Advice From 2 Developers Who Launched a Side Hustle | Golden Record - DonTheDeveloper Podcast

Episode Transcript
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John Ostler (00:00):
Welcome back to another web dev podcast where we
help aspiring developers getjobs and junior developers grow.
We're going to pivot a bit andwe actually brought on two
founders that have kind of builtup a side project and are kind
of trying to turn it into theirown business.
Both of them have many years ofexperience in the dev world and
so I kind of just want to bringthem on, pick their brains, ask
questions about like, how thisapp went and some of the you

(00:23):
know turbulence that they facedand what they're facing now and
what they're trying to turn itinto.
So, if you're trying to turnyour side project into anything,
uh, turn your side hustle intokind of a business.
Your developer you're trying topush out a product Um, this is
the episode to watch.
So I appreciate you guys comingon, I appreciate your time, but
, um, yeah, let's, let's goahead and just roll into the

(00:44):
intros.

Danny Peck (00:50):
Danny, would you like to introduce yourself?
Yeah, name's Danny Peck.
Kind of a career programmer.
I've been at it since thereally late 90s as a hobbyist,
but then I'm kind of one ofthose you know odd ducks that
went into school knowing exactlywhat I wanted to do.
So computer science major, youknow, right out of school

(01:12):
straight into a developer job in2001.
And I've literally been just adeveloper since then.
So fast forward 23 years.
I'm still at it.
So yeah, programmer, I live inMichigan, West Michigan, just
moved up here with my wife lastlast year, and in addition to
programming I'm also a musicianproducer, uh.
So I like to just sort of jumpbetween uh programming and and
music and stuff.

(01:32):
It's kind of where I kind ofbalance out, get my, get my uh
creative outlet in cool, coolthanks.

Don Hansen (01:40):
Thanks for john osler, um, co-founder here,
golden Golden Record and,similar to Danny, got my sort of
cut my teeth in the internetsback in the late 90s trying to
get designs online into websitesand that kind of sparked into
all the digital tools like gotinto the Adobe Suite early and

(02:00):
things like that early andthings like that.
So um and we actually Danny andI met originally in Chicago at
a at a agency called designkitchen.
That um was one of thesecreative agencies that had moved
from kind of more marketing andtraditional print advertising
into the web.
So we were part of a group ofpeople who were probably too
young to be working on theselike major brands that are

(02:22):
headquartered in Chicago andlike building a lot of cool new
tech using Ruby on Rails andthings like that.
So yeah, like Danny said, I'vehad a similar path.
I'm not a computer science major.
I was a visual quick startguide type of dude.
I'd go into Barnes Noble andtry to figure it out that way,
but you know as you do.
But since then started a coupleof agencies when they got

(02:43):
pretty big for a while there andstill run one agency that does
kind of full service tech anddesign.
And then, yeah, golden Recordsstarted in January to you know.
Try to go for it officially sothat's my background.

That's awesome.
So a lot of experience,different backgrounds, and it's
cool to meet someone else thatwasn't a computer science major.
It can be a little bit tougheras well Got to be resourceful
but I'm kind of excited to diveinto this project.
You know I've heard bits andpieces from Danny, but you know
the product is Golden Record andI kind of just want you guys to

(03:21):
share like what you thinkGolden Record is.

Don Hansen (03:32):
And we'll kind of dive into what it's going to be.
But, like right now, what is it?
Well, I, I think if I, if Icould take a quick stab, danny
is more eloquent than myself, soI'll let him like, really like,
sell the the full picture foryou.
But this, this started in theuh, the paper prototype phase as
a cassette audio recorder.
So if anyone has one of thesesitting in a drawer somewhere.
It's got the old cassette tape.

(03:52):
You'd maybe make your mixtapewith it.
But there's a few people thatmight have had an old recording
done from a parent or someonelike this.
But anyway, long story shortwas I effectively gifted these
cassette recorders to a few ofthe family members I don't see
very often, so my grandma or herbrother, a few other people

(04:12):
that are.
You know that I wanted to gettheir stories out of and they
took me up on it, and so we hadthese keepsakes and I've always,
like, really appreciated whatthose were, because they, you
know, know, they're now longpast.
But we kind of have theserecordings not of not only of
their stories they're kind ofchildhood stories and things
like that but just the sound oftheir voice.

