How to pick a CMS and the challenges of building part time

In this episode Andrew tries to pick a CMS for the new MetaMonster website and talks about his dream solution. Then the guys talk about their ideal consulting businesses. Meanwhile Sean is feeling frustrated by how slow his projects are moving, and wishes he could focus on them fulltime for a bit. They also touch on the difficulties of balancing attention to design details versus just getting a product out the door quickly. Finally, Sean shares 3 businesses he loves.

Links:
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:00.01
Sean
Uh, yeah, I mean, I was going to talk about, well, I should have your record.

Andrew
Do you want to start over?

Sean
No, it just let's just roll with it. Hi, everyone.

Andrew
Hi, how's it going? Behind the scenes look at Andrew and Sean being a bit of a clusterfuck trying to figure out what the hell the pod about 30 seconds before the pod or five seconds after the pod.

Sean
Good.

Sean
We're very organized or we're incredibly organized. think, I think it's a good segue into, into like, we can talk about like other service business and I have a segue into it because I was kind of curious about just how your consulting is sort of going now that.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Yeah. but more importantly, some crazy, crazy, crazy tech Twitter stuff going on these days, huh?

Andrew
Oh, so when i when I said I wanted to talk about CMSs, yeah the WordPress drama, I feel like we covered a little bit last time.

Sean
Since the last.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
There's more updates. it's It keeps getting wackier.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
The WordPress founder took over a plugin, which is batshit crazy.

Sean
Yeah, I was just going to go from crazy batshit WordPress things into maybe Ghost and then CMS's house imagining.

Andrew
Uh, sorry, I totally fucked your, your segue there.

Sean
No.

Andrew
yeah, anyway, I need to build a website and I'm trying to pick a CMS and I want you to, to I want you to tell me which CMS to use and I'm gonna, I'm gonna like ignore you and tell you why you're wrong on every CMS.

Sean
squarepace Okay.

Andrew
Like, because they all suck.

Sean
Okay. Hit me. Hit me. They do all suck, but hit me.

Andrew
Okay. So I think I have it narrowed down. I wanted to use, so I'm trying to build a proper marketing site for MetaMonster so that I can get a little bit of SEO stuff rolling and then publish some content and just like have a place to do marketing.

Andrew
um want to build some free tools, want to do some other things to just start building building the list, our waiting list.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So need to pick a CMS. would typically just build on Webflow. Like Webflow is so fast. It's what I built chart juice on. It's clunky, it's expensive, it has its problems. The CMS sucks if you're doing a lot of content, but for like early stage SaaS website, I don't know many things better. So would typically just do Webflow. But I know one of the marketing channels I wanna try is building

Andrew
some free tools to try to drive, get like SEO juice from, from free tools and like some traffic. it just aligns perfectly with MetaMonster, you know, having a free like, enter a link or copy and paste your content in and we'll generate a page title for you. We'll generate a meta description for you. Like it just makes too much sense. Um, and sorry, one second. Let me let my cat in.

Sean
got

Andrew
Come on in you dork.

Andrew
Okay. So yeah, I want to build free tools and like.

Sean
You want to build free tools. It's great. It isn't a monster.

Andrew
The process of doing that in Webflow is just clunky. I could yeah know i could build them, host them on some free thing like Netlify, and then just like run them on a subdomain.

Andrew
But you know if the whole point is SEO, then running it on a subdomain is a little counterproductive. you know It's not the worst thing in the world, I guess, but you're just like, do they now?

Sean
does it you I thought subdomains count as the main domains. like Yeah, I thought that was the whole thing.

Andrew
I feel, oh, okay, I need to look into that. Cause that would massively simplify my my problems.

Sean
right

Andrew
I always thought like best practice was to do everything on your primary domain and that like subdomains got treated differently.

Sean
I thought that

Andrew
You're looking it up.

Sean
Yeah, I'm looking it up. I feel like it was something.

Andrew
There was a Google update, like in this, one of these new big updates, they they started

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Mashing it all together.

Sean
Yeah. I mean, Ahrefs literally pulls shop.mistreins.com and mistreins.com into one thing now for me.

Andrew
Interesting.

Sean
So. I don't know. Yeah.

Andrew
Do subdomains hurt SEO? and This is not helpful.

Sean
I love that we're just like doing this on our podcast.

Andrew
Yeah. There is no clear-cut answer on whether subdomains are good or bad for SEO. Some say that subdirectories are the better choice for SEO performance, while others say that subdomains can be a valuable tool.

Andrew
Best approach is to assess the benefits and drawbacks on a case-by-case basis and do what works best for your business. Well, fucking great. Thanks.

Sean
and Okay. By the way, there is there's an alternative option, by the way, you can reverse proxy.

Andrew
OK.

Andrew
you Wait, what?

Sean
You can reverse proxy the the main domain so that like. Uh, you can do like, you know, like FinSuite does this. FinSuite does like their own internal solution for this, but I'm pretty sure you could just do this on Cloudflare, where Cloud, like Cloudflare owns the, um like, is is where you manage your DNS and your domain.

Sean
And then basically all, uh, root domain stuff goes to metamonster dot.com, but then like anything that's like, you know, tool.metamonster goes to metamonster.com slash tool slash whatever.

Andrew
Yeah, I was also wondering if I could just do this with a 301 redirect with something like redirect that.pizza.

Sean
Yeah, you could you could do that too.

Andrew
Just redirect stuff to

Sean
You could.

Sean
I don't know if that. Yeah.

Andrew
think I think that would work for SEO purposes, right?

Sean
Yeah, you probably just have to be like really ah judicious about your site map, right? Because like. You want to you want Google to index quote I'm doing air quotes, but index the slash tools, slash whatever page, even though you're redirecting it to something else.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
OK. OK, so it sounds like one option for CMSs is to use Webflow and then use a subdomain, host my free tools on a subdomain, and maybe redirect that subdomain, do some proxy shit, or maybe just leave them on the subdomain, and it doesn't matter, possibly.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
OK, so that's that's like option one. um But then i you know I started thinking, hey, it might be nice to have this just a slightly more unified code base, have a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more control over the code base. So me look at the other CMS options out there. This will also be helpful to know more about these as as we're you know thinking about what to build plugins for in the future.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
so briefly thought about trying to build it on WordPress because that's what so many of our clients and our, or our, our potential customers and their clients use. Um, but God, I just hate WordPress. not only is there all the WordPress drama going on right now, but just like.

