How Three Friends Created Pocket Bard, a Game Changing RPG Audio App - Interview 28 - Nerdpreneur - Grow Your Nerdy Business

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(00:00):
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(01:41):
Welcome to Nerdpreneur,
where we have fun conversations with people
making money from their nerdy passion.
My name is Chris, and as always,
I'm joined by my co host, Frank.
Hello.
And today we have three, count them up,
three very special guests.
They are the founders,
owners and leadership team

(02:02):
of a company called Pocket Bard.
Their names are Alex Berner, Chase Harris,
and Jason Kovalski.
Welcome to the show, guys.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
So, Pocket Bard, what is your nerdy passion?
Interactive audio for tabletop gaming.
Nice, nice. Well, for all of our listeners

(02:25):
who may not be in that space, what is that?
What is interactive music? Or. Tell me more,
tell me more. Tell us. Yeah. What is this?
So it's easiest to understand
by comparison with non interactive audio.
So let's say you're playing a game of d and d,
and you want to set the stage.

(02:45):
So you open up your
favorite streaming platform for music.
You queue up a playlist
that fits the mood perfectly.
But as anybody who's played
a tabletop game or a tabletop RPG,
knows the mood changes.
You go from scene to scene,
from points of action to points of reflection,
and you want that mood to change. And ideally,

(03:07):
just like when you're
watching a movie or something,
the music and the atmosphere
should change with the mood.
Well, if you're on
your favorite streaming platform,
as great as they are,
there's some difficulty in changing that mood.
You got to go and find the right playlist.
Maybe you have something curated beforehand.
But even then,
if you curate for every possible thing,
that could happen,
now you're talking about

(03:28):
scrolling through different playlists,
and that just gets heavy handed. Right?
So that's non interactive audio.
We did was we took our
experience in the game audio space.
There's a whole lot
of technology behind video game audio,
and we said we can build something that lets
you use all these adaptive strategies to

(03:50):
make it easy at the table to switch the music,
the sound effects,
the ambience to exactly what you need in the
moment with as little interaction as possible.
One button, click here,
a little tweak of a slider there,
and all of a sudden,
the music is perfect and
you can focus back in the game.
Nice. That's really helpful for, I think,

(04:11):
people who may not know
anything about what Pocket Bard does.
And I want to clarify for people,
this is an app, right?
So you guys are a downloadable awesome app,
and it basically for people
who maybe don't play tabletop RPG's,
my layman's terms of this is it basically
gives me the ability to play atmospheric

(04:32):
music at any point in the game based
on wherever these players want to go.
So if I want to be in a tavern, I
can find something that sounds like a taverny.
And if I want to go to a place
that's more of a chilling haunted house,
I could be able to move into that
atmosphere and have it become that while

(04:53):
I describe what that actually looks like.
And I
looked through your app a bit, and, Frank,
did you use the app?
Did you do any homework for this or.
I actually have a bit of an anecdote
about what Chase was just talking about. Yeah,
I heard about Pocket
Bard a couple months ago, actually,
it was an ad on Instagram that you guys had.
Instagram has me figured out pretty good.

(05:15):
That algorithm works for us.
Yeah, only the ads, though.
The ads are nailed down.
So your money was.
Was well placed on that front. And.
And it was funny because then,
like a month later,
Chris sent me this video from when you guys
were at a trade show and I was like, Chris,
I know about these guys. Like,
what's your point?
I thought he was cool.

(05:36):
Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah,
that's a great idea.
So I had downloaded your app,
and I had chase.
You explained my pain point to a T.
I have literally made a dozen
plus podcasts or not podcasts,
playlists with different music. I was
trying to pull them up. I have, like, suspense.
D and D suspense.

(05:57):
I have D and D exploration d
and d crafting d and d big boss battle.
D and D smaller boss battle. You know,
I had all of these playlists,
and it was just.
It was a cool idea,
but then I had to go out and also find
the music because the other people who've
created these playlists don't have the same

(06:20):
perspective that I do.
And so I wanted something very unique.
So then when I discovered your guys's app,
I just thought, my God, this is like,
where has this been? And you actually,
what you said that was super interesting,
was that it was from video game tech,
which makes so much sense. Did
any of you guys work in video game, or did you?

(06:40):
Yeah. So Chase and I, at the end of college,
we were college roommates,
and both in video game audio minors,
different sections of it.
I was more in the music composition,
and Chase was more in the, like, audio design,
but we had a good pairing of skills.
So right towards the end of college,

(07:01):
we decided to start a video game.
Audio company got pretty sidetracked,
started making games
instead of audio for games.
Had a lot of experiences there,
which will inform a lot of some of, like,
a lot of our takeaways, I think,
for future questions
when we're talking about business, but, yeah.
So there was a few years there
where we were really focused on

(07:23):
creating interactive audio for games. Right.
Like looking for indie games to score,
stuff like that.
So that's where our expertise came,
and we were kind of at a lull of stuff we
were working on and basically just got
this idea and been working on it ever since.
Yeah, it's a really good solution. And I

(07:45):
did use it in one game not too long ago,
I downloaded the ship packet,
the nautical ship themed one,
and it was very fun.
And one of the things I really loved about it,
because I've used some of the
older programs that are out there,
respect to them and them kind of paving

(08:05):
the way as they did over those years.
But I always had to mess with them.
I always had to correct them.
Something would go wrong.
But the cool thing was, with pocket Bard,
I totally got to forget about it,
and I set the intensity.
I would every now and then add some sound
effects like the weather and ambiance,
but it was great and

(08:26):
the players very much enjoyed it.
What stood out to me was
how simple it was for an app, because, I mean,
when people have an app,
I'm always like, seriously, all right,
I gotta go download this thing. And then
getting into an app, it's like, frustrating,
usually that kind of thing. I was like,
in and playing music within like a few,
like a minute.
It was really actually quite impressive.

(08:46):
And you had, it was like, okay,
the app came up,
told me exactly what to do,
and I didn't have to pay
anything either to actually
start testing the product and using it.
So there's free music on there when you start.
That is decent, good.
And you can actually implement into
your game and not just like one track.
And then you try to upsell me to, like,
every other track, there's like a. A
bunch of different dozen different atmospheres

(09:07):
that I can select from. I still, like,
put campfire overlaid onto things. Like,
it was a great
experience just from that standpoint.
So this leads into my questing, and we're
going to get into some business stuff here.
Cause I know you guys
like to get to that streamlined.
I want to just say, like,
you guys have a rating on your.
You have pretty
good ratings on your app already, like 4.3

(09:29):
with 1000 some odd votes. You have, like,
248 reviews on the Apple podcast
on the Apple Store with 4.8 rating. Like,
this is good. Like,
this is really solid
amount of traction with your app.
So I'm curious,
where do you start when you're built? Like,
when did you guys get into building an

(09:51):
app and how did that come out to be, like, your
business idea and how does that get started?
So I was late to tabletop rpg's. Now,
I love tabletop rpg's.
I play D and D with my wife every week,
and I love it,
but that wasn't always me.

(10:11):
And I think it was 2018 when I played
my very first game of D and D and
immediately fell in love with the experience.
I roped my wife in,
roped some other friends in,
and we had this incredible guy who
was dming for us who he knew how to
tailor the experience for what we wanted.
And I'm talking,

(10:33):
he had miniatures,
he had terrains,
he was doing all this voice acting,
and he had music playing.
But then there were these moments
that I kept noticing of the action
would change and he would say, all right,
role for initiative.
And things would kind of pause and even
the experienced players around the table,

(10:54):
the pace kind of lulled,
and people would take
out their phones and check Twitter.
And I was like, what's happening? Well,
he's back behind the DM screen,
heads down in his laptop,
picking a new playlist.
And then eventually, oh, okay,
the cool music started great,
and we're back into it. And, you know,
that was not the end of

(11:16):
the world as far as an experience went.
But after having that a couple
of times and having some conversations,
I kind of said to him,
how would you like if I built
you an app where all that work
you're doing that takes you 45, 60, 90 seconds?
What if that was one
button click or two button clicks?
And we kind of talked

(11:37):
a little bit about what he would need?
And then I brought the idea to Alex,
and we just blossomed from there
about how do we make this experience
a lot easier and build it into this
interface that we're able to construct?
We're familiar with.
Everybody's got their
smartphones at the table anyway.
And so that was the origin of the idea

(11:59):
and why that design philosophy of making
this thing the easiest possible thing to use,
so that you don't repeat that experience
of being heads down for too long as a DM,
that really informs
everything we've done thus far.
Totally kills the momentum when people do that.