(04:33):
And so when it came time totalking about you know, what is
a side hustle or what is what isgoing to be, this sort of uh,
you know, sink your teeth intype app play, I knew that for
me I've got the kind of shinything syndrome problem, which is
like if you're a developer, youfeel like you can just build
anything at any time and youcould spend most of that time,

(04:54):
building tools for yourself orpeople like you, and so to cut
it short here, basically I wastrying to think like what is
something that I knew that Iwould live with for a very long
time and not give up on, and andkind of.
I think there's there's a senseof willing things into
existence, rather than themhaving an opportunity and doing
well or not.
It's like, oh no, this is goingto be real and so this, this

(05:17):
kind of golden record thing,came from that.
It's like I know, I know this issomething I'll stick with and
it's actually something I careabout, like capturing people's
memories, so that's that waskind of the build up to it.
It's like, again, paperprototype phase, like there's an
analog to this and could wedigitize it, make it easier for
people and and it almost tellpeople like hey, this isn't such

(05:39):
a bad idea to do this, tocapture, capture sound, capture
audio, audio and and chroniclepeople's life that way okay, I
am back off of that.

Danny Peck (05:49):
Um, you know the original like golden record was.
It was humanity's like, it wasour attempt to capture our
essence for the cosmos.
So like it was a copper discthat launched aboard like nasa's
voyager spacecraft in like 1977and it created.
It contained earth's greatesthits, like you know, music from

(06:10):
around the world, natural sounds, like greetings in 55 languages
and, like you know, 115 imagesrepresenting like human life.
So it's essentially likehumanity's time capsule for the
universe.
So like, the golden record appthat we're trying to build like,
takes the same profound conceptof like, but but points it
inwards.
So, instead of preservepreserving humanity's voice for

(06:32):
distinct distant civilizations,like, it helps preserve like
individual voices, just for likefuture generations.
So like, just as like nasa'srecord, like aim to tell Earth's
story through sound.
Like, the app like goldenrecord enables families to
create their like own goldenrecords.

Don Hansen (06:51):
So I carefully curated audio time capsules that
capture the voices, the storiesand like the wisdoms of loved
ones, basically basically, andthat was kind of a Carl Sagan
idea, who's you know very famouslike publicly famous astronomer
right, who was really good ateducating the public on various
you know parts of the humanitiesand science and space and

(07:14):
things like that, and he, he andhis wife and team put together
this idea of this golden record.
So, yeah, it definitely I thinkthe naming comes from that.
It's.
It's a riff off being a totalscience nerd and space nerd, um,
but it's.

Danny Peck (07:27):
It's very akin also to what you're doing, what we're
doing, obviously, as Danny said, yeah, and if you really want
to just like treat yourself liketo something really nice, like,
go on YouTube and just searchfor like Carl Sagan monologues,
and people have put these likevideos online with music and
it's just like Carl Sagan givinglike, uh, like a lecture or

(07:52):
something like that, and justtalking about the universe for
like five minutes and it's justlike the most beautiful thing
you've ever heard.

It's great I fall asleep to stuff like that, I
like that yeah, exactly, exactly.
um, I I like that both of youare very much interested in this
right.
Um, I've been exploring theindie hacker community a bit and
I'm finding that there are verydifferent people that are
building products and I I findthat I'm more interested in

(08:15):
connecting with developers that,like, care about the product
that they're building, becausesome people don't, and it's
really hard to.
Honestly, I think it's reallyhard to connect to your users
and flesh out something that'struly going to provide value
when you don't care about theproduct.
So I love that both of youactually do care about it and it
shows and you know, john, asyou said, danny's very eloquent
in the way he describes it too,so I got to keep up with him.

(08:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Hansen (08:38):
Well, and I think, don, just to add to that, I mean
, especially on the consultingside, you meet so many people
building products and there's areal difference, exactly what
you said.
There's a real difference.
To someone who hasn't found abusiness case to solve or taken

(08:58):
this, I think there's a businessstrategist version of creating
startups, which is absolutelyfine and fair, but that approach
it's a cold open, which isabsolutely fine and fair.
But that approach, you knowit's it's a cold open.
It's like, usually the, thecompanies that are successful
like that are, you know, maybeyounger students who have a lot
of time, who are fresh out ofbusiness school, who are playing

