What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of,
so the rest of us can do the same.
All right, I'm here with Ben Orenstein, one of the co-founders of Tupel. Ben, how's it
going?
Dude, it's going great. It's great to be back on the pod.
It's great to have you back. It's been a year and a half, two years. I wanted to have you
on last year, and then I don't know what happened. A few small things like a global pandemic,
you know, things of that nature. But now you're back. And I want to get people sort of a catch
up as to who you are since it's been a year and a half. And maybe the best way to do this
is to sort of retell the story you have on your website. I'm going to try telling you.
You tell me how to get wrong. Way back in the day, there's this app ScreenHero, and
you could use it to call somebody and share your screen with them. And it was super good.
It was fast. It was reliable. It was high quality. Everybody loved it. And in fact,
it was so good that programmers would use it to collaborate and write code together
and a pair. And then the unthinkable happened. Slackbot ScreenHero and shut it down. So this
amazing thing that existed in the world suddenly ceased to exist. And that's where you came
in, Ben, you were looking for a startup idea and you ended up making a modern sleek ScreenHero
replacement called Tupel. And so I think you were last on the pod and late 2019, you
hadn't even launched yet, but you've done a bunch of pre-sales, you have beta customers,
you were doing something like $20,000 a month in revenue. That was a little bit over a year
and a half ago. Since then, we've had a global pandemic, remote work has become kind of like
the new norm. Where are you at now in terms of like Tupel's progress?
Yeah, we're at like millions of dollars a year. COVID was crazy for us. Like the business
more or less quadrupled in a month or two, starting in March of 2020. And the next couple
months were crazy too. And basically since then, they're not quite as crazy, but they're
like our growth rate is 3x what it used to be. So it's been good for us for sure.
And how big is your team now? Because it was just three of you in total when I talked to
you.
Yeah. So I have two co-founders. So it's just the three of us last time. Now we are five
full-timers and three part-timers.
So I take it you're probably profitable, unless you're paying everybody a very, very good
salary.
No, no, no. Yeah, definitely profitable.
Cool. Well, that's awesome, man. Congratulations. I've talked to a few people recently who just
had their businesses explode in the last year. And it's like COVID seems to play a role in
all of them.
Totally. I mean, yeah, everything shifted so much. And one of the reasons we picked
tuple as an idea was that we thought there would be more remote programmers every year.
And it just accelerated at an insane pace where suddenly it was like, oh, guess what?
Everyone's a remote programmer.
I was going to say it's pretty nice to build a business on a wave that's growing. It's
pretty safe to predict there will be more software engineers in the future. And even
if everybody switches to no code, they're probably going to collaborate over the internet
and need some sort of pair programming tool.
And so it's kind of like you're betting on almost a sure thing. And when the market grows,
to some degree, it's not like you're not doing anything, you're doing quite a lot. But like,
you could do nothing and there would just be more customers there for you tomorrow.
It also helps with just thinking about competitors. It's like, okay, like, oh, there's people
over here doing this. These people over here doing this. And it's like, yeah, but also
every month, there's more programmers. And every month, some of them go remote or work
from home a bit more or something like that.
Yeah, competitors are funny. It's one of these topics that I think a lot of us will say one
thing in public when the reality is very different, like Paul Graham actually tweeted, I don't
know exactly what he said, but it's basically something like when people say that they're
flattered by competitors and copycats and like, oh, this proves that there's a market.
The reality is they're actually super annoyed by it because copycats suck. And I read that
tweet and I was like, that's so true. Like every time I even copied any hackers or anything
else working on it, it's just like, this sucks. Like I'm already having a hard enough time
and trying to grow this thing. I don't need someone like ripping off my idea, taking my
customers, etc. Like, but I'll go in public and say like, this just proves that the market
exists and it lights a fuel. It's a fire under my butt that I'm going to work even harder.
Like it's kind of bullshit.
It is. Yeah. There's this, there's like that unflappable, magnanimous, you know, exterior
persona and then your, your real actual like monkey mind wants to get back at them.
Yeah, exactly. But you, despite having, do you have any competitors? Are there any serious
like challenges for tuple?
So for a while it didn't seem like anyone else was positioning themselves for the pair
programming market, which is what we go after. So like, we have built the whole app around
the idea that it's for developers doing pairing. It's not generic screen sharing, not generic
video conferencing kind of stuff. And there wasn't a lot of people in that space before
there are more now it's, you know, it's, it's happening. It's, which is not shocking as
this was to be expected, but you prefer if there weren't, right? It'd be great if it
would be nice.
Like, yeah, we don't, we don't want that niche. That'd be the best. But you know, I just find
it very flattering and it helps you out at the market there. So I'm glad to see it.
But you've got quite a headstart and you've got like a very intentional positioning because
like I was mentioning earlier, like anybody could use this. Even if I'm not a developer,
if I wanted to, you know, be a no code person and collaborate with another no coder, I could
use tuple, but you've like made like very specifically said, this is the best remote
pair programming app because programmers deserve better. Like that's what it says at the top
of your homepage, which means in a way you're excluding other people who might not be turned
on by your messaging and you just don't care. It's worth it for you.