(12:20):
And in the end,
there's thousands and thousands
of hours of amazing audio out there, right?
There's dozens of films,
more than dozens of
film scores that are incredible,
been recorded by professional orchestras,
with professional mix engineers.
There's incredible audio out there.
What we're offering really

(12:40):
is just a comprehensive solution.
It's the tool,
it's the delivery of it.
The goal is to save people
time and attention because in the end,
those are such limited resources,
especially when you're already in a session
where you have basically two to 8 hours,
who knows how long people's sessions are?
But that amount of time to deliver

(13:02):
a great experience to your players,
and if even 5% of that is bogged down
by the kind of stuff chase was saying,
searching for stuff,
trying to figure out what to do in real time,
that's a long time.
That's maybe half an hour when
you add it up over a long session. So

(13:24):
we're offering a time saver, attention saver,
so you can focus more on the game
and just really focusing on.
We've been trying to establish kind of like
company philosophies that we adhere to,
and these generally evolve naturally.
And one of them that I'm always

(13:44):
referencing is product first right?
If it doesn't serve the product,
we need to be really
careful about doing it right. Like,
is this making the app better?
Is this making the customer experience better?
Is this improving the UI?
Is it making.
Is this an extra button? Click? Like,
we've been very deliberate about every little

(14:05):
design choice we've made with conceptualizing.
When somebody's setting up a scene,
what are they thinking of first?
Are they thinking mood?
Are they thinking music?
Are they thinking?
What is their imagination?
How are they crafting it?
And how can we best adhere
and replicate that in the app to
make it as user friendly as possible?

(14:27):
We also view the app as never done right. Like,
we're trying to get
those ratings up higher and higher.
We're trying to improve everything.
When we find a better solution to do something,
we'll probably do that.
Right? We're not resting on our current design.
We did a post recently on Instagram
that showed all the design iterations
of the app. There's been, like, seven,

(14:49):
and I'm sure there'll be many more.
So you're talking about the pathing the
user experience to better suit the app.
And then you were talking about
all the different iterations you've had.
How long have you been working on this app?
To get to this point?

(15:10):
We started in August 2019 and
had a bit of a lull in the COVID times,
but have been going really, like,
focused really hard on it since. Jason,
when did you come on. It was like,

(15:30):
when you came on.
That's when we all really got to work.
I think it was around 2021, the COVID period.
Right. Or maybe shortly after that. I forgot.
Yeah, I think so.
But we first released
like a year and a half ago, I think.
Right.
Or has it been two years? Almost.
Wow.
Yeah, it's almost two years.

(15:51):
Two years in beta. Yeah.
And a year in out of beta.
So, Jason, what is your role? We haven't
had a chance to hear from you yet.
How do you play a part in this team?
Yeah. So I am mostly on the technology side.
I've known both of them for a long time now,
like almost a decade now.

(16:11):
I grew up with Alex in upstate New York.
We went to middle school, high school together,
and we both ended
up going to college here in Boston, where I am.
And then I actually also met Chase around.
Was it freshman year, I think. Oh, yeah,
because I got your roommates then. Yeah,
but, yeah, I mean, we. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(16:32):
So I was a business major
and then pivoted to software engineering,
got a job out of college.
And then these
guys came to me and said, you know,
we're working on this app.
Maybe you can help.
So that's when I kind of
part time started to work on it,
and at that point,
I had no idea where this would go. Honestly,
I was just, like,
happy to help out wherever I could.

(16:53):
So weeknights or weekends,
whenever I could find,
scrape away some time,
I would work on this.
And then the last year,
we've just been getting so much traction,
and I've been spending more
and more time on pocket Bard. And actually,
the start of this year, January 1,
I decided to quit my
day job and come on full time.

(17:14):
So, yeah, very, very happy and
grateful that I got to do that.
Yeah, you made the leap.
Yeah. Yeah.
Congratulations, man.
Yeah.
Were Alex and
Chase already full time in this? Was
this already your full time gig? Yeah, yeah.
So we didn't get
to hear what your roles are. I know he's.
Jason's born in the tech side and

(17:36):
helped with a lot of that development,
but what were you guys doing?
Or what are your roles now?
So I started out.
When Chase first came to me with this idea,
I was mainly the composer, right.
So I wrote the music,
generated the audio assets,
and kind of split just the
design and figuring everything

(17:56):
else out that we had to do 50 50, I guess.
And then back when we started
being more like Jason came on and
we started operating more like a business,
I realized it would be helpful to
have somebody just kind of take on the
business leadership part of it. Right? Like,
get paperwork filed, keep, you know,

(18:18):
do our bookkeeping,
keep an overall kind of
view of the business strategy at all times,
making sure everything's working together.
So I kind of leaped into that role.
I just pitched it to Jason.
Jason just wrote
up a long message one day. I was like, hey,
so I think we need to move faster,

(18:39):
and I think if I just kind
of step into this role and help
keep everything on track and organized,
that'll be helpful.
You guys can focus more on what you're doing.
So since then,
I've been the CEO role as well,
although I hate saying
that because of all the connotations,
but it's what I do.
So composer 50% of the time,

(18:59):
CEO 50% of the time, and
design app design as a team that we all.
Do just kind of wear many hats.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It sounds like you guys
are jumping around a dynamic team, for sure,
and I'm really curious about what
some of the lessons you learned about
making that switch from composer to CEO's.

(19:20):
But I also want to hear what
Chase's role is before we get into that.
So I'm sure that'll also
include a lot of fascinating questions.
So I always tell people
my background is in audio technology,
so I went to school for.
I'm blanking on the name of my degree, but

(19:41):
it's essentially an audio technology degree.
Electronic production and design. There it is.
And so that includes
everything from audio engineering,
being able to engineer
and record and mix and master,
to kind of the more technical side of things,
of being able to take a piece
of software that needs audio

(20:02):
and create audio solutions for it.
All of my programming abilities,
so I also do some software development.
All of my programming abilities are self
taught with a lot of help from my dad,
who's a professional software architect.
And so my role in Pocketbard is all
things audio technology and more recently,

(20:24):
stepping into leadership
of the audio team as a whole.
So everything
from spearheading our latest project, which
is we're working on some cool tavern music,
to kind of having that high
level vision of what the audio
landscape in the app needs to look like,

(20:45):
what kinds of music we're putting in it,
how we're prioritizing different things,
and then as we create new features,
figuring out the implementation side,
and from an audio technology perspective, like,
how is that going to work if we want
these sound effects to work this way?
When somebody does this in the app,
what does that look like as
far as implementing the audio tech side?

(21:06):
He's being humble
on the software development side, too.
He's written a lot of the code.
For a while,
there was a misnomer
that I was the lead developer.
I've been correcting people by saying,
even though I've written
a lot of the code for a long time, when
Jason was just kind of moonlighting for us,

(21:27):
it was his job to fix my mistakes as a higher
level developer and software engineer than me.
Even though I wrote more lines of code,
it wouldn't be there without
him looking over my shoulder.
Catch it up now.
It's really nice that the three of
you have solid overlap with each other.

(21:47):
Not only have you found your roles
to make this machine move, you know, with.
With three people, you know,
we often talk with people who are solopreneurs
and how they have to do everything,
and they've got a different struggle.
And then there's, you know,
the situation Chris and I have,
where there's the two of us,
and we can kind of divide things.
If one of us says,

(22:08):
I'm not that great at that thing,
how are you at it,
and then the other says, actually,
that's not that bad for me.
I can do it. Sure,
we end up divvying things up like that,
but the three of you have found this role.
I love to think of Alex,
you are a musical composer,
but you're also the composer
to get people and every.
You're organizing an organizing composer,

(22:29):
and I love that visual.
I'm already creating D and D
classes in my head for you three.
I'm trying to figure it out for everybody,
but that one made sense to me pretty clearly.
I'll get back to you on the other ones. But.
So the three of you also,
it stands out to me,
fall into this classic startup story.
It's like, yeah,

(22:49):
pretty recently after college,
me and some buddies got
together and we started an app.
How often
does that actually work out, too, right?
Yeah. Like Dropbox and Facebook and Pocket bar.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, part of the reason it
is our overlap of skills that
we've been able to get to where we are,

(23:10):
because software developers are expensive,
and the amount of music I've written
would have cost us a lot of money to, like,
dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of music.
So by having us
be the main team and not get paid,
we've saved ourselves. I mean, honestly,

(23:31):
I'm sure it's over
half a million dollars. Right. Like, that's.
Could we have raised that money for this idea?
I don't know who you know. It's. It's.
If you can find the right pairings of
skills that save you the most money
and have a team that works together well.
Like, I don't know how we could have
gotten to this
point without this team specifically. Right.

