Build Your SaaS

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Podcasting
**Build Your SaaS**

Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Latest Episodes:

Pants-driven development Mar 31, 2020

Show notes

Jon and Justin, still making sense of life (and business) in a pandemic:

Jon put on pants today.
Justin is mad at Amazon.

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How are founders handling the pandemic? Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Jon and Justin are hunkered down, and reeling from COVID-19:

This is moving fast, so this podcast might already be out-of-date.
Difference between the restrictions in Chicago and Vernon.
"It's hard to focus on Transistor and write any code."
"There are all these people out there suffering, it's hard to know what to do."
"You see these effects rippling through society, and then rippling towards you."
7:50 – "It'd be nice to donate to everyone, but you just can't."
8:40 – It's a multidimensional difficulty for businesses.
9:15 – The tools for small shops are still not very good (especially the UX).
Justin's tweet about Square
10:14 – DNS is still the most difficult thing.
11:00 – "These people are scrambling to save their businesses."
Ivy and Dan Meehan’s podcast, Local
When did you start taking this seriously? On the Not Overthinking podcast
What makes a business recession-proof?
Henry Mintzberg: The Three Pillars for rebalancing society
Interview with Henry Mintzberg
Are we going to band together, and fight this together?
MegaMaker Slack

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Sofia Quintero
Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Marie Poulin: Maybe you shouldn't start a software company Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

This week, Justin is joined by Marie Poulin, co-founder of Oki Doki. They discuss:

Chatting with Marie Poulin, Oki Doki

3:40 – "I used to be in the 'Ra Ra! Everyone should build a web app' crowd."
4:18 – "Now there's this feeling that maybe everyone shouldn't start a SaaS?"
9:30 – When you're starting a business, there are so many dynamics you need to get right.
13:40 – Why so many people fail to go from zero to one in business.
16:20 – Why are you starting a business in the first place? What's driving you?
23:41 – There's a company called Tighten that gives their employees mental-health days.
26:00 – What is the most efficient way for you to improve your life?
27:00 – Sometimes folks try to make a part-time business into a full-time business.
33:00 – Is it possible for a business to be lucrative, easy, and fun?
42:00 – Having money does solve a lot of life's problems.
Marie's super-secret Notion course

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @mariepoulin
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

All that he wants Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

This week, Jon and Justin celebrate 100 episodes:

Jon was on the Cody Story podcast awhile back.
Justin, on the other hand, loves writing testimonials:
"We are in our mid-life crisis of SaaS building. I think, for me, the problem is not quite knowing what's next."
Is this the time we hire a business coach?
Where does your personal motivation for work come from?
What difference are we trying to make in the world?
Derek Sivers: "You've got to take off the old clothes in order to put on the new clothes."
Organizational cadence: what team retreats do we do each year?
Inertia: "things don't move unless you apply an external force to them."
"Brian Rhea seems thoughtful about this kind of stuff."
Jon has been using AlpineJS by Caleb Porzio – it's really nice.
Vampire movie recommendation: Let the Right One In
Justin is contacting our winners from the contest. (We used ContestKit.com for this)
- 410 registrations
- 64 people were already on our MailChimp list.
- 55 of these people have been a customer at some point (trial + paid)
Printing and sending t-shirts via Printful.

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Diogo
Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Should you start a startup with your spouse? Mar 03, 2020

Show notes

This week, Justin is joined by Michele Hansen (co-founder of Geocodio). We explore a bunch of questions:

What it's like to bootstrap with your spouse
6:30 – where Michele and Mathias found the idea for their company
7:00 – when you have kids you need diapers at 1am
Why people start companies
7:55 – how getting pregnant motivated them to build a product
10:15 – Matthias initially built a really basic geocoder for their purposes
11:30 – a lot of bootstrappers get motivated to start a business after they have their first kid
Tyler Tringas: "Building, Owning (& possibly Selling) a profitable remote SaaS business is the new American Dream."
13:20 – "we were so surprised that people wanted to pay us."

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @mjwhansen
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What's driving you now? Feb 25, 2020

Show notes

This week, Justin is joined by Ward Sandler from MemberSpace (launched in 2015). We explore a bunch of questions:

How do you find a cofounder?
Ward explains to Justin (a Canadian) what a fraternity is.
What it's like doing enterprise sales.
How two sales guys ended up learning design and programming.
"Everybody needs to build a website for Uncle Larry"
Justin and Ward go through a sample sales phone call.
How they found the idea for MemberSpace through their consulting company.
How Ward knew there was a lot of interest in the product.
The unconventional reason Ward and Ryan took money from Ernest.
47:25 – what to do about that feeling of dissatisfaction and listlessness.
48:45 – "You have to ask yourself: why are you constantly running? What are you trying to achieve?"
49:50 – "Don't succumb to the ennui."

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Chris Willow
Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Dave Young, magnusrush.com/
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Clearing the air Feb 18, 2020

Show notes

This week, Jon and Justin discuss:

Justin's office is under construction 🛠️.
How to talk about things that are hard.
A review exercise from the book: The Great CEO Within (as recommended by Ben on Art of Product).
It gives each founder the ability to say: "This bugs me."
We've hired Helen (NamesAce) as a part-time contractor.
Switching out our UI framework: Jon is rebuilding the Transistor app with Tailwind.
How do you move to V2 of your app? Should you rebuild?
Joel on Software: Things you should never do
Interview with Mike from Freshbooks on Founders Talk.
"It's possible that you build something new that's worse."
Justin built a public changelog: transistor.fm/changelog
A contest announcement at 23:20
Jon needs a hat education: this is a 5-panel cap.
Good option for startup swag: Printful.com.
Print-on-demand fades differently than screenprinting.
Interview with Ryan Holiday (on Noah Kagan's podcast)
Funny Panic podcast episode

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Dave Young, magnusrush.com/
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Anxiety about what might happen with the business Feb 11, 2020

Show notes

This week, Jon and Justin discuss:

What makes a good podcast for product people?
New American Dream: building, owning, selling a SaaS (Tyler Tringas)
What do you worry about when you own your own software company?
How would we handle an economic downturn?
Why do software founders not sleep well at night?

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, snapshooter.io
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Dave Young, magnusrush.com/
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A cloudy feeling of dread Feb 04, 2020

Show notes

This week, Jon and Justin discuss:

Repeating calendar item: "Jan 5th, GTFO."
How are you doing with the winter blue?
The Transistor Volkswagen bus, surfboards, and snowboards.
Monolithic vs mico-services
- https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1222966700913479681
- https://changelog.com/posts/monoliths-are-the-future
Pushing ahead with our “switch from Semantic UI to Tailwind CSS" cycle.
"Retargeting is like squeezing the last drop of juice out of the lemon. Is it worth it?"
"We were adding more and more things to the business hoping we'd be able to get it to work." justinjackson.ca/margin
Jon is running to Austin, Texas using Wolfram's computer harness.

You can reply to this podcast here:

Twitter:@buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda
Leave a comment on PodHunt; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
Leave a comment on Breaker, the podcast app for iPhone.
Interact on WhatPods.
Email us: mail@transistor.fm

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Mason Hensley
Borja Soler teami.io
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Eric Lima
James Sowers (like Flowers) with UserInput.io
Travis Fischer
Matt Buckley, from NiceThings.io
Russell Brown
Evandro Sasse
Pradyumna Shembekar (PD), pradyumna.dev
Noah Prail, eventOneHQ.com
Robert Simplicio, Simplicio.com
Colin Gray alitu.com
Josh Smith, hellosift.com
Ivan Curkovic
Brian Rhea (Pronounced “Ray”)
Shane Smith, dev.transistor.fm
Austin Loveless
Simon Bennett, saasreality.com
Michael Sitver, letterjoy.co
Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, usefathom.com
Dan Buda danbuda.com
Darby Frey
Samori Augusto, thebicrowd.com
Dave Young, magnusrush.com/
Brad from Canada
Sammy Schuckert
Mike Walker
Adam DuVander
Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Thanks to our monthly supporters

Rewardful.com
Mitchell Davis from sixsides.co
Bill Condo (@mavrck)
Ward from MemberSpace.com
Evandro Sasse
Austin Loveless
Michael Sitver
Dave Giunta

🎙️ Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm.
📺 Learn how to start your own podcast!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Who gets paid, and who doesn't? Jan 28, 2020

Show notes

Jon is back! This week, we discuss:

This book, The Timeless Way of Building, that Justin is reading.
When you work for yourself, there can be sense of not being grounded. What do you do?
What's better than meditating?
Why co-founders should have a weekly phone call.
How the environment we're in influences our actions.
Jon's been rebuilding our dashboard using Tailwind CSS + Alpine JS.
Tutorial: Rails and Tailwind
People complaining about Webpack
"What's that Rails gem that everyone buys?" "Sidekiq"
People have gotten so used to free software!
Justin's advice for Statamic.