John Crickett is the creator of Coding Challenges, a newsletter for engineers that has over 54k subscribers. John’s LinkedIn profile grew from 3k to 150k+ followers in a year. In this episode, we dive into the process and mindset that allowed John’s following to grow so quickly.

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Segments

• [00:58] Introduction
• [03:18] Spending a million Euros and a year on an MVP
• [05:54] Coding Challenges
• [08:15] MVP for an info product vs. software
• [13:51] Growth on LinkedIn
• [17:32] Post structure
• [19:48] Comments on posts
• [21:48] Twitter/X
• [25:15] Coding Challenges newsletter
• [27:12] Building a personal brand
• [34:09] Nicheing on LinkedIn
• [41:50] Selling B2B vs. B2C
• [47:18] Tangent on car salesmen
• [50:13] Book recommendations

Where to find John

• John’s LinkedIn
• Coding Challenges
• Coding Challenges newsletter
• Coding Chats podcast
• 30 Day LinkedIn Personal Branding Challenge for Software Engineers (starts on May 20, 2024!)

Links

• Advent of Code
• Carrd website builder
• AirChat

Podcasts

• My First Million (Jason Cohen episode)

Books

• Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner
• Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton

Get in touch!

• Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com
• Subscribe to newsletter at buildersgonnabuild.com
• Metacast: Behind the scenes - "build in public" style podcast and newsletter at metacastpodcast.com

Jason Fried is a co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY. Together with his business partner David Hannemeier Hanson, Jason co-authored seminal entrepreneurship books Rework, Remote, and It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work.

This episode was originally published on the Metacast podcast, episode 28 in July 2023.

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Segments

• [03:17] Introduction of Jason and 37signals
• [05:38] Founder role vs. CEO role
• [08:37] Working with the same co-founder for 20 years
• [11:10] Disagreements between founders
• [13:31] Disagree and commit principle
• [15:14] The business side of things (numbers, accounting, etc.)
• [18:17] On costs and profitability
• [21:01] Intentionally keeping the company small
• [24:01] Managing risk
• [26:11] Jeff Bezos’ investment
• [32:34] Working on several products at the same time
• [33:31] Six-week cycles vs. long-term projects
• [38:50] Evolution of 37signals
• [44:45] Keeping products until the end of the Internet
• [47:28] Calm companies
• [48:38] Listening to customer feedback
• [54:25] Jason's email is public. Is this a good idea?
• [58:07] Employee performance reviews and fixed salaries
• [59:45] Can the "calm company" mindset work in big companies?
• [01:05:51] How does one find a calm company to work for?
• [01:08:46] Publishing books
• [01:11:38] On being contrarian and no politics at work

Podcasts

• Rework
• #496: Marc Randolph on Building Netflix, Battling Blockbuster, Negotiating with Amazon/Bezos, and Scraping the Barnacles Off the Hull on The Tim Ferriss Show

Books

• Rework
• Getting Real
• It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
• Shape Up
• Maverick by Ricardo Semler

Blog posts

• Founder & CEO is kinda a BS title by Jason Fried
• Basecamp's new etiquette regarding societal politics at work by DHH
• But what if you're wrong? by DHH

Get in touch!

• Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com
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• Metacast: Behind the scenes - "build in public" style podcast and newsletter at metacastpodcast.com

Corey Quinn is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group and a big celebrity at the AWS circles well known for his sense of humor and unrelenting focus on making some good fun of the cloud providers.

In our interview, we are learning Corey’s background, how The Duckbill Group got started, and how he runs the media side of his business. As usual, we talked about bootstrapping and running consulting services while building a product.

This episode was originally published on the Metacast podcast, episode 32.

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Where to find Corey

• Screaming in the Cloud (podcast)
• Last week in AWS (newsletter)
• AWS Morning Brief (podcast)
• X: @QuinnyPig
• Duckbill Group

Books

• Practical Monitoring: Effective Strategies for the Real World by Mike Julian
• Never Eat Alone by Tahl Raz Keith Ferrazzi

Other references

• Route 53, Amazon’s Premier Database
• Writing New Editions and Ticking All the Boxes with Andreas Wittig
• Metacast Ep. 8 - SquadCast Founders on Remote Collaboration in Podcasts
• Yes, I Test in Production (And So Do You) by Charity Majors

Get in touch!

• Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com
• Subscribe to newsletter at buildersgonnabuild.com
• Metacast: Behind the scenes - "build in public" style podcast and newsletter at metacastpodcast.com

Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer and Agile Manifesto, on the true spirit of being agile (vs. "doing agile"), mistakes engineering teams make, and common practices of successful teams.

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Segments
[10:29] The genesis of The Pragmatic Programmer
[11:41] People don't know what they want, importance of feedback loops
[22:17] Doing Agile vs. being agile
[26:36] Practices of successful engineering teams
[36:35] Being pragmatic at an early stage startup
[44:10] Things that are still true 24 years after the book was published
[55:25] How does a book define its author's identity?

Show notes

• The Pragmatic Programmer
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• The Agile Manifesto

Get in touch!

• Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com
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For 10 years, Henry built mobile apps at Google and Amazon. Now he is a partner at a software development agency studio.init(). Henry shares his thoughts on using cross-platform frameworks vs. native languages, argues that Apple’s 30% cut of the in-app purchases is acceptable, and tells us how Google layoffs became a blessing in disguise.

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Try Metacast podcast app at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://metacast.app⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Segments

[01:31] Introduction

[04:03] Viral LinkedIn posts about layoffs

[08:13] Google layoffs

[17:36] Cross-platform app development with Flutter vs. native languages

[30:12] Getting apps into app stores

[31:43] Apple's 30% in-app purchase fees

[42:09] Building apps within Google and Amazon

[50:30] Starting studio.init() and finding first customers

[56:58] Book recommendations

Show notes

Where to find Henry

• LinkedIn

• studio.init()

Books

• Permission to Screw Up by Kristen Hadeed

• Crucial Conversations

• Getting More by Stuart Diamond

• The New One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johnson

Do you love audio podcasts?

Try Metacast podcast app at ⁠⁠⁠https://metacast.app⁠⁠⁠.

Join our Reddit community at ⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠. Get in touch!

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Subscribe to newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.buildersgonnabuild.com⁠⁠⁠

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Justin shares how he created Winamp and sold it to AOL at age 20 and tells us about his current project, digital audio workstation (DAW) Reaper.

Segments

[03:16] The genesis of Winamp

[11:07] Winamp whips the llama's ass

[14:06] Nullsoft

[16:27] Winamp as a platform

[23:16] The business side of Winamp

[24:11] What was it like to work at AOL?

[27:06] Why Justin doesn't use streaming services

[30:03] Justin's website

[32:06] Why Justin created Reaper

[35:48] Shipping v1 of Reaper

[37:02] Reaper is built by just a few people

[38:53] Cross-platform codebase

[40:48] Reaper as a platform

[43:42] Future of Reaper

[44:40] AI in Reaper

[47:09] Questions lightning round

[53:36] Book recommendations

Show notes

Where to find Justin

• Mastodon — justin@cockos.net

• Justin’s website

• Ask Justin Frankel

Books

• Masters of Doom by David Kushner

• Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott

Podcasts

• Interview with Justin on the Internet History Podcast

Software

• Winamp

• Reaper

Do you love audio podcasts?

Try Metacast podcast app at ⁠https://metacast.app⁠.

Join our Reddit community at r/metacastapp. Get in touch!

Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com

Subscribe to newsletter at ⁠https://www.buildersgonnabuild.com⁠

Metacast: Behind the scenes - "build in public" style podcast and newsletter at ⁠https://metacastpodcast.com⁠

Christian tells a story of how Apollo got started, grew and eventually had to shut down following Reddit's API pricing decision.

Segments

[00:46] Introduction of Christian

[01:58] How Christian got into app development

[03:36] Internship at Apple

[06:38] The origin of the name for Apollo

[07:49] Launching v1 of Apollo

[13:12] Pricing the app

[17:46] Apollo t-shirts and custom app icons

[21:38] Adding notifications and being rejected by Apple

[26:15] Initial reception of Apollo and building a community

[31:32] Apollo's growth

[39:39] Challenges with Reddit API

[41:51] The demise of Apollo

[47:11] Apollo in metrics

[54:14] PixelPals

[56:05] Advice for app developers

[57:26] Podcast and book recommendations

Show notes

• Christian on Twitter/X: @ChristianSelig
• Pixel Pals Widget Pet Game on Apple App Store
• Apollo app subreddit r/apolloapp

Do you love audio podcasts?

Sign up for Metacast podcast app at https://metacast.app. Get in touch!

Send us an email at hello@buildersgonnabuild.com

Subscribe to newsletter at https://www.buildersgonnabuild.com

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