(23:53):
And I really like this number. We.
We've started expanding our team.
We brought on our first employees,
which they've been to amazing,
but just getting started when
everything's on the line and you have to
kind of rely on the hope of it doing well.
I do think that the attitudes and the

(24:15):
culture that you have are super important.
I think we're all optimists,
or at least have a positive bias
towards what we're working on,
and that's really helpful to be
able to maybe when a feature
gets delayed by four months from
when we were hoping to still be like, nope,

(24:35):
we're going to get to it,
and it's still worth doing.
Yeah, we haven't made money. Yeah,
we're out of money. Yeah,
we need to pay the bills,
but we just got to keep going.
So I do think that that
is a difficult element to quantify,
but has really worked out in our favor

(24:58):
and just trusting each other. You know,
we've known each other for a long time. Like.
Like Jason said,
I've known him since he got there,
got to our town in fifth grade,
and just became friends right away.
I've known Chase since 2012 at this point.
So having that trust
also is really helpful as well,

(25:19):
so you can rely on the other people
having a similar level of dedication.
Also, we're not worried about
somebody kind of bailing or, I don't know,
just the kind of
things that you hear about a lot, I think,
are things that we've avoided. Right.
And that's very helpful.
Not just the things that

(25:40):
have a positive impact on success, but
avoiding the things that make stuff fall apart.
Like, can you give an example?
Put you on the spot right there?
Yeah. No, yeah, I'll give a specific example.
Equity disputes or issues
with ownership and what people

(26:02):
contribute and what they own.
That's something that
we've tried to navigate very openly. Like,
we trust each other to have those discussions,
and we actually found a system
to love to give a shout out.
It's called slicing pie.
It's a dynamic equity system where, basically,
your contributions
to the business are quantified,

(26:24):
and it changes over time.
So it's dynamic equity.
The time you put in based on your role is
calculated with a multiplier into slices,
and so is any cash you put into the business.
So anybody's ownership of the business at any
given point is just how many slices they've
contributed over the whole of the team.

(26:46):
So we were able to, you know,
Chase could take a week off, and
me and Jason wouldn't be like, hey, you got.
Why'd you get a week off?
We didn't get a week off. Like, you know,
equity would dilute and vice versa.
If you really put in a lot of time,
that would be represented in
your equity and it changing over time.

(27:06):
So I think that's one thing we did
that was a systematized kind of
approach to better facilitate
everybody feeling
accurately or adequately valued.
But there's a level before that, too,
which is just the fundamental trust and

(27:27):
excitement and dedication to the product,
and that sometimes just takes time.
When somebody's been dedicating
hundreds or thousands of hours to
something over the course of four years,
it can start to
count on people pretty confidently.
Yeah. And, well, that's super interesting,

(27:49):
the dynamic flow of equity.
I'm guessing that that creates
a unique culture between the three of you, too,
where things continually get done as you see
other people working and getting things done.
It almost feels to me like
the dungeon master awarding loot. Right.

(28:10):
It's like based on experience, right? Like, oh,
or you get this because you did more, right?
Or you get more experience or
an inspiration point or things like that.
There's something weirdly fair by having
it sort of be something outside of just
having to negotiate between each other.
And it's interesting to see
that that has actually created a good,
cohesive environment within it.

(28:32):
Do you think that being nerds who play D and D,
I'm assuming you all play D and D, but
helped and contributed to that kind of being
you guys being a party that works together?
I definitely see the analogy,
but I don't think the three of us,
with the three of us all
together have played d and daughter, like,
with all three of us once,

(28:55):
so we're not used to actually gaming
together at the table. So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't think we even knew how well
we would work together in the beginning.
It just happened to be that way.
We're very similar in certain ways,
very detail oriented and, yeah,
I don't know, it just worked.
And that overlap like we were talking
about earlier just worked out very well.

(29:17):
Yeah, the communication is, like, super easy.
I feel like we communicate in similar
ways where I hear all the time about
meetings being a waste of time or anything.
When we have meetings,
at the end of it,
I always feel super energized
and excited about what we're doing.
I feel like we got a lot done.
I feel like we made a lot of decisions.

(29:38):
So when we have our four hour meetings,
whether a business or development,
those are my favorite things.
So I always look forward to those. Our
development meetings are fun,
even when I'm just kind of taking a backseat
to listening to these guys talk about
how they're going to execute on features.

(29:59):
Can you tell us a little bit about
the structure of those types of meetings?
How is that run?
Just to give us a peek behind the
curtain of what seems to be working.
Is there a structure or is it just
personalities that are gelling together?
It depends on the meeting. Jason,
do you want to give a background on, I guess,
how you run the software dev stuff?
Sure. Yeah. So there's

(30:21):
this methodology called agile,
and there are certain ceremonies that you're
supposed to do as part of that process.
So something like backlog grooming,
which is essentially going through a
bunch of items and adding details to it,
what needs to be done,
what's the acceptance criteria, and then, like,
assigning priority,
how much effort it's going to take.

(30:42):
And then that kind of complements
another ceremony called sprint planning,
where you actually set the
direction for the next two weeks, let's say,
and then you pull in work from the
backlog and assign it to different people.
So that's something
we're trying to be better at now, like
adding a little more structure and processes.

(31:05):
But I think it's
also something we're trying to balance.
Like we don't want to add
too much process and waste time.
So we're kind of slowly,
incrementally adding
those types of meetings on the technology side.
But we do have a lot of other business
strategy type of meetings as well.
Yeah, I think like Jason described,

(31:27):
those are pretty analytical, right.
We meet and it's within
two minutes or in the details, right.
Like it's really focused on being efficient,
figuring out what the best
course of action is on a small scale.
For the larger strategy discussions,
it's generally a little bit more freeform,

(31:47):
with some exceptions.
So usually I like to lead them in a
way where there's a specific topic
that's being addressed and just, you know,
usually like to hear all three of our
viewpoints because I do feel like we're.
It's like a workshopping an idea, right.

(32:09):
And as we go around and kind of list our
concerns with a concept or our thoughts
on it or potentially pitch an alternative
for whatever we're trying to decide.
So I'll give an example
because that's probably more useful.
We get a lot of community,
a lot of the community asking us, oh,

(32:30):
will you integrate with foundry?
Will you integrate with other virtual
tabletop games like I play on this site?
Could you build an integration for that?
And that was something
that we were trying to figure out. Okay,
how are we going to fit this into our roadmap?
We've already got all this other stuff,
and we had a long meeting a

(32:52):
few months ago and just went around,
listed our concerns and
just came to the decision of, right now,
we don't have the resources for this,
and it will detract
from our core offering right now,
which is our in person gaming experience.
This is not something
we want to detract from right now. And

(33:14):
that came about just through us kind of saying,
what's our capacity right now?
How realistic are we being about our timelines?
Let's look back at our history.
Have we been delivering on our items according
to the schedule we've been hoping to,
and just came to the decision as a team

(33:35):
after a pretty free form discussion that
we were going to at least wait for that.
I've started in this new year,
start taking a bunch
of ideas from the book, working backwards,
which I highly recommend.
It's about corporate practices at

(33:57):
Amazon and it's definitely one of
the best business books I've ever read.
There's some I'll read and I'll feel like, oh,
maybe I got like
two takeaways every page in this.
I was stopping and
writing notes of practical takeaways.
So I kind of grabbed the
idea of project proposals where Amazon,

(34:19):
they banned PowerPoints,
so basically
they present projects and narratives,
a six page narrative form.
And I tried that with
one of our awesome new employees, Nick,
who's working on customer support.
And we worked together on a project
proposal for basically an overhaul for
our entire customer support infrastructure,

(34:42):
like how we answer emails,
what our standards are, what
the resources are that anybody can reference,
how people can be aware of what the status
of bug fixes is and everything like that.
We spent a few days writing
up this six page narrative document,
making it really good,
and then came to

(35:03):
Jason and basically just presented it,
just sat there,
read it through for 20 minutes,
made some notes,
made some alterations,
and then just greenlit it. So
this is something that I've always been
really curious about and passionate about,
is what the best way different

(35:25):
pieces of information are presented,
because there's a lot of things to consider.
People read faster than they speak, people
speak faster than they type, people text,
like with what implement
you're typing on changes the speed.
These all alter how fast we can communicate.
And certain ideas are

(35:47):
better communicated in written format.
Sometimes if I was going to try to
convey something to a large number of people,
maybe I would want to spend 200 hours
writing the best thing I possibly could, right.
And because that actually will make
it better and save everybody else

(36:08):
time from having to read an extra page.
So it's about scale,
it's about considering how the
audience will best digest the information.
So I always try to keep that in mind.
That ties back into our app design, too.
How are we best going to present the
information to the user so that
they can immediately know what's happening?

(36:29):
That's why we've had symbols with
sound icons.
We want people to be able to just look down,
instantly recognize something visually,
not have to read.
If we had a text based app,
it would be much less usable.
So maybe that was rambling, but yeah.
Anyway, that makes a lot of sense.

(36:52):
And I applaud also,
one of the things you said there where you say,
turn down some
of the stuff that people, not forever,
but right now people were saying, oh,
why aren't you on foundry? Or can
you make something for this integration, right.
And understanding who you're serving is really
important when you're new in business. Right.