(09:18):
, trying to play the play thegame properly, right.
Or you've got people that arevery experienced, who have maybe
sold businesses and they're notthat invested but they know
mechanically what needs tohappen.
So you've kind of you kind ofhave this juxtaposition of those
type people versus the peoplewho are potentially solving
their own problem, who are trulypassionate about it and will go
the eighth mile to get thisthing done, which is kind of

(09:41):
what you need.
So I think both are survivalskill but, like you said, the
developers or entrepreneurs whoare invested in the actual
problem that they're solving.
I think they have a much betterchance of actually pulling it
off Because, like you said,they're going to be closer to
the metal in terms ofunderstanding what is the
problem.
What am I actually trying to dohere, versus it being it being

(10:03):
like well, this should workbecause this framework is like
relevant to this market.
It's like okay, like good job.

So yeah, I agree with you and um, because a lot
of people will give up onwhatever they're building and
they might pivot too early.
But, like, if you really careabout this, you can.
You can pivot in the rightdirection, but you can also take
go the extra mile, like whenyou get burned out.
When you're like this isn'tworking, you figure out what to
do rather than giving up on itand going to the next product.

(10:32):
So what was the originalproduct supposed to be like?
What was the mvp and is likewhat you have now?
Is that different than what youhad originally planned?

Don Hansen (10:44):
yeah, it's.
It started taking a bunch offorms when, when I started and
then and then and then trickeddanny into doing it with me, it
was almost, um, the approachoriginally was well, uh, could
this be an ios only play like,is this a self-contained
organism where we don't have alot of platforms and we don't

(11:04):
have anything involved in theweb and it's just a simplified
private?
Everything lives on device inthe like Apple walled garden the
whole time, and so again,that's like I think that's a
more traditional approach.
If you're a one man band whereit's like okay, where you know,
play to your strengths, Is therea market for it?
What can you do?

(11:25):
And so that was kind of.
The original vision is likethere's a great audio recorder
on our smart devices, soiPhone's going to do well with
that aspect, and so can weplatform this in one way going
forward.
And that was kind of like Iwould say MVP, MVP.
But the more we kind of bringingDanny in and talking to various

(11:46):
people and investors and things, it got shaped a lot more in
terms of thinking like well,actually, if our goals are truly
to have this be something thathas the opportunity to be
massively adopted, then not onlydo we need to platform
differently, but we need to beable to support the people who

(12:07):
are doing it right.
We need to be able topotentially help them recover
files or, if something happensin a family or something you
know, managed at a support levelwhich, you know, having a
single platform app doesn'treally afford you to do,
especially if everything'stotally walled off to just that
account.
So that's when we kind of wentthe other direction, which is

(12:29):
like we need to start with theweb and make it accessible to as
many people as possible and usethat as our kind of learning
tool to be able to iteratequickly over that, and then the
native app which we're about torelease here is complementary to
that, to both play to theecosystem but also take
advantage of the device and someof the native functions of the

(12:49):
device.
So that was kind of the twomethods.
But yeah, I think it's like yousay with anything, I mean
ideally, when we're talkingabout MVPs, we're trying to get
something out as fast aspossible with the fewest number
of features that get in the wayof that, and so I think we've
probably over engineered it abit because we can, which is

(13:12):
this is the classic developersproblem.
We just don't know when to stopright.
But yeah, here we are and Ithink we're quite lucky to have
done it the way we have because,as we're doing our market
validation tests and things, nothaving a mobile app is super
helpful because we can actuallysee and isolate the behavior.
We can't say well, I think somepeople might be downloading the

(13:33):
app and getting stuck here, orthere's this bifurcation of user
behavior that you start to losethe trail of like is the
messaging wrong?
Is it the app download?
You start to blame potentiallyother things for why your
conversion numbers may be thecertain way or how your funnels
are set up.
So, yeah, we're takingadvantage of the fact that we're

(13:54):
just web right now.
It's really great to be able tolook at the insights a lot more
clearly.

Danny Peck (13:59):
Yeah, and I think the native app then becomes an
enhancement rather than arequirement, which is nice, and
so then it's all aboutaugmenting the experience with
like device specific features,while maintaining the core
accessibility and thepreservation capabilities of
like the web platform.
So, like I think the hybridapproach just ensures that, like

(14:21):
the most important thing, likethe actual preservation of
memories isn't like dependent onany like single technology or
platform or ecosystem.

