The Art of Product
Ben and Derrick chat weekly about building software companies.
Episodes
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156: Reflections on 2020
January 7th, 2021 | 46 mins 27 secs
Ben & Derrick reflect on their journeys the past year and their plans for 2021.
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155: How Do You Buy A New Habit?
December 31st, 2020 | 37 mins 22 secs
Ben wants to build a meditation habit and is considering ways to facilitate that. Tuple is still searching for a product designer. Derrick & Ben both saw success with their year-end annual upgrade promotions. Derrick is planning a Product Hunt launch in early January.
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154: Courtland Allen Must Be Stopped
December 17th, 2020 | 39 mins 48 secs
We're nominated for the SaaS Podcast Awards - go vote! The guys muse about the clever marketing behind the awards and their fellow nominee Courtland Allen's unfair charm & good looks. Ben talks through a shared clipboard feature he is shaping for Tuple. Derrick shipped a bunch of marketing projects this past week.
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153: The Value of Coaching
December 10th, 2020 | 29 mins 31 secs
The Tuple team is finishing up 3-player mode. Ben is continuing to derive value out of coaching (this time with video games). Derrick shipped a 7-day free trial for SavvyCal and competitor comparison pages.
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152: Default Alive By Spring
November 26th, 2020 | 34 mins 51 secs
Ben opened up a job listing for Senior Product Designer at Tuple. The Tuple team is working on full-featured multi-participant calls. Derrick shipped embedding SavvyCal links on websites and is working on a number of website updates with Corey. Derrick hopes to achieve default alive state by spring through a combination of marketing efforts.
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151: The One Comma Club
November 19th, 2020 | 24 mins 39 secs
Derrick reached an important revenue milestone for SavvyCal. Ben is looking forward to an upcoming Tuple retreat.
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150: It's Like The Vinyl Of Telling Time
November 12th, 2020 | 31 mins 7 secs
Ben and Derrick discuss some recent instances of founder CEOs stepping down from their posts. Derrick is shipping a unique feature this week. Ben is trying (but failing) to avoid getting into antique watches.
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149: Check Your Business Privilege
November 5th, 2020 | 40 mins 57 secs
Derrick has found a new groove working in public again. Ben is polishing a job posting for a Senior Product Designer role at Tuple. The guys discuss long-term visions and harvesting profits vs. reinvesting in the business.
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148: No Design Survives Contact With The DOM
October 29th, 2020 | 34 mins 2 secs
Ben is enjoying working on marketing activities. Tuple is beginning their experiment of offering pairing coaching calls to customers. Derrick shipped a differentiating feature and received very positive response. A new part-time head of marketing is starting with SavvyCal in November. The guys opine about specialists vs. generalists.
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147: Incremental Shipping
October 22nd, 2020 | 30 mins 2 secs
Derrick shipped the next part of team functionality, which opened the door for expansion revenue. Ben is zeroing in on hiring a pairing coach for Tuple customers. In his down time, Ben is taking up playing the piano - something his childhood self would be appalled about.
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146: Growing Teams
October 15th, 2020 | 29 mins 22 secs
The Tuple team is contracting with Thoughtbot for pairing and leveling up their Rails skills. Derrick is working on team permissions and thinking about working with a marketer after wrapping up most of the work around the StaticKit sale.
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145: What's Next for StaticKit
October 8th, 2020 | 27 mins 56 secs
Derrick is joined by Cole Krumbholz to talk about Formspree's acquisition of StaticKit. They delve into Cole's history as a bootstrapped founder, dealing with competition, defining success, how the deal came together, and what's next for both products.
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144: Launching SavvyCal
September 24th, 2020 | 37 mins 22 secs
SavvyCal is officially launched! Derrick talks through how the launch went and how he's managing his freshly-restocked information pipeline. The Tuple team is nearing the finish line on their large upcoming release and recorded a "peek behind the curtains" screencast for customers.
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143: Networking Thoughts
September 17th, 2020 | 32 mins 35 secs
Ben is trying out Roam for organizing his notes. He shares some tips for engineers applying for jobs. After manually onboarding customers for a few weeks, Derrick is soft-launching SavvyCal to accelerate his learning from real-world customers.
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142: A Savvy Rebrand
September 10th, 2020 | 32 mins 59 secs
Ben reflects on their latest all-hands meeting and a major upcoming release that will improve the Tuple internals. Derrick recounts the Mighty Cal rebrand to SavvyCal.
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141: Hiring Optimally
August 27th, 2020 | 38 mins 39 secs
Derrick is continuing to manually onboard Mighty Cal users and is incorporating their feedback into the product. He is driving towards optimizing self-service onboarding to enable opening up signups more broadly. Ben is considering hiring a someone to optimize trial conversions. They discuss OKRs and what skills this person might need.