(37:12):
And knowing who is your market.
And I love one that you're promoting.
People get together into in person
D and D because as much as I
think in person's d and D is like one,
it is having a resurgence because
we got out of the COVID times,
but also I think it's really where
people fall in love with the game.
You know,
it is one of those things
that I've had people who have

(37:34):
started just on the digital side of it,
and it's hard to maintain their excitement
in the same way as when you have that
consistent group of friends getting together in
person and you're app is selling convenience.
So that convenience,
that ability to just show
up and not have to have planned,
spend an hour or two going through YouTube

(37:54):
or Spotify or whatever looking for great music,
you can just go and show up and finish your
day and go right into the game and be able
to provide the atmospheres at an easy level.
And there's people that I just think
that saying no to that kind of stuff.
And so you can be great in this one area.
That's a really a wise and smart thing to do,

(38:16):
especially at this stage of the company. So
I guess you mentioned earlier that
you transitioned from being mainly
a composer to then being like the CEO.
And I'm sure all of you have had to
probably expand yourselves and read
more business books or watch more business

(38:36):
youtubes or listen to be able to kind
of step into these bigger and grand roles,
because you all do multiple things.
So maybe we can take a second if each of you
could share some of the lessons you've learned,
or maybe a lesson that's been really
crucial that serves you now in the role
that you're at and how you learned that

(38:56):
lesson as you were coming into your role.
Yeah, that's a good question.
Sure, I can start. So, yeah, I often
fall victim to chasing perfection.
And oftentimes I think it slows me down.
And especially early on in a company like this,
I've learned it's really important

(39:16):
to just launch and iterate
quickly and learn from your users.
Establish that feedback loop early on,
because oftentimes you're not
going to know what the perfect
implementation of some feature is.
It's just important, I think,
to just get the product and features out
there and then learn and then keep, you know,

(39:38):
evolving as you go.
Would you say
it's almost like a fire, ready, fire,
aim strategy as opposed to a ready, aim,
fire strategy because you kind of aim after
you figure out what people like or don't like?
Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.
That's a good one.
I'm going to write that down.
We got a few good ones on this show.

(39:59):
When you're starting off with something,
you want to say yes to a lot, right? Like,
you want as many opportunities to test,
to get as much data as possible,
but at some point,
you need to start saying no a bit,
and at some point,
you need to start saying no to most things,
and then at some point,
you need to start saying no to

(40:20):
everything unless you have
a really good justification for it. Again,
that's when you have something that's working.
And to use your example, ready, fire, aim.
When you're aiming right,
and you've got it aimed,
the sites are aimed well, right.
It calibrated.
You're not looking for anything else,

(40:41):
because at that point,
anything else is a totally new venture. Right.
We can't get, I guess,
overconfident or expect that something
else we could do would pan out as well as,
as what
we've currently got going. So, yeah. Saying no,

(41:02):
because like I was saying earlier,
we're all pretty optimistic people.
I get excited about stuff.
People present ideas. I'm like, oh, that's,
that's really neat.
That'd be a lot of fun.
But it's my natural inclination
to say yes to everything, and I just,
we can't do that anymore.
I absolutely resonate.
I just wanted to throw out there

(41:23):
a little thing that I've learned with Chris,
and it's something,
it's a lesson I've learned over
my entire lifetime working with people.
But with Chris,
I feel like the opportunity helped
me really get good at it, so, you know,
because Chris is very much an ideas guy,
and he gets really passionate
about the cool ideas he comes up with.
I feel like in any startup or any new venture,

(41:45):
there's got to be somebody like that
because it fuels so much of
your direction and it creates
these new ideas that I'm like, oh, yeah,
that would be cool.
But I'm also the structure guy.
I am the logistics guy.
And so when Chris says, hey,
we should do this thing,
I immediately just go, oh, shit. Oh, my God,

(42:07):
how am I going to find,
where are we going to? I don't even,
I know how we could do that,
but that would take to,
how are we going to wow.
And so that's where my brain goes.
But I've learned that,
you know what, it's okay. I tell myself,
Chris had another really good idea.
I'm going to write that down.
If he brings it up a second time,
I'll write it down again,
and then I'll know, like, okay,

(42:28):
he's really thinking about this.
You know, it's. It's. For me,
I couldn't get
to the saying no as much more of, for me,
it's the say yes, write it down,
come back to it when I can. But it's totally.
It's similar but different from, like,
when you have customers, like,

(42:48):
you're talking about, you know,
they want to see you on foundry. Like,
that comes down to your laser focus.
You guys have been on the market for, you said,
a couple years now,
so you kind of understand there's.
There's proof of success in your product,
so you're not as worried about that.
You've.
You've gotten a good
idea of who your audience is. You know,

(43:10):
what their pain points are. I'm.
I assume a bit on that one. And, you know,
their pain points.
So you can create features
and products that cater to those. And that's.
That is an interesting distinction. Like,
that's a couple steps up from many of the other
people we talk to that are still, in some ways,

(43:31):
figuring it out.
And many of our listeners are still trying
to figure out who is my audience, you know,
what are their pain points? And eventually,
they'll be able to get that laser focus,
I will hope.
And with what you're talking about,
they'll at least think about it.
So very cool.
I didn't want to miss Chase, though,
on the lesson for yourself.

(43:52):
Yeah, I had three small ones, if that's cool.
I wrote it down so that I'd be
able to focus and listen and not
just be thinking about my answer. And actually,
these all kind of come from other people.
None of this is lessons that
I learned by figuring it out myself.
The first one is actually something that

(44:13):
Jason said months and months ago about.
I think it was even just, like,
an off the cuff, like,
we should kind of act like this.
And I took that, and just, like,
it started cycling in my mind,
and I was like, oh, no, no, no.
We need to take this to 110%,
which is limit work in progress.
If you have 18 irons in the fire, none

(44:36):
of them are getting the attention they deserve.
And so I don't even
remember what we were working on,
but Jason was like, we
should try to limit our works in progress here.
And I went, oh, yeah, that's right. And
so now we have a million things we want to do,
and it's so tempting to take
step one or step one and two
on 18 of those all at once. But like, nope,

(44:59):
we're actually going to be serving the company
and the product and the business better
by finishing what we're currently working
on now and putting that attention here.
And I'll still be excited about the next thing.
Two weeks from now,
two months from now,
we'll get to it.
That's the first one.
The second one is also kind

(45:19):
of something that's been said here
before or said in this conversation,
which is that the
fact that we have a team of three, I think
is actually something extra, extra special.
When you have one person, every single idea,
you just bounce around with yourself.
Maybe you have people you can trust,
that you can talk to,
but ultimately it's you and only you. And I,

(45:41):
frankly think that's a problem.
Adding in a second person is great
because all of a sudden you have a mirror.
You can actually genuinely get somebody
else's perspective from somebody who has
skin in the game. And that's, that's, you know,
you're 100% better than you were before.
But I think having a third person in the mix
actually provides an extra mirror where

(46:04):
there might be times where Alex and I will talk
about something and we'll get caught up in,
in a perspective that we happen
to share and Jason will come in
and we'll kind of shatter the
illusion and go, you know, hey, wait a minute.
Think about it this way.
And we both go, oh, that's right. And I think.
I think three is kind of a magic
number for being able to do that. So that's,

(46:24):
that's the second lesson.
And then the last thing
is kind of a two parter.
The first part is always do your best,
which seems obvious,
but the second part is the important part,
which is do your best to
communicate that you're doing your best.
When we first started

(46:45):
putting our product out there,
and there have always been bugs
that we want to fix or things like that.
In the beginning,
there were a whole bunch of bugs and
we would get a lot of feedback. And for me,
just the way my personality works,
that feedback always would hit me really hard.
I could read 205 star reviews,
but then I see the one,
one star review that

(47:05):
points out something that I'm like,
we've known about that for three
weeks and we still haven't fixed it,
or we've known about that for six months,
and we were just kind of hoping
we could get to it as soon as we can.
That's the one that digs at
me and that keeps me up at night.
And somebody said to me, hey,
when you see those people,
or when you have the opportunity

(47:25):
to talk to people who see that, first of all,
they're giving you something valuable.
But the thing that you can do that's actually
going to help you kind of mentally cope
with the fact that somebody has noticed a flaw
in what you're creating is communicating
to them that you are doing your best.
And that's not always going to

(47:47):
solve the problem that they're having.
It's not always going to make them feel better,
but something it is going to do is remind
you because you're telling somebody else that
you actually are doing your best and you're
committing to doing your best on something.
And so there's this kind of back
and forth psychological principle to it.
So I've been trying to integrate that

(48:08):
in anytime I'm communicating people, whether
it's telling them that, like, hey, look,
I'm a foundry user, too.
I would love that. But no,
we can't do that right now,
or other tech questions or bugs or whatever,
I always try to make sure that
in my answers I'm coming off as saying, hey,
we will do our best. Whatever happens,

(48:30):
I promise you,
we're doing our best with that. And that
not only helps with the customer interaction,
it helps with my own ability to
handle those interactions as well.
There's another thing
it does that I really like from,
I spent a lot of time in
customer support and customer service.
And the other thing that does is it
tells the other person they've been heard,

(48:52):
which I find a lot of
the time big companies forget to do. They
just see it and they say, you know, thank you.
Your feedback has been noted.
We'll send this higher up. And, you know,
it's not going anywhere. Like,
that was actually one of the things
I was taught at a company to do.
And they told us, yeah, it's going somewhere.

