Sean's building a SaaS!
In this episode Andrew talks about his recent struggles with ADHD and feeling like MetaMonster is moving too slowly. Meanwhile, Sean is planning to build a new SaaS product within Miscreants. The guys talk about the challenges of maintaining focus on a new product while running an agency, and how to set up the project for the best chance of success. Sean gets deeply uncomfortable, it's great!
Links:
Links:
- Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
- Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
- MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
- Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
- Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
- Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.
Transcript:
00:00.79
Sean
Do you play Starcraft? Have you played Starcraft?
00:03.15
Andrew
No, I've never played Starcraft. I'm not a big gamer.
00:04.71
Sean
and
00:06.24
Andrew
Like the most time I've ever spent on video games, like my top games are like Pokemon, like Crystal.
00:13.03
Sean
That's true. You're like an actual sports like healthy touch grass person. I forget that.
00:17.74
Andrew
i I'm not an there I'm a watch sports and then touch grass in like nerdy hiking ways, not like Boy Scout touch grass.
00:27.01
Sean
Yeah, but I'm like, ah ah I'm like, a you know, watch eSports and touch Minecraft grass sometimes, every guy.
00:34.57
Andrew
Why do you ask about Starcraft?
00:35.44
Sean
I've been I may have gotten really into stuff. It's been like two days, but I may have spent a lot of hours into Starcraft over the weekend. But it's because, well, first of all, it's really interesting because like,
00:48.14
Sean
I see how it's like a groundwork for a lot of other games that have been really bad at and I see the difference between people who are good at like played Starcraft and then we're good at other games like League of Legends versus not. More importantly, it's because my brain has been on like like agents, agent systems, Starcraft is like RTS where you manage a bunch of little tiny things and that move around the map.
01:06.11
Andrew
Huh.
01:08.75
Sean
and And like, so for some reason, my brain has that connection.
01:11.48
Andrew
Yeah.
01:11.58
Sean
Oh, so it's because I've always been really bad at it. And like my best, one of my but best friends is like, was top 200 in the US. So, it's, it's not that impressive.
01:19.07
Andrew
whoa Whoa.
01:21.89
Sean
I'm i'm pretty sure it, I think it's like, you know, top 200 snapshot in time, never went pro.
01:22.08
Andrew
Oh.
01:26.65
Sean
Oh, so it's in the US. So he's Korean, but.
01:28.07
Andrew
I mean, I mean, it's so impressive. Like why you gotta, why you gotta hate on your friend? Like your friend sounds, that's cool.
01:33.85
Sean
that's what we do okay okay fine fine fine he's pretty good he's pretty good at it anyway he's been rolling me constantly it's but maybe I'm just salty that he's been fucking destroyed like cool
01:42.52
Andrew
I played Civ three for a while. Is that like similar vibes where you like, you send all your little people to go do things and you have to constantly like be like, okay, do this.
01:50.93
Sean
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah
01:52.07
Andrew
Now do this. Now do this. Now you, you guys build this and you guys build this and okay. Cool. Yeah. I could get hooked on some, some Civ three back in the day.
02:02.67
Sean
Nice, nice. Yeah, some Age of Empires, some Fred Alert.
02:06.05
Andrew
Yeah, I never got beyond Civ III.
02:06.19
Sean
and um Okay.
02:08.67
Andrew
Again.
02:08.70
Sean
Alright, alright. I mean, I need discovered football. That was my weekend. um um Amongst like some other random things, but how about you? How you doing?
02:18.77
Andrew
I'm all right, man. i I am feeling a little stressed because I feel like the last couple of weeks, we just have not made much progress on MetaMonster at all.
02:29.67
Sean
Hmm.
02:31.04
Andrew
So there's a handful of of things at play here. Austin was trying to buy a house. Yeah, which just sort of consumes your life while you're doing it.
02:36.98
Sean
Oh, sick.
02:41.38
Andrew
And it all happened like way faster than he was expecting.
02:41.66
Sean
Sure.
02:44.48
Sean
sure
02:45.51
Andrew
It ended up falling through, like they decided to pass on it.
02:44.87
Sean
Sure.
02:47.47
Andrew
So he's he's not buying the house, but he was going through the motions.
02:48.03
Sean
Okay.
02:53.13
Andrew
And I think it was just eating up all of his like attention as it would.
02:58.84
Sean
right
03:00.29
Andrew
So that was going on. And then I've talked about robotic season. The build season of robotic season like takes up a lot of my free time. like you know, one to two weeknights and all day Saturday basically are spent at robotics and that eats up a lot of time. we've been having to fight with our landlord ah like getting our heater worked on. He keeps saying there's not a problem. We try to tell him there's a problem. We have been fighting with him on that. and then I just think for the past like two or three months, I've been in a season of like
03:42.79
Andrew
higher ADHD, like my ADHD feels like it is has been harder to manage for the past couple months. And so I have had more days where I'm just like,
03:55.63
Andrew
staring at a screen, trying to get started, trying to get over that initial hurdle, and then just like not getting anywhere with my day, other than like to get the most urgent things done.
04:08.02
Andrew
Client work is great at like kind of forcing you to get over that ADHD hurdle, because there are deadlines.
04:12.14
Sean
For sure.
04:13.37
Andrew
And so there's like that added pressure. So my client work, I'm i'm getting done. My MetaMonster work, not so much. And so like the result is that I feel like I'm just crawling on the marketing side. And then, yeah, Austin has also been been busy the last couple weeks, so we haven't gotten, and we're just like dealing with some crawler issues too. trying to We've made the decision to switch to a paid crawler service, but like we're trying to get a couple features out before we make that switch, because we don't know how long that switch is going to take. and so
04:50.04
Andrew
i just i I'm feeling a little discouraged. I'm feeling a little like we're just moving more slowly than I would like.
04:58.08
Sean
Yeah, i mean we missed our first episode in a long time last week.
05:01.06
Andrew
yeah Yeah. Also, my cat got into the basement and hid under a pile of insulation in the crawl space. So I had to spend like two hours one afternoon like tearing apart the house, finding him. So that kind of derailed derailed my day last week too.
05:17.58
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Oh, Paul is okay, which is good.
05:18.37
Andrew
so But boy is fine. But boy is totally fine. I was pretty pissed off at him, but he's cats are curious.
05:21.66
Sean
Yeah.
05:26.21
Andrew
And if you leave a door open, they will go and look in that door.
05:31.13
Sean
Yeah.
05:31.94
Andrew
So.
05:33.19
Sean
well, I'm sorry to hear that. That sucks. I'm kind of wondering, what are you, what are you doing about it? What's, what's the.
05:43.10
Andrew
good question. So, I mean, Austin's time is free enough now because, uh, he ended up passing on this house. So he doesn't have that hanging over him. robotics is temporary. That'll pass. I have,
05:58.55
Andrew
been trying I tried to do some stuff to like kind of minimize my phone usage and I'm trying to start meditating again a little bit I know that those things will help with the ADHD it'll take time but like if I'm spending a little less time you know scrolling endlessly on YouTube or whatever um my attention span starts to grow, and it's it becomes easier to focus when I need to. So trying to like reduce phone usage,
06:34.80
Andrew
get back into like a ah mindfulness habit, and then just trying to like yeah kind of break things down into small tasks and get started. so I had a semi productive day today.
06:47.76
Andrew
I think I like made some progress on this free tool that I'm trying to build.
06:54.09
Sean
Cool.
06:55.50
Andrew
Users will be able to to drop in a single page link and then get back a a generated meta description for that page and like a primary keyword and and stuff.
07:05.65
Sean
Cool.
07:09.13
Andrew
So it's kind of like a little taste of how a meta monster works. I've been wanting to build this for a while for SEO purposes. So So um I worked, put in some solid work on that today, although the end result of that work is that I am no further than I was because a lot of that was fighting with dependencies and then going,
07:31.18
Andrew
I think I'm taking the wrong approach. I think I need to start fresh a little bit. So one of those like one step forward, two steps back kind of days, but at least like I was actively pushing.
07:47.63
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Plus it pays off in the long run. I think, I think the the stuff you learn now, I mean, it's, it's just like standard dev stuff, right? You got to just hit walls and then you don't hit as many walls and then next time you do it.
07:58.20
Andrew
Yeah.
08:00.91
Sean
So the free tool sounds cool.
08:01.15
Andrew
Yeah.
08:02.86
Sean
I feel like there's no, I always go to like different places to like test my open graph image and my schema and my meta description. I know you're not, it doesn't sound like you're doing like a one place live URL thing, but, it is.
08:15.37
Andrew
I mean, I definitely have plans to build several of these. Right now, I'm thinking of like each of them being slightly separate, mainly so that I can target a different keyword with each one.
08:26.72
Sean
make sense
08:27.48
Andrew
But the way that I'm doing this now, I'm going to build them all as like a standalone Nux app and host them on a subdomain.
08:27.50
Sean
Makes sense.
08:34.69
Andrew
because i Google has rolled out an update but late last year.
08:38.91
Sean
Yeah, yeah, they're all, yeah.
08:40.58
Andrew
Subdomains don't really matter anymore. They don't hurt you.
08:42.76
Sean
Yeah, they're all, they're all one, like, thing now, yeah.
08:44.65
Andrew
Cool. Sweet. So, which is really how it always should have been like.
08:49.80
Sean
Yeah, I don't know why. Who knows?
08:52.11
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, except for, I guess, really complex sites and properties, then those get a little wonky, but like, I guess.
08:59.81
Sean
But why would you ever not want it to be all one thing, you know?
09:05.60
Andrew
So that but cough cough someone couldn't game the system by creating a dot card page and getting really strong backlinks.
09:10.00
Sean
Oh, yeah.
09:13.00
Sean
Right, right, right, right, right, right.
09:16.67
Sean
Right, right. That's a good point. It hasn't worked on it.
09:19.35
Andrew
Cough cough somebody.
09:20.48
Sean
It hasn't worked with the dot .card thing, by the way.
09:22.54
Andrew
Well,
09:22.60
Sean
That one doesn't get indexed, I think.
09:24.80
Andrew
and Well, that's that's totally possible. And then also, I think like links just don't matter quite as much as they used to. like They matter, but they don't matter as much. so um So I guess it it works within that new context.
09:35.60
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
09:39.74
Andrew
because But anyway, so I'm going to create a standalone Nux app. And so then like I can keep all of the free tools in the standalone Nux app.
09:50.78
Andrew
some point in the future, my role you know our marketing website and our our like actual product and these standalone tools into kind of one code base, one big monolithic code base, or we might keep them separate, who knows.
10:04.51
Andrew
But but yeah, I'll have like the infrastructure in place, and so then I should be able to add more relatively easily.
10:14.40
Sean
Sweet.
10:15.19
Andrew
Yeah, and I'll create like kind of a
10:18.30
Andrew
a landing page at some point once I have multiple where you can like jump between them easily.
10:24.40
Sean
Cool. go back to the ADHD ADHD thing.
10:28.20
Andrew
Yeah.
10:28.67
Sean
Are you like a, like, you know, there's like overarching like strategies that kind of deal with it. So like accountability or body doubling or like a change of environment, various, I guess there are more tactics than strategies, but, do any of those, like, do you feel like any of those work for you?
10:47.44
Andrew
The things that work best for me are Diet and exercise, which are actually pretty solid right now. I'm working out three days a week. I'm eating relatively healthy. So diet and exercise, mindfulness, regular mindfulness practice, which has always been one of the hardest habits for me to establish. But I know that when I'm doing it, it does make an impact on my ability to
11:16.25
Andrew
Focus and like come back once I get distracted. I think that's one of the really cool things that it teaches you is like when you get distracted, the, the like. almost like muscle memory, like the neurological memory to like come back.
11:31.40
Andrew
And then social pressure works really well for me. So actually I haven't been using it, but I am a member of Flow Club, which is like virtual co-working.
11:43.17
Sean
Right, right.
11:43.43
Andrew
And that can often be, it's not always perfect, but like it can often be just a little bit of extra social pressure to help me get into a groove and stay stay focused.
11:56.97
Sean
nice cool yeah yeah i mean i think body doubling ends up working for me sometimes similar similar idea just like someone else in the room was also working so you you feel like you should also be working not always but it helps it helps yeah but okay i hope you
12:01.21
Andrew
What is body doubling? I'm not sure if I know that one. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I might try. I've also thought about trying to like,
12:19.99
Andrew
go to a coworking space or a library or a cafe or something. So should probably give that a try at some point too.