And also just the competitor thing. So when people have used tuple for a little bit, we
asked them what they were using before and asked them if they like tuple better as like
a little customer survey. And interestingly, the people that I consider our competitors
in terms of like doing like positioning similar to us and doing a similar thing, don't even
show up on this list. Our competitors such that like in the sense of apps that people
have used before and are switching to tuple from are basically zoom slack calls, hangouts
slash meat. That's it. So it's like we I'm aware I'm hyper aware of everyone in this
space, right? It's a TV I'm like, Oh, these guys are over here doing this. And these guys
are over here a little different because they have this angle on it. And most people are
just like using zoom. And so like they try to be like, Oh, this is way better than zoom
for pairing. We're like, there we go. You're, you're our customer.
It's the same thing that happens to everybody who builds like a to do list app or productivity
app. And they're like, who's our competition? And it always turns out that people are like,
I use like sticky notes. Like I'm using like a notepad. Then I've been using like the high
tech competitors that everybody's afraid of. So do you feel that in any way being transparent
about your numbers, like you didn't share your exact revenue numbers, but like you're
happy to go on podcast and say that you're doing millions of revenue, revenue quadrupled.
Why do that? If you have competitors and you have like not necessarily the best feelings
about the fact that these people exist.
I sort of don't buy the idea that like, just by talking about your revenue, you're going
to create savvy competitors out of the air. Maybe at the margin, there's someone who like
has three different ideas and they listen to this podcast and they go, Oh, well, tuples
making millions. I'm going to do that. The one that's most like tuple, maybe that I guess,
but like, if you can just like hear me talk about this and then go create something better
than tuple and compete with us so effectively that we start to lose customers to you and
our revenue goes down like, wow, like, damn, you're going to beat us anyway. And like,
you didn't need me to tell you that, Hey, this is a good business to sell programming
tools to programmers.
It's funny. You mentioned savvy competitors because you've got a podcast and your co-host
here at Reimer has a company called Savvy Cal and he's literally done this thing. So
there's Calendly, which many of us use to sort of like, I use this to schedule this
podcast call with you. I send you the link. You pick a date that's free on my calendar.
Super simple. And like, it's got a lot of issues. Like everyone knows Calendly has issues
and everyone also knows that Calendly is crushing it because they're found to go on podcast
and talk about how many millions of dollars they're making. And it just seems from the
surface to be a really simple app. And so Derek came and built, and he's one of these
competitors nipping at their heels. He built Savvy Cal. I think he just hit what, $10,000
a month in revenue recently. And he is a very savvy competitor. I don't know if he's going
to crush Calendly into the dust or anything like that, but like he's certainly making
a run for it.
That's the thing, but Derek didn't start Savvy Cal because he thought Calendly was
making a lot of money. He looked at Calendly and said, and talked to customers of Calendly
and found some of their dissatisfaction and said, I think there's a space for a thing
that does things a little bit differently here. It wasn't just like, Oh, they're making
X million. I want some of that. It was like, I see a gap and I think I can execute well
in this particular niche. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll come back on the podcast in a few
years and say, well, Cortland, I never should have mentioned that because I inspired all
these copycats that then went out and beat us and overcame our lead.
Well, how do you feel now that you have this lead? I mean, I talked to a lot of people
who obviously want to be where you are now. I think the last time I talked to you, you
would have told me that you want to be where you are now. And that probably would have
seemed much more than a year and a half out. Now that you're here, does it feel like you
still have like the fire to keep growing the business? Do you feel like you're settled
down a little bit? You want to focus more on your personal life? Like what's going through
your mind now?
Here's the thing that I've been realizing about the startup life or just having a company,
which is everyone says like the highs are high and the lows are low. And I think that's
pretty true. Like the highs are higher and the lows are lower than say having a job.
But also there's this peculiar quirk in my brain. And I think a lot of people's brains,
which is that as soon as I come down from the high, I don't want to lose any little
bit of the high. So like every time we hit a new high MRR mark, if we go down $1,000,
I'm like, Oh, that's the worst. Like it hurts so much. Or like we drop, you know, we have
a big day and a big customer cancels and it hurts. Or like, even like a, okay, we signed
a big contract with a customer, but you know, uh, it was an unlimited deal and we're not
getting expansion revenue from them anymore. And even though it's a huge contract, I still
feel the loss of that. So it's just like, it's hard to make yourself happy. It's one
of the things I've realized with like, with like business success, it's not a good happiness
region.
It makes sense. We are animals. We evolved in the wild. We really, really, really didn't
like losing things. You know, you gather a bunch of acorns, like you better keep those
acorns cause you might starve to death. Charlie Munger had calls it, uh, but like loss super
to private reaction syndrome is funny name for it. But I think psychologists call it
just like loss aversion. And it's this idea that like people are much more, much sadder
about like losing a thousand dollars than they are happy about gaining a thousand dollars,
which means you have this sort of, uh, mindset switch as you like become more successful
or gain things that are important to you in life. Or instead of like kind of being the
starry eyed child looking out into the world and saying, what do I want to do? What can
I accomplish? You start thinking like, how do I keep all the stuff that I have and not
lose any of it? Cause it's pretty fucking awesome.
Yeah. It's so irrational to, I was talking to Joel, my co-founder about this the other
day and I was like, well, what if revenue drops by this much? And he was like, well,
if revenue had just gotten to the point of that, the bottom of that drop, but it had
done it slowly rather than going up and then down, if it had gone there directly, you would
feel totally fine about it. I was like, yeah, I would feel totally fine. It's the fact that
we went down from a higher number that makes you really upset now. And it's just, man.
