. After all, when you can see the wrong thing, the right thing becomes so much easier.
-
66: TinySeed Updates with Rob Walling
December 6th, 2018 | 45 mins 21 secs
Ben and Derrick are joined by Rob Walling to share updates - their favorite part of most podcasts!
It’s been a good week in Tuple marketing land. Thanks to Ben’s tweet announcing the release date for its alpha, his launch list goal was reached. He was surprised by how willing people were to help out when he asked them to do it.
Rob is working on TinySeed, a startup accelerator for bootstrappers.
Derrick provided a pre-order update on Level and plans to do direct outreach to those who ordered it to determine their level of interest for validation.