12:26.41
Sean
Do you feel that you're doing too much client work? That it's draining you of the energy you have to do current work?
12:31.51
Andrew
I'm definitely at my limit, which is kind of funny because yeah I'm only on three client projects right now.
12:38.57
Sean
All the client projects. Not an insignificant amount of client projects.
12:42.50
Andrew
Yeah, but I think back to some of the days at crit and like I feel like Austin had to juggle significantly more than that. So I'm like, how the fuck did you do that?
12:49.97
Sean
Sure.
12:53.84
Andrew
But yeah, I'm definitely at my limit and it was certainly easier with one or two. So that that does probably play a role, even if it's like a Yeah, it's not always immediately obvious, but I think that probably does play a little bit of a role too.
13:13.29
Sean
Plus, I think, for what it's worth, like I think one of them is more nerve-wracking of the three than the other two I would would imagine, I feel like.
13:23.24
Andrew
Yeah. One of them is just like work, a type of work that I haven't done as much of. And so I'm not as, the process isn't like ingrained in me and it's not like kind of easy.
13:33.65
Sean
I know, sorry. It's kind of on, that's on me.
13:36.87
Andrew
It's okay, I'm learning, yeah.
13:37.56
Sean
oh Well.
13:40.07
Andrew
Also, whoever sold the project loves to promise the moon in zero time and not push back on clients, so, you know.
13:48.04
Sean
Could it it be me?
13:54.95
Andrew
But yeah, it's it's all good. i think I think another part of this, like another thing I'm trying to do is
14:01.66
Andrew
just like have some larger perspective and go, yes, who things have been slow over the past couple of weeks. They won't stay this way. It's good to take action to try to yeah get the ADHD under control. But also, you I think it's OK to be kind to myself and Austin in this in this phase and just be like,
14:25.32
Andrew
We're bootstrapping for a reason.
14:25.48
Sean
yeah you're cool.
14:27.01
Andrew
and And we're both part-time. And so like there are going to be limits to help us.
14:29.79
Sean
and your California was buying a house. just Just for the record, just to take a step back, I'm not actually concerned about you being slow, because your California was buying a house.
14:32.88
Andrew
That too, yeah.
14:38.36
Andrew
Yeah.
14:40.62
Sean
It doesn't matter.
14:41.32
Andrew
Yeah.
14:41.42
Sean
You probably should not have been working at at actual speeds. But with that being said, I also don't feel like, like sure, there's a lot of like as a user, maybe there's like a little bit of product slowdown, but I also feel like there's new people joining the Slack every week.
14:59.03
Sean
So from my perspective, it's like, oh, Andrew's getting more trapped, like in focus more on like getting traction in early users and.
15:07.49
Andrew
Yeah, we have been adding a few folks. Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit too. But before before we jump into that, what's what's going on in your world?
15:17.01
Sean
Well, I believe we are officially pursuing, speaking of ADHD and chart ideas and all that stuff, we are, i I believe we are going to be officially ah pursuing a SaaS product under misgrains.
15:34.56
Andrew
You believe or you are.
15:37.67
Sean
I'm believing that we are. how You know, it it hasn't, it hasn't, when when we spoke about it internally that was like this is like 1099 week so we were all busy with taxes and all that stuff and we're switching to cpa and like folks were out earlier in the month and so we've been kind of just like chatting i mean just seeding the idea and chatting about it and sort of slowly working on like the prd on my own thinking about it
15:48.100
Andrew
Oh, okay. I got you.
16:09.51
Sean
But my goal is to do it mainly because, so just for context, it's like a layer on top of Webflow or something extensible for Webflow. Webflow is deprecating a lot of things, which which sucks for a number of different reasons. I really wish they weren't.
16:28.62
Sean
and we're improving those things. For example, Webflow is deprecating memberships. That's not very good, given the fact that like the current options available all hide content with CSS versus like Webflow actually like you know rendering something server-side and then shipping it over. There's a whole problem if you want like real data content, for example.
16:52.38
Sean
Not what we're pursuing, but anyway, point being is like, we think it'd be cool. It makes a lot of sense for us to do it because our clients are going to need it. And at the very worst, not that we're planning to fail here, but at the very worst, it's a great agency tool to just have have um and set us apart.
17:11.20
Andrew
Yeah. So you have told me this idea and I am so hyped. I think this thing needs to exist. I think it has more market potential than almost anything else that we've ever talked about you working on.
17:18.21
Sean
Thanks.
17:26.50
Andrew
And I am like, I want to see this succeed. I want to see it come to market. And I think you, I think this is worth putting some chips in and really taking a swing.
17:37.73
Sean
Thanks.
17:40.56
Sean
Thanks. we, like, we are, we are like, during the conversation, you know, we have a concept of a budget for it too, which is, you know, it was like,
17:48.93
Andrew
Okay. Sick. That was going to be one of the first questions I was going to ask is like, yeah, how are you funding this? What's the budget look like?
17:55.49
Sean
and So my thinking is, you know, if we were to do this, we would hire probably somewhat of like a full-time senior dev, right? So somewhere we between 100 to 200K. So that's the budget, basically, or the concept of the budget.
18:15.57
Sean
I don't know if that's like a lot, I don't know if that's like a little. I actually like, it feels very weird to be doing it this way compared to like scrappy ramen startups 0-1, hack it together and just do it.
18:20.01
Andrew
Hmm.
18:28.06
Sean
the Especially also because our initial buyers are people that are people that you know our enterprises and and have SOC 2s and care about certain things.
18:40.06
Sean
So there's a lot of things falling in my head, it's like a very different mental model of how to think about it. And I have a lot of concerns, actually about doing it so I want to ask you about it.
18:46.62
Andrew
Yeah.
18:49.66
Sean
I know you have a lot of thoughts, as well as per our slack messages
18:53.80
Andrew
Yeah.
18:55.36
Sean
Anyway, we're pursuing this thing. It's very exciting. like's It's always always been what I wanted to do, and the last time I did it, it was way too sloppy, and I didn't see it through.
19:07.61
Sean
like For context, I tried running a security. I tried to launch a security startup at the same time. Very talented co-founder. It's funny with agency money.
19:18.19
Sean
It was very sloppy, big failure, because I spent no time thinking about product management. I kind of was just like, go forth and prosper here, Dev, here design it, go do it. I did the sales part. you know we had We had demos lined up, and we just couldn't execute on it in time.
19:36.84
Sean
And then, you know, other subsequent sort of mini failures of like, built a really cool micro free tool, like, looks really cool, and was a really cool idea, and could not handle the upkeep of it.
19:51.43
Sean
Still like occasionally thinking about going back, but you know, like, like a directory business, like at the end of the day, there was no system in place.
19:56.86
Andrew
Yeah,
19:59.43
Andrew
yeah I mean building a product while running an agency is hard.
20:03.74
Sean
Yeah.
20:04.03
Andrew
Like people focus on the success stories like Basecamp, 37signals and yeah a handful of others that are out there. But like the vast majority of people who try this fail and they end up just burning a bunch of money.
20:18.81
Sean
For sure sure.
20:19.26
Andrew
and not really ever getting any sort of traction. And and like that's true of a lot of startups, but I think it's especially true within if you try to launch a product internal to an agency.
20:23.24
Sean
For sure. sure.
20:30.07
Andrew
We tried multiple times at Grit and never were successful. And I think it's because, in part, like focus is so critical in the early stages of getting a product off the ground.
20:43.50
Andrew
and
20:43.56
Sean
Yeah.
20:44.95
Andrew
Like we talked about it with the work I'm doing right now a second ago.
20:46.94
Sean
Yeah.
20:48.56
Andrew
like you know, it's so easy for the client work to take precedence because the client work is funding everything. It's always going to feel more urgent. It's like, you know, it's important. It's your bread and butter. It's your how your company exists right now. So, you know, how figuring out how to maintain that focus while continuing to focus on delivering good client work is critical and also like why I think most people fail at this.
21:20.68
Sean
Yeah, I agree. I think that one of the things we're doing differently now and feels different is I am slowly pulling myself out of client work and it's slowly working. Just last Friday was really cool. I was on, you know,
21:35.03
Sean
also thanks to you you've been a part of that too so thank you for that but i was part of like four or five different client calls on our on either thursday or friday and at the end of the day i realized i was not the main person who talked on any of those calls like i'd actually just kind of sat there like honestly i wasn't even needed it was nice it was probably good for the client that ah my my face was there but I said like two lines in each meeting and they were not actually helpful or or any of that sort of stuff. So, slowly I think I'm pulling myself out of it. I think it's been super helpful to have, you know, people I can really trust handle all these things. But yeah, yeah.
22:16.13
Andrew
So I've got a couple of thoughts for how I think you should approach this.
22:19.29
Sean
Yeah, go.
22:21.83
Andrew
So I think you're right to think about like having dedicated resources that are as separate from client work as possible.
22:30.50
Andrew
So an engineer, designer. think the designer is a little less important just because like there's usually less design work in this phase.
22:35.54
Sean
Yep.
22:38.15
Andrew
So you don't you certainly don't need a full-time designer.
22:40.66
Sean
Yep, yep.
22:40.72
Andrew
So I think you could like have a you lean on on some of the designers on on your team. but like having an engineer who is not going to get pulled into like, you know, a client project, I think is, I think is smart.
22:51.84
Sean
Yeah.
22:54.30
Andrew
I think you should consider also hiring a, or maybe you can find one person to do both, maybe you can I don't know. I think you should have an entrepreneur in residence. Pulling yourself out of client work is one option, but I think you should look realistically at like how long that's going to take and how that lines up with the timeline of this project. And I think you should look at yourself more as like,
23:20.92
Andrew
the CEO of miscreants who is responsible now for these two revenue lines and, and find someone to own this one.
23:32.13
Andrew
And, you know, you can like direct them and give them as much like help as you can. But I, I think you kind of need someone who can be focused on this and on like marketing this to like marketing and growth.
23:48.74
Sean
you want you want you want to You want to quit Metal Monster and become my yeah EIR? Andrew?
23:54.62
Andrew
I would love to, but then I'm not bringing you in any revenue on the client side. Not quit MetaMonster. I would love to quit my client work.
24:06.41
Sean
spend it down.
24:09.72
Sean
For sure.
24:10.26
Andrew
But no, I think I'm probably not a good fit because I like MetaMonster is going to be my primary focus. And I think like, ideally you'd find someone who isn't, doesn't have a like primary project right now who, you know, like I'm not going to use my personal socials for anything but MetaMonster really.
24:23.68
Sean
For sure.
24:29.73
Andrew
I mean, I'll, I'll like, I share miscreant stuff there and stuff like that, but like, yeah.
24:33.84
Sean
I agree. You're not, you're not, this is not a job offer. You're not here. It's declined. If you, anyway, uh, it was a joke, but yeah keep going.
24:40.10
Andrew
Yeah, but i think I think someone like me is kind of who you need, ideally someone with less ADHD, but or their ADHD more under control. But yeah, i think that I think you should seriously consider, rather than trying to be the product owner yourself, having a dedicated like product manager. And I don't even think I think they need to be more than a product manager because I think they also need to do marketing and sales. So I think they need to be more of an EIR. What do you think?
25:12.48
Sean
What a hard pill to swallow. What an incredibly... I think that is a very good idea. And I have not considered it yet.
25:24.08
Sean
And I think the reason I have not considered it is I mean, I like the romantics of doing the work.
25:28.20
Andrew
You want to do the work?
25:36.52
Andrew
Mm hmm.
25:36.70
Sean
I don't actually know if I enjoy doing the work.
25:39.88
Andrew
Hmm.
25:41.98
Sean
I'm sure I do, right? i like But the thing is, like do I really enjoy like the completeness of it, or is it that I enjoy the scratching my own itch, hacking away, using like bolt dot.new, building something really shitty, and like feeling good about having done it because it's like the concept and the idea is there and it got and now in and out of the world and I can move on with my life now?
25:43.94
Andrew
Hmm.
26:07.34
Sean
versus you know fully seeing it through. like i think I think one of the things that makes SaaS successful is excellent customer support.
26:16.39
Andrew
Mm hmm.
26:17.12
Sean
And fuck, I do not care to do it.
26:20.58
Andrew
Yeah.
26:21.72
Sean
I do, I do, I do. for for just If anyone's coming back to this after we were both you know private island owners, like I do. you know and um've never But yeah yeah, I mean, I think standing setting it up, like building it, and turning it into an actual SAS, like doing all that, I think you're right.