(49:12):
Well, I knew after very quickly, I
knew it wasn't really getting reviewed.
And so saying that,
you know what, that genuine, hey,
we're doing our best. I mean, for anyone,
even if someone listening has an Etsy store
or some other place where they sell product,
where they get reviews, just saying, hey,
we appreciate that feedback.
We are trying our best to address this.

(49:32):
Your note has not been ignored.
But I love that the mindset aspect
isn't something I've really thought about.
It kind of holds you accountable,
which is another thing that we've
been talking around is this accountability.
The magic three
that you were just talking about, Chase,
with the three of you,

(49:53):
there is this accountability for each of you.
There's the dynamic slicer app,
or what was it called?
Slicing pie.
Slicing pie.
That one.
I nailed it. And that is, you know,
there's accountability in there,
and everything that you're
doing together has created that. Now, now,
we've talked a lot about

(50:15):
the three of you as a team, a cohesive unit,
and we've talked a little bit about the app.
I'd like to dive a little bit more
into it as a business model. Specifically,
I'm just going to go for the jugular and
ask about your money generating product,
because you have created
a phenomenal product that is freemium.

(50:37):
And like I said,
I've used it for hours.
I have not been asked to pay anything.
There's also no ads that I've noticed.
I appreciate no ads very much.
So how do you guys make money?
Yeah, no, no ads. And that's lines, basically,
we've set out to, from the beginning,

(50:59):
create a solid
and comprehensive free experience. Right? Like,
we're moving towards an age where, like,
everything is free, I think.
So we're in an interim stage,
but the expectations.
People need to be able to try something
before they want to spend money. And also,

(51:21):
we don't need everybody to have to pay to.
For us to be able to have this, be a company.
So we've always wanted to
have that comprehensive free
experience so somebody could download it,
and even if they can't afford it,
they don't want to pay.
They, like you said, you haven't
been prompted to pay anything.
You can use it for your games,
and that's actually something.
We're even expanding.

(51:42):
I just finished up a whole bunch of
new music for the forest scene, which is free,
so that will be in the app soon.
And to support that vision of
having a solid and ever improving
free version is our subscription.
There's a lot of reasons that we have this.

(52:04):
We definitely are aware that subscriptions
are hated by a lot of people. Right.
It can definitely feel like
it sucks to not own anything,
but there's a lot
of reasons why we went that way,
and I think that it actually.

(52:24):
It's fundamentally our belief,
and nothing has changed our minds on this,
that it actually is in the best interest of the
consumer when you look long term, which, again,
I think Chase mentioned,
our goal is we're thinking
five years from now or longer.
So when we think about pocket Bard in 2020,

(52:45):
what year is it? 2024.
In 2028 or 2029,
what will we be able to do with
this business model is totally
different than what we would do with, like,
a one time per pack purchase.
We could have a lot more money right now
if we had a one time purchase model, right.

(53:08):
People are willing to spend. I mean,
people love D and D, right?
They are willing to spend on this hobby.
If they wanted to buy
a seafaring pack for I don't know what price,
but a lot of people would,
and a lot
of people turn down the subscription, right.
Because a lot of reasons which we can get into,
but that really is

(53:30):
the short term money making thing,
is the one time purchase.
But then there's no incentive for
us to focus on what actually matters,
which is improving the app over time,
as we get better at this,
as we have more resources.
So we've opted for this kind of
freemium model because we can have regular

(53:52):
income to devote to what the product
actually needs to get better in a year.
It might not be content, right.
Maybe 15% of our budget goes towards content,
and the rest goes to overhauling
the design of the app and reprogramming
something from the ground up because
it's going to speed up everything. It's
going to allow it to live in a place where.

(54:16):
Where the consumer lives.
Maybe it will allow
for that virtual tabletop integration.
There's so many aspects of the business
that are not covered by one time purchases.
It's basically just produce content
as fast as you can and sell it,
and then there's
no incentive to go back to it. So, again,
we're focused on the long term app,

(54:38):
and this is also regular income.
It's recurring each month,
so we can better tailor our expenses
and grow responsibly and not
just hire a bunch of people, spam our growth,
make a bunch of money,
and then just leave.
Just don't push an update for a year.

(55:00):
So I want to kind of double down on something.
Where do you make money?
So we have.
Did I miss it?
Go ahead, Jason.
It's through the subscription model.
So, basically, there's, like, you know,
a set of content that's always free,
and then there's also

(55:20):
a subset of content that's premium,
and you have to be
a subscriber to access if it's like.
Netflix before your tabletop game, right,
which basically means, like, when I.
When I go in there,
I saw the option to upgrade to get
some of these other environments or
types of tabletop rpg,
which actually liked

(55:41):
quite a bit because I was like, oh,
there's plenty here for me to play
around with and get a sense for
what the app does and how it works.
And is this even something that's functional?
And then to actually
go in there and say, like, oh man, I'm running,
like you said, seafaring game.
I think seafaring is free,
but if I wanted to expand upon a pirate
thing or something like that and have more,

(56:01):
maybe there'd be an upgrade
that I could go into and say, oh,
I'm going to join premium
so I can run that for my game.
And so that's it. I mean,
I think that's interesting
because I personally don't mind.
I know some people are saying
memberships and subscriptions
and all that stuff is bad. I'm like,
I don't mind that stuff.
If the subscription provides good value,
there's a lot of
subscriptions that I'm part of, but

(56:23):
if I don't get the value out of it regularly,
then I'm going to leave.
And I think that there's a lot of
companies out there that trick
people into doing their memberships, like, oh,
you get this.
That's what I'm worried
about when I download an app, right?
Everybody's had
that experience where it's like, oh,
you download an app that
promises some big transformation for you,

(56:43):
and then you're immediately dinged
for like a year long subscription to
it for 70 or 80 or $100 just to even
access or try out this thing that says
it's going to solve this problem for you,
and then the thing doesn't really
work or it's not really delivering,
or they don't service it or all those things.
I think that's a really valid concern.
I didn't have that experience with you,
which is one of the reasons I liked your app.

(57:04):
So I was like, oh, this is good.
When we were first kind of considering things,
there's a story that I had heard, I
think I heard it on a podcast a long time ago,
about the kind of business strategy
of how much do you give in a free trial
type of thing and how much do you pay? While I.

(57:24):
And it was called the happy meal mistake.
And I know this is like a little old school,
but imagine you're taking somebody
out on a date for the first time, right?
They don't know much about you.
This is like your chance
to get the other person to decide,
I'm going to continue.
We're going to go on dates

(57:45):
number two and three and four,
and you show up,
maybe you're in a nice suit.
You're gonna pick the
person up from wherever they live,
and they say, okay, well,
where are we going? And you go,
we're gonna go to McDonald's. Well,
come on. That's like. That's
a little silly. And, of course, the person.
I don't understand, Chase.

(58:06):
Why.
Why is that a bad idea?
Can you elaborate?
You imagine that
you give the justification of, like, well,
it's a lot.
It's a lot of
investment to, like, kind of, you know, do
a more expensive meal. Let's, like, you know,
let's see if there's.
I don't know if you're
that great yet, you know.
Yeah.
And it's a silly example,

(58:26):
but it illustrates.
And I actually.
I think it illustrates more for business
than it actually has wisdom with dating,
but it illustrates that in a business context,
when you give kind of the free
trial or the free version of
something and you have handicapped it,
what you're setting people
up for is a frustrating experience,

(58:48):
and you're not actually convincing
people that the premium experience
is worth paying for a lot of the time.
I find with a lot of freemium apps that the
free version is just deeply unsatisfying,
and it feels like they're relying
on that dissatisfaction to
entice you into paying for the rest of it.

(59:10):
But for the most black hat innovation.
And at that point,
why have the free version at all know?
I just delete the apps that
when they do that free trial, three days,
then it's $85 a month. I'm like, what?
Not gonna lie.
I totally thought
it would be that way with pocket Bard. I
totally thought when I saw the ad, I was like,
too good to be true.

(59:31):
I'm gonna download
this and just prove myself right.
And I was like, crap.
There's a lot here for us.
We kind of decided from the beginning,
and Alex has alluded to this,
as well already,
that even if you
decide not to pay for pocket Bard,
we still want it to be the best experience
that you can have for free. That's it.

(59:52):
That's the goal.
Well, there's value also within
of just having a customer base
that's continually using your app. Right.
And whether that's them not paying,
just logging in and
running their weekly d and d game. Right.
But down the road, you know, if
I've got a relationship with you of like, oh,
I've been in pocket Bard

(01:00:14):
every week for the last 15 weeks,
and you just released this, like, you know,
you just released a new dungeon pack.
That sounds really cool. And I'm like, oh, man,
I wanted to do more of a scary dungeon.
They have this whole scary pack that's
gonna really make it more horror theme,
and I want to create
that atmosphere for these characters.
I trust you.
I know you're not trying to screw me over.