Don Hansen (14:29):
Yeah, and I would say that the beautiful thing
that's happened and kind of Ithink we realized it a bit later
in the process, like late thissummer is that by having us both
independently attack theplatforms, we both can show and
tell how we solve certain ux orfunnel things like how we solve

(14:51):
those problems and take almostthe best approaches of both.
So if, if in and I I didn'tfully appreciate this in that
I've I've been in the, thenative app game for a really
long time, like, like since theSDKs came out so that you could
build apps, and I think theinteresting thing about
progressive web apps, in termsof them being, like Kotlin or

(15:16):
any of these languages allow youto deploy one to many is that
your responsive web is actually,it is truly a limited view of
how you could run the userexperience, while also there
isn't anything to really pushthe web experience because there
aren't native things beingtried to be like, hey, could we
like use 3JS for this, or like,could we hide this view until

(15:40):
this happens?
And so, anyway, what I'm tryingto say is, by the two of us
having the different platforms,that collaboration aspect uh, it
just made it better.
We could actually retool eachother's solutions almost live
and uh, and I think it's makingfor a much better um set of
platforms altogether.

because that, because we're actually
independently developing them-and so you're doing that in
parallel and kind of justessentially propping both of
each other up with things thatyou discover as you continue
fleshing this out.

Don Hansen (16:14):
Exactly.

Danny Peck (16:15):
I like that.
I think there's somethingmagical that happens when you
develop a web and nativeplatform in parallel.
You end up with this sort ofbeautiful cross-pollination of
ideas.
So, like, instead of like thetypical approach when one
platform tries to mimic theother, you get these sort of
like two independentexplorations of how to solve the
same, like fundamental problems.
Yeah, so I think the webplatform sort of forces you to

(16:41):
think deeply about accessibilityand like universal design, like
how to create experiences thatwork across like any device or
browser, where, like, meanwhile,the native platform can kind of
push the boundaries of what'spossible with like device
specific features, like anoptimized user experiences from
that perspective.

Yeah, that makes sense.
What I'm kind of more curiousabout the web version.
So, john, you basically pickedthe iphone ecosystem because
you're comfortable with that.
Is that what you said before?

Don Hansen (17:10):
well, I think it's.
It's comfort's one thing.
I think the other thing that,um, I've I've quite a bit of
experience launching standaloneapps in the iphone store.
So I've got a couple apps thathave maintained their top 50
status in the paid apps and theiPhone marketplace ecosystem is

(17:34):
definitely self-sustaining Ifyou are able to tool it
correctly and also do a bit ofthe search engine optimization.
Piece, even between web, youcan do quite well there.
Piece, even between web, youcan do quite well there.
So it more represented, like yousaid, a familiar but also kind

(17:54):
of strategic angle in that ifit's going to be a one-man show
for a while, then keep it thatway.
Simplify as much as possible.
Have, offload payment, offloadservers, offload push
notifications, everything youpossibly can.
Just offload it, offload pushnotifications, everything you
possibly can.
Just offload it to appleservices.
Let them do all the heavylifting, pay them their 15
commission and then when youlook cool and you're in your,
you know you can buy new jeans.

(18:15):
Then you can like bring in adeveloper to like do the android
version or do the web app andthings like that, right, um, so
that that was more it, but again, that I, that's been my
experience.
I know that apps in general areit's like the wild west, like I
think most apps die prettyyoung and probably have an
audience of five, so um.
So that that was just more myexperience of like maybe

(18:38):
cracking a few codes on how toget some of those apps and
visibility.

Okay, it's always interesting to hear kind of the
different ecosystems, evenbetween Android and Apple.
There's definitely pros andcons of each and I've heard
complaints of both, but I dothink I want to learn a little
bit more about that.
But I like your philosophy oftrying to offload as much as you

(19:05):
possibly can into kind of thatecosystem.
I think that's helpful.
Like I don't know, maybe justspeaking for myself as a
developer, like I feel the needto like, even on the web, I feel
the need to implement everykind of custom integration that
I possibly can to keep theexperience entirely on whatever

(19:25):
I'm hosting and in myapplication, and I think that's
a horrible idea and I, at leastinitially, you know I'm trying
to get better with that.
But, um, I'm also interestedthough, um, danny, in the web
stack.
Um, why did you decide to gowith it?
Are aren't you using like Rubyon the backend?
Why did you decide to go withit?