26:36.48
Andrew
All the minutia, although like like seeing it through past the prototype phase to like
26:43.28
Andrew
the yeah when you have to do the current work to make it like a robust platform.
26:48.92
Sean
Right, right.
26:50.48
Andrew
Yeah.
26:52.47
Sean
I have considered that's interesting, like one of the conversations that came up in this is like, I'm not a CTO, in the sense that like, I think I can totally zero, I can totally get something from like zero to one, but in terms of it being one to three, you know, what happens when we're actually like,
27:02.95
Andrew
Mm hmm.
27:11.23
Sean
Yeah, what happens when we're actually like, trying to serve more than two customers on the sass app. I don't know what that actually looks like. i I have hunches and you know for my conversations I can learn it of course but I don't know, I feel it feels very weird to be in this spot though, like it feels very uncomfortable.
27:30.99
Sean
Like, it feels very uncomfortable to be in like an executive producer position versus a director of a movie.
27:39.50
Andrew
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
27:39.84
Sean
And the thing that I think I've always romanticized is not being the executive producer of it. What I should is the problem. But I don't know what, like,
27:50.44
Sean
Like you watch Ocean's 11, the cool guy is not the person who they went to for all the money to go do the the heist. It's like, you know, like the people that it's, it's the other 10, having for sure, for sure.
28:03.95
Andrew
Yeah, but the problem is those other 10 people aren't also doing heist for a bunch of clients at the same time. Like they're able to just focus on do the heist and do it really well.
28:11.72
Sean
Sure.
28:16.38
Sean
I'm with you. um I am. I am with you. I.
28:22.33
Sean
I'm with you. I think it's a good call. I have to like come to terms, I think, almost with my own ego about it. But let's let's say I'm on board, right? Like.
28:34.06
Andrew
How do you find that person?
28:35.10
Sean
Yeah.
28:35.82
Andrew
It's fucking hard.
28:35.99
Sean
Where I don't, I don't have friends that are like that. I did. I i thought I did in, in, uh, in college. And then they all went to get tech jobs that pay him hundreds of thousand dollars a year.
28:47.37
Sean
And then all their startup, like vibe was went out the window.
28:52.71
Andrew
Yeah. So you either need like a true unicorn who can do the engineering early on or you need like an engineer and a, you know, head of product like, like I, you're almost, we're almost talking about you're building like, MetaMonster, like you're building a, a small team of like a technical co founder and a business co founder, and, and then just like funding them and trying to get them started. And so,
29:29.89
Andrew
Yeah, how do you find those people? I think the engineer is easier to find because I think that.
29:35.17
Sean
Actually, I'm curious if you think I should. I'm almost kind of tempted to do an MVP agency, but I'm curious what you think about it as someone who ran said agency.
29:47.21
Andrew
God, this is so hypocritical of me.
29:50.44
Andrew
I think like the people who the MVP agency is the most useful for are the people who don't have the technical knowledge to like find and vet an engineer.
30:05.64
Andrew
and i think you know Truthfully, I think having a sort of dedicated freelance engineer is probably better, it's, but it's just not a good option for some people because if you don't have the know how to find that person that then guide their work, like make sure they're not over optimizing for scale, like make sure they're, they're actually building like in an MVP fashion.
30:39.83
Andrew
then then you kind of need more of a trusted brand who has a track record and can kind of do all of that.
30:45.94
Sean
Hmm.
30:49.16
Andrew
But like what you, you have that skill. And so I think it would be better for you to focus on like get a dedicated person and like basically start building the team a little bit.
31:00.18
Sean
I might be also conflating the fact that, like, the MEP agency I've been behind is, like, one next next JS engineer who
31:06.25
Andrew
Yeah, I would
31:07.27
Andrew
I don't want to say stay away from a next JS engineer, but don't cheap. Don't be cheap on this. Like, like, I feel like you have often for a lot of your side projects found people who were like very young, not a whole, a super proven track record.
31:17.60
Sean
For sure.
31:24.22
Andrew
And we're like very, very affordable. And often those people have gotten 75% of the way and then.
31:28.03
Sean
Yeah.
31:34.60
Andrew
like been unable to take it over the finish line for some reason. And so I like you were just talking about you said yourself like a senior engineer. And I think that is who you should be looking for here.
31:47.38
Andrew
You need someone.
31:47.75
Sean
Hold on.
31:49.68
Andrew
Yeah.
31:49.90
Sean
I agree with you. What I was going to say is this specific MVP agency is like a senior engineer who's building MVPs in Next.js and Subibase and everything.
32:00.99
Sean
That being said, I've not vetted his work properly.
32:04.38
Andrew
Yeah.
32:04.95
Sean
I've not gone through that process. I actually don't feel a lot of
32:12.66
Sean
I brought it up to kind of, because I was conflating like a single person masquerading as an agency versus like and MVP, like like ah like a crit slash, I guess you guys didn't just do MVPs, but you know, like an actual trusted brand agency, like a whoever whoever Rob suggests for getting their name, but yeah,
32:33.76
Andrew
Like Brian Castle's instrumental products.
32:36.40
Sean
exactly, exactly.
32:36.59
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. I would, and again, I, I have recommended instrumental products to people, but I think I like.
32:44.36
Sean
and I don't want to go that route anyway.
32:45.69
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
32:46.71
Andrew
Yeah.
32:48.31
Sean
so So going back, actually, I think the the thing that I'm stuck on is I actually don't think I know how to vet for a good engineer.
32:58.70
Andrew
I think I do. I can help you with that.
32:59.82
Sean
Oh, OK. Oh, cool.
33:00.66
Andrew
Yeah.
33:01.56
Sean
Dope.
33:02.05
Andrew
Yeah.
33:02.54
Sean
Dope, dope. That's true. I've actually, I don't, I don't hire like actual software engineers. I hire Webflow. I can vet for a great Webflow dev. like very quickly, but I got no clue.
33:08.58
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
33:14.12
Sean
but hence the, hence the wondering if I should get like someone in like a CTO as position would, but I also don't know if that's the right call. um, yeah.
33:25.61
Andrew
Yeah. I think. I think probably the early team needs to be like. a scrappy product person who can help with scoping the product and, uh, do marketing and sales like in parallel and then a, you know, a reasonably senior engineer.
33:40.88
Sean
Mm hmm.
33:46.12
Andrew
And I think like what I would prioritize in finding that engineer is yes, find someone with, you know, experience in a stack, make sure they write relatively clean code.
34:01.20
Andrew
there's ways to do that there' platforms you can use, you can hire them to do like a code test. If they're a freelancer, a full-time freelancer, you can hire them to do like a one-off small feature and then and then yeah check that out.
34:14.32
Sean
Sure.
34:15.44
Andrew
I think that's generally the best way to go about it. And while I could look at their code and probably tell reasonably well how clean it is, and then I also have people I could lean on.
34:28.02
Andrew
i could yeah we can We can connect you to someone who could vet their code and just be like, hey, here's what I see. But I think the bigger, more important thing for an engineer like this is you want someone, an engineer, a product-minded engineer.
34:43.22
Andrew
So you you need someone who, you need to test how they think through trade-offs more than anything else.
34:50.79
Sean
Hmm.
34:50.86
Andrew
Like, like I would yo And again, if they're a freelancer, great, pay them pay them to do this. Pay them to put together a roadmap, right? Like a scoping document.
35:00.04
Sean
Hmm.
35:01.86
Andrew
But do it collaborative have them do it collaboratively with you. And what you want to hear is how they think through trade-offs. You want to hear them go,
35:13.36
Andrew
We could do things this way and we will eventually need to do things this way to scale, but we shouldn't do that now. we We should do this now because this will get us there faster. And you want someone who has that mindset of scaling doesn't matter if we don't get our first customer, um but also someone who ideally has a little bit of like a knowledge of what it would take to scale in the future.
35:36.68
Sean
Yeah, yeah,
35:37.11
Andrew
And that that's that balance you you want to look for.
35:40.22
Sean
yeah yeah for sure, for sure. Someone who, yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of like one and a half way doors you end up walking through by only in prioritizing for user one and user two.
35:47.21
Andrew
Mhm. Mhm.
35:53.52
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
35:56.67
Sean
Yeah. Fair. Fair, fair, fair.
35:59.63
Andrew
Yeah, my immediate thought is like I would probably look in like the microconf community, the like indie hackers community, and you know and i would I would also probably prioritize like less trendy code bases. My initial thought is Laravel Laravel Ruby are probably just going to attract people who are more a little bit more product minded.
36:27.88
Andrew
I say this as like we are working on a Nux app. Nux is JavaScript. JavaScript is like in Vercel or like the trendy, like the trendy stack right now is like Superbase, Next.js, Vercel.
36:33.57
Sean
yeah Yeah.
36:36.54
Sean
Yeah.
36:40.33
Sean
And like we're selling qualify or or qualify. Yeah, yeah.
36:43.73
Andrew
Yeah. And so, and that's totally fine. Like I think that person But I think there's just like, there's a lot more people swirling around in that community that are like a little more into the nerdiness of like using the new hotness.
36:52.03
Sean
Sure.
37:00.55
Sean
Sure.
37:01.00
Andrew
And you almost like want the boring engineer.
37:07.16
Sean
Yeah.
37:08.41
Sean
I think that's good advice.
37:11.15
Sean
Long pause.
37:12.15
Andrew
Yeah.
37:13.07
Sean
OK, what else? i feel like I feel like you've listed two things.
37:19.73
Sean
I don't know if you had another one.
37:22.36
Andrew
So those are two, the two biggest things like the, I think, I think the thing that will make this the most likely to be successful like getting the right engineer is going to be a huge part.
37:24.90
Sean
Okay, okay.
37:32.56
Andrew
I think the other I think getting that person like having a dedicated person who And I don't know that they need to be full time, right? Like if you if the budget doesn't have enough for these two people to be full time, that might be okay. But if you could find someone who was like half time so that they they're just their focus wasn't too split, but having that that sort of entrepreneur role,
37:58.91
Andrew
So that it's not, so that when you inevitably get busy with client work, like yes, keep pulling yourself out of client work, but when you inevitably have to jump in and like cover here the gaps, the project keeps making progress without you.
38:07.45
Sean
Hmm.
38:13.50
Andrew
I think that's the biggest thing. I mean, we could get nerdy and talk about like how you are gonna structure this legally, which, but I think
38:23.50
Sean
I'm curious, maybe maybe we could talk about it on a different episode after I figure out whether or not I will hire like who I will hire.
38:28.83
Andrew
Yeah.
38:31.98
Sean
I think.
38:32.34
Andrew
Yeah.
38:33.75
Sean
These are all right.
38:36.76
Sean
suggestions because I think it has. So one of the concerns I have is just fundamentally about seeing this through into into like.
38:47.64
Sean
Yeah, like like what is actual completion? and And not just like the just the MVP version of it. So I think these are all fair. I do think that I have another concern about this whole thing. I don't know when my risk appetite became like so diminished. Maybe it's like when I started having like a salary and like a payroll.
39:11.61
Sean
but
39:13.76
Sean
So, you know, I give you a very, very nebulous answer, like a hundred or two hundred K. Right. But I actually don't know how to think about this from like a payback sort of thing. So how much are we realistic looking at a charge for this product? 30 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month. Right. like what is the actual, like, I think it's also because I come from agency world where like.
39:38.37
Sean
You know, I could burn this down and and get to 10K a month on a contract single contract and like fairly quickly because it's like agency is all about float, right?
39:49.57
Sean
You get the cash, you have 50% up front and then you get that to play with and you get 50% on completion on how fast you do it. That's completely different from, from like the slow.
40:00.21
Andrew
The long slow zasran, the death.
40:01.89
Sean
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
40:03.70
Andrew
Yeah.
40:03.76
Sean
And I'm a little bit concerned about surviving the the SAS ramp of death.
40:08.10
Andrew
Yeah.
40:09.76
Sean
And because like because we're an agency and because we're putting a budget to it there and it's not like this is the thing I'm doing is my side hustle while I have a full-time job and I can so you know take however long uh there's like a there's like a realistic cut off to it or at least like the conversation about should we kill this project comes up more often would come up more often than not so i don't know i don't know
40:33.94
Andrew
Yeah.
40:39.43
Andrew
Yeah, that's that's the other hard piece is just like the economics like continuing to have the courage to say, we're gonna keep s sinking money into this and knowing you're not you know putting good money after bad, right?
40:52.32
Andrew
Like knowing when to pull the strings. I mean, you're kind of talking about taking an investor mindset, right? And going, okay, I have this capital to deploy, what's the smartest way I can deploy it?
41:05.38
Andrew
And I think, yeah.
41:06.73
Sean
You know what the smartest way to deploy capital? Fucking SMP 500. That's the smartest way to deploy capital. Like 10% year after year.
41:15.65
Andrew
100%, but you don't even do that in your personal life. so
41:19.21
Sean
i I might have bought a thousand bucks worth in the video when I dropped 15%.
41:23.84
Andrew
Yeah, but you don't buy ETFs, which are the actual smartest way of doing things.
41:24.85
Sean
No, I don't. I don't. I don't. You're right. You're right. You're right. All right. Whatever.
41:33.15
Andrew
I think it's really good that you're thinking about that.
41:30.75
Sean
You're not wrong.
41:37.45
Andrew
Maybe the way to do that is
41:41.92
Andrew
You probably need to think long-term now. rather than thinking about this as like, what does it take to get the MVP built? You've probably got to think about this as like, what's the realistic budget to get this to product market fit? And so that's probably these roles, these this one to two people being you as close to full-time as possible for two to three years.
42:10.70
Andrew
and so you got to like, kind of do the math there and like, see if you're comfortable with that. And then like, yeah, I mean. You it's going to take longer to get this thing to ramen profitability.
42:25.18
Andrew
I mean, it all depends on the people you find and like their risk tolerance to write like if you can. That's kind of why I was I was wondering how you were going to structure this legally because like probably you want people who want some amount of equity and and so like.
42:39.81
Sean
It hasn't crossed my mind because we just talked about the yeah EIR stuff.
42:43.57
Andrew
Yeah.
42:43.58
Sean
I haven't considered it as a...
42:44.84
Andrew
Yeah. Like if you, I guess that's true. If you were just doing this in-house and hiring like a full stack engineer, then you're just paying them cash. But if you're like, especially if you hire that yeah EIR role, then it is, you're kind of talking about like,
43:00.39
Andrew
And i I don't think you need to start any of that. yeah Ideally, you you don't waste time spinning up a business structure yet. But like once it you have some sort of threshold where, like hey, once we get to this point, we are going to create a separate business structure, and you'll have this and whatever.
43:19.39
Sean
Yeah.
43:19.59
Andrew
And like yeah the more risk tolerance these people are willing to take on the the like lower your initial capital is and like the faster it will be to get to Raman profitability.
43:34.47
Andrew
but But yeah, I think you depending on where that risk tolerance ends up, you you should be thinking long-term and making sure Because I think if you're only willing to put the money in to get to the MVP, then like you're probably you're more likely to just be setting this money on fire.
43:52.74
Sean
Hmm.
43:53.16
Andrew
Because you you've got to be willing to give it the time it needs to succeed, the time and resources it needs to succeed, or else like you're kind of just wasting the capital.
43:58.09
Sean
Right. Yep.
44:07.12
Andrew
And so yeah, that's probably part of it is just like be realistic about how long this is gonna take and like the resources it's gonna take and then like ideally find someone who's willing to take on some of the risk with you.
44:19.01
Andrew
But this person's getting harder and harder to find. The the more of these things.
44:22.10
Sean
i know and know
44:24.17
Andrew
like It's already almost impossible to to find a like like someone who is a capable product person and capable marketer and to find that person who's also then willing to like
44:24.40
Sean
huh
44:30.09
Sean
and
44:35.03
Sean
yeah
44:39.38
Andrew
you know take less salary and yeah, it's hard.
44:40.54
Sean
yeah Yeah, who isn't like a young person that I'm just taking a bet on because I believe in them because yeah, I think
44:47.15
Andrew
Yeah. And like you could take a bet on a young person, like that's a strategy, but it's just, it's introducing more risk, right? It's like, you know, versus someone who, you know, knows the like same bootstrapper lessons that you and I know from like trying things and listening to people for you years.
45:07.90
Sean
yeah yeah that i mean that and also like i think this specific idea also requires like a level of intimacy with webflow that you might honestly just not have like there's a ramp up period to it i don't it's uh yeah i think
45:20.69
Andrew
Hmm.
45:32.84
Sean
There's like two.
45:36.85
Sean
There's two ways I feel very uncomfortable about it, even though I feel like it's right. So it's more like two things I'm trying to like mentally unblock and work through. I think number one is I don't really know if I go this route, I really don't know what my job is like.
45:54.92
Sean
or like where the fun in my job or like where to find the fun in my in my like newfound role and you know that makes sense i think there's a lot like this is one of those like moments where i have to grow as a person and become a different type of like you know from like founder to like actual ceo sort of stuff
46:17.29
Andrew
I think you've got to find the fun in like building the systems and the environments and and identifying the right people to bet on and then giving being more of a coach than a player.
46:29.63
Sean
Right. right
46:32.57
Andrew
and so you've yeah like you're You know, you're talking about building something kind of like Peter Kang, right? And Beryl, the thing that he's done that's probably smart is like he's built.
46:41.41
Sean
Well, he's found EIRs. That's been the strategy.
46:51.27
Andrew
He's found, yeah, he's found managers and he's also built agencies, which are faster to get to cashflow positive, even if they're less valuable in the long run.
47:01.41
Sean
Right, right, right.
47:07.29
Sean
um
47:08.89
Sean
Yeah, and then the other thing that sort of like is a mild concern is, I don't actually have a lot of faith in my own recruiting, recruiting abilities. I think, I think I am able to, like, I think I'm able to close someone in terms of bringing them on board and getting them to believe in the thing that they're doing. But I actually think that one of the I think something that's always been part of my personality is that I'm always willing to like rise to an occasion. And that's what, you know, early days of mysteries was built on the back of is was saying, yes, the things that I was sure I could learn how to do and do well, rather than I already knew how to do. I think that's been responsible for a lot of early learning. Like, and and not, like, not their mistakes, just like early success.
47:55.01
Sean
that doesn't translate I've noticed that doesn't translate very well to hiring and interviewing because I end up finding myself seeing the same thing in other people and like over believing in someone's capabilities expecting them to do that because if you look at the tracker record of people I've brought on off of that vibe versus like the track record that JJ for example has brought on
48:08.53
Andrew
Hmm.
48:14.63
Andrew
Hmm.
48:17.72
Sean
Everyone that I love working with has been someone that JJ has hired, minus JJ and Ben, who I have brought on. Because, you know, I haven't, I'm not worked in a very large professional setting where, like, like, I like people who may or may not be like kind of offbeat and scrappy and just hucking well like might be like a might be secretly a founder type.
48:47.87
Sean
Yeah.
48:46.83
Andrew
So two thoughts, one, it's possible that that's more of the kind of person you need for this. Again, it's often you're taking on a little bit more risk betting on those people because they can like just as easily get distracted and run off and do something else.
48:54.63
Sean
Possible, sure.
49:04.03
Andrew
but
49:04.57
Sean
sure
49:05.25
Sean
They might try to put AI in it and then I'm going to be like, no, stop, and then we're going to fight about it. and but
49:12.28
Andrew
So that's one thought. The other thought is like you might have your answer. If this is a weakness of yours and you have people on the team for whom it's a strength, then like don't do it yourself.
49:24.96
Sean
Oh, sure. Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, that's how I mean, that' that's how we're doing the miscreant.
49:26.71
Andrew
Have them do it.
49:29.79
Sean
I have I have knighted JJ in like she is now in charge of recruiting or final final say in someone higher and joining the team, not me.
49:38.41
Andrew
Awesome.
49:40.14
Sean
Yeah, yeah, because because I will just yeah, I think I think her nose for someone's ability to work in a professional team setting is like. significantly better than mine.
49:50.21
Sean
And I think it's because she's seen more shitheads than I have and and can weed them out way faster. there Yeah.
50:01.34
Sean
What an uncomfortable conversation and I have to like think about now. I'm glad I'm talking to Austin after this, by the way. He's gonna make me...
50:07.75
Andrew
Are you really?
50:08.67
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:09.57
Andrew
That's awesome.
50:10.66
Andrew
That's dope.
50:12.63
Sean
Yeah, I have to... I'm just verbally processing now. I'm so, I'm so against it.
50:18.00
Sean
Every fiber by being is like, is like.
50:21.91
Andrew
I mean, the great thing is it's your fucking company, so you don't you get to choose whether or not you want to take my advice, right?
50:26.97
Sean
For sure.
50:27.03
Andrew
It's it's your decision at the end of the day, but I am delighted at how uncomfortable I have made you.
50:28.97
Sean
For sure.
50:34.37
Sean
Yeah. yeah I will probably listen to wise kant counsel. I think, I think the the doubly ah ah like.
50:45.29
Sean
It's so hard not to be scrappy. It is like so difficult. Every part of me wants to go work with a dev that's going to cost me 10K maybe to get a very good prototype version of the sub with the designs that I have ah ah effectively done.
51:05.48
Andrew
I mean, that's an that's an option.
51:05.64
Sean
And then run with it.
51:07.66
Andrew
it's just like I haven't seen that be very successful for you.
51:07.68
Sean
It is.
51:10.72
Sean
No, no, I think your option is significantly ah ah more sustainable because like that 10k will soon become 20k because, you know, and then and then that that MVP thing will stall because...
51:26.36
Andrew
yeah I think if nothing else, you should you should be thinking about like what what will it take to support this thing until it gets to
51:33.07
Sean
Yeah.
51:35.18
Andrew
profitability and not just until it gets to MVP.
51:39.43
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay,
51:42.26
Andrew
and like yeah and like you know How is it going to work when important client work comes up? Maybe you can be the founder, but if you are, what like think through the the problems that are going to arise and have a solution now
51:53.65
Sean
wait.
52:04.48
Andrew
And that solution might not be right, right? Like you're you're not going to be able to predict everything, but just like what's the like James Clear quote, or it's not James Clear, it's someone you like, we all like fall to our systems, not rise to our like.
52:20.48
Sean
Yeah, we don't rise to our occasions. We fall to our level like highest level of training, is what I've always...
52:24.92
Andrew
Yeah, something like that.
52:25.87
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:26.32
Andrew
Yeah, so it's like. You know, I think that's the important thing. If you really want this to succeed versus like some of the other side projects, it's like figure out what's going to happen when client work becomes more important.
52:40.28
Andrew
And again, I'm i'm saying this, not just like being as constructive criticism, but because I tried to do this and just saw how easy it was.
52:41.55
Sean
For sure.
52:50.88
Andrew
like when we thought short-term and thought, like we got an MVP of a product out. We got a couple of users on it. We started hiring someone to like create content for it. And then within like two months, we were like, this is too expensive. This person's not gonna create content for crit. We're not putting any, it's just too easy to like lose focus. Yeah.
53:09.87
Sean
I think the first thing to do is exactly that is like, what will it actually cost and take to do this? And I feel like when I game it, honestly, when I feel like I game it out, I'm like, fuck that.
53:18.33
Andrew
Yeah.
53:22.40
Sean
I don't want to keep doing the agency. Like I might as well sell fucking t-shirts cause it's way faster to make money doing that. Just given where we're at with the brand at the moment. um Which Which is such a frustrating, like, you know, sort of thing, but...
53:35.41
Andrew
Yeah.
53:35.63
Sean
Okay, I think we're i think we're going in circles about this, and I think I had have to sit down and be sad for, like, 72 hours about it.
53:38.24
Andrew
yeah
53:40.81
Andrew
Cool.
53:43.66
Andrew
Okay. I'm excited to hear here where you land. I think next week's pod will be will be super interesting.
53:48.14
Sean
I'm gonna shut this project down.
53:49.11
Andrew
We can talk through your thoughts
53:52.06
Sean
The next week's pot is like...
53:53.71
Andrew
That's, that is a valid answer.
53:55.70
Sean
No, it isn't.
53:56.32
Andrew
Like it's a valid answer.
53:56.75
Sean
No, it isn't. No, it isn't. We're gonna have to...
54:00.16
Andrew
Yeah.
54:01.00
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
54:02.74
Andrew
Cool.
54:02.75
Sean
You're right. You're right.
54:03.56
Andrew
This is, this is a super interesting conversation. I think it's super cool that we recorded it. we both got to run, but cool, man.