So like, anyway, I guess the, the big lesson there is like, wow, try good luck, good luck,
but try not tying your happiness to like how the business is doing. I mean, I have not
had much success with that. Honestly, I'm very tied to it, but I'm working on it. I'm
like a meditating. I'm trying to, you know, do, do my waking up app and try to be calm
and stuff and make success.
It's hard not to you. It's something you're spending like, it's like your life's work,
right? You're spending a great deal of your time and energy and effort on this. It's like
hard to say like, I care about this enough to spend all my time on it, but not enough
to feel any negative feelings when things don't go well. And I think like the trajectory
of the change matters too, because you know, if you hit this revenue number a little bit
slip more slowly, that actually is, I think better than hitting it and then like reverting
because if you revert, that means like the trajectory is now going down and like you
don't necessarily know where the bottom is. So part of that is kind of a fear, like, oh
yeah, it went down this month, but also like, will it keep going down? Like if we like lost
some spark. And I think in your particular case, you know, you have any apprehension
about the fact that like the pandemic is going to end in some form or fashion, right? Like
everybody's getting vaccinated. Things are going to go back to normal. People are going
to work in the office. I just saw something today, like Google's rapidly reopening their
offices or something. And like a part of your tailwind has been the fact that like we've
had people working remote, you know? And so like, I could imagine that there might be
some like fear in the back of your mind, like, Hey, like maybe this won't last forever. Maybe
the good times aren't here to stay. And we're going to go back to like some baseline level.
Yeah, that, that could certainly happen. I'm kind of hoping there'll be residual effects
of like people now, you know, want to work a couple of days from home or some, some chunk
of people will stay home or there'll be more hiring remote now that people have seen it
works. So we might not grow as fast as we have during the peak of this when like everyone
was forced to, I'd be surprised if we do. But I do think there's, there's still a tailwind
caused by that initial event that won't go back down to zero. I think it'll stay stick
around.
Yeah. I'm the same, same sort of feeling. And then on a personal level, I'm trying to,
I guess, reconcile my own feelings about like how I feel about the end of the pandemic where
it's like, obviously it's a horrible thing and I want it to end. And there's like, it's
super isolating to just not be able to see everybody you want to you and go to the events
you want to. Like I miss live music and I miss a lot of these bigger gatherings that
are with my friends, but like, it's pretty nice, literally never feeling FOMO. Like every
day that I stay in, I'm like, I'm not missing anything. There's nothing better that I could
be doing. And like, that's pretty cool. I love that feeling. And like, that's going
to go away. So beyond your company, I've been taking a look at like your personal website.
You got a lot of cool stuff you're working on. Obviously you're working on your podcast
with Derek, which you already mentioned. That's been going pretty well. I'm a listener. I
occasionally catch up. You won, I should say you stole from me a very prestigious award.
You were micro coms SaaS podcast awards, best show of 2020. I forgot. I won like best host
and best episode, but you got the crown and you got the actual, I did. I got like the
consolation prize and you wage like a pretty brutal campaign. I know you, it was like you
were, you were, uh, it was like attack marketing. You know, I felt personally attacked with
a lot of good compliments actually. I remember our, our podcast episode title was Cortland
Allen must be stopped. Yes. I saw that in his feed and I did a double take. I thought
someone's pulling an April fool's prank on me, but you did it. I mean, you were all over
me on Twitter. You pointed out some very salient hypocrisy and the fact that Andy hackers is
all from the ND founder. And yet we're owned by, what'd you say? Like a giant unicorn megacorp,
something like that, which I try to hide. How did it feel winning the, uh, the best
show award? Oh, it was great. I mean, I, it's, it's so stupid because it's just a made up
award, but I wanted it. And when I saw we were nominated, I was like, all right, I want
this award. And it was clear. It was like, all right. Cortland is the heavy hitter on
this list. He's my, he's the one I got to worry about. And so what, what better to do
than to personally attack him and make unfair allegations on Twitter. That's how I understand
you win elections these days. So that's what I went for. I'm pretty sure that's how you
went and it worked. And it was weird for me because I always feel like the underdog. I'm
like, wait, I'm, I'm the non underdog in this story. What is, what even is this very strange
dog? Well, they're doing it again this year and I've got some plans because I didn't even,
I didn't even see any hackers like fan base on you. I said nothing about it on the podcast.
I put no ads on the website. I just let it, just let it happen. And I said, we'll see,
we'll see how this naturally plays out. But next year the gloves are off. Good. All right.
Let's bring it on. I'm going to buy a lot of Facebook ads or something. I'm not going
to fraud in a way. You inviting me on your podcast is a huge mistake because now you've
exposed my podcast to your listeners. 80% of them at least. Oh, people should go check
out your show. What is it? Art of art of product. Ben Ornstein, Derek Reimer. What do you guys
do there? You basically just talk about, you do what we're doing right here. You just catch
up with each other and explain what's new in your lives.
Two dudes talking. This is the two dudes talking format. So it's like we reach running startup
companies, software companies, trying to make them work. And so each week it kind of come
on and say, what are you working on? What are you struggling with? That kind of thing.
Well, I love your show, dude. I think it's really cool. And I, whenever I see someone
who's like very successful and they're still running their podcast, I'm always curious.
Like what do you get out of it? You know, like, why do this podcast? Is it just like
a weekly ritual at this point? Is it moving the numbers in any way? Are you making money
from it or is it just like pure fun?