Danny Peck (19:47):
Aren't you using like Ruby on the backend?
Yeah, so we are using Ruby onthe backend and it's kind of
like we sort of built our ownsort of I call it MVC light
framework, like model viewcontroller light.
We needed something that wasrobust enough to give us a model
framework so that we couldoffload some of the more complex

(20:10):
controller stuff to the backend, to the server side.
We're using Firebase and Reacton the front end, but Ruby gave
us the nice controllers that wecould tap into to do server-side
processing for things likestripe and like email
notifications and like sendingoff like jobs to sidekick for

(20:30):
like scheduled future, likeemail notifications and things
like that.
So, um, it kind of partly waslike a mvc framework that I was
familiar with and I knew I couldget in there quickly and start
building.
But then it kind of morphedinto this like sort of nice,
like very like sort of rubylight, like it's there and it

(20:52):
has all the likes, the the bellsand whistles that I can tap
into if I want, but it's veryoptional and it stays very light
.
I can stay on the front end anddo a lot of stuff with like the
firebase, uh softwaredevelopment kits and do a lot of
stuff with the Firebasesoftware development kits and a
whole lot of things just in theReact app.
But then I can hand things offand hit API endpoints on the

(21:12):
back end and lean on the niceRails gems that you get for
things like payment processingand email notifications and also
working with Firebase, but onthe backend as well.

Yeah, that's interesting.
You don't often hear kind oflike you often have like a
self-hosted database when you doset up a custom backend for
that, and I think it'sinteresting that you offloaded
that to kind of a cloud database.
It's just not a common thingbut it completely makes sense

(21:49):
why you're doing that.
You're just offloading a lot ofyour backend logic and just
integrations that you're set uplike with Stripe and you just
use Ruby to do that.

Danny Peck (21:58):
You felt comfortable with the organization um, yeah,
and one huge uh unlock withthat is that you know, john in
ios can be sort of tapped intothat same like cloud firebase,
database storage and all thatkind of stuff.
Uh, and firebase makes it reallyeasy to just like kind of run

(22:19):
in production mode where you canhave multiple devices, just
kind of all like locked into thesame like data store, and it's
just like super powerful.
This is like one of my firstlike really like deep dives into
firebase, so it's just beenamazing for just like database
stuff, like one click login withgoogle and like signing in with
like different like third-partyoauth providers.

(22:39):
Um, but yeah, I just uh, I Ifound that like I've done a lot
of active record stuff with,like you know, local database
and in rails, but um, yeah, youimmediately become a walled
garden unto yourself and justbeing able to iterate with john
with the same database throughdifferent on different
ecosystems was like such a greatyeah, it meant that we we could

(23:03):
both work in parallel and beadding properties and screwing
each other up a little bit hereand there, in a good way, I
think.

Don Hansen (23:09):
I think particularly with with Firebase and
frameworks like Firebase, one ofthe recurring issues and
struggles on the native app sideis just data persistence and
how to manage offline and online, because obviously with mobile
apps, there's an assumed you'renot connected to the internet at
times, or what do we do withthese files on and off and when

(23:33):
do they sync and all that.
And, um, yeah, firebase, andyou know there's others that do
a great job of managing that, sothat you're not in the weeds.
Or you know there are othermobile frameworks you can
integrate, but just in the weedsdoing that.
So it was kind of double.
That it allowed us to both workin parallel and I'm not, you
know, asking for asking for endpoints or being like, oh, this

(23:53):
is giving me a weird return.
It's like, no, I can see therule, I can make an adjustment
and then WhatsApp Danny and belike, hey, I'm going to mess up
your world.
Just get ready for this.

Danny Peck (24:02):
It's also pretty great Just trying to figure out
really like complex sort of datahandshaking stuff.
Like there was one part duringthe implementation where we're
like okay, so you know, someonecreates an album, they want to
share it to someone else and,like you know, they need to put
in their email address.
But we need to handle ascenario where, like, does the
person have an account already?
We need to look that up and ifthey do, we need to put their ID
in this table.