54:07.39
Sean
Yeah, me too. Yep. Cool. I'll see you later.
54:11.19
Andrew
Peace.
54:11.34
Sean
Thanks. I appreciate the thoughts. Thanks.
Transcript:
00:00.79
Sean
Do you play Starcraft? Have you played Starcraft?
00:03.15
Andrew
No, I've never played Starcraft. I'm not a big gamer.
00:04.71
Sean
and
00:06.24
Andrew
Like the most time I've ever spent on video games, like my top games are like Pokemon, like Crystal.
00:13.03
Sean
That's true. You're like an actual sports like healthy touch grass person. I forget that.
00:17.74
Andrew
i I'm not an there I'm a watch sports and then touch grass in like nerdy hiking ways, not like Boy Scout touch grass.
00:27.01
Sean
Yeah, but I'm like, ah ah I'm like, a you know, watch eSports and touch Minecraft grass sometimes, every guy.
00:34.57
Andrew
Why do you ask about Starcraft?
00:35.44
Sean
I've been I may have gotten really into stuff. It's been like two days, but I may have spent a lot of hours into Starcraft over the weekend. But it's because, well, first of all, it's really interesting because like,
00:48.14
Sean
I see how it's like a groundwork for a lot of other games that have been really bad at and I see the difference between people who are good at like played Starcraft and then we're good at other games like League of Legends versus not. More importantly, it's because my brain has been on like like agents, agent systems, Starcraft is like RTS where you manage a bunch of little tiny things and that move around the map.
01:06.11
Andrew
Huh.
01:08.75
Sean
and And like, so for some reason, my brain has that connection.
01:11.48
Andrew
Yeah.
01:11.58
Sean
Oh, so it's because I've always been really bad at it. And like my best, one of my but best friends is like, was top 200 in the US. So, it's, it's not that impressive.
01:19.07
Andrew
whoa Whoa.
01:21.89
Sean
I'm i'm pretty sure it, I think it's like, you know, top 200 snapshot in time, never went pro.
01:22.08
Andrew
Oh.
01:26.65
Sean
Oh, so it's in the US. So he's Korean, but.
01:28.07
Andrew
I mean, I mean, it's so impressive. Like why you gotta, why you gotta hate on your friend? Like your friend sounds, that's cool.
01:33.85
Sean
that's what we do okay okay fine fine fine he's pretty good he's pretty good at it anyway he's been rolling me constantly it's but maybe I'm just salty that he's been fucking destroyed like cool
01:42.52
Andrew
I played Civ three for a while. Is that like similar vibes where you like, you send all your little people to go do things and you have to constantly like be like, okay, do this.
01:50.93
Sean
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah
01:52.07
Andrew
Now do this. Now do this. Now you, you guys build this and you guys build this and okay. Cool. Yeah. I could get hooked on some, some Civ three back in the day.
02:02.67
Sean
Nice, nice. Yeah, some Age of Empires, some Fred Alert.
02:06.05
Andrew
Yeah, I never got beyond Civ III.
02:06.19
Sean
and um Okay.
02:08.67
Andrew
Again.
02:08.70
Sean
Alright, alright. I mean, I need discovered football. That was my weekend. um um Amongst like some other random things, but how about you? How you doing?
02:18.77
Andrew
I'm all right, man. i I am feeling a little stressed because I feel like the last couple of weeks, we just have not made much progress on MetaMonster at all.
02:29.67
Sean
Hmm.
02:31.04
Andrew
So there's a handful of of things at play here. Austin was trying to buy a house. Yeah, which just sort of consumes your life while you're doing it.
02:36.98
Sean
Oh, sick.
02:41.38
Andrew
And it all happened like way faster than he was expecting.
02:41.66
Sean
Sure.
02:44.48
Sean
sure
02:45.51
Andrew
It ended up falling through, like they decided to pass on it.
02:44.87
Sean
Sure.
02:47.47
Andrew
So he's he's not buying the house, but he was going through the motions.
02:48.03
Sean
Okay.
02:53.13
Andrew
And I think it was just eating up all of his like attention as it would.
02:58.84
Sean
right
03:00.29
Andrew
So that was going on. And then I've talked about robotic season. The build season of robotic season like takes up a lot of my free time. like you know, one to two weeknights and all day Saturday basically are spent at robotics and that eats up a lot of time. we've been having to fight with our landlord ah like getting our heater worked on. He keeps saying there's not a problem. We try to tell him there's a problem. We have been fighting with him on that. and then I just think for the past like two or three months, I've been in a season of like
03:42.79
Andrew
higher ADHD, like my ADHD feels like it is has been harder to manage for the past couple months. And so I have had more days where I'm just like,
03:55.63
Andrew
staring at a screen, trying to get started, trying to get over that initial hurdle, and then just like not getting anywhere with my day, other than like to get the most urgent things done.
04:08.02
Andrew
Client work is great at like kind of forcing you to get over that ADHD hurdle, because there are deadlines.
04:12.14
Sean
For sure.
04:13.37
Andrew
And so there's like that added pressure. So my client work, I'm i'm getting done. My MetaMonster work, not so much. And so like the result is that I feel like I'm just crawling on the marketing side. And then, yeah, Austin has also been been busy the last couple weeks, so we haven't gotten, and we're just like dealing with some crawler issues too. trying to We've made the decision to switch to a paid crawler service, but like we're trying to get a couple features out before we make that switch, because we don't know how long that switch is going to take. and so
04:50.04
Andrew
i just i I'm feeling a little discouraged. I'm feeling a little like we're just moving more slowly than I would like.
04:58.08
Sean
Yeah, i mean we missed our first episode in a long time last week.
05:01.06
Andrew
yeah Yeah. Also, my cat got into the basement and hid under a pile of insulation in the crawl space. So I had to spend like two hours one afternoon like tearing apart the house, finding him. So that kind of derailed derailed my day last week too.
05:17.58
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Oh, Paul is okay, which is good.
05:18.37
Andrew
so But boy is fine. But boy is totally fine. I was pretty pissed off at him, but he's cats are curious.
05:21.66
Sean
Yeah.
05:26.21
Andrew
And if you leave a door open, they will go and look in that door.
05:31.13
Sean
Yeah.
05:31.94
Andrew
So.
05:33.19
Sean
well, I'm sorry to hear that. That sucks. I'm kind of wondering, what are you, what are you doing about it? What's, what's the.
05:43.10
Andrew
good question. So, I mean, Austin's time is free enough now because, uh, he ended up passing on this house. So he doesn't have that hanging over him. robotics is temporary. That'll pass. I have,
05:58.55
Andrew
been trying I tried to do some stuff to like kind of minimize my phone usage and I'm trying to start meditating again a little bit I know that those things will help with the ADHD it'll take time but like if I'm spending a little less time you know scrolling endlessly on YouTube or whatever um my attention span starts to grow, and it's it becomes easier to focus when I need to. So trying to like reduce phone usage,
06:34.80
Andrew
get back into like a ah mindfulness habit, and then just trying to like yeah kind of break things down into small tasks and get started. so I had a semi productive day today.
06:47.76
Andrew
I think I like made some progress on this free tool that I'm trying to build.
06:54.09
Sean
Cool.
06:55.50
Andrew
Users will be able to to drop in a single page link and then get back a a generated meta description for that page and like a primary keyword and and stuff.
07:05.65
Sean
Cool.
07:09.13
Andrew
So it's kind of like a little taste of how a meta monster works. I've been wanting to build this for a while for SEO purposes. So So um I worked, put in some solid work on that today, although the end result of that work is that I am no further than I was because a lot of that was fighting with dependencies and then going,
07:31.18
Andrew
I think I'm taking the wrong approach. I think I need to start fresh a little bit. So one of those like one step forward, two steps back kind of days, but at least like I was actively pushing.
07:47.63
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Plus it pays off in the long run. I think, I think the the stuff you learn now, I mean, it's, it's just like standard dev stuff, right? You got to just hit walls and then you don't hit as many walls and then next time you do it.
07:58.20
Andrew
Yeah.
08:00.91
Sean
So the free tool sounds cool.
08:01.15
Andrew
Yeah.
08:02.86
Sean
I feel like there's no, I always go to like different places to like test my open graph image and my schema and my meta description. I know you're not, it doesn't sound like you're doing like a one place live URL thing, but, it is.
08:15.37
Andrew
I mean, I definitely have plans to build several of these. Right now, I'm thinking of like each of them being slightly separate, mainly so that I can target a different keyword with each one.
08:26.72
Sean
make sense
08:27.48
Andrew
But the way that I'm doing this now, I'm going to build them all as like a standalone Nux app and host them on a subdomain.
08:27.50
Sean
Makes sense.
08:34.69
Andrew
because i Google has rolled out an update but late last year.
08:38.91
Sean
Yeah, yeah, they're all, yeah.
08:40.58
Andrew
Subdomains don't really matter anymore. They don't hurt you.
08:42.76
Sean
Yeah, they're all, they're all one, like, thing now, yeah.
08:44.65
Andrew
Cool. Sweet. So, which is really how it always should have been like.
08:49.80
Sean
Yeah, I don't know why. Who knows?
08:52.11
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, except for, I guess, really complex sites and properties, then those get a little wonky, but like, I guess.
08:59.81
Sean
But why would you ever not want it to be all one thing, you know?
09:05.60
Andrew
So that but cough cough someone couldn't game the system by creating a dot card page and getting really strong backlinks.
09:10.00
Sean
Oh, yeah.
09:13.00
Sean
Right, right, right, right, right, right.
09:16.67
Sean
Right, right. That's a good point. It hasn't worked on it.
09:19.35
Andrew
Cough cough somebody.
09:20.48
Sean
It hasn't worked with the dot .card thing, by the way.
09:22.54
Andrew
Well,
09:22.60
Sean
That one doesn't get indexed, I think.
09:24.80
Andrew
and Well, that's that's totally possible. And then also, I think like links just don't matter quite as much as they used to. like They matter, but they don't matter as much. so um So I guess it it works within that new context.
09:35.60
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
09:39.74
Andrew
because But anyway, so I'm going to create a standalone Nux app. And so then like I can keep all of the free tools in the standalone Nux app.
09:50.78
Andrew
some point in the future, my role you know our marketing website and our our like actual product and these standalone tools into kind of one code base, one big monolithic code base, or we might keep them separate, who knows.
10:04.51
Andrew
But but yeah, I'll have like the infrastructure in place, and so then I should be able to add more relatively easily.
10:14.40
Sean
Sweet.
10:15.19
Andrew
Yeah, and I'll create like kind of a
10:18.30
Andrew
a landing page at some point once I have multiple where you can like jump between them easily.
10:24.40
Sean
Cool. go back to the ADHD ADHD thing.
10:28.20
Andrew
Yeah.
10:28.67
Sean
Are you like a, like, you know, there's like overarching like strategies that kind of deal with it. So like accountability or body doubling or like a change of environment, various, I guess there are more tactics than strategies, but, do any of those, like, do you feel like any of those work for you?
10:47.44
Andrew
The things that work best for me are Diet and exercise, which are actually pretty solid right now. I'm working out three days a week. I'm eating relatively healthy. So diet and exercise, mindfulness, regular mindfulness practice, which has always been one of the hardest habits for me to establish. But I know that when I'm doing it, it does make an impact on my ability to
11:16.25
Andrew
Focus and like come back once I get distracted. I think that's one of the really cool things that it teaches you is like when you get distracted, the, the like. almost like muscle memory, like the neurological memory to like come back.
11:31.40
Andrew
And then social pressure works really well for me. So actually I haven't been using it, but I am a member of Flow Club, which is like virtual co-working.
11:43.17
Sean
Right, right.
11:43.43
Andrew
And that can often be, it's not always perfect, but like it can often be just a little bit of extra social pressure to help me get into a groove and stay stay focused.
11:56.97
Sean
nice cool yeah yeah i mean i think body doubling ends up working for me sometimes similar similar idea just like someone else in the room was also working so you you feel like you should also be working not always but it helps it helps yeah but okay i hope you
12:01.21
Andrew
What is body doubling? I'm not sure if I know that one. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I might try. I've also thought about trying to like,
12:19.99
Andrew
go to a coworking space or a library or a cafe or something. So should probably give that a try at some point too.
12:26.41
Sean
Do you feel that you're doing too much client work? That it's draining you of the energy you have to do current work?