That's a good question. It is. The closest thing is kind of to fun. Honestly, we in the,
in the early days, a lot of our, our first customers came from the podcast. It was like,
definitely like a good seed for the business these days. I don't think that I'd be surprised
if many people found us through that. I honestly just really like it. I like talking to Derek.
I like trying to summarize my week. I like that I can go back almost any length of time
and hear a podcast episode of like what I was thinking at the time. Like I went and
for some, for kicks to just like listen to like the first episode where I was like, I
think I'm going to quit my job and build this thing. And it was just like, it was great
to go listen to me and like hear me say stupid things and be like, wow, so naive about this
or like, wow, I was really bent out of shape about this thing that turned out to be nothing.
And it's just a cool record to have.
It's super nice. And it's like way easier than doing like, you know, like in like a
YouTube show or something that's like super like high effort. And I think more people
should do the sort of audio format just for their normal lives. Like, for example, I did
a podcast with my friend Lynn on any hackers. And she just loved so much having a record
that was like a snapshot of us at that time. She's asked me like ever since and like we
just do a podcast, not publish it at all and just have it between us. And I've seen others
doing the same thing. Like the creator of the show Midnight Gospel, one of my favorite
shows on Netflix, every episode is basically an animated podcast. And like his last episode
was one that he did with his mom before she passed away. And it was super emotional and
moving and who always have that record. And so I just think people should consider buy
a couple good mics, get people you love and care about, sit down and record something
with them. And you can always go back and listen to it. And it's just, it's, it's worth
its weight in gold, I think.
So the other good thing about having a podcast is that you're sort of putting yourself out
there. So I was trying around your personal website and you've got something on your website
that I've only seen one or two other people do ever, which is kind of a call to action.
It says, by the way, I'm searching for an awesome life partner. Know any smart, funny,
accomplished ladies, or are you one yourself? Get in touch. And you click the link and it
literally just goes directly to your email inbox. So you've created like an almost like
a tender for yourself where at any point in time people can get in touch and you can like,
you can find someone to date. And where are you located? By the way, you're in, you're
in Boston.
I'm in Boston. Yep.
All right. So if any lovely ladies want to date a successful, smart, uh, eligible bachelor
with a booming deep voice who makes me sound bad on my own podcast, you know where to find
him. Uh, what was your thing in there? Why did you put a dating ad on your, on your personal
website?
It felt like worth a shot. Um, some that site gets some traffic and I wanted people to know
like, I actually think being set up is great. And I think meeting people through atypical
ways is great. Like everyone's on the dating apps. Of course I am too, but finding somebody
through a more organic channel or like it's just a different, just a unique way seems
good to me. It seems worth exploring rather than being Tinder profile number 5 million.
And honestly it's, it's resulted in some dates. Like I've had, I've been on dates with people.
It's great. I had this experience recently where I was on clubhouse talking to my buddy
Adam Wavin and I mentioned being single and someone like DM me afterwards and was like,
Oh, Hey, you're single. Like, do you want to do a zoom date? And I was like, absolutely.
I realized like I'm really under utilizing my audience honestly, to find a partner by
like not talking about it enough. And so I have a, I have a to do item, which is like
write up a public dating profile, link to it from my Twitter bio, talk about it on Twitter.
And I'm, I'm glad we're bringing this up now because this is like, honestly, like a kind
of the top priority of my life. Honestly, tuple is great and matters and is going well,
but like, gotta, I gotta do the dating thing and it feels like I'm missing piece right
now. So your exhortation to get in touch with me, if you think that seems good, is I second
please do. And please refer your awesome friends to me.
Yeah, it's hard to be on the bleeding edge of anything involving dating. Like, let's
say you're online dating in 2001. It was just weird back then. Like people would give you
crap for it. They have all sorts of questions, but now obviously it's completely normal.
I remember being in college actually in like 2005, I think. And Facebook was brand new.
And I actually met somebody on Facebook. I don't know how I found her like the features
for Facebook were different back then. But I somehow met someone who was a twin like
I was who was also born on March 22nd, like I was. And then we just kind of talked and
corresponded on Facebook for maybe like eight or nine months. And then she eventually moved
to Boston for completely different reasons. And she showed up on campus and we went on
a few dates and it was super cool. And people were like, that's so weird. Like you just
met this girl online. Like how do you trust her? Like what if she's a serial killer? You
know, if you had all these weird questions, but today, like nobody would blink about something
like that because everybody dates online. And so it gets me thinking like, okay, maybe
Ben, you're just like five to 10 years ahead of the curve. And maybe like five years from
now, it'll be super common for everybody on their Twitter profile to link to a personal
dating page that they have on their website. And you're just way ahead of everybody. And
I should probably be considering stuff like this too, because I'm technically single.
I date nominogamously, which means I have multiple partners, but I don't have what we
call a primary partner right now. Like I would love to meet someone to actually spend my
life with. And I don't know, I think talking about these things in public probably helps.
And I think you're probably onto something where if we have a unique platform, we're
like way more likely to be able to take advantage of something like this. And I never really
do it. It feels like kind of a no go zone on the podcast because it has nothing to do
with what the show is about. It has nothing to do with what my public persona or my tweets
are about. And most of my followers are probably guys anyway. But I think you're right. And
I think you're smart. And even if it feels a little bit weird, it's probably just ahead
of its time and looked at through another lens.