(01:00:35):
You're not trying to just, like,
click this button and give me that $80. Like,
you've actually established a relationship
with me for that free version,
and you've shown up and given me what I wanted,
and now I'm willing to spend a lot
more money with you down the road
and your quality of client. Now, this might,
like you said, might take.
This might take you a little longer to build,
but you're building a foundation where once

(01:00:57):
I jump into that and I realize, like, oh, man,
this is awesome,
you're actually gonna want to.
I'm actually gonna want to stay,
and I'm gonna keep paying,
or I'm gonna actually want
to know what's the next release?
And you can always entice me with new great
stuff because you're continuing to add to the.
Add to the app, right? Like, you,
I'm assuming we haven't got every
single piece of music that's

(01:01:18):
ever gonna be made on it already.
You just said you made
new forest music, right? So, you know, let's.
Maybe that's a great place to go, is, like,
where are you guys looking to
expand and entice people with some
of this premium stuff in the future?
And what can people look forward
to in the coming months and years?

(01:01:39):
From Pocket Bard,
I'll start by saying the next
big thing to look forward to is tavern.
We have been planning and plotting
from the start for something pretty
incredible with our tavern music pack,
and I can't give a lot of detail at the moment

(01:02:01):
other than to say it's going to be a pretty.
It's certainly going to
fit within the pocket part experience,
but I think it's going to elevate
things quite a bit beyond that.
We have a whole roadmap of music
that we have planned, some free, some premium,
and we'll continue to improve

(01:02:23):
the existing music that's there as well.
And then we have some cool platform features.
I don't know if Alex or Jason,
you guys want to get into any details on that,
on any of the platform feature improvements,
but suffice it to say
that as we improve the pocket board,
the Pocket Bard platform itself,
all of those new kind of features and things

(01:02:46):
will become part of the core experience.
We don't really
have any features planned that are,
like premium only type features because
that's not really the direction that we
necessarily want to go with it at the moment.
Yeah, on the content side.

(01:03:07):
So I've been writing music for this since 2019,
so I now have four
more years experience doing this,
and all of us do.
Chase has four more years experience mastering.
That's the stage that I send the music off
to him and then implementing it in the app.
So we've all gotten better at what we do.

(01:03:28):
So I'm going back through and elevating
the free fantasy essentials content to be
where the current standard of the app is.
We've released Sci-Fi seafaring horror,
and I think when we did Sci-Fi,
it just kind of brought the standard,
in my opinion,
of the music in the app,

(01:03:49):
the production quality,
the amount of
music in each scene, the interactivity.
It's at a different level than the free stuff
that 98% of our users are used to. Right.
So I'm excited to go back and up the
level of that because that's something that
our expectations are luckily always

(01:04:13):
ahead of our customers in general. Right? Like,
we've used this app all the time.
I know the music backwards and forwards.
I know what could be better.
I know where every track up that mix I did
three years ago doesn't sound quite right.
I know what we could do better. Now.
This scene needs like ten minutes more music.
I'm excited to show our users what new

(01:04:36):
standards look like that we are currently at,
but only a small subset of people
are aware of with our premium content.
Hey, nerdpreneurs. We'll get back to
the show in just a second.
We spent another 40 minutes
with Pocketbard talking through
their customer acquisition strategy,
how they established market share, the
most stressful times they've had as a startup,

(01:04:57):
and how they got through it,
and their experience at PAX and how they
leverage that event to grow their brand.
To get access to the full interview
and dozens of other interviews
with successful nerdy entrepreneurs,
join our awesome nerdpreneur board
by going to patreon.com nerdpreneur.
We don't advertise on our show,

(01:05:19):
and we keep doing this because we
love it and because of the support
we get from our amazing board members.
The more board members we get,
the bigger our guests will be and
the more cons and events we can go
to to meet other nerdy entrepreneurs
and discover their success secrets.
So if you want to see us
grow and keep doing what we're doing.

(01:05:41):
The number one way you can help
us out is by becoming a board member.
So go to patreon.com
nerdpreneur and join today.
Now let's get back to the show.
All right,
so we're going to move on over to random rolls.
So these are less serious,
bit more fun questions.

(01:06:02):
I think everything we've
talked about has been very fun,
don't get me wrong.
But let's go ahead and start with Chase.
You're just left most on my screen,
so go ahead and roll your d 100, please.
I would also like to point out I've got.
These are my dice that my wife got me.
I don't know if they'll show up on camera,
but they're spider themed because

(01:06:25):
my current D and D character is connected to.
We play in the Exandria universe and
is connected to Lolf the Spider Queen.
And so playing
with these spider dice is cool. So. All right,
I will roll this.
53 in Star Trek,

(01:06:47):
there are six divisions, science, medicine,
command, con, security, and engineering.
Which division would you train into?
They don't have audio engineering.
Yeah, sorry.
You know,
it's hard because life on

(01:07:09):
a starship is different than life here,
back here on Earth and at a startup.
I think the other thing is,
this is interestingly appropriate.
I've been playing a lot of traveler lately,
which is a Sci-Fi TTRPG,
so my mind is definitely in that space,

(01:07:31):
but a ching. I think.
I think for me,
it's got to be between command and engineering.
I think I might have to go with command.
How come?
I think my kind of natural leadership
tendencies in something like

(01:07:53):
a starship exploration vessel environment,
I think I have a lot to lend to that.
And I feel like if I. If
I weren't in a command position, if I didn't,
if I didn't try for a command position,
I would feel like.
I feel like I would have more to give that

(01:08:14):
I didn't give myself the opportunity to.
Nice. Starfleet's all about everyone
living up to their potential,
so I resonate with that. Thank you.
All right, Jason, how about you?
All right.
Let me roll this online. Roller 60.

(01:08:34):
So this is a two part question.
If you had a band, first,
what spell would
you name your band after? And second,
what kind of music would your band play?
This is perfect for a tabletop RPG music app.

(01:08:55):
So out of the three of us,
I am the least
familiar with D and D and ttrpgs.
The spell part might be hard what do I know?
Just call yourself fireball.
That's a great name for a band.
We can help you out, Jason,
if you want to.
Yeah. Chase, can you give me,
like three spell options here?

(01:09:17):
Well, what type of music first?
Then it would go from there.
Definitely something like melodic.
Maybe like RMB or something.
Oh, yeah.
D and D, R and B.
Makes me think Melf's acid arrow.

(01:09:38):
Let's go with that.
That honestly is a.
For some reason that works for RB.
Yeah.
It'S kind of smooth.
I like that with a little hit.
And then it kind of blows up at the end.
Maybe that part doesn't work, but.

(01:09:59):
All right, Alex, what about you?
All right, I got 89.
89.
Ah, nice. What makes
a great friendship stronger?
Are there, like multiple choice?

(01:10:21):
No, but it has to be silly. No, it does not.
Makes a great friendship stronger.
So it's already starting out great, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, great.
Okay.
That's a really good question.

(01:10:43):
Business partnership.
Yeah. Going into business together.
Start an app with.
Honestly.
Honestly, though, that's actually
probably the best answer
that I would have, because realistically,
it's hard to find time
to hang out with friends. Right. Like,
stuff is like,

(01:11:03):
we have busy lives, especially
around this age. Right. This is like,
kind of the peak in busyness
in the twenties, thirties, forties. Right.
So it's part
of the reason I've always wanted to, like,
get people involved in
businesses or projects is so
I could hang out with them more. So honestly,
that's the right.

(01:11:23):
I think that's the right answer because
I've been able to hang out with
Chase and Jason now so many more
hours a week than I would have otherwise.
And whenever.
And who launched
this business in the first place?
I forget.
I mean, Chase and I kind of. Yeah.
Okay. I thought the answer

(01:11:43):
was going to be Alex, actually.
And that was all part of its plan.
This entire time,
this has been like an on.
Kind of an ongoing threat.
There's an ongoing thread throughout this
business and previous projects. Businesses.
Chase and I had
a video game audio company previously,

(01:12:04):
like we mentioned, Jason. I.
Jason and I worked on a game in a college.
He had a computer science project.
Like a math game.
Oh, yeah. You wrote the music to it.
Yeah. Yeah. So we've. We've always
been finding ways to pair up
to work on fun stuff and the same
thing with other creative, creative projects,
working on songs with people.

(01:12:26):
It's a great way to feel
like you're being productive and
engaging in our capitalistic society,
getting the benefits of that while
also being able to hang out with
people that you enjoy being around,
because that's one of the things I try to
find as many dual purpose tasks as possible.