12:31.51
Andrew
I'm definitely at my limit, which is kind of funny because yeah I'm only on three client projects right now.
12:38.57
Sean
All the client projects. Not an insignificant amount of client projects.
12:42.50
Andrew
Yeah, but I think back to some of the days at crit and like I feel like Austin had to juggle significantly more than that. So I'm like, how the fuck did you do that?
12:49.97
Sean
Sure.
12:53.84
Andrew
But yeah, I'm definitely at my limit and it was certainly easier with one or two. So that that does probably play a role, even if it's like a Yeah, it's not always immediately obvious, but I think that probably does play a little bit of a role too.
13:13.29
Sean
Plus, I think, for what it's worth, like I think one of them is more nerve-wracking of the three than the other two I would would imagine, I feel like.
13:23.24
Andrew
Yeah. One of them is just like work, a type of work that I haven't done as much of. And so I'm not as, the process isn't like ingrained in me and it's not like kind of easy.
13:33.65
Sean
I know, sorry. It's kind of on, that's on me.
13:36.87
Andrew
It's okay, I'm learning, yeah.
13:37.56
Sean
oh Well.
13:40.07
Andrew
Also, whoever sold the project loves to promise the moon in zero time and not push back on clients, so, you know.
13:48.04
Sean
Could it it be me?
13:54.95
Andrew
But yeah, it's it's all good. i think I think another part of this, like another thing I'm trying to do is
14:01.66
Andrew
just like have some larger perspective and go, yes, who things have been slow over the past couple of weeks. They won't stay this way. It's good to take action to try to yeah get the ADHD under control. But also, you I think it's OK to be kind to myself and Austin in this in this phase and just be like,
14:25.32
Andrew
We're bootstrapping for a reason.
14:25.48
Sean
yeah you're cool.
14:27.01
Andrew
and And we're both part-time. And so like there are going to be limits to help us.
14:29.79
Sean
and your California was buying a house. just Just for the record, just to take a step back, I'm not actually concerned about you being slow, because your California was buying a house.
14:32.88
Andrew
That too, yeah.
14:38.36
Andrew
Yeah.
14:40.62
Sean
It doesn't matter.
14:41.32
Andrew
Yeah.
14:41.42
Sean
You probably should not have been working at at actual speeds. But with that being said, I also don't feel like, like sure, there's a lot of like as a user, maybe there's like a little bit of product slowdown, but I also feel like there's new people joining the Slack every week.
14:59.03
Sean
So from my perspective, it's like, oh, Andrew's getting more trapped, like in focus more on like getting traction in early users and.
15:07.49
Andrew
Yeah, we have been adding a few folks. Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit too. But before before we jump into that, what's what's going on in your world?
15:17.01
Sean
Well, I believe we are officially pursuing, speaking of ADHD and chart ideas and all that stuff, we are, i I believe we are going to be officially ah pursuing a SaaS product under misgrains.
15:34.56
Andrew
You believe or you are.
15:37.67
Sean
I'm believing that we are. how You know, it it hasn't, it hasn't, when when we spoke about it internally that was like this is like 1099 week so we were all busy with taxes and all that stuff and we're switching to cpa and like folks were out earlier in the month and so we've been kind of just like chatting i mean just seeding the idea and chatting about it and sort of slowly working on like the prd on my own thinking about it
15:48.100
Andrew
Oh, okay. I got you.
16:09.51
Sean
But my goal is to do it mainly because, so just for context, it's like a layer on top of Webflow or something extensible for Webflow. Webflow is deprecating a lot of things, which which sucks for a number of different reasons. I really wish they weren't.
16:28.62
Sean
and we're improving those things. For example, Webflow is deprecating memberships. That's not very good, given the fact that like the current options available all hide content with CSS versus like Webflow actually like you know rendering something server-side and then shipping it over. There's a whole problem if you want like real data content, for example.
16:52.38
Sean
Not what we're pursuing, but anyway, point being is like, we think it'd be cool. It makes a lot of sense for us to do it because our clients are going to need it. And at the very worst, not that we're planning to fail here, but at the very worst, it's a great agency tool to just have have um and set us apart.
17:11.20
Andrew
Yeah. So you have told me this idea and I am so hyped. I think this thing needs to exist. I think it has more market potential than almost anything else that we've ever talked about you working on.
17:18.21
Sean
Thanks.
17:26.50
Andrew
And I am like, I want to see this succeed. I want to see it come to market. And I think you, I think this is worth putting some chips in and really taking a swing.
17:37.73
Sean
Thanks.
17:40.56
Sean
Thanks. we, like, we are, we are like, during the conversation, you know, we have a concept of a budget for it too, which is, you know, it was like,
17:48.93
Andrew
Okay. Sick. That was going to be one of the first questions I was going to ask is like, yeah, how are you funding this? What's the budget look like?
17:55.49
Sean
and So my thinking is, you know, if we were to do this, we would hire probably somewhat of like a full-time senior dev, right? So somewhere we between 100 to 200K. So that's the budget, basically, or the concept of the budget.
18:15.57
Sean
I don't know if that's like a lot, I don't know if that's like a little. I actually like, it feels very weird to be doing it this way compared to like scrappy ramen startups 0-1, hack it together and just do it.
18:20.01
Andrew
Hmm.
18:28.06
Sean
the Especially also because our initial buyers are people that are people that you know our enterprises and and have SOC 2s and care about certain things.
18:40.06
Sean
So there's a lot of things falling in my head, it's like a very different mental model of how to think about it. And I have a lot of concerns, actually about doing it so I want to ask you about it.
18:46.62
Andrew
Yeah.
18:49.66
Sean
I know you have a lot of thoughts, as well as per our slack messages
18:53.80
Andrew
Yeah.
18:55.36
Sean
Anyway, we're pursuing this thing. It's very exciting. like's It's always always been what I wanted to do, and the last time I did it, it was way too sloppy, and I didn't see it through.
19:07.61
Sean
like For context, I tried running a security. I tried to launch a security startup at the same time. Very talented co-founder. It's funny with agency money.
19:18.19
Sean
It was very sloppy, big failure, because I spent no time thinking about product management. I kind of was just like, go forth and prosper here, Dev, here design it, go do it. I did the sales part. you know we had We had demos lined up, and we just couldn't execute on it in time.
19:36.84
Sean
And then, you know, other subsequent sort of mini failures of like, built a really cool micro free tool, like, looks really cool, and was a really cool idea, and could not handle the upkeep of it.
19:51.43
Sean
Still like occasionally thinking about going back, but you know, like, like a directory business, like at the end of the day, there was no system in place.
19:56.86
Andrew
Yeah,
19:59.43
Andrew
yeah I mean building a product while running an agency is hard.
20:03.74
Sean
Yeah.
20:04.03
Andrew
Like people focus on the success stories like Basecamp, 37signals and yeah a handful of others that are out there. But like the vast majority of people who try this fail and they end up just burning a bunch of money.
20:18.81
Sean
For sure sure.
20:19.26
Andrew
and not really ever getting any sort of traction. And and like that's true of a lot of startups, but I think it's especially true within if you try to launch a product internal to an agency.
20:23.24
Sean
For sure. sure.
20:30.07
Andrew
We tried multiple times at Grit and never were successful. And I think it's because, in part, like focus is so critical in the early stages of getting a product off the ground.
20:43.50
Andrew
and
20:43.56
Sean
Yeah.
20:44.95
Andrew
Like we talked about it with the work I'm doing right now a second ago.
20:46.94
Sean
Yeah.
20:48.56
Andrew
like you know, it's so easy for the client work to take precedence because the client work is funding everything. It's always going to feel more urgent. It's like, you know, it's important. It's your bread and butter. It's your how your company exists right now. So, you know, how figuring out how to maintain that focus while continuing to focus on delivering good client work is critical and also like why I think most people fail at this.
21:20.68
Sean
Yeah, I agree. I think that one of the things we're doing differently now and feels different is I am slowly pulling myself out of client work and it's slowly working. Just last Friday was really cool. I was on, you know,
21:35.03
Sean
also thanks to you you've been a part of that too so thank you for that but i was part of like four or five different client calls on our on either thursday or friday and at the end of the day i realized i was not the main person who talked on any of those calls like i'd actually just kind of sat there like honestly i wasn't even needed it was nice it was probably good for the client that ah my my face was there but I said like two lines in each meeting and they were not actually helpful or or any of that sort of stuff. So, slowly I think I'm pulling myself out of it. I think it's been super helpful to have, you know, people I can really trust handle all these things. But yeah, yeah.
22:16.13
Andrew
So I've got a couple of thoughts for how I think you should approach this.
22:19.29
Sean
Yeah, go.
22:21.83
Andrew
So I think you're right to think about like having dedicated resources that are as separate from client work as possible.
22:30.50
Andrew
So an engineer, designer. think the designer is a little less important just because like there's usually less design work in this phase.
22:35.54
Sean
Yep.
22:38.15
Andrew
So you don't you certainly don't need a full-time designer.
22:40.66
Sean
Yep, yep.
22:40.72
Andrew
So I think you could like have a you lean on on some of the designers on on your team. but like having an engineer who is not going to get pulled into like, you know, a client project, I think is, I think is smart.
22:51.84
Sean
Yeah.
22:54.30
Andrew
I think you should consider also hiring a, or maybe you can find one person to do both, maybe you can I don't know. I think you should have an entrepreneur in residence. Pulling yourself out of client work is one option, but I think you should look realistically at like how long that's going to take and how that lines up with the timeline of this project. And I think you should look at yourself more as like,
23:20.92
Andrew
the CEO of miscreants who is responsible now for these two revenue lines and, and find someone to own this one.
23:32.13
Andrew
And, you know, you can like direct them and give them as much like help as you can. But I, I think you kind of need someone who can be focused on this and on like marketing this to like marketing and growth.
23:48.74
Sean
you want you want you want to You want to quit Metal Monster and become my yeah EIR? Andrew?
23:54.62
Andrew
I would love to, but then I'm not bringing you in any revenue on the client side. Not quit MetaMonster. I would love to quit my client work.
24:06.41
Sean
spend it down.
24:09.72
Sean
For sure.
24:10.26
Andrew
But no, I think I'm probably not a good fit because I like MetaMonster is going to be my primary focus. And I think like, ideally you'd find someone who isn't, doesn't have a like primary project right now who, you know, like I'm not going to use my personal socials for anything but MetaMonster really.
24:23.68
Sean
For sure.
24:29.73
Andrew
I mean, I'll, I'll like, I share miscreant stuff there and stuff like that, but like, yeah.
24:33.84
Sean
I agree. You're not, you're not, this is not a job offer. You're not here. It's declined. If you, anyway, uh, it was a joke, but yeah keep going.
24:40.10
Andrew
Yeah, but i think I think someone like me is kind of who you need, ideally someone with less ADHD, but or their ADHD more under control. But yeah, i think that I think you should seriously consider, rather than trying to be the product owner yourself, having a dedicated like product manager. And I don't even think I think they need to be more than a product manager because I think they also need to do marketing and sales. So I think they need to be more of an EIR. What do you think?
25:12.48
Sean
What a hard pill to swallow. What an incredibly... I think that is a very good idea. And I have not considered it yet.
25:24.08
Sean
And I think the reason I have not considered it is I mean, I like the romantics of doing the work.
25:28.20
Andrew
You want to do the work?
25:36.52
Andrew
Mm hmm.
25:36.70
Sean
I don't actually know if I enjoy doing the work.
25:39.88
Andrew
Hmm.
25:41.98
Sean
I'm sure I do, right? i like But the thing is, like do I really enjoy like the completeness of it, or is it that I enjoy the scratching my own itch, hacking away, using like bolt dot.new, building something really shitty, and like feeling good about having done it because it's like the concept and the idea is there and it got and now in and out of the world and I can move on with my life now?
25:43.94
Andrew
Hmm.
26:07.34
Sean
versus you know fully seeing it through. like i think I think one of the things that makes SaaS successful is excellent customer support.
26:16.39
Andrew
Mm hmm.
26:17.12
Sean
And fuck, I do not care to do it.
26:20.58
Andrew
Yeah.
26:21.72
Sean
I do, I do, I do. for for just If anyone's coming back to this after we were both you know private island owners, like I do. you know and um've never But yeah yeah, I mean, I think standing setting it up, like building it, and turning it into an actual SAS, like doing all that, I think you're right.
26:36.48
Andrew
All the minutia, although like like seeing it through past the prototype phase to like
26:43.28
Andrew
the yeah when you have to do the current work to make it like a robust platform.