If you are a founder type person, you're probably like kind of predisposed to sort of flaunt
societal conventions. Like if you did what society said you should do, like you wouldn't
start a company, you wouldn't be running tuple. Like you would get a job because that's like
the tracks that you're supposed to be on and anything else is like risky and unproven and
might fail and crash and burn. Dating nominogamously is definitely that way. Gonna have to make
up your own rules and figure things out. And it's a little bit dangerous and scary, but
also very rewarding. And also like using your social profile to sort of meet people. Although
it seems like a total no brainer. It's like for whatever reason, like not that, not that
commonly done.
There's still some shame around it. Even like as I'm thinking, even as we're doing it now,
like I still feel like 5% where I'm like, is this embarrassing? Like, should I admit
this world? Like, should I say these things?
If you go to like a bar, for example, and you're been to a bar, there's like literally
nothing that separates you from every other random person in that bar besides your height
and your good looks like nothing else separates you, right? And maybe that counts for a lot,
but you've done all these other cool things. And there are a lot of people on earth who
are aware that you've done these cool things. And like, if you have, you know, all these
tools in your arsenal, like why not bring that to the competition basically, which is
kind of what dating is in a way, you know, why beyond tender swiping and just be one
face of millions when you can be your own unique thing.
Yeah, it feels like a waste to not do that. And honestly, like, like I appreciate your
openness like talking about your situation because you don't know who knows people in
Seattle. Like maybe I know someone who's amazing who was looking for a primary partner but
dates nominogamously like that's like and like you just you just I can't tell who in
your audience who in the world might be somebody or know somebody that might be a good match.
So like I want to maximize the possible opportunities to make that match because you only need one
ish basically like I was seeing a dentist a little while back and she's got both vaccine
shots. She's super excited. We're just talking about dating. She's obviously not monogamous
as well. And she's telling me about how at some point in her past, a friend connected
to her to another person who was like, Oh my god, I met another non monogamous dentist.
And it's just like, what are the chances that we would meet another non monogamous dentist
in Seattle? So like connected the two of them, they want to like a few dates or whatever.
But yeah, I mean, if you don't if you don't put yourself out there and tell people like
what you're about, no one's gonna help you. You're not gonna get any make a whole talk
about this. How do you make your own luck? And like a huge part of it is you just literally
tell people constantly what it is you're trying to do and what you're looking for. And then
like magically serendipity happens. And for people who like don't you know, who aren't
transparent who don't share what's going on with them who don't ask for help or who don't
vote build in public. They just tend to be much less lucky because people literally can't
help them because they have no idea what's going on with them. So this is this is actually
a great forcing function because I've been meaning to like publish this like dating profile
page on my website. And now I can make sure to do it before this podcast drops so we can
throw a link in the show notes.
The other thing is that I think your, your priorities tend to shift as a founder. So
I was asking earlier, like, how do you feel differently now that tuples a success? I know
that like for me with any hackers, I don't know, I spent like most of my 20s working
a lot, you know, and like I had a lot of really good fun vacations and trips and experiences
with friends and whatnot. But like, to some degree, I definitely sacrifice some of my
personal life to like chase professional goals. And now I'm 33. And it's like, hey, I should,
I should reverse that, you know, like professionally, I'm doing really well, I feel super secure,
because a lot I want to accomplish. But like, I want to figure out like a really good living
situation, right can be near as near as possible to friends and family and cool people. I want
to like travel a lot and I have lots of new experiences. Like I want to use the sort of
things I've accomplished to just live a better life. You know, I want to like meet a really
great partner. And it's much easier to sort of notice the absence of these things and
to focus on them once you've gotten to a point where your company is doing really well, at
least in my experience.
Super true. Yeah. I mean, it honestly feels a little bit like a waste, where it's like
I can I have all this flexibility, I could go take an amazing trip by myself, like, or
like, I can like, I can leave work at noon on a Wednesday and go home by myself. Like,
it's not nearly as cool to have these things without someone awesome to do them with. And
like, I do stuff with friends a lot. And you know, have friends I'm very close to. And
that helps helps quite a bit. But it's definitely not the same. So yeah, I like you, my focus
is is definitely shifting.
But you mentioned being on a clubhouse call with Adam Wavin, and it sort of came up. But
I was scrolling through tweets, you've been on like a few different clubhouse calls recently.
For example, you had one that was called a money and emptiness. Justin Jackson tweeted
that he was going to do this room with you. And I wasn't there. I have no idea what you
talked about. But like, that's the most clickbaity title I've ever heard. Like I was insulin like
what are they? What's the topic of this conversation? What'd you talk about? So now that I've got
you here, I can just ask what's the most memorable part of that conversation? What's going on?
Yeah, it really is just that like, it's not going to make you happy reality for me. Again,
it's just it's so cliche and everyone hates and it's even cliche to say that saying this
is cliche. This is just like infinitely nested cliche. There's no way out of it. But here
we are, which is like, yeah, I'm making more money than before. It's really cool. I'm now
instantly like as soon as I hit a new level, I'm instantly used to it, it feels normal.
And the idea of going down at all sucks. And like if the dividend is lower next month,
I'm like, oh man, we didn't hit the same level as last time. It's like, man, it's just there's
just no, there's very, I mean, there's very little happiness to be had there. There's
there's some fun. There's some financial comfort. There's sleeping better at night. Definitely.
But like my brains, I think they're just not so wired to be like, ah, yes, that is enough
resource. I've now reached contentment and happiness and we're good here. Totally diminishing
returns. But so Justin had a different feeling of that. And he was like, no, no, I've my
stress levels have gone down a ton since like going from like, and I was like, well, Justin
got married at like 19 and had like five kids starting at 20 or something. Like he started
having kids really young and has I think five of them. And so like his finances and my finances
are very different. Like I've been single for a long time. I have no dependents. Like
I was a programmer before this. And so it's like I've always, yeah, I felt pretty comfortable
for a long time.
In a way, it's like the contrast, like he needed to have to be in sort of a bad place
where every business has to work because he's been very entrepreneurial, despite having
a bunch of kids and stuff. And so like to go from like this huge, I don't want to say
negative, but like, you know, very far away from areas today. Transistor, I think is
also making millions of dollars a year to where he is now. Like that's a crazy change
where it's to go from like a successful single software engineer who like doesn't want for
money, you could eat anything you want, you can live pretty much anywhere you want to
now having like this very successful business, which is great. And like, it's an accomplishment,
but it's not like a million miles removed from where you were like, it's not gonna,
it's not gonna permanently change your life and leave you in this permanent state of awe.
And I think it's a cliche because like, the fact of the matter is when you're not there,
it still feels like bullshit. Like if you asked me five years ago, well, how I'd respond
to that person who said that I'd say, Oh, it's easy for you to say because you're there.
Right? But once you are there, then it's like, okay, I get it. You know, this is not there's
other things in life, right? And then after dating, let's say you have like the perfect
partner, that's going well. There's still other categories in life that matter too,
right? Some would say like, you know, mental health or spirituality, there's also like
your own like solo sort of like hobby endeavors. I tweeted this thing, maybe the last time
you're on the podcast, it's around when I was like taking chess lessons before chess
got super huge. Because of that Netflix show, I was just like, you know what, I want to
learn how to play chess because my friend keeps beating me. So like, I want to beat him.
And I started taking chess coaching lessons and I had some very mundane tweet about how
I was paying a guy 30 bucks an hour to teach me chess. And it blew up. It's my most popular
tweet of all time. It's like 2000 likes. And I remember you responded to it. You're like,
I love one on one coaching. It's my favorite thing. But you didn't say what it was that
you pay for one on one coaching for. And so I didn't know for the longest time until I
started listening to your show. But it seems like you've got like a few things. And like,
I'm curious about like what those are and like, why you pay for for coaching.
Yeah, improving at things rapidly causes more dopamine in my brain than almost anything.
It's basically my favorite thing. Like I love mastering a new skill or like rapidly improving
in a new skill. I don't have to master it. It's just like, you know, going from where
I am to better. And so usually one on one coaching is like kind of the fastest way to
progress at a thing. So I love being coached in a thing at someone pointing out, nope,
that's not an efficient way to do that. You should do this instead. And so like I get
I've had one on one coaching for a lot of things. I try to get it for almost everything
like that. I get into the latest example that probably is maybe illustrative of how much
I like coaching is I've been playing this game called Overwatch. It's a video game and
you play and we play once a week and I take video recordings of our games and then I pay
a coach to record a video critiquing our play and telling us how to do it better next time.
So like, I want coaching for everything. I want coaching for video games. I want coach
like I've got like a voice like I've used to get voice lessons, squash lessons, just
like whatever I'm into at the time, whatever hobby is occupying me, like I want to get
better at it as quickly as possible.
Super smart. And I love that feeling of like getting better at stuff. So for me for a little
while it was chess and then I was like, okay, I'm pretty good at chess. This is fine. Like
I don't want to be like a master or anything. I'll take years and years and years. Other
things like this podcast, like I don't have a podcast coach, but I have like a, I heard
a podcast boss who we've talked about on the show before, who just kind of sits down with
me. She watches me come up with topics and questions and book guests and she just like
keeps me honest. And it's kind of cool. It's almost like a little, you know, person on
my shoulder who's telling me like the right thing to do, even as I'm doing the wrong thing
and like trying to convince myself that it's right.
And I guess it's an argument to be made for that. Anything in life that you actually care
about where you have the funds to get a coach, like why not get a coach? Like I want to get
better at cooking. Like why don't I have a cooking coach? I'm going to get better like
at my athletic training and nutrition, like why not hire a nutritionist and a personal
trainer if I can afford it. Right. In a way it's kind of like, I can't explain why I haven't,
you know, maybe it's fear, maybe it's just pure laziness, but it would make perfect sense
to do it. And it's like, maybe I'm afraid that if I have a person who keeps me honest,
I'm going to have to do the work that I'm a little bit scared of doing.
Yeah. I mean, the thing I've learned about coaching is like, it's often more affordable
than you might guess. Like you don't, it doesn't have to be every week. It doesn't have to
be all the time. Like you can get occasional sessions, but it's just so, I find it so delightful
to have my eyes opened to a thing that was like kind of invisible to me before when I
was working with a squash coach, he would like record me playing. And he'd be like,
you see what you're doing right here? Like the way you're taking this step instead of
that step, like notice how like now you're all messed up and you don't have enough room
to swing. And it's like, ah, like the experience of going through the learning process of like
now seeing a thing that I couldn't see before and then like still making the mistake, but
at least seeing the mistake. And then you start to anticipate the mistake and then you
don't do the thing anymore. Like now you're just at a new level and now you're looking
for new mistakes. Ah, it feels so good. I just love that feeling.