(01:12:46):
I'm working out,
and I'm on the phone with my mom
while I'm secretly on a meeting. And, you know,
not actually that, but.
But as many of those
things can fit together as possible.
I'm learning about
business while I'm walking my dog. Right.
I'm always trying to do multiple
things at once and being

(01:13:08):
able to actually spend time with. I mean,
these guys are the people I,
other than my girlfriend,
that I see the most in the world, so.
So you would recommend
going into business with your friends.
Use slicing pie.
If you do that, though,
that's against common wisdom, right?
Yeah.
You just got to have the right friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is becoming a bit

(01:13:29):
of a theme on nerdpreneur, though. Like, we.
When we do,
we usually are
talking to successful businesses, though, too.
So I want to give that caveat
that we have a natural filter for. Whether
you even get on this podcast is success.
So we're not seeing all the friendships
that dissolved over starting an app together.
Maybe we should. Maybe we should.
But I can say that I think

(01:13:50):
there are a lot of people that,
at least in this generation,
that want to work with their friends and want
to do this more on their own terms and be able
to create companies in their nerdy passion.
And I think that that's something
we keep finding as we go out there,
as it emerges out of them talking
with their friends about an idea and
them seeing their friends struggle
with something and then being like, oh,

(01:14:10):
why don't we just fix this?
Or why don't we do something
to create something that's good,
having the spirit,
the entrepreneurial spirit,
to actually go and do it.
I know it'll create bonds and connections
and friendships at a much deeper level than
just playing D and d together.
This is like a real adventure, right?
Yeah. And I do want to point out that I think,

(01:14:33):
because it is actually legitimately very
important to keep in mind how many businesses,
either businesses get broken
up because friendships fall apart,
or friendships fall apart because businesses,
you know, go south. Like, that's definitely.
I don't know the data on that,
but it's probably not, like,
a fully positive outlook.

(01:14:55):
But I think we are all very,
very focused on what we are doing
as individuals to contribute to the team. Like,
I don't get the vibe that we're all like. Like,
stewing or seething. Like,
Chase didn't do enough.
You know what I mean?
We're focused on our individual
contributions to this and living

(01:15:16):
up to what we expect of ourselves
and being very self motivated people.
I think when we're stressed,
at least for me,
and I know Chase as well,
we're usually focused in on what we're
not achieving or bringing to the team. Like,
it goes more inward than outward.
But if you're predisposed to

(01:15:38):
go outward towards this
person's not doing their thing or, you know,
and not be self reflective and take
ownership for the success of everything,
that would go badly very quickly.
Yeah, that ownership is. Yeah,
I definitely resonate with that. I mean,
I find that for Chris and I,
we both are very good at recognizing where

(01:16:00):
we ourselves need to fill in and other
people we've spoken to as well. Yeah. Well,
shall we move on to rapid fire, everybody?
So these are going to be,
as the name suggests, rapid.
And we've never done this with three people,

(01:16:20):
so we're going to figure this out.
And if you couldn't tell already,
we're long winded,
so we'll do our best.
I was thinking, like,
do we want to go around and, like,
one after the other and just, like, rapid fire.
And you and I alternate, and then. Well,
I'm thinking I'll follow this pattern. Chris,

(01:16:42):
you can be the voice of chaos if you like,
but I'm gonna do chase. Jason. Alex.
All right.
Okay. Yes, he's agreed.
I will see how that goes. I can.
I can switch it all up in editing anyway,
so whatever you say.
I have the final say on it anyway.
Chase, three favorite pizza toppings.

(01:17:08):
Italian sausage, pineapple, and jalapenos.
Ah, the salty, sweet, and spicy.
Jason, what is your zombie
apocalypse weapon of choice?
Oh, I'll take a baseball bat.
I think I can do some damage with it.

(01:17:29):
That's a good one.
Harley Quinn style. Love it. Alex,
this isn't on here,
but I have to ask,
how do you cleanse? Like,
when you're at the perfume stand and.
Because everybody does that. Right?
And you have to smell the
coffee beans to cleanse your nose.
What do you do to cleanse your ears?
Oh, that's a great question. I'll usually.
I mean,

(01:17:50):
sleep is the only actual effective thing, like,
waiting to the next day.
But I'll often go
to the gym and listen to music. That's
the opposite. Like, just metal, you know?
Nice. So you weren't. You guys aren't planning
to do any dwarven metal music yet? I. Well,
because that
was something I went deep into. It is.

(01:18:12):
There is a dwarven metal band that we're in
the process of getting on the podcast. So nice.
So anyway,
I guess that's not planned yet.
We'll put you guys in touch with the band.
Sweet chase,
Lord of the Rings,
the books or the movies.
Oh, my gosh. I have to make the
biggest nerd confession in history.

(01:18:34):
I saw the first lord of the Rings movie once.
And it stopped that, period.
That's the end of it.
I make every apology necessary. I understand.
I committed a big sin here.
Whatever happened at pocket Bard? Well,
we found out they never watched Lord
of the Rings and their evaluation went.

(01:18:57):
Did you at least.
Was it at least the extended version?
Yes, it was.
Oh, thank goodness. Okay.
I would not have gone into
film scoring without Lord of the Rings.
That was like everything to me in childhood.
I think I would appreciate it more now. Again,
this is part of the.
As I mentioned at the top of the episode,
I didn't get into d and D until late in life.

(01:19:19):
The real reason is because I grew up a
Sci-Fi lover and I had this strange, just like,
gut aversion to high fantasy where
I just immediately would find myself
bored and never gave it a real chance.
And I feel so differently now.

(01:19:39):
I really wish that
I had learned to appreciate it sooner,
but that that's honestly the reason that Lord
of the Rings was never a big thing for me.
Get another shot at it.
Maybe that'll be a viewing party.
It's on the list now.
Yeah, once
you guys have some real time, you know,
once the stat picks up.
All right, Jason. Harry Potter.

(01:20:01):
What Hogwarts house are you in?
I think I just took
a quiz and I forgot what I got. Shoot.
Hufflepuff.
Slytherin.
Okay.
All right.
What did I get?

(01:20:21):
I dig it.
You know,
I recognize a snake when I see one.
You know, I could see, hey, slytherin.
This has been a topic before.
Slytherins get things done.
I will say I say that as a slim.
I could see Jason as any of them. To be honest,
I'm really not sure.
I was going thinking Gryffindor,
but I'm not sure.
No, it wasn't Gryffindor.

(01:20:42):
Alex, what is your favorite personal
growth or business book that you've read.
Is favorite have a plural or.
Sure. Me. If you have two
on the top of your head, go for it.
Books have totally
changed my life. Mindfulness. In plain English,
that was the first like life shifting book.

(01:21:05):
Power of habit was another one.
Build Tony Fadal and working backwards, chase.
As a avid Sci-Fi fellow Sci-Fi lover here,
your favorite Sci-Fi ip.
Oh, favorites. So difficult.

(01:21:26):
I have a lot of love for.
There are some very
strong runners up right now, though,
I have to say. The Expanse.
Nice books or the tv show or both books.
Okay. I have been completely captured,
and I'm loving it.

(01:21:48):
Okay. I'll give it a more serious
consideration the next time
I'm looking for a series to dive into.
I've tried
watching the expanse, like, three times,
and I cannot.
I just cannot get into it. I don't know.
I feel like it should be good. Like,
everything says to me.
It should be good,
but I just can't. I can't.
It just doesn't work for me.
But I would like to maybe try the books.

(01:22:09):
I didn't know they were actually books.
Yeah. Very, very good.
And it's.
It's. It's so hard to pick favorites, right.
Because there's
so much legacy of, like, obviously,
things like Star wars and Star Trek have such.
Such weight in the history of my
interest in Sci-Fi right. Or even, like, Dune.

(01:22:33):
I had such a big dune phase where I was like,
this is incredible.
But I think right now,
I'm just obsessed with the expanse.
Nice. I'm still
in my dune phase right now. So, Jason,
what's the coolest Batman gadget?
Ooh, whatever that thing is called

(01:22:53):
where he can just hook
onto buildings and fly up and down?
Is there a name for that, like.
Bat grip or whatever? I think it's, like,
the bat grip.
It depends on
which series you're talking about, but, yeah.
Bat gun. Grappling hook.
Grappling hook.
Yeah, the bat hook.
Yeah, the bat hook. Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.

(01:23:16):
Alex, that would be pretty cool.
Alex, who is cooler, Indiana
Jones or Lara Croft?
Indiana Jones.
I've never played any of the Tomb Raider games,
so I have no idea.
Excuse me. I'll be back.
Yeah.
You're gonna tear this company apart.
I've seen her in Xbox magazine ads,
and that's the extent of
my knowledge of Tomb Raider.

(01:23:39):
I do love Indiana Jones.
Yeah. The movies. Angelina Jolie were fun.
I rewatched the second one, like,
six years ago,
and I don't know
who was in charge for wardrobe,
but she had some of the weirdest style.
It was so funny.
She had this really cool,
probably super vintage gold

(01:23:59):
swirling dragons on the back.
I just remember thinking,
that's so odd for Lara Croft. Like, that
is not at all what I would have envisioned.
I thought she would be
more like the Indiana Jones style, but cooler.
And so the tvs don't hold up. Well,
what I'm trying to say is that the video games,
the newer video games do a great job.