(24:23):
If they don't, we need to likeput their email address in a
different like table so we cansend them an email, send them an
email and then so, like youknow, negotiating all of that
sort of like in the same withthe same like back in the same
database just made that so mucheasier because I could just
point to the table and be likeyep, see, see what I'm doing
there, yeah, yeah, or even I canjust I could just run the web

(24:44):
app, watch the record, go inlive, look at the, look at the
properties and how the chain belike, oh, oh, okay, like it
almost saves the discussion.

Don Hansen (24:53):
I mean, obviously you know we're confirming
everything, but yeah, it made abig difference.
So, yeah, I mean Don to yourpoint, I mean most of the apps
or most of the websites I'veworked on, yeah, would have a
localized.
You know why send it out, youknow why even involve you know a
third party, why offload someof that?

(25:14):
But I think in cases where Ithink it's becoming more rare
really, but in cases whereyou've got a multi platform play
, this is one of those caseswhere, if there's, you know,
push notifications and offlinemanagement and some other things
, you're like you're reallysaving time and they're not
really spending much more, oryou might be saving in some
cases, but yeah, yeah I.

Think that's a great idea.
Especially, that's a good pointabout multi platform and,
honestly, like a lot ofFront-end developers that want
to build their application, likeyou can build a lot of what you
want to do With just firestore,real-time firebase, like, yeah,
unless you need somecomplicated custom logic on the
back end and you're runningprocesses on the back end,
that's a little bit heavier.

(25:56):
I think a lot more peopleshould consider something like
that, to be honest.
But you know what I'm curiousabout, though what was your
biggest technical challenge?
Because it sounds like you guysare pretty comfortable and
confident with the technologiesyou pick, but were there any big
hiccups on things?
You didn't expect to happenAnything like that.

Danny Peck (26:21):
From a development standpoint.

Don Hansen (26:22):
I mean, I mean I, to give you an idea, I'm on the
eighth version of the iOS appand it hasn't launched now.
That obviously started with anall localized version using
CloudKit and Swift data and allthe just Apple Cloud crap, which
is super complicated andconvoluted and, for some reason,

(26:46):
really hard.
But I would say when we finallydecided to start using Firebase
, that all loosened up and thencame the re-architecture.
That was the reckoning.
So I know on the native appside that was I don't know if
that was a challenge.
Well, I would say, anyone who'stried to do a CloudKit with

(27:07):
CloudKit, share and some of thatmanagement where you're doing a
collaboration on files, it'skind of a pain, to be honest, as
well as just kind of doing someof that memory management with
that.
But I don't know, danny, Idon't feel like we've really hit
anything.
I mean Stripe.
I'd say this Stripe's been apain just from a.

(27:29):
Stripe itself wasn't a pain.
No one ever in the world hasever said Stripe is a pain.
But the it flagging cards forfraud, meaning like someone's,
like hey, this is a new startup.
Like is this legit?
Call your bank.
We've come across that a numberof times now we're like oh,
this is like rough, it's justnot a problem.

(27:52):
You're thinking about Like, oh,we need to like manage what
happens to an account when it'sin limbo because of a fraud
alert.
Right, it like kind of goesthrough, but it doesn't go
through.
So that's been a little bit ofa challenge just in terms of
like navigating that andfiguring out how to handle the
errors and make for a good userexperience, when you're

(28:12):
basically adding the mostfriction you possibly could to
onboarding, which is likeliterally stopping people from
paying I feel like things havegone pretty smoothly.

Danny Peck (28:23):
I feel like the yeah , the biggest trip ups for me
are dealing with likethird-party integrations.
So like stripe is a pain in thebutt, like if you've ever dealt
with transactional emails, thatis also can be a huge pain in
the butt, like if you don'tproperly set up your dns to
handle like spf and like, uh,dmarc, dkim and like all that

(28:45):
stuff you can get like literallyblacklisted by gmail and
they'll say like you can't senda gmail ever again, like you're
out there and setting which isno big deal emails like iron
that stuff out, don't sleep on.
Like setting up the spf and thedcam and the dmark stuff that is
so important and so it's a hugepain in the butt the question

(29:08):
is did you guys get blacklisted?
Not on this particular project.
No.

I've screwed that up before, even just setting up
a mailing list and setting upsome custom domain email for
that.
It's a pain to set up.

Danny Peck (29:28):
It should be, it really is.

Yeah, so what is your monetization strategy like?
How are you going to make money?
How are you going?