Andrew
Most off the shelf WordPress themes are slow, even the fast ones are still slow.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
And they're bloated they just have a bunch of crap I don't need. I don't want to worry about security all the time. I don't want to like, deal with hosting now I'm like, a little wondering like we're going to build a WordPress plugin.

Andrew
And so I would want to use WP engines hosting, but like, is that going to cause problems for us? um us? um I just, I, ah ah you know, as much as I need to get more, I probably need to get my hands dirty and play around some WordPress sites.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
I just don't know that I want to deal with it for our primary marketing site. My ideal solution would be to use Ghost. um Ghost is my favorite CMS by far best editing experience out there and they have added some features lately that make me think it might be possible to like kind of hack it to use it as a marketing site.

Andrew
So the biggest problem with Ghost is it's built for like blogs and like publications. So it's all built around posts and like and blogs, newsletters, that kind of thing.

Andrew
So you're kind of fighting it to be more of a marketing site, build more of a marketing site with it.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But they've added, they call them headers. It's like it's a block that you can use to add calls to action and stuff in the middle of a page. um And then they've also added the ability to create like snippets of content. So you can kind of, even if you added some custom HTML,

Andrew
To something, if you had to do that to create a feature that's not in Ghost, you could then save it as a snippet and then reuse it throughout places. um But this would require me to build a custom theme and like kind of hack that theme to pull in a page and use that as the home page rather than like what Ghost wants to do, which is display a bunch of blog posts on the home page. So a little janky.

Andrew
Not sure if I want want to fight that fight as much as I would love to use Ghost.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Also looked into Stetamic a little bit, but Stetamic basically just has really shitty off-the-shelf themes. They don't have any get-off-the-shelf themes, and I really just don't think it's worth my time to like become a an expert Stetamic theme developer just to stand up a marketing website.

Andrew
like That feels like a massive waste of time.

Sean
Have you tried sanity or have you looked at sanity?

Andrew
Okay, so here's the last thing I'm thinking about trying.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Astro with a headless CMS.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
So Astro is like a front end framework for building content sites. And Astro, interestingly, has some really great off the shelf themes. And then in theory, it should be relatively easy to integrate Astro with a headless CMS like sanity or there's a million of them you could even use Ghost as a headless CMS although again you might have some of the same problems. You could use Prismic or there's a bunch of these headless CMSs.

Andrew
So that that is is an option that I'm considering. To be perfectly honest, I'm a little overwhelmed by like the number of headless CMSs, and like there doesn't seem to be one that's like head and shoulders above the others.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
like There's Contentful, but it's really clunky. we've used I've used it before. It's kind of annoying, and it's more enterprise-y.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So i we used sanity once before at crit. And it seems like it's as good as you make it. So you have to spend some time thinking about how you architect your content a little bit. it seems to be decent if if you architect it well. So yeah, Astro plus a headless CMS is like kind of the last option that I'm that i'm thinking about.

Sean
Gotcha. Gotcha.

Andrew
So yeah, that's that's those are all the options.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
That's what I found over the past couple of days, just like digging into like the latest on CMS bullshit.

Sean
so So I don't know, to give you another option, you want like a page builder instead of using Astro, I think there is a Webflow competitor. I forget their name. ah ah i I don't think it's Web Studio, but I want to say it's something close to Web Studio. They got bought out by another company, but they're sort of like a subsidiary and and independent got bought out by their main customer, basically, because they want me want to make sure they don't go away.

Sean
The point being is that it's Webflow, it's it's all the powers of Webflow with its with ah with ah any CMS you want to connect it to, with or any headless CMS you want to connect it to, is the general idea.

Andrew
I think the whole, if I'm using a headless CMS, like the, the Webless CMS sucks, but that's not the main reason for me to not use Webflow. The main we reason for me to not use Webflow is to not use a page builder, like to have more control over the the actual code.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
And so

Sean
Gotcha.

Andrew
I don't want Webflow with a headless CMS. I want to either not use a headless CMS and use Webflow or use a headless CMS and have control of the code with Astro.

Sean
Gotcha.

Andrew
there are like There are a couple of headless DMSs that have that have page builder type stuff built in where you can like build your own components, like build your own components in code, and then they'll give you like a page builder. I think Storyblock might have some of that. Yeah, they have like a point and click visual editor, they say.

Sean
gotcha

Andrew
but I don't know, man.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
What? Yeah. Pitch me on. Tell me why I should use. Something.

Andrew
And then I'll tell you why I disagree.

Sean
no like yeah um i don't know i feel like I think you should do use WordPress because your customers are going to be in WordPress.

Andrew
Uh,

Sean
I know, I know. What ah ah what a terrible answer.

Sean
oh Yeah, I think your customers are going to be a WordPress and you should look at what RankMath does and what all the WordPress plugins and what you're up against and competing against.

Andrew
I can do that without using it for our primary marketing site. I can just spin up another WordPress site, which I probably i need to do regardless.

Sean
That's true.

Sean
yeah yeah i think well i think you need to do it regardless i'm happy to give you access to one of mine regardless and that would save you the time of like setting it up and and doing all that that being said we might move to ghost so yeah but ghost is 29 bucks a month and my word presence since it's four bucks a month so

Andrew
Yeah. maybe yeah

Andrew
Honestly, the the stuff you're doing, you should be on Ghost because like Ghost is perfect for building an online publication.

Andrew
Okay. All right. You can also run a Digital Ocean droplet and...

Sean
That's 10 bucks a month.

Andrew
Oh my God.

Sean
That's 10 dollars a month, and i have to and I have to manage it. This is like shared VPS with a slightly managed WordPress hosting sort of thing. It's just Namecheap's solution.

Sean
it's It's actually like the cPanel for it is garbage.

Andrew
Oh, interesting.

Sean
It's really bad, but it's four bucks a month, so I let it slide.

Andrew
You should probably actually just leave it on WordPress because migrating is not worth it if you don't have any any customers or any revenue, I imagine.

Sean
yeah yeah yeah i don't know tempted to move the ghost just to know what ghost is like and to to touch it and also so there's not enough like oh so

Andrew
But Ghost is a better experience for sure.

Sean
it's going to depend on how easy it is to edit things on Ghost. It's WordPress is a pain in the fucking ass. WordPress is great because I can make another dev do it, there's an infinite amount of inexpensive devs to like make changes that might need very stupid niche content site.

Sean
I don't know. well i think

Andrew
I think I'm probably where I feel like I'm landing right now is I think I might just like buy an Astro theme, play around with it, see how hard it would be to like hook it up to a headless CMS. And then after I've burned a few hours on that, abandon the whole thing and go to Webflow. like I think that's probably what I end up doing here, to be honest.

Sean
yeah it just feels like it just feels like the shiny solution yeah it just feels like the uh it feels like the the like most amount of effort needed to set something up solution but yeah

Andrew
Astro? Yeah.

Andrew
Yep. That's why I said I'm probably going to abandon it and go to Webflow, because I'm probably going to like get to a point where I'm like, this is stupid. I shouldn't be spending my time on this. I should just build this in Webflow, because I know I can do it fast. And it's more important to have something up than it is to like

Sean
True.

Andrew
have it be all shiny and good. And like does that mean I should just go to Webflow now and not waste my time? Yeah. Am I going to probably go to Webflow anyway?

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Am I probably going to mess around with Astro anyway, I mean? Yeah.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Okay, I have, I have my actual, I think you should just do Astro, I think you should do Astro and not worry about whether or not you're going to switch later, because you've touched WordPress you've done nothing than WordPress, you've done.

Sean
I assume you've touched WordPress, sorry, sorry, what what flow.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I assume you've touched what WordPress at one point.

Andrew
Yeah. I've, I've built add probably five or six WordPress sites over the years.

Sean
Yeah, so you should do the thing that you haven't gotten a chance to like mess with so you can have the full amount of comparison. I do think that like every time I think about headless CMS is I think about how many there are and I get analysis paralysis.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Like I wish there was a market leader in the headless CMS world, but.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. it While you were talking, I did look up to see if there was like a cm headless CMS directory, like a compare like a g like a mini G2 for it.

Andrew
Mm-hmm.

Sean
I don't think there is. I don't think there is. I feel like I should just go make one on Webflow.

Andrew
i've got I've actually got a great ghost directory theme for you if you want to if you want to spin up a ah ghost directory.

Sean
Oh, yeah. Yeah, what is it?

Andrew
It's called Lumen.

Sean
Okay, I just found out about Job Bortley, by the way, which is just like a

Andrew
Here, let me jobboardly. Is that like some jobboard sass?

Sean
Yeah, job board sass, white label job boards, or not even white label, but like, you just put it on. It's like a one time, one time payment, it helps you like backfill a bunch of jobs and you kind of build a job board overnight and charge, you know, small amounts of money to have a job board.

Sean
I'm testing it out as like a potential marketing, like little tiny like sub branded marketing thing for a client.

Andrew
Oh, cool.

Sean
You know, like, like panther has like security engineer jobs for example so i'm wondering if it's a good idea to do something like that oh interesting interesting this is this is like a good this is also a job board by the way yeah watch gotcha ahre gotcha gotcha gotcha

Andrew
Interesting. It's also, yeah, I said it's a directory, and it is. Like if you go to companies or categories, it's just like, you can tell it's just like a directory template or jobs. But it's it is set up to be a job board.

Andrew
But honestly, yeah, dude, ghost sites are just so clean.

Sean
Hmm. Yeah, this is nice. Maybe I will use this for my HeadletCMS comparison.

Sean
Sorry.

Andrew
You can also use ghost as a headless CMS, but then you're stuck with ghost things.

Sean
With AI-generated content.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, there's there's a non zero percent chance that I at some point end up forking ghost and trying to build a a, you know, proper WordPress killer.

Sean
ah So okay, run run me through like your exact requirements again. You want control over the code. What else?

Andrew
OK.

Sean
You want control over the code. You want to have a good sort of experience if you have large content velocity. What else?

Andrew
Yeah. So are you talking about like just my dream MS or are you talking about, like my actual requirements for meta monster?

Sean
Let's go with the former because it sounds more fun. So let's do that.

Andrew
Yeah, because my actual requirements for MetaMonster, if I'm being honest, are get some shit up fast, Andrew, stop dicking around.

Sean
Yeah. yeah

Andrew
Okay, so my dream CMS, one thing that I have realized like as I've been going through this process and thinking about building my own theme, I hate theme development. I hate having to stay up to date with like,

Andrew
changes, you know a new CMS version comes out. It like breaks 10 things and introduces 10 new features. And like i I've never had the patience to be a really good theme developer, because like you to build a good theme, you need it to be fast. So you need it to be lightweight, minimal. So use as few third-party things as possible. You need you need to like build out examples of everything.

Andrew
so you need, and you need it to be super, super modular and like, really well structured. and yeah, you need to like really, really deeply understand the CMS. And I just, I find that incredibly tedious. so one might, my like,

Andrew
One of my main requirements for a Dream CMS is like really good, well-designed, fast themes that are easy to find, easy to install, easy to purchase.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
So like a really good theme ecosystem. And again, part of my problem with the WordPress theme ecosystem is yes, it's massive. Yes, there's a million things out there, but like most of the stuff is so bloated that it doesn't really fit what I want.

Andrew
It's like it's like overkill.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
I want like just a small, simple theme that works well for SAS companies. I want managed hosting. i ah also hate, you know, logging into a DigitalOcean droplet and like updating the, you know, the operating system and, you know, keeping track of all of that, I hate it. So I want like, reasonably priced, you know, managed hosting. Ideally, I should be able to like, you know,

Andrew
from their website, start paying X number of dollars per month, and instantly be set up, you know have it easy to like redirect my DNS shit, and then be able to buy a theme, slap it in, and get going.

Andrew
think after i think like Ghost and Webflow have the best like managed hosting services that I've experienced in the like CMS world so far. Most of the others feel clunkier.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
WordPress is, you know, probably decent if you're willing to use wordpress dot.com I don't know. Then, you know, I want it to be designed to where I can build a marketing site so this is the biggest Problem I have with ghost and why I don't use it on more projects is because it's really designed for publication. So, you know, ghost tries to force you to have a homepage that is a list of content and to really be all about like

Andrew
creating categories of content and and and that. You can create individual like landing pages on Ghost, but they're intended to be like ancillary, to be like supporting pages, not to be core to your site experience.

Sean
Yeah, they're like a about pages or right, right.

Andrew
Yeah. I want something that's designed for for marketing sites, but I also want the clean editor experience that you get in Ghost.