26:48.92
Sean
Right, right.
26:50.48
Andrew
Yeah.
26:52.47
Sean
I have considered that's interesting, like one of the conversations that came up in this is like, I'm not a CTO, in the sense that like, I think I can totally zero, I can totally get something from like zero to one, but in terms of it being one to three, you know, what happens when we're actually like,
27:02.95
Andrew
Mm hmm.
27:11.23
Sean
Yeah, what happens when we're actually like, trying to serve more than two customers on the sass app. I don't know what that actually looks like. i I have hunches and you know for my conversations I can learn it of course but I don't know, I feel it feels very weird to be in this spot though, like it feels very uncomfortable.
27:30.99
Sean
Like, it feels very uncomfortable to be in like an executive producer position versus a director of a movie.
27:39.50
Andrew
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
27:39.84
Sean
And the thing that I think I've always romanticized is not being the executive producer of it. What I should is the problem. But I don't know what, like,
27:50.44
Sean
Like you watch Ocean's 11, the cool guy is not the person who they went to for all the money to go do the the heist. It's like, you know, like the people that it's, it's the other 10, having for sure, for sure.
28:03.95
Andrew
Yeah, but the problem is those other 10 people aren't also doing heist for a bunch of clients at the same time. Like they're able to just focus on do the heist and do it really well.
28:11.72
Sean
Sure.
28:16.38
Sean
I'm with you. um I am. I am with you. I.
28:22.33
Sean
I'm with you. I think it's a good call. I have to like come to terms, I think, almost with my own ego about it. But let's let's say I'm on board, right? Like.
28:34.06
Andrew
How do you find that person?
28:35.10
Sean
Yeah.
28:35.82
Andrew
It's fucking hard.
28:35.99
Sean
Where I don't, I don't have friends that are like that. I did. I i thought I did in, in, uh, in college. And then they all went to get tech jobs that pay him hundreds of thousand dollars a year.
28:47.37
Sean
And then all their startup, like vibe was went out the window.
28:52.71
Andrew
Yeah. So you either need like a true unicorn who can do the engineering early on or you need like an engineer and a, you know, head of product like, like I, you're almost, we're almost talking about you're building like, MetaMonster, like you're building a, a small team of like a technical co founder and a business co founder, and, and then just like funding them and trying to get them started. And so,
29:29.89
Andrew
Yeah, how do you find those people? I think the engineer is easier to find because I think that.
29:35.17
Sean
Actually, I'm curious if you think I should. I'm almost kind of tempted to do an MVP agency, but I'm curious what you think about it as someone who ran said agency.
29:47.21
Andrew
God, this is so hypocritical of me.
29:50.44
Andrew
I think like the people who the MVP agency is the most useful for are the people who don't have the technical knowledge to like find and vet an engineer.
30:05.64
Andrew
and i think you know Truthfully, I think having a sort of dedicated freelance engineer is probably better, it's, but it's just not a good option for some people because if you don't have the know how to find that person that then guide their work, like make sure they're not over optimizing for scale, like make sure they're, they're actually building like in an MVP fashion.
30:39.83
Andrew
then then you kind of need more of a trusted brand who has a track record and can kind of do all of that.
30:45.94
Sean
Hmm.
30:49.16
Andrew
But like what you, you have that skill. And so I think it would be better for you to focus on like get a dedicated person and like basically start building the team a little bit.
31:00.18
Sean
I might be also conflating the fact that, like, the MEP agency I've been behind is, like, one next next JS engineer who
31:06.25
Andrew
Yeah, I would
31:07.27
Andrew
I don't want to say stay away from a next JS engineer, but don't cheap. Don't be cheap on this. Like, like, I feel like you have often for a lot of your side projects found people who were like very young, not a whole, a super proven track record.
31:17.60
Sean
For sure.
31:24.22
Andrew
And we're like very, very affordable. And often those people have gotten 75% of the way and then.
31:28.03
Sean
Yeah.
31:34.60
Andrew
like been unable to take it over the finish line for some reason. And so I like you were just talking about you said yourself like a senior engineer. And I think that is who you should be looking for here.
31:47.38
Andrew
You need someone.
31:47.75
Sean
Hold on.
31:49.68
Andrew
Yeah.
31:49.90
Sean
I agree with you. What I was going to say is this specific MVP agency is like a senior engineer who's building MVPs in Next.js and Subibase and everything.
32:00.99
Sean
That being said, I've not vetted his work properly.
32:04.38
Andrew
Yeah.
32:04.95
Sean
I've not gone through that process. I actually don't feel a lot of
32:12.66
Sean
I brought it up to kind of, because I was conflating like a single person masquerading as an agency versus like and MVP, like like ah like a crit slash, I guess you guys didn't just do MVPs, but you know, like an actual trusted brand agency, like a whoever whoever Rob suggests for getting their name, but yeah,
32:33.76
Andrew
Like Brian Castle's instrumental products.
32:36.40
Sean
exactly, exactly.
32:36.59
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. I would, and again, I, I have recommended instrumental products to people, but I think I like.
32:44.36
Sean
and I don't want to go that route anyway.
32:45.69
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
32:46.71
Andrew
Yeah.
32:48.31
Sean
so So going back, actually, I think the the thing that I'm stuck on is I actually don't think I know how to vet for a good engineer.
32:58.70
Andrew
I think I do. I can help you with that.
32:59.82
Sean
Oh, OK. Oh, cool.
33:00.66
Andrew
Yeah.
33:01.56
Sean
Dope.
33:02.05
Andrew
Yeah.
33:02.54
Sean
Dope, dope. That's true. I've actually, I don't, I don't hire like actual software engineers. I hire Webflow. I can vet for a great Webflow dev. like very quickly, but I got no clue.
33:08.58
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
33:14.12
Sean
but hence the, hence the wondering if I should get like someone in like a CTO as position would, but I also don't know if that's the right call. um, yeah.
33:25.61
Andrew
Yeah. I think. I think probably the early team needs to be like. a scrappy product person who can help with scoping the product and, uh, do marketing and sales like in parallel and then a, you know, a reasonably senior engineer.
33:40.88
Sean
Mm hmm.
33:46.12
Andrew
And I think like what I would prioritize in finding that engineer is yes, find someone with, you know, experience in a stack, make sure they write relatively clean code.
34:01.20
Andrew
there's ways to do that there' platforms you can use, you can hire them to do like a code test. If they're a freelancer, a full-time freelancer, you can hire them to do like a one-off small feature and then and then yeah check that out.
34:14.32
Sean
Sure.
34:15.44
Andrew
I think that's generally the best way to go about it. And while I could look at their code and probably tell reasonably well how clean it is, and then I also have people I could lean on.
34:28.02
Andrew
i could yeah we can We can connect you to someone who could vet their code and just be like, hey, here's what I see. But I think the bigger, more important thing for an engineer like this is you want someone, an engineer, a product-minded engineer.
34:43.22
Andrew
So you you need someone who, you need to test how they think through trade-offs more than anything else.
34:50.79
Sean
Hmm.
34:50.86
Andrew
Like, like I would yo And again, if they're a freelancer, great, pay them pay them to do this. Pay them to put together a roadmap, right? Like a scoping document.
35:00.04
Sean
Hmm.
35:01.86
Andrew
But do it collaborative have them do it collaboratively with you. And what you want to hear is how they think through trade-offs. You want to hear them go,
35:13.36
Andrew
We could do things this way and we will eventually need to do things this way to scale, but we shouldn't do that now. we We should do this now because this will get us there faster. And you want someone who has that mindset of scaling doesn't matter if we don't get our first customer, um but also someone who ideally has a little bit of like a knowledge of what it would take to scale in the future.
35:36.68
Sean
Yeah, yeah,
35:37.11
Andrew
And that that's that balance you you want to look for.
35:40.22
Sean
yeah yeah for sure, for sure. Someone who, yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of like one and a half way doors you end up walking through by only in prioritizing for user one and user two.
35:47.21
Andrew
Mhm. Mhm.
35:53.52
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
35:56.67
Sean
Yeah. Fair. Fair, fair, fair.
35:59.63
Andrew
Yeah, my immediate thought is like I would probably look in like the microconf community, the like indie hackers community, and you know and i would I would also probably prioritize like less trendy code bases. My initial thought is Laravel Laravel Ruby are probably just going to attract people who are more a little bit more product minded.
36:27.88
Andrew
I say this as like we are working on a Nux app. Nux is JavaScript. JavaScript is like in Vercel or like the trendy, like the trendy stack right now is like Superbase, Next.js, Vercel.
36:33.57
Sean
yeah Yeah.
36:36.54
Sean
Yeah.
36:40.33
Sean
And like we're selling qualify or or qualify. Yeah, yeah.
36:43.73
Andrew
Yeah. And so, and that's totally fine. Like I think that person But I think there's just like, there's a lot more people swirling around in that community that are like a little more into the nerdiness of like using the new hotness.
36:52.03
Sean
Sure.
37:00.55
Sean
Sure.
37:01.00
Andrew
And you almost like want the boring engineer.
37:07.16
Sean
Yeah.
37:08.41
Sean
I think that's good advice.
37:11.15
Sean
Long pause.
37:12.15
Andrew
Yeah.
37:13.07
Sean
OK, what else? i feel like I feel like you've listed two things.
37:19.73
Sean
I don't know if you had another one.
37:22.36
Andrew
So those are two, the two biggest things like the, I think, I think the thing that will make this the most likely to be successful like getting the right engineer is going to be a huge part.
37:24.90
Sean
Okay, okay.
37:32.56
Andrew
I think the other I think getting that person like having a dedicated person who And I don't know that they need to be full time, right? Like if you if the budget doesn't have enough for these two people to be full time, that might be okay. But if you could find someone who was like half time so that they they're just their focus wasn't too split, but having that that sort of entrepreneur role,
37:58.91
Andrew
So that it's not, so that when you inevitably get busy with client work, like yes, keep pulling yourself out of client work, but when you inevitably have to jump in and like cover here the gaps, the project keeps making progress without you.
38:07.45
Sean
Hmm.
38:13.50
Andrew
I think that's the biggest thing. I mean, we could get nerdy and talk about like how you are gonna structure this legally, which, but I think
38:23.50
Sean
I'm curious, maybe maybe we could talk about it on a different episode after I figure out whether or not I will hire like who I will hire.
38:28.83
Andrew
Yeah.
38:31.98
Sean
I think.
38:32.34
Andrew
Yeah.
38:33.75
Sean
These are all right.
38:36.76
Sean
suggestions because I think it has. So one of the concerns I have is just fundamentally about seeing this through into into like.
38:47.64
Sean
Yeah, like like what is actual completion? and And not just like the just the MVP version of it. So I think these are all fair. I do think that I have another concern about this whole thing. I don't know when my risk appetite became like so diminished. Maybe it's like when I started having like a salary and like a payroll.
39:11.61
Sean
but
39:13.76
Sean
So, you know, I give you a very, very nebulous answer, like a hundred or two hundred K. Right. But I actually don't know how to think about this from like a payback sort of thing. So how much are we realistic looking at a charge for this product? 30 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month. Right. like what is the actual, like, I think it's also because I come from agency world where like.
39:38.37
Sean
You know, I could burn this down and and get to 10K a month on a contract single contract and like fairly quickly because it's like agency is all about float, right?
39:49.57
Sean
You get the cash, you have 50% up front and then you get that to play with and you get 50% on completion on how fast you do it. That's completely different from, from like the slow.
40:00.21
Andrew
The long slow zasran, the death.
40:01.89
Sean
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
40:03.70
Andrew
Yeah.
40:03.76
Sean
And I'm a little bit concerned about surviving the the SAS ramp of death.
40:08.10
Andrew
Yeah.
40:09.76
Sean
And because like because we're an agency and because we're putting a budget to it there and it's not like this is the thing I'm doing is my side hustle while I have a full-time job and I can so you know take however long uh there's like a there's like a realistic cut off to it or at least like the conversation about should we kill this project comes up more often would come up more often than not so i don't know i don't know
40:33.94
Andrew
Yeah.
40:39.43
Andrew
Yeah, that's that's the other hard piece is just like the economics like continuing to have the courage to say, we're gonna keep s sinking money into this and knowing you're not you know putting good money after bad, right?