Don Hansen (29:40):
to grow this.
Well, everyone knows that we'renot going to make money,
including us, so let's get thatout of the way.
No, we've got, we've got.
I think we've got a really gooduh setup right now.
We've, we, we basically have athree tier model and so on, the
low tier, that what we'recalling the bronze tier, it's a,
it's a digital onlysubscription.
It's an annual payment, it'sit's 49, 99 us, which basically

(30:07):
unlocks the crack and you canbasically do everything you'd
want to do.
As many albums you can sharethe albums, you can basically do
everything you'd want to do, asmany albums, you can share the
albums you can like, do all thethings that you might want to do
as well, as it takes limits off, like tracks and lengths of
tracks and things like that.
And then and then and then wepivot into.
The other two tiers are muchmore keepsake oriented.
So the silver, silver recordwe're calling silver record is

(30:30):
basically a usb gift set.
So you get two usbs that areengraved and effectively, you
pick the tracks that are goingto go into them and then you can
gift that.
The idea is you can gift thatsort of audio book, that audio
keepsake, uh, to someone insomething physical and then, and
then at the high end, and ifyou're really cool, um, you can
get the golden record, which isan actual vinyl cut, uh, lp, 45

(30:54):
minutes of audio, uh, with acustom, custom labels, custom
jacket, um, yeah, lathe cut foryou, um, and that's a.
That's at, uh, the 124.99 pricepoint, right, kind of up there,
and that gets you.
So we've, we've got kind ofthree, three modes of kind of
engaging.
There's this gets you.
So we've, we've got kind ofthree, three modes of kind of
engaging.
There's this kind of light modewhich is digital only.

(31:15):
That just keeps you going,allows you to, like, do that
gift email and get that going,um, or you can, you can, get
right into the actual keepsakesthemselves.
So we're, we're kind of, um,we're market validation, testing
that right now.
Like, what are people willingto?
Is that appropriate for a giftor for a user who is going to

(31:36):
use this app or these productsmore passively?
And we'll see where it goes.
We know that that's positionedreally nicely in the other type
of personalized keepsake market.
You know you've got a lot ofcustom books and newsletters and
things that are coming outwhere they're custom done for
families, so, um, so we've done,we, we've got a good price
comparison there.

(31:57):
It's just really a matter of, Ithink, uh, you know, basically
doing two things Number one,solving the problem of what to
get your parents or grandparents, which is hard, but the second
one, solving the problem of, isthis, uh, a way that you know
know, someone finds compellingto capture and preserve memories
, like we need to kind of doboth jobs a little bit okay, um,

(32:21):
do you guys have any customersyet?
we have, we're in.
We're sort of still in friendsand family mode right now, so
we've got.
We do have customers, butthey're, they don't count
basically gotcha.

Do they pay for the product?

Don Hansen (32:38):
they do a couple.
A couple of them are paying,but I don't know if those those
are.
You know they feel obligated topay or not.
We'll see.
I definitely personally writethat off.
Or it's like yeah, the first,like hundred people, like don't
count, like those are, likethose are the invisibles, the
supporters, the emotionalsupport group might get in there
if they know you well enough,and then after that, then the

(33:00):
people really don't care, comein and you're in trouble.

Danny Peck (33:02):
Basically, we're kind of at that pre-public stage
.
We're just like we're holdingit, like we haven't really told
anyone outside of our friendgroup about it yet, so we're
just like kind of waiting tolike burst the bubble and send
it out there.
We're just trying to figure outto the most effective way to
like just get, send themessaging out, like you know, to
to like a wider audience andstuff and like two-pronged as

(33:23):
well.
Like you know, we want to keepthat user count low so that we
can continue to like iron outany issues or quirks or things
we didn't consider with, likeyou know, audio storage and like
stuff like that before.
Like we get like peopleflooding in and, like you know,
realizing that we have someterrible bug in our code.
That's like you know.
Obviously we probably don't,but you know, you never know.

Don Hansen (33:47):
So I mean, what we do know about our product and
this is just from, like,comparative companies doing this
sort of thing is that it isvery periodic, it's occasion
based, right.
So there, I mean, there are afew ways of getting in front of
people for other sort of lifeevents, but ultimately this is

(34:07):
like maybe a birthday gift, butvery hard to get in front of
birthday gift people.
A Christmas gift, for sure.
Mother's Day, father's Day,grