FounderQuest

FounderQuest

The 2019 Thanksgiving Freestyle Episode

Dec 6 • 19 min

The guys throw the show notes out the window and kick it freestyle on this special Thanksgiving episode. All of today’s hard-hitting questions are answered: Dark meat or light meat? Turkey or duck? The warm glow of a fireplace or the warm glow of a…

Is Offering A Free Plan Worth The Hassle?

Nov 29 • 31 min

This week on FounderQuest, the guys talk about their decision to offer a free plan alongside the paid plans for Honeybadger and how it impacted the overall business. Josh is also back shares the hottest of takes from his recent trip to Nashville to attend…

Is Marketing On Marketplaces Worth It?

Nov 22 • 27 min

This week Ben and Starr talk about Honeybadger’s efforts using marketplaces to get new business and whether it’s worth the development time needed to set them up. They also discuss Honeybadger’s participation in the GitHub Student Developer Pack, creating…

Should You Comply With Compliance?

Nov 15 • 33 min

On this week’s episode of FounderQuest Josh, Ben, and Starr talk about their Soc 2 and GDPR compliance efforts. They go over the different strategies to handle compliance, the potential costs involved, and discuss if it’s worth the time and money. When…

Should You Blow Up Your Backlog?

Nov 8 • 21 min

This week on FounderQuest the guys weigh in on a recent debate sparked by Jason Fried at Basecamp around the value of backlogs. In short, Fried proports that backlogs cause unnecessary stress and that if an idea will be forgotten about if it isn’t written…

How Honeybadger Creates Content

Nov 1 • 22 min

The guys talk about creating content for Honeybadger and the difficulties switching back and forth from writing prose to writing code. Starr channels his inner Anna Wintour and describes his latest initiative recruiting developers to write guest posts on…

Don’t Let Customer Service Crush You

Oct 25 • 34 min

The guys talk about how they are scaling up their awesome customer service without adding headcount and their journey from email customer support, to chat support, and back to email support. They also discuss how to deal with informational silos and if…

You Know What We Did Last Summer - Season Two Begins!

Oct 18 • 27 min

Season Two of FounderQuest is upon you! The guys discuss what they did while on summer break, releasing breadcrumbs on Honeybadger and why they help when debugging, launching the new blog, Amazon RDS, and Airwolf!

We’re Going on Summer Vacation!

Jul 19 • 0 min

The guys are taking a few weeks off from podcasting to enjoy the fleeting Pacific northwest summer. They’ll be back in late August or early September, fully rested and ready with hot takes to warm you as summer turns to fall.

To Be Or Not To Be Acquired - That Is The Question

Jul 12 • 37 min

The guys talk about their experiences with offers to acquire Honeybadger and go over some common structures of acquisition deals (hint - most don’t involve walking a wheelbarrow of money out of your office and never returning). They also chat about things…

What Does The Ideal Remote Office Look Like?

Jul 5 • 34 min

This week the guys talk about their office equipment and remote workspaces which range from working in a winery to building a standalone office in a backyard. They also go full old cranky developer mode on the new office paradigms and warn the youths of…

How to gauge customer success with an introverted customer base.

Jun 28 • 38 min

The guys answer a listener question about how to ensure customers are happy with your product and how to be proactive in finding out if they aren’t. This can be especially difficult if your customers tend to be a little bit introverted…*cough* developers…

Are 3rd-party scripts out to get you? CSP to the rescue!

Jun 21 • 27 min

Do you know what the 3rd-party scripts on your website are up to? In this week’s episode of FounderQuest, the guys talk about CSP (Content Security Policy) and how it can enhance security in the browser. They also weigh adding it as a feature of…

Why Do Developers Get Burned Out?

Jun 14 • 42 min

Running a lifestyle business is awesome, contrary to what the VC’s say. Figure out your life goals and fit your business to achieve them rather than worrying about 10x-ing. The guys also talk about why developers seem to experience higher rates of burnout…

If You Aren’t Growing, Are You Dying?