Andrew
where, you know, I don't have 50 different field types I have to pick from and I'm not like, I'm not like constantly trying to, you know, I don't have to, like i don't I don't really like like, I like that Ghost just has pages and posts.

Andrew
I don't feel like most websites need more than pages and posts. Maybe you do if you're doing e-commerce, sure. If you're doing you know a more complex like media site, maybe.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
but But most sites don't need more than pages and posts. and then like with Ghost, you don't have to like, everything is just a big rich text editor.

Andrew
And you can add blocks or they call them cards, editor cards. you can add code embeds, you can add and and I want them to expand the number of cards they have a little bit.

Andrew
And ideally give people the ability to create custom cards um that they can, they come bundled with a theme or or something like that.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
that you can add flexibility to that like rich text editor. But yeah I love the editing experience in Ghost. It's so much cleaner and so much nicer than any other CMS I've ever used.

Andrew
And yeah then you Ghost has some like nice you know metadata kind of options built in.

Andrew
You know, they have like newsletters built in where you can like use ghost as your like email. You can like bring.

Sean
Which is underrated, by the way. Actually very cool.

Andrew
Yeah, but it's the process feels very clunky to me. Like it doesn't, it's never really made sense to me. I've, I knew people use it and get value out of it and they've made it better.

Andrew
Certainly over the last couple of years, like I was just reading through their docs and there's, there's more flexibility now. But it still feels clunky to me. It feels like a CMS trying to be a newsletter, like an ESP, and like I'd rather have a CMS that's separate from an ESP. To me, those are two different functions, and I can copy the the content over to the yeah ESP.

Andrew
And like half the time I'm going to create different content for email than I am for, especially again, if I'm building a marketing site, I'm not, you know, I'm not sending every post in its entirety in an email.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
I'm creating, you know, different email content.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So I don't really need that. You know, their built-in analytics and stuff too doesn't work for me because I don't use any of their membership stuff. Because again, I'm not trying to build like a paid membership publication. I want to build a marketing site. So, yeah. Those are kind of my requirements.

Sean
Sounds like you want Webflow with a better editing experience.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And honestly, like less, I don't, when I say better editing experience, Like, I don't need the level of complex customization that you get in Webflow.

Andrew
If I have a good theme, and I can just like work well within that theme.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And this is my problem with like most WordPress themes too is like most of the like page editor like most WordPress themes big WordPress themes that you buy are come bundled with like Elementor or Divi or all of these like insanely bloated page editors and like I don't want that shit I just want like good simple no-nonsense styles and the ability to do some like customization within those styles

Sean
Right. Right. Right.

Sean
Yeah, I mean, I hear you. I hear you. Yeah, I don't think there's a good option, unfortunately. I think

Sean
The closest I can think, I mean, I have zero experience with Astro and any of these headless CMSs at this point. hear a lot of things about Gatsby. like

Andrew
gett And again, Gatsby isn't a CMS. It's like a it's a a static site generator.

Sean
Oh.

Andrew
And so it's more like Astro, where it's like you can use Gatsby to as like kind of a framework to write your code.

Andrew
And you can add like markdown files and shit. And you can upload markdown files via FTP. But it's not true not a CMS. like To use Gatsby with a CMS, you're going to have to use a headless CMS, just like Astro.

Sean
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, for some reason I thought Gatsby was was the head of the CMS. But yeah, I mean, I think I've shown you like the the like, I feel like

Sean
One answer is like Webflow with a lot of things pre done and build and then a better editing experience. But I'm not that's like far from what you're looking for at the moment because it's a very long project also a separate micro sass tool that I've shown you for in our Figma before but.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Would love for that to get built. Would love to have a ghost style editor content editing experience for Webflow.

Sean
Maybe I'll just, maybe I'll just fork ghost Emma and yoink there.

Andrew
Yeah. i I think ghost would be okay with somebody forking ghost and building a marketing site version of ghost because I think they genuinely don't want to go in that direction.

Sean
hu

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
And so I don't, and they're pretty, you know, unlike WordPress, they seem to be much more open minded about what open source means.

Sean
sure

Andrew
And so I think they would be genuinely happy for someone to take ghost and fork it and go, all right, I'm going to create my own version that is designed for this other experience.

Sean
Toast. Toast.

Andrew
No.

Andrew
And the problem that I have with most of the headless CMSs too is like,

Andrew
they again they require like too much setup like you you have to really architect all of your content types because they're designed to be so flexible because people are using them for like content in apps and like people are creating like 20 different content types and a million different field types within those content types and like

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Mmhmm.

Andrew
I don't want all that shit. And yeah, I could set up a headless CMS and just create two content types and be done with it. I could just like maybe that's what I'll do. Maybe I'll set up Astro with a headless CMS and like mimic ghosts content types and then just, you know, kind of try to work within that. But.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Okay, good luck. Sounds like an adventure.

Andrew
Yeah, again, I'll probably end up just going back to Webflow because Webflow gives me, you know,

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Webflow is the closest thing to what I want. It's just like clunky if you want to do something super custom and it's clunky as a like their actual content editing experience is clunky. But.

Sean
Yeah, I mean, the best editor for WordPress, oh sorry, sorry, the best editor experience for Webflow is Google Docs.

Andrew
Wait, do you integrate Google Docs directly with Webflow?

Sean
No, no, no, you just copy paste.

Andrew
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sean
There are a lot of people, wait, actually, that's actually something, there are a lot of people that use Notion and integrated with Webflow for that purpose, actually.

Andrew
That's interesting.

Sean
They write in Notion and it gets auto published to the Webflow CMS. There's a lot of like make or dot com or Zapier or stuff going on in the middle that I don't I'm not like super privy to anymore, but I seen that before, but.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, we'll see.

Sean
Rough.

Andrew
We'll see what I hopefully by next week, I will have a new meta monster website up and it'll either be built in Astro or Webflow, most likely.

Andrew
And we'll see where I land.

Sean
OK. okay

Andrew
My money is on Webflow, but I still might try Astro first.

Sean
All right, I'm just gonna hard segue into oh you know yeah, what what yeah No,

Andrew
Oh, wait, wait, real quick, real quick. Last question. Do you have a favorite Webflow theme?

Sean
I don't I don't

Sean
I think 90% of them suck. I think the thing that you want to do is there are some like really clean, if you look at like magazine or newspaper, there are some like really clean ones that might be closer to what you're looking for.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
otherwise no.