Yeah. You've got coaches and they can basically spot everything that you're doing wrong way
easier than you. And for them it's like super easy. And for you, it's like a struggle and
like, you're right. It's also like kind of affordable. I was looking into like, uh, I
was talking to Lee Jen about this a few episodes back about like getting like a personal chef,
which is not a coach. It's just someone to literally cook for you. But it's like actually
like you would think this is like the most luxurious thing in the world. Like you've
got to be basically Scrooge McDuck to afford this. And it's like, no, it's kind of the
same cost as a personal trainer plus the cost of ingredients. And you get someone to come
over and like cookie, a bunch of meals. And I've been thinking about like startup ideas
around this where there could just be so much more, I don't know, education and teaching.
Like they're just so many people in the world who are good at things and who probably don't
like their jobs, but they would be very enthused to teach people about the things that they're
good at. Like they're really good at crocheting or they're really good at like, I don't know,
taking care of plants. Like I just bought a whole bunch of plants from my place. Like
I don't know what I'm doing. I went to the nursery. I asked them what's easy to grow.
Like they gave me some recommendations. I've half killed some of them already, even though
these like among the easiest plants, but like I would paint someone who loves plants to
come over, you know, once a month and give me recommendations that go do this, do that,
buy some more plants, get these, or just like go plant shopping with me. And like that could
be a profession, you know, and they're not going to be super rich and not going to make
100 bucks an hour, but like I don't need them so often that I need to, that I would shy
away from paying like kind of a high rate, you know, maybe I only need them an hour a
month, you know? And so I wonder if there's room to build more and more platforms where
you can essentially find people who have all these like niche interests who are really
good at things and just let them make a living as coaches, doing the thing that they love
enough to be good at in the first place.
I think I've already seen sort of niche versions of that general idea. So like maybe the, maybe
the general thing of like, we are the repository of all coaches, uh, is a hard, hard nut to
crack. But I mean that there's sort of the seeds where it's like, okay, like I found
my Overwatch coach on a site that matches people with video game coaches. So like this,
that particular slice is like apparently enough to sustain some sort of business.
I found my chess coach on like a chess website where you go to play chess, but that was just
like a listing for a coaches. Like I should probably do this on any hackers. Like you
want a business coach. There are a lot of people who love their SaaS applications and
who love talking to people about it, especially people who are serious. There's just be a
director and any hackers hire this person for however many dollars a month or whatever.
And they'll talk to you about your business and give you like one-on-one feedback.
That's interesting. I mean, I've, I've honestly considered offering that kind of service
to people because like I love, like it's, it's fun to talk about SaaS and offer people
advice and, and do things. It's the easiest part is the advice, but like there's just
enough activation energy where I'm like, I don't really want to advertise it and figure
it out and all that. So I don't know. I'm out. I would consider it if you had an easy
thing to plug into.
Yeah. It's all like the meta work. If you could just like basically click a button and
there's a call and you know who it's going to be and you got like a little briefing of
what they, what they need and you could just talk to them and you don't have to do any
of the work sourcing people are getting paid or whatever, then suddenly it's worth doing.
And like who wouldn't listen to you talk, right? You've grown your business to millions
in revenue, like super quickly, pretty much like 99% of founders never get to that point.
And so it would be like rewarding for you. Probably. Maybe the downside is that you'd
be spending even more time on startup stuff and less time dating and doing your best.
Yeah, right. That's a good point. Also in classic mom test fashion, you definitely can't
trust me when I say that I would totally use that.
Yeah. I'm going to go out and just build this whole thing.
Yeah. In actuality, I kind of, I'm busy. Actually, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, dude. I'm not going
to use this, but I don't know. I think it's an interesting idea and I need to explore
it. I think looking at where you've come, it's cool to do this catch up episodes. Hopefully
I can get you back on. We can catch up like at least a couple of times a year to see where
you're at, but, uh, I'm pretty blown away by how far you've come. And you know, we talked
about COVID driving a lot of the growth and a lot of traffic, but people are going to
be pissed off at me if I don't at least ask you some questions about like, okay, how did
this happen? You know, like what, what did you guys do at tubal to sort of drive this
growth? Uh, so what besides COVID, what besides like this huge shift to remote work has gone
really well for you in the past year?
One thing that we did that I think was good was we hired a salesperson. I'm a programmer
by training. And so I was getting these sales leads from people wanting to like purchase
like annual plans or things or buy tubal from larger companies. And I have a hard time being
patient with those people. It's an extremely inefficient process for large companies to
buy most large companies to buy things. And so I would like try to be like, how do we
do this really efficiently? And like, I would try to like change their process or like be
kind of ornery and like refuse to give them things they would ask for. And like, that's
just what are you talking about? And so that's not the best way to treat your leads probably.
So we hired a salesperson who just like doesn't mind this stuff. Like he, he doesn't mind
it. He has to sign up for a stupid website and then like punch in the invoice manually
rather than just like send him the stripe invoice and have him pay with the credit card.
Like he's like, he doesn't love it, but he doesn't mind it. And like, I hate it. And
so it's like, it took something that like I hated that the business kind of should have
someone doing and like had someone do it who doesn't mind it. And I was like, ah, that
was yeah, there we go. Delegation. That's that seems to be what this is for. I think
it's pretty magical. And you can learn that when you learn that you can hire someone who
is not only like better at certain things, he didn't think it would be better either.