Jun 7 • 29 min

The guys talk dissect the “If you’re not growing you’re dying” aphorism and debate if it has merits or if it should be discarded into the dustbin of history. Do entrepreneurs need to have a winner take all mindset or is it acceptable to be a minor player…

Chunky Bacon! Let’s Geek Out About Early Ruby & Rails.

May 31 • 39 min

The guys chat about the early days of Ruby and Rails and discuss how the developer community has changed from a more individual hacking pursuit to more of a team sport. Ben also talks about his experiences at the very first RailsConf and teaches young…

Document & Automate Your Way to a Vacation When Running a Startup

May 24 • 38 min

The guys talk about strategies for creating systems, documentation, and automation to separate yourself from your business so you can hire employees, get it ready for sale, or even take some time off. Balancing good customer service while being efficient…

Siloing Together, How to Move a Company Forward While Working Independently

May 17 • 35 min

Two part special! In part one, the guys chat about decision making in a siloed company structure and the challenges of making sure everyone is on the same page. That’s not all! More details about the secret Honeybadger conclaves are leaked, dirty laundry…

How to Successfully Market to Software Developers

May 10 • 43 min

Hey guys ladle out some secret sauce for successfully marketing and selling to software developers. Also discussed is their Facebook ad boycott, why you should never call a developer, Coke vs. Pepsi, and leveraging Princess Bride to weed out sales emails.

Is Marketing To People The Same As Robbing Them?

May 3 • 40 min

The guys discuss gorilla conference marketing and how they promoted Honeybadger back when they could barely afford to attend the conference, let alone a sponsorship. Also discussed is turning Honeybadger’s unprofessionalism into a marketing strength,…

Twilayfunbootrucknes!!! VC vs. bootstrap funding, recent layoffs at NPM, and more!

Apr 26 • 36 min

The gents look back with some hindsight on the debates around private equity, VC vs. bootstrapping Honeybadger, and how funding decisions may have affected recent layoffs at NPM and Travis CI. Our recent Twitter ad performance for FounderQuest is also…

MicroConf 2019 Recap, Confronting Ageism In Tech, And Badgercon 2020

Apr 19 • 31 min

The guys dish about their experiences at MicroConf. Ben talks about entrepreneurial ADD, Josh explains why the “good old days” at Honeybadger are now, and Starr challenges younger developers to a coding battle royale. There is also a preview of Badgercon…

Screw Dependencies! Learn How We Are Fighting Our Abandonware Problem.

Apr 12 • 26 min

We originally sat down to discuss distractions and Yak Shaving. What emerged was more like group therapy for a team struggling to cope with a spate of JS dependency upgrades. We also discuss purchasing an ice cream truck. Buckle up!

Personal Productivity - Dealing With Distractions While Getting Sh!t Done

Apr 5 • 33 min

Faced with a punishing week of distractions, the crew discusses their own techniques for remaining personally productive.

Technical Debt - Our Approach to Building Cool Tech Profitably

Mar 29 • 25 min

“Suits” vs “hackers” is a trope as old as tech itself. Suits want to make money and cut costs. Hackers want to build cool things the right way. What if you’re both the suit *and* the hacker? How do you balance business vs engineering needs and adopt a…

Decisions & Events That Made Honeybadger What It Is Today

Mar 15 • 37 min

Looking at the major events in our lives, we can often trace them back to turning points — decisions big and small that had outsized effects. In this episode the dudes reflect on some of their major decisions, good and bad.

How to hire great software developers when you can’t compete on salary

Mar 8 • 26 min

How we attracted top quality software developer candidates without offering Facebook, Amazon, or Google salary levels. We talk about how to write the job description and reveal the feedback we received from candidates.

Programming in Elixir and Phoenix to build a proof-of-concept product during our hackathon

Mar 1 • 18 min

In their first episode, Starr, Josh and Ben talk about the company hack-week where they built a small proof-of-concept product with Elixir and Phoenix.