Andrew
Yeah, most of the SAS ones are like a little too like web.

Sean
They're very over the top.

Andrew
Yeah, it's a good word.

Sean
Yeah. there was one that i was like trying out for like a test blog project that was and it might even been like literally the free one i think my problem my problem with with uh wordpress themes is that the blog part is so usually severely under cooked

Sean
actually it is almost always undercooked even the ones for blog and stuff like they put one ah ah they put like one style to it or it's like the default rich text style for workflow and then they just run away one of the biggest things with like what flows what flows rich text stuff for the blog is that like your h1

Andrew
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Sean
is Your H2s are almost always too big. Your H3s are almost way too big for like a readable post size.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
So I always have to go in and mess with it.

Andrew
I actually like the, the theme that I use for chart juice is sassy. and I, I like it. I think it's pretty good. It's pretty basic, like SAS page kind of, and their blog, I think is actually pretty nice.

Andrew
but I will say everything in sassy feels like 20% too big.

Sean
ah ah The other thing is...

Andrew
Like buttons feel too big, everything feels a little too big.

Sean
Yeah, that makes sense. I think the other thing is that Webflow's native functionality doesn't work perfectly for like a blog section. I always have i almost always am in integrating FinSuite's stuff, because like I don't want to create like resource page like resource category pages and have them load another new web page.

Sean
I want them to filter on my slash blog page, which is another thing.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
So there's always like extra billing that's required.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah, good luck, enjoy, have fun, learn cases how it goes.

Andrew
Thanks.

Andrew
Yeah. Cool.

Sean
I have a hard side way again.

Andrew
OK. Hard segue.

Sean
Okay, attempt number two. we before this Before this podcast started, we were talking about sort of like, your thoughts on product consulting. Last episode, I kind of wanted to ask you, but then we ran long.

Sean
is like, you know, you, you've been doing it a number of different things since, since you have become fun and bloid. Um, Um, uh, you know, we talked a lot about like doing, like doing product consulting and stuff, even doing product consulting with us, which has been awesome.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
Thank you for all the hard work so far. I'm just kind of curious, like, well, one thing is like, like how that's going as an independent product consulting sort of person compared to you know when you were running an agency very very different but also number two is like how else you would like like I'm always thinking about like other agencies to run because I don't know the grass is always greener like one of the things

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
One of the things I talk to my team about is we are very much like, like we run our shop. Let me put this in a different way. There's a lot of different types of agencies.

Sean
Different agencies are like different types of restaurants. There are Michelin star restaurants, and then there are faster food restaurants. And we try to lean closer to Michelin star restaurant style, or or like, I don't know.

Sean
Yeah, Michelin star restaurant sort of thing.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Not saying we're the French laundry, but we We work really hard to maintain the quality of our work and get really, really bespoke and custom.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And it's not always the most, the highest margin sort of thing compared to McDonald's. Part of me always thinks about productized services, especially like very niche productized services or product like niche high impact things like website optimization or rails optimization is something else someone else does or like,

Andrew
yeah

Sean
specific like executive ghostwriting for example. Anyway before we got on this podcast we were sort of jamming on like surface ideas and stuff so.

Andrew
Yeah, so pretty much all of the consulting I've done minus like one or two small like projects has has been through miscreants. And those projects typically look more like product design with some lightweight product management. So you know I do some story mapping with clients to help them like hone in their ideas and like make sure we're on the same page about scope.

Andrew
And then I check back in with them from time to time. Well, we might do another story mapping session. you know I ask them some discovery questions. I make sure I understand they their user personas and their their business goals and stuff like that. And then you i'm I'm working with a a product designer to to deliver designs and then helping to, like,

Andrew
you know, helping that designer with technical details and, you know, serving as kind of like little bit creative director, you know, being a second round device, a second round of feedback, a little bit like technical account manager providing both technical expertise and then account product project management. And then, and then again, some lightweight product management product strategy kind of stuff.

Andrew
If you had to like give a name to the role that I've had, I would call it technical account manager. like That, I think, is the closest thing, where I'm doing a little bit of strategy, a little bit of technical advising, a little bit of like you giving feedback to the team internally, but it's more about like just sort of keeping the project on track and everything.

Andrew
you know, very similar to like what my actual client work role had become at crit where like that's, that's kind of the role that I was filling. The big difference is just like not having to worry a whole lot about like, you know, if we lose a client, then, you know, certain which we,

Andrew
We haven't really lost a client so far. Like we had the first project, I think we worked on together. Like we got the initial work done and they just, they didn't have other stuff they wanted to continue with right away, but. don't feel like we've really lost a client so far, but you know, if we lose a client or if a client gets to a point where they need to press pause or something, it's just a lot less stressful than it was when I was running crit, because it's just me.

Andrew
I don't have to, you know, I have a ah ah freelancer I'm working with, but their freelance, they, you know, they're sort of going through this.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
They're used to, you know, some ebbs and flows. and so, You know, I don't have to be super stressed about like building the business that's that's not been my goal. And I don't have to be stressed, but I'm like not hitting some arbitrary goal or like All of that. So it's a lot more, I can just kind of do the work and then I can focus on some other things. It's been really nice, really really have loved the flexibility and and everything. So it's it's been really great from that standpoint. I think the piece that I still get kind of hung up on sometimes is just like wanting to be more involved in

Andrew
Like as a product manager, kind of head of product, like wanting to be shaping the strategy more, wanting to be interviewing users, wanting to be helping make sure the client is actually citing the right things to design and build. And.

Andrew
you know in my experience when you're hired as like a product design consultant you can do a little bit of that stuff by forcing clients to go through a process and like and all this but but it's hard when they're really coming to you to deliver designs and you're trying to sell them something that they didn't ask for it it's just kind of tricky so I think what's, what's the most interesting to me is less like going the product eyes route and actually going even more boutique to where you're not the Michelin star restaurant you're not the

Andrew
you're not the McDonald's, you're like a private chef or even maybe it's even more like maybe private chef is wrong because a private chef is still being hired to cook food.

Sean
You're a nutritionist.

Andrew
Like, yeah, you're a nutritionist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. That's perfect.

Sean
Hell yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, people are coming to you being like, help me figure out what to eat. um And I think that's the The role, the kind of thing that if I were trying to really build a an independent consulting business. I think that's what I would want to do. And I think that probably

Andrew
you know, around the beginning of next year, I'm gonna make a decision about, do I want to put more energy into building an indie consulting business? Or do I just keep scraping by until I can get MetaMonster to the point, or some project to the point where it can sustain me?

Andrew
And that decision will ultimately come down to what kind of traction have we seen and like, do I feel confident that like, if I'm, if I feel like I'm three to six months away, then I'm probably not going to put the energy into building a consulting business right now.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
But if I feel like I'm still one to two years away, then I'm probably going to start building a consulting business so that I can, you know, earn real money while I build other things.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Currently, with MetaMonster, do you feel like you are, like, six months away?

Andrew
I think, I think by the beginning of the year, we might be.

Sean
Okay nice.

Andrew
Yeah, I think so call it nine months or eight months or something, you know, like, I think that I think there's still some big question marks, like, we haven't built the product yet.

Sean
Yeah, yeah,

Andrew
So like, Can we do the things we think we can do technically, like once we start actually building? And then just you how many of the people who have been giving us commitments, verbal commitments so far, actually convert into customers? And how many people from air landing our waiting list can we convert into actual customers? and you know where Google Ads are working to build the waiting list, will they work to get paying users?

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So all of these are the things that are like still up in the air that I won't know until the beginning of next year.

Sean
Nice. okay i'm asking because every day i think about the sasps i mildly ah work on every day i feel like i am a month an extra month away at the moment sas is fucking hard oh yeah yeah yeah i like part of me part of me

Andrew
Uh-huh.

Andrew
Sass is hard, man. it's It's long and slow. And yeah, it's a challenge.

Sean
tell was like maybe i should just hunker down for a weekend and like build a lot of it myself and like go and like learn larval for example or whatever at this point at this point like i feel like stackwise so is so far away from where it needs to be that like uh

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
yeah

Andrew
Yeah. So what's, we haven't gotten an update on stack wise in a while. What's, what's going on there? Cause like you'd found, I think like at one point at one point you had a developer you, uh, like.

Andrew
They were trying to use one stack and then you realize that they were really more of a larval like developer and so you switched over to like a larval stack and then did you have to is that the developer you had to who had to step away from the project and like is that the one where you

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
uh... yeah yeah yes so so he had to step away uh... for for like a bunch of personal things that that was going on but so so i went online found another dev uh...

Sean
at this point if anyone wants to be a developer i got i got money i will pay you want to do this goddamn thing

Andrew
you.

Sean
uh... but i heard him i mean uh... i was trying uh... like It had been on pause for like a month or two, especially with Black Hat and everything going on. And then it was trying like what Cody Schneider had kind of and suggested on the call of like, like there there are just like there's like mid-level talent that becomes like senior level with the power of chat GPT and all these things.

Sean
And yeah, I grabbed someone there from online jobs. He's been making some progress.

Sean
I feel like the design of the product has been deteriorating, which is like unfortunate, but it's small.

Andrew
How involved are you in like, in like, how much work are you doing to spec out features and, and hand it over? Are you just kind of letting this person run free or are you with like some high level guidelines?

Sean
uh so there's like a wireframe design of it well so so this is where this is where we got to so sorry long

Sean
First, I was building in React, shad cn, and xjs. I found out he's more of a Laravel person, so I went to React, Laravel, and I produced shad cn as I went to this step. And that was making progress. We were getting somewhere. We got ran into like a data problem that that we hadn't solved yet.

Sean
Working with this dev, he is way more of a Vue dev than he is React. So he's in swapping everything into Vue, but Chatzian doesn't work on Vue, so he's just swapping it over to Prime Vue.

Andrew
Mm-hmm.

Sean
And it looks, eh, you know, but all they're all white and black, but it's just like a little bit shittier.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Because prime view is a little bit shitty or not.

Sean
But it's

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Because prime view is a little bit shittier. I mean, and and also so I would say like, I think this dev doesn't have as much of an eye for for design, which isn't, you know, what we hired him for.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
What I've given, so like he's been rebuilding a lot of that functionality. He's slowly adding things on.

Andrew
Do you have an estimate for like when it should, in theory, be done?

Sean
I mean, it was supposed to be in the last month. Now it's going to be the end of this month.

Andrew
what what What happened? what's the What's the reason it didn't get done by end of last month?

Sean
I think end of last month was an ambitious goal. I think he was a little bit over ambitious on on the thing. I think there's a lot of other issues that he ran into, I think.

Sean
And for what it's worth, also, I was mildly absent because I wasn't really around the other.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. And and now like this that also has like some like. issues family wise and uh like uh uh you know i think it slowed down a lot of things there so just try an agency oh

Andrew
Yeah. I wonder if you should try, like, I feel like you've been trying to work with people

Andrew
Like one, no, it's not actually what I was gonna say. So one, I totally disagree that like chat GPT can make a mid level developer senior level. Like I feel like that's completely wrong. Because I think what what chat GPT is the worst at is like that mid to senior level thinking. I think chat GPT maybe can make a junior,

Andrew
engineer a mid-level or more likely can make a mid-level engineer capable of doing the work of like a mid-level engineer plus a junior engineer or something like that.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
chat GPT cursor give you like an extra junior engineer and if you have someone who can kind of direct that and like work with that you can like move faster.

Sean
um Sure. Sure. Sure.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
Maybe it makes some juniors mid in terms of output or something but yeah I think

Sean
Sure, sure, sure.

Andrew
Mid to senior is the wrong way to think about it.

Sean
Fair.

Andrew
Yeah, fair.

Sean
For the record, I don't know if Cody's necessarily said that. I'm just kind of interpreting for the last time. But sure, sure. Go ahead. Yeah.

Andrew
So I wonder if if you would be better off looking for, like, ah ah really senior developer and like paying more but to someone who could get the shit done faster like look at like lemon.io or or a service that would help you find a senior level uh, overseas developer and like work with them so that you're still, you know, like you probably can't afford, yeah you know, senior level US prices, but you could, um, but like look for a senior level developer, pay a little more pay, you know, a hundred an hour, something like that.

Andrew
but pay it to someone who's going to be more able to like independently like crank shit out.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
yeah.

Sean
Yeah, I think i think it's a like and think it's a great idea. I think, to be honest with you, as much as there are all of these hiring boards and everything, Like, it is a process.

Sean
It is hard to find a good dev.

Andrew
It is.

Sean
And I think it's been easier with like the like offshoring because the risk is not there in terms of like, you know, I could try them out for a week and if it's not good, I'm out not a exorbitant amount of money, but yeah,

Andrew
Yeah, it is.