But then they actually like some of the stuff that you didn't like, like our community manager
for, uh, Andy hackers. She actually just left. She was here for like two years. She turned
to like a celebrity and just graduated and I was like, peace guys, which is kind of cool
to see. But, uh, she's just super good at running community. And she does like a lot
of the personal tedious things on the forum that I'm just like, I hated doing. And she
loved doing it. It was like her favorite thing to wake up in the morning and do. I'm like,
that's just mind blowing to like unlock that when you've spent years probably grinding
away and just start up doing everything by yourself. I knew sort of intellectually that
like there was a reason companies hired people, but when it came to it, I was like kind of
emotionally like, yeah, but like, no one's going to do this thing as well as I can. Like,
will we ever be able to find a good person that does act like no one likes to do sales?
That's it's so annoying. And I was like, no, you dumb dumb. Um, so that's been like a kind
of a good thing for me over this course of the year, which is like, as we started hiring
people, it's like, Oh yeah, I'm starting to see and appreciate at a more visceral level,
the power of delegation. And also just the fact that like, it's like a win, win, win
where it's like, I don't have to do this thing anymore. This thing is getting done and it's
getting done by someone that likes it and is good at it.
So what's the future look like? Is there a point where you like hire yourself out of
tuple and you can kind of just sort of watch the machine run by itself or is that not something
you'd want to do?
I don't know. Um, it's not clear. Like it's, I have a hard time projecting that like into
the future that much and knowing like what it's going to feel like I could see doing
that. Like I have friends who've run businesses where they eventually hire management teams
to run them and they, they just, you know, advise basically. And that seems pretty cool.
If, if, if I got, it's probably going to come down to like kind of novelty and interest
where it's like, as long as my day to day changes and I have new things to learn and
new stuff to get coached on, um, and improve that, then I'm probably good for a while and
a company so far seems to be a very good vehicle for that because it keeps changing. Like the
thing you need to do each month to be successful is different. Uh, and the challenges are different
and it's different every time we hire a new person. But I think at some point I could
see myself being like, you know what, I'm tired of thinking about pair programming.
Uh, and I, I just, I'm really excited about this other idea over here. And at that point
I might, you know, there's, there's a few options of how you step back and what it looks
like. Um, but it would probably, it'll probably up at some point.
I think about that all the time too. And it's so hard to figure out like, what would the
next thing be? Because there's a bunch of different options. Like do you just pick something
like Peter levels, for example, he's just a craftsman who just likes working on things
that he can perfect and that he's curious about. And so he's not like trying to like
one up his former self. He's just like, Oh, this is really cool. Like I want to experiment
with, you know, this new technology or this new trend, et cetera. And like, that's what
motivates him. And he's like super locked into that. Whereas like another approach is
like to just one up your previous self, you know, I built a company to millions in revenue.
Like let me start a VC funded unicorn company and see if I can just go big, you know, as
cliche as that is to do, there's a lot of validity to that. You know, like why not set
your sights higher once you get to a certain level, you know, like once you graduate high
school, you want to go to college. And then there's another approach, which is just completely
leave the domain altogether. Like you've had your life as a tech founder and software engineer,
like now you're going to have your life as like a singer songwriter or as a, you know,
a novelist or something. And it's like, it's hard to pick which one you want, you know,
but it's also cool to be in the position where you could probably live multiple lives like
multiple careers because you're able to sort of find success in one at a young age.
That's such a lucky thing to have. And I don't really worry about finding the next thing
because I just, I eventually get into something like my, I just love new stuff. And so I think
like the thing with tuple was like, I wasn't like, okay, I got to start a company. What
are we going to do? It was like the idea for tuple was there. And it was like, I think
I have to do this. And so I don't think I would be like, okay, I want to leave tuple
and go do another thing. Let me just kind of figure it out. I think I'm just gonna like
get distracted by a thing and be like, Oh man, I'm kind of obsessed with this. I feel
like I kind of have to do this thing. And then I'll have to figure out what to do at
that point.
What's your advice for founders who aren't in your position yet, but who might someday
be in your position? You were maybe like on the verge of achieving like the success that
they've been dreaming of. What are you going to take away from kind of what you've learned
in the past year and a half running tuple and seeing it grow to such a large size?
It'd be great if there were just like kind of one or two things that I knew that were
like a secret that I could just like whisper to people. And then like, it would work for
them too. But like, I don't know, I think we did a lot of small things, right? So like,
you know, make sure to do 100 things right is like not helpful advice. Like our path,
it's so hard for me to tease apart like, what were the things that were like key choices?
What was kind of luck? What did we succeed despite of it's like, it would be I think
kind of unfair for me or like just not really genuine for me to be like, ah, here you go.
Here's your one or two quips that will send you on your way.
But in a way that is like a single quip, which is like, there was no single thing. And if
you're a founder and you're doing like a hundred little, you can't escape from, uh, from the
question. If you're a founder doing a hundred little things, we'll reduce you to, to a small
anecdote or one quip to one small anecdote that we can take out of context that everyone
can disagree with you on Twitter. Well, folks, you've heard it here first on the index podcast,
a bunch of potentially useless advice, but maybe good advice. You know, we're not really
quite sure. Uh, Ben, thanks for coming on and shooting the shit with me and doing sort
of a funky catch up episode. And hopefully you'll come on again.
Dude, I'd love to. It's always fun. It's, it's, it's quite a pleasure and, uh, good
luck this year at, uh, trying to win some awards.
Yeah. I'll see you in the SAS podcast awards 2021 gloves are off this time.
That's good. Bring it