40:52.32
Andrew
Like knowing when to pull the strings. I mean, you're kind of talking about taking an investor mindset, right? And going, okay, I have this capital to deploy, what's the smartest way I can deploy it?
41:05.38
Andrew
And I think, yeah.
41:06.73
Sean
You know what the smartest way to deploy capital? Fucking SMP 500. That's the smartest way to deploy capital. Like 10% year after year.
41:15.65
Andrew
100%, but you don't even do that in your personal life. so
41:19.21
Sean
i I might have bought a thousand bucks worth in the video when I dropped 15%.
41:23.84
Andrew
Yeah, but you don't buy ETFs, which are the actual smartest way of doing things.
41:24.85
Sean
No, I don't. I don't. I don't. You're right. You're right. You're right. All right. Whatever.
41:33.15
Andrew
I think it's really good that you're thinking about that.
41:30.75
Sean
You're not wrong.
41:37.45
Andrew
Maybe the way to do that is
41:41.92
Andrew
You probably need to think long-term now. rather than thinking about this as like, what does it take to get the MVP built? You've probably got to think about this as like, what's the realistic budget to get this to product market fit? And so that's probably these roles, these this one to two people being you as close to full-time as possible for two to three years.
42:10.70
Andrew
and so you got to like, kind of do the math there and like, see if you're comfortable with that. And then like, yeah, I mean. You it's going to take longer to get this thing to ramen profitability.
42:25.18
Andrew
I mean, it all depends on the people you find and like their risk tolerance to write like if you can. That's kind of why I was I was wondering how you were going to structure this legally because like probably you want people who want some amount of equity and and so like.
42:39.81
Sean
It hasn't crossed my mind because we just talked about the yeah EIR stuff.
42:43.57
Andrew
Yeah.
42:43.58
Sean
I haven't considered it as a...
42:44.84
Andrew
Yeah. Like if you, I guess that's true. If you were just doing this in-house and hiring like a full stack engineer, then you're just paying them cash. But if you're like, especially if you hire that yeah EIR role, then it is, you're kind of talking about like,
43:00.39
Andrew
And i I don't think you need to start any of that. yeah Ideally, you you don't waste time spinning up a business structure yet. But like once it you have some sort of threshold where, like hey, once we get to this point, we are going to create a separate business structure, and you'll have this and whatever.
43:19.39
Sean
Yeah.
43:19.59
Andrew
And like yeah the more risk tolerance these people are willing to take on the the like lower your initial capital is and like the faster it will be to get to Raman profitability.
43:34.47
Andrew
but But yeah, I think you depending on where that risk tolerance ends up, you you should be thinking long-term and making sure Because I think if you're only willing to put the money in to get to the MVP, then like you're probably you're more likely to just be setting this money on fire.
43:52.74
Sean
Hmm.
43:53.16
Andrew
Because you you've got to be willing to give it the time it needs to succeed, the time and resources it needs to succeed, or else like you're kind of just wasting the capital.
43:58.09
Sean
Right. Yep.
44:07.12
Andrew
And so yeah, that's probably part of it is just like be realistic about how long this is gonna take and like the resources it's gonna take and then like ideally find someone who's willing to take on some of the risk with you.
44:19.01
Andrew
But this person's getting harder and harder to find. The the more of these things.
44:22.10
Sean
i know and know
44:24.17
Andrew
like It's already almost impossible to to find a like like someone who is a capable product person and capable marketer and to find that person who's also then willing to like
44:24.40
Sean
huh
44:30.09
Sean
and
44:35.03
Sean
yeah
44:39.38
Andrew
you know take less salary and yeah, it's hard.
44:40.54
Sean
yeah Yeah, who isn't like a young person that I'm just taking a bet on because I believe in them because yeah, I think
44:47.15
Andrew
Yeah. And like you could take a bet on a young person, like that's a strategy, but it's just, it's introducing more risk, right? It's like, you know, versus someone who, you know, knows the like same bootstrapper lessons that you and I know from like trying things and listening to people for you years.
45:07.90
Sean
yeah yeah that i mean that and also like i think this specific idea also requires like a level of intimacy with webflow that you might honestly just not have like there's a ramp up period to it i don't it's uh yeah i think
45:20.69
Andrew
Hmm.
45:32.84
Sean
There's like two.
45:36.85
Sean
There's two ways I feel very uncomfortable about it, even though I feel like it's right. So it's more like two things I'm trying to like mentally unblock and work through. I think number one is I don't really know if I go this route, I really don't know what my job is like.
45:54.92
Sean
or like where the fun in my job or like where to find the fun in my in my like newfound role and you know that makes sense i think there's a lot like this is one of those like moments where i have to grow as a person and become a different type of like you know from like founder to like actual ceo sort of stuff
46:17.29
Andrew
I think you've got to find the fun in like building the systems and the environments and and identifying the right people to bet on and then giving being more of a coach than a player.
46:29.63
Sean
Right. right
46:32.57
Andrew
and so you've yeah like you're You know, you're talking about building something kind of like Peter Kang, right? And Beryl, the thing that he's done that's probably smart is like he's built.
46:41.41
Sean
Well, he's found EIRs. That's been the strategy.
46:51.27
Andrew
He's found, yeah, he's found managers and he's also built agencies, which are faster to get to cashflow positive, even if they're less valuable in the long run.
47:01.41
Sean
Right, right, right.
47:07.29
Sean
um
47:08.89
Sean
Yeah, and then the other thing that sort of like is a mild concern is, I don't actually have a lot of faith in my own recruiting, recruiting abilities. I think, I think I am able to, like, I think I'm able to close someone in terms of bringing them on board and getting them to believe in the thing that they're doing. But I actually think that one of the I think something that's always been part of my personality is that I'm always willing to like rise to an occasion. And that's what, you know, early days of mysteries was built on the back of is was saying, yes, the things that I was sure I could learn how to do and do well, rather than I already knew how to do. I think that's been responsible for a lot of early learning. Like, and and not, like, not their mistakes, just like early success.
47:55.01
Sean
that doesn't translate I've noticed that doesn't translate very well to hiring and interviewing because I end up finding myself seeing the same thing in other people and like over believing in someone's capabilities expecting them to do that because if you look at the tracker record of people I've brought on off of that vibe versus like the track record that JJ for example has brought on
48:08.53
Andrew
Hmm.
48:14.63
Andrew
Hmm.
48:17.72
Sean
Everyone that I love working with has been someone that JJ has hired, minus JJ and Ben, who I have brought on. Because, you know, I haven't, I'm not worked in a very large professional setting where, like, like, I like people who may or may not be like kind of offbeat and scrappy and just hucking well like might be like a might be secretly a founder type.
48:47.87
Sean
Yeah.
48:46.83
Andrew
So two thoughts, one, it's possible that that's more of the kind of person you need for this. Again, it's often you're taking on a little bit more risk betting on those people because they can like just as easily get distracted and run off and do something else.
48:54.63
Sean
Possible, sure.
49:04.03
Andrew
but
49:04.57
Sean
sure
49:05.25
Sean
They might try to put AI in it and then I'm going to be like, no, stop, and then we're going to fight about it. and but
49:12.28
Andrew
So that's one thought. The other thought is like you might have your answer. If this is a weakness of yours and you have people on the team for whom it's a strength, then like don't do it yourself.
49:24.96
Sean
Oh, sure. Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, that's how I mean, that' that's how we're doing the miscreant.
49:26.71
Andrew
Have them do it.
49:29.79
Sean
I have I have knighted JJ in like she is now in charge of recruiting or final final say in someone higher and joining the team, not me.
49:38.41
Andrew
Awesome.
49:40.14
Sean
Yeah, yeah, because because I will just yeah, I think I think her nose for someone's ability to work in a professional team setting is like. significantly better than mine.
49:50.21
Sean
And I think it's because she's seen more shitheads than I have and and can weed them out way faster. there Yeah.
50:01.34
Sean
What an uncomfortable conversation and I have to like think about now. I'm glad I'm talking to Austin after this, by the way. He's gonna make me...
50:07.75
Andrew
Are you really?
50:08.67
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:09.57
Andrew
That's awesome.
50:10.66
Andrew
That's dope.
50:12.63
Sean
Yeah, I have to... I'm just verbally processing now. I'm so, I'm so against it.
50:18.00
Sean
Every fiber by being is like, is like.
50:21.91
Andrew
I mean, the great thing is it's your fucking company, so you don't you get to choose whether or not you want to take my advice, right?
50:26.97
Sean
For sure.
50:27.03
Andrew
It's it's your decision at the end of the day, but I am delighted at how uncomfortable I have made you.
50:28.97
Sean
For sure.
50:34.37
Sean
Yeah. yeah I will probably listen to wise kant counsel. I think, I think the the doubly ah ah like.
50:45.29
Sean
It's so hard not to be scrappy. It is like so difficult. Every part of me wants to go work with a dev that's going to cost me 10K maybe to get a very good prototype version of the sub with the designs that I have ah ah effectively done.
51:05.48
Andrew
I mean, that's an that's an option.
51:05.64
Sean
And then run with it.
51:07.66
Andrew
it's just like I haven't seen that be very successful for you.
51:07.68
Sean
It is.
51:10.72
Sean
No, no, I think your option is significantly ah ah more sustainable because like that 10k will soon become 20k because, you know, and then and then that that MVP thing will stall because...
51:26.36
Andrew
yeah I think if nothing else, you should you should be thinking about like what what will it take to support this thing until it gets to
51:33.07
Sean
Yeah.
51:35.18
Andrew
profitability and not just until it gets to MVP.
51:39.43
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay,
51:42.26
Andrew
and like yeah and like you know How is it going to work when important client work comes up? Maybe you can be the founder, but if you are, what like think through the the problems that are going to arise and have a solution now
51:53.65
Sean
wait.
52:04.48
Andrew
And that solution might not be right, right? Like you're you're not going to be able to predict everything, but just like what's the like James Clear quote, or it's not James Clear, it's someone you like, we all like fall to our systems, not rise to our like.
52:20.48
Sean
Yeah, we don't rise to our occasions. We fall to our level like highest level of training, is what I've always...
52:24.92
Andrew
Yeah, something like that.
52:25.87
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:26.32
Andrew
Yeah, so it's like. You know, I think that's the important thing. If you really want this to succeed versus like some of the other side projects, it's like figure out what's going to happen when client work becomes more important.
52:40.28
Andrew
And again, I'm i'm saying this, not just like being as constructive criticism, but because I tried to do this and just saw how easy it was.
52:41.55
Sean
For sure.
52:50.88
Andrew
like when we thought short-term and thought, like we got an MVP of a product out. We got a couple of users on it. We started hiring someone to like create content for it. And then within like two months, we were like, this is too expensive. This person's not gonna create content for crit. We're not putting any, it's just too easy to like lose focus. Yeah.
53:09.87
Sean
I think the first thing to do is exactly that is like, what will it actually cost and take to do this? And I feel like when I game it, honestly, when I feel like I game it out, I'm like, fuck that.
53:18.33
Andrew
Yeah.
53:22.40
Sean
I don't want to keep doing the agency. Like I might as well sell fucking t-shirts cause it's way faster to make money doing that. Just given where we're at with the brand at the moment. um Which Which is such a frustrating, like, you know, sort of thing, but...
53:35.41
Andrew
Yeah.
53:35.63
Sean
Okay, I think we're i think we're going in circles about this, and I think I had have to sit down and be sad for, like, 72 hours about it.
53:38.24
Andrew
yeah
53:40.81
Andrew
Cool.
53:43.66
Andrew
Okay. I'm excited to hear here where you land. I think next week's pod will be will be super interesting.
53:48.14
Sean
I'm gonna shut this project down.
53:49.11
Andrew
We can talk through your thoughts
53:52.06
Sean
The next week's pot is like...
53:53.71
Andrew
That's, that is a valid answer.
53:55.70
Sean
No, it isn't.
53:56.32
Andrew
Like it's a valid answer.
53:56.75
Sean
No, it isn't. No, it isn't. We're gonna have to...
54:00.16
Andrew
Yeah.
54:01.00
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
54:02.74
Andrew
Cool.
54:02.75
Sean
You're right. You're right.
54:03.56
Andrew
This is, this is a super interesting conversation. I think it's super cool that we recorded it. we both got to run, but cool, man.
54:07.39
Sean
Yeah, me too. Yep. Cool. I'll see you later.
54:11.19
Andrew
Peace.
54:11.34
Sean
Thanks. I appreciate the thoughts. Thanks.