Sean
yeah, yeah.

Andrew
That, and then I think you might just have to project manage it a little bit more. So you might have to like, in addition to just giving people wireframes, like have more of a, Hey, this sprint, we're going to do this.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
And I want to see it done by this point. And then like next sprint, we're going to do this. And then next.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
front And like, get it, give them like very clear, like. Spectile stuff. I mean, if you find someone senior enough, you might not have to do that, but like, probably you're going to have to do something more like that and just crank that way.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Part of me. Part of me. is jealous of the speed at which some indie hackers are able to just turn out SaaS apps.

Sean
Like I get the whole idea that like, oh, engineers don't know how to market. So like like engineers don't know how to market. So that's why they build like 12 startups in 12 months because they're just trying to see whatever hits on that stuff.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
So I get like the the the learning from that is like not to do that, but like, Part of me I think just wants to build the thing and have it out in the world and scratch the itch and it doesn't really need like like Sure

Andrew
Sure. So I feel like the other thing that you're like, you're probably as like a key difference is like not a single one of the people who's cranking something out like 12 things out in 12 months gives a shit about like,

Andrew
view prime looking worse than shad cn like most of them like most of those apps are like you know they might some of them look decent a lot of them look kind of ugly like people are just like using a boilerplate and like don't care about the little details and they're just like and I feel like it's very hard for you and me to like not care about the little details

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Andrew
sometimes And I think sometimes that's right and sometimes it's wrong. like Sometimes we need to care less and just like get the shit out the door. like I need to just use Webflow instead of Astro.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And then sometimes we like we need to... Sometimes yeah that level of care makes...

Sean
yeah

Andrew
you know

Andrew
It makes a product, like part of the reason things don't take off is, sure, because there's some luck involved, but part of it is because you didn't take the time to like really put your energy into a thing.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
And like, you know, usually putting your energy into a thing, again, means doing some marketing and doing some like validation and research and talking to humans and and stuff.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
But, but some of it it also goes into like making something quality. There is too, like though, I will say like, like Brian Castle has one month app. Honestly, that might be what you should do. You should maybe work with Brian and like, it's going to cost me more, but like.

Sean
no there's no way there's no way i can i i think looking at the results of one month app i don't think they're bad in in any way i think the sorry to shoot down the idea i'll consider it regardless after the yeah yeah i think like i i think like those things like arguably are like bubbleable and i think i want more to launch with

Andrew
They're just, it's too, it's smaller. Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah but that's again that's the other thing is like anyone who's launching something in a month is launching something tiny like you're not building like that much functionality in a month you're just not like you know my friend Ramy is he can crank something out in like a month or six weeks one he's he has his own boilerplate he's built over the years he does it all like in Django with so he can like

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
he can generate a bunch of shit really fast. And then when he launches something, it is tiny.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, I think the the point the point that I was getting at wasn't so much that like I'm jealous that they can launch 12 in 12.

Andrew
It is very, very minimal.

Sean
It's it's like the ability to go and like launch the thing, regardless of how much time it takes. But I think i think what it is is, frankly, it has eaten away at me ah ah so often.

Sean
And this is like a stupid thing, right? uh the fact that you were able to just like you you got to like sit and code and not have to build not not have to like like manage people for like two three weeks and like and then and then and then you were like look at chart juice and then i was like this is fucking dope this is

Andrew
Fair. Fair.

Sean
And I think I think there's like a personal and simmering frustration of like, I wish everyone would just leave me alone for three weeks, and I could just fucking do something. But, but I think it's a, and you know, I think it's, it's it's an unfair frustration.

Andrew
I feel you, man. I feel you. i I felt very similarly for most of the time at Crit. And part of why we ended up selling Crit was like, Austin and I knew we kind of wanted to do something else.

Andrew
And we were like, we just, you know, whatever that was going to be for each of us in the future, we just both had the feeling that like we wanted to do something else.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And it was a chance to like, to move on past Crit in a way that was like kind of a win for everybody, even if it wasn't the massive win we had hoped for.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I'm too bad I can't sell miscreants. By the way, speaking of miscreants, I found out that my lead web developer listens to the show. So shout out to Yarek.

Andrew
Nice.

Andrew
What's up, what's up?

Sean
yeah Don't tell all the people about this podcast. I don't need the whole staff listening. but

Andrew
We only want our 13 listeners. We can't, 14, the whole thing is ruined.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe this are a wait list like a private podcast.

Andrew
Private podcast are a thing. Brian was doing them on on his like ripple dot.fm thing.

Sean
That's true.

Sean
Yeah, I know I don't want a 13 person private podcast that sounds depressing.

Andrew
Yeah, private. but No, I don't either. I would i would ideally like to have, like I think my dream would be to have 50 to 100 people actively listening who were like,

Andrew
who were, you know, other bootstrappers and like agency owners and stuff like, think that would be, or like freelancers or, you know, folks who are, I think that would be really cool.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Cause then you'd be like, um, you'd have a tiny audience.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
People would listen. That would be enough people that like, you could help each other out from time to time. Like, yeah.

Sean
Hmm. Yeah, yeah, they can come on the show. One of them maybe wants to be my- wants to be a part-time dev for my thing.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. So that'd be cool.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
All right, man. Oh, oh, one one last thing.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I've been in the process of getting rid of all of our nonstick pans and like upgrading our pans, and it's making me so happy.

Sean
well

Andrew
I've I spent all of this like a big chunk of this weekend re-seasoning my grandmother's cast iron skillet. And I feel like I've finally gotten it. to like a decent level of seasoning where if I keep using it, I'll, it'll be like what I've wanted it to be for a long time. So, and then I, I got a stainless steel pan and I think I'm going to get one more stainless and a new nonstick. So I still am going to have one nonstick, but then going and all like stainless and cast iron otherwise. And it just like, it brings me so much joy to like, get rid of all these junky old, old nonstick bands that were causing us cancer and just like.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
not even nonstick anymore and be like, have good pans. And I'm like trying to cook more, trying to get back into it. So.

Sean
Kitchenware is is good business because it gets dirty. people throw

Andrew
But the great thing about like stainless is you don't have to throw it out.

Sean
are you are you

Andrew
You can just scrub the shit out of that.

Sean
That's true.

Andrew
Like stainless should last you forever.

Sean
Are you, are you into this like PFAS thing, by the way? Are you like, are you not, not into it, but are you, well, the PFAS, like the forever chemicals and is that not why you're throwing up?

Andrew
What?

Andrew
What's the thing?

Andrew
Uh, it's part of it.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Yeah. Like I, it's like, I'm not someone who worries about it all the time.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Like I kept these nonstick pans for years.

Sean
okay Okay. Gotcha.

Andrew
and I bought a new nonstick pan, but like, yeah, I do think that once nonstick gets scratched up and stops becoming nonstick, it is probably giving you cancer and you should get rid of it.

Sean
Uh-huh.

Sean
Yeah, same

Andrew
and in general, I think stainless stainless and cast iron are both. like better for you and just like better tools for most things.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
If you just like put a little bit of care into them and like a little bit of time into learning how to use them.

Sean
Yeah, im I'm with you. i When I was in my apartment, I used one stainless steel pan the entire time. It caused me to scrub it a lot, because I kept you know not letting it get hot enough.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
But yeah, it was cool. It was fun. It was it was nice to not use a nonstick and like worry about, like oh, is my metal spatula going to destroy it and all that stuff.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
So I'm with you. OK, really quick, before we go, this is going to extend it by like at least 10 minutes.

Andrew
Okay. Okay.

Sean
ah meaning to tell you this I have three really, really interesting businesses that have been on my mind for the past week or or more.

Andrew
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. These are businesses to start.

Sean
no these are just like businesses i've seen that are like that make me jealous that make me incredibly jealous it's not chart juice or meta monster number one was a dry number one number one was a dried flower shop crazy margins they last fucking i don't know they last forever but they last a long much longer time than flowers and they're not as seasonal as like you know where you have graduations and your flowers don't die

Andrew
Okay.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wouldn't expect that neither of those should make you jealous at this point. Oh, interesting.

Sean
Random thing. The, the actual two that are so beautifully simplistic are one is called one schema.com.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
It's just an embeddable CSV importer. It's a startup that lets every app developer immediately have like CSV abilities.

Andrew
Oh, that's dope.

Andrew
Honestly, we might be able to use that for MetaMonster.

Sean
Yeah, you could, because it's such a it's such a beautiful solution. And number two is this startup called the security startup called Nira and IRA. It's just permissions management for Google Drive Dropbox and 65.

Andrew
Dude, I'm pretty sure Neera is Heat and Shaw's company, isn't it?

Sean
I don't know.

Andrew
And I think he just sold it. Yeah. He heat and shot ah ah has been working on near. This is like the eighth iteration of, of this product. It's been like 10 different, well, I just said eight and then 10. It's been a bunch of different things. Like they've pivoted a bunch of times trying to find product market fit. And I think they just sold to Dropbox.

Andrew
Yeah. I think they sold to Dropbox to join. I don't know if it was like an Aqua hire or like a, a like a real sale, but I think they sold to Dropbox to help build Dropbox is like universal search kind of thing.

Sean
Dash. Yeah, yeah. Oh, cool. Sick.

Andrew
Yeah, I just saw this because. Oh, shit, what's his name? Walter Chin, you know, you know of Walter.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, Walter just posted about which is posted or commented on Heaton's post. a

Sean
Nice. Dude, I saw fucking ah like, I think I met he didn't two RSAs ago.

Andrew
Did you?

Sean
yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
I didn't know his name was he didn't I, someone just introduced me and told me like he's building near us.

Andrew
You know, he's like a he's like kind of famous in the bootstrapper world, right?

Sean
No, someone just told me.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah. Heaton like built

Sean
Oh.

Andrew
he goes He goes way back, like he was like one of the OG bootstrappers.

Andrew
He built an analytics tool early on, Crazy Egg. I think he built Crazy Egg, or like Kissmetrics, one of those.

Sean
oh

Andrew
Yeah, he built Crazy Egg, and oh, and Kissmetrics. He built both of them.

Sean
Gotcha. Gotcha.

Andrew
And yeah, so he's like one of the OG bootstrappers who's been doing this for years. and like He's written a lot and like, he has a massive following.

Sean
Gotcha. Cool.

Andrew
He's cool guy. he talked to us a couple of times for like content we were working on at crit.

Sean
Gotcha. I don't actually know if I met he didn't, I just remember I met someone, but I also watched him pitch Nira to someone at RSA, like two RSA's ago.

Andrew
Cool. Yeah.

Sean
and that's been like in my mind, in the back of my head of like, what are like really, really beautiful, like solutions to things. So you're telling me, you're telling me that I, that, that Google drive permissions management,

Sean
is now another greenfield because they got bought by Dropbox.

Andrew
Maybe, yeah.

Sean
Sick.

Andrew
Let me look at this. Honestly, such a smart software security product idea.

Sean
It's so good.

Andrew
Also wild to me to think of Heat and Shaw at RSA.

Sean
It's...

Andrew
like Because Heat and Shaw, in my mind, is famous, but at RSA, yeah because he's so new new to security, they've only been doing security stuff for like for like a few years now.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
I see.

Andrew
And so he's probably not famous at RSA, but he's that's that's so funny to me.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Let me look. I'm trying to look for his posts. Yeah.

Andrew
Hold on.

Andrew
Uh, yeah, Nira is now part of Dropbox. Our team has been hard at work integrating Dropbox as a connector and building nearest capabilities into Dropbox Dash, Dropbox's new AI powered universal search. our product and expertise fit seamlessly.

Andrew
They're not shutting Nira down.

Andrew
And yeah, they're, it sounds like they're going to be a part of the Dropbox stash team. Honestly, like I bet that this is as much about Nira as it is like the previous product they were working on before Nira was called FYI.

Sean
Hm.

Andrew
And it was like a universal search thing.

Sean
I see.

Andrew
so I bet this is like kind of both, it's both like Dropbox wanting Nira and Dropbox wanting their expertise on like universal search stuff.

Sean
Huh. You think he uses podscan? He didn't shawl. He didn't shawl. He didn't shawl.

Andrew
What's up, Heaton?

Sean
OK, cool.

Andrew
That would be funny.

Sean
Well, sick.

Andrew
Yeah, your is cool, man.

Sean
Yeah, near is dope. Near is. Okay. Well, thank you for that extra bit of information. I'm going to go down this rabbit hole now. I will see you later.

Andrew
Yeah, man. Peace.

Sean
Peace.

Andrew
Later.