(01:24:22):
Yeah. That's just something that.
I've missed so many of those. I was so.
Everything was like
Lord of the Rings or Star wars, and I.
I miss all the other franchises.
Or Harry Potter.
So, Chase, do you believe in aliens?
It depends on what you mean.

(01:24:43):
Does extraterrestrial life exist?
Almost to a certainty.
Has it ever visited Earth?
Almost certainly not.
That was a very nice,
succinct answer to a complicated question.
I like that.
I feel like you just stopped Chris
from asking something else based on. I haven't.

(01:25:04):
That's all right.
The most interesting part of
it is whether we think they've
arrived here or not, but. Yeah. Yeah, no.
All right. Jason,
if you could have.
I realize now this suddenly
sounds like a work interview question,
but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
If you could have lunch with anyone in history,

(01:25:26):
who would it be?
Alive or dead? Doesn't matter.
Yeah, doesn't matter.
Anyone in history.
I'll just go with. With Elon Musk.
Very topical these days. Yeah.
What would you guys talk about? Any, like,

(01:25:48):
coding or anything, or. Is there anything.
Probably a lot of
engineering conversations. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nice. Nice.
Alex, how many cats is too many cats?
I mean,
how big is your apartment?
I'm a dog person,
but I do like cats. I don't know.
I would say real,
if I'm trying to be honest.

(01:26:09):
Probably four would be too many, right?
Three probably seems acceptable to me.
No experience with them, though. So.
You know what?
Just take a dive in.
Just start with three.
Yeah.
Just see how that goes, man. Yeah.
Get back to me.
Let me know how you're doing at.
The end from different locations.

(01:26:29):
Throw them all into one room, get.
Them off the street. Yeah.
Chase, I'm thinking
we do one more round here. Chase,
what character would you cosplay at Comic Con?
Mmm.
My wife and I have been talking about hopping

(01:26:51):
on the critical role cosplay bandwagon.
We're both big into campaign three.
And so I would love to.
I'd love to see if I could pull off
Dorian from earlier in the season.
He's a air genasi Bardeenen,

(01:27:12):
and that'd be cool.
When you say season three,
are you talking Vox machina on Amazon prime
or are you talking the actual live stream?
No, I'm talking about the actual. The
actual actual play live streams.
Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Because
I am not in the know.
All good.
Except for the animated show.
That's all I got.

(01:27:33):
Which was very good.
It's very good. It's very fun.
Jason, what's your favorite movie franchise?
Honestly, I'm a sucker for
a lot of the Marvel universe. Universe.
So something, something there.
The whole thing can be a movie franchise.

(01:27:54):
You could just say Marvel.
It definitely works for a movie franchise.
There's only a couple.
A handful.
Alex, if you could visit
any fictional setting, you know, fantasy,
sci-Fi you know, anywhere,

(01:28:15):
and you could spend a week there,
where would it be?
Probably. I mean, I would want it to be as
different as possible, right? Like, the most.
So I would go something.
I would go Star wars,
and I'd probably go to, like,

(01:28:36):
the video game locations,
like knights of the old Republic,
all those locations there.
Because being able to actually, like,
be immersed in the places I was
for hundreds of hours as a kid,
I feel like that would be pretty cool.
And travel at light speed and, you know,
stuff like that,
that'd be pretty sweet.
Heck, yeah.
Can I ask
one more question of Chase? So, Chase,

(01:29:01):
are you related to Seth Rogen?
You had to do it.
I. I'm from Vancouver. I just gotta ask.
I've the whole interview, I've been like,
this guy is like a mini sister.
I was.
When I was getting married,
my wife went and did her, like,

(01:29:24):
bachelorette party with, you know,
her sisters and her cousins,
and they went to
this place in Michigan where they, like,
kind of spent the day out doing fun stuff.
And one of the things
that one of her bridesmaids
did for her was they took these, like,
popsicle sticks and printed
out pictures of my face
and made fans of me because, like, you know,

(01:29:47):
she's Chase's fan.
The number of people who stopped them and said,
are you guys some kind of Seth Rogen fan club?
What is this?
I'm not kidding.
This is a real thing that happened.
Wow. I've never seen the resemblance.
Now I can't see it.
No.
Are you serious?

(01:30:13):
I just thought that was Chase.
Well, sorry to break the illusion,
but it's. I. I've seen, like I said,
I'm from Vancouver, canadian. Like,
he's a treasure here. I know.
I go to the same thai
food restaurant that he goes to, and it's like,
am I about to interview Seth Rogen,
or is this like his, his kid or, like,

(01:30:35):
his nephew or something like,
what's going on here? But, uh,
it's just also your voice is like
bang on anyway with very different laughs.
His laugh is great.
Yeah. His laugh is infectious.
It's distinct. All right, now we can.
Okay, last thing I'd like to ask is,
is there anything any one of

(01:30:56):
you three would like to talk about? You know,
maybe a lesson or a takeaway
or something that we haven't touched on?
Or maybe there's. There's
a nugget that you'd like to really, you know,
bring up again just because of its importance,
or is there anything that running a business
like you have been doing and starting it
is something that anyone in similar

(01:31:17):
situations or not similar situations,
would you think benefit from hearing?
I think for me,
going in to make a product for a market
that already exists is a much better idea
than trying to create a market from scratch.

(01:31:39):
When Chase and I had a video
game audio company that made games,
we were trying to create a niche that was not
easy to market to or didn't already exist.
We did not have a million dollar
marketing budget and that did
not get the traction that this app has.
And my biggest takeaway from

(01:31:59):
those two years of our lives,
year and a half, whatever it was,
was next time we work on a product,
make sure that it's actually solving a need,
addressing an existing pain point
in a market that is easy to
connect to and get in contact with.

(01:32:20):
So I would recommend making sure that what
you're working on is valuable to somebody.
Doesn't have to be a lot of people,
doesn't have to be everybody.
But if you put it in front of 50 people
that you think it matters to them and

(01:32:40):
they need to understand why it matters
and be able to confirm that that
is something that they would pay for. Right.
That will help you determine if it's
worth putting the time and money into.
I'll just say really quick,
focus on the journey.
Learn from your mistakes. Be persistent.

(01:33:01):
Don't focus on the outcomes as much.
Focus on maximizing your chance of success.
That's all I got.
Take ownership.
There's a lot of wisdom in
the phrase discipline equals
freedom that I feel like I've.
When I learned that,
I think that opened a
lot of things that a lot of,

(01:33:23):
like those possible versions of
myself that Alex was talking about earlier,
I think that's one of those key turning points,
at least for me,
was kind of learning
to integrate that principle and go, okay,
this is useful.
Well, guys, this has been great. Thank

(01:33:44):
you so much for coming onto the podcast. Alex,
Chase and Jason,
how can people support you?
Find you and pick up Pocketbard so.
You can download Pocketbard on the Apple
app Store and Google Play Store. Coming
soon in beta to the Windows store as well,
which we just got our code

(01:34:04):
to go download at our dev version today.
So that's exciting.
Yes.
Nice. Congrats.
So you can just download the app,
share it with anybody you think would be.
It would be interested in it.
Lots of people use it. Some
of the coolest messages we get are from, like,
people using it to read their kids
stories as they're going to bed, or, you know,
kids like using it to torment

(01:34:26):
their siblings using the horror sounds.
So the, you know, it's.
It's an interactive audio app.
So if you want to dynamically
control soundscapes and audio,
just download the app,
give it a try. Like we said,
there's a lot of free content.
And if you like what we have
there and want to support us, subscribe.
That's super helpful.

(01:34:47):
So that's what helped us keep developing,
keep the app going.
You can find us on our social media, Instagram.
It's all just pocket barred.
We've hit the point where you
can just google it and you'll find it. So.
And just one more
shout out to our discord community.
That's where we tried to
host all of our community events.
We have awesome

(01:35:08):
moderators and discord managers there,
Dom and Zach. They're amazing.
Respond to people's feedback.
We try to be as active there as we can.
But, yeah, we post development updates
there and try
to just keep a lively, active community.
So if you want to get in contact with us,
that's probably the best place.

(01:35:28):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, guys,
for joining us,
sharing your wisdom and your
journey and inspiring others
to pursue their neuropreneur journey.
And thanks for listening, everybody.
And as always,
keep it nerdy.

(01:36:02):
You just finished the shuttle class version
of this episode with Frank and Chris.
If you want to hear the galaxy class version,
go to patreon.com
nerdpreneur to become a member
of the awesome nerdpreneur board.
Thanks for listening,
and as always, keep it nerdy.

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How Three Friends Created Pocket Bard, a Game Changing RPG Audio App - Interview 28

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Three Friends Created Pocket Bard, a Game Changing RPG Audio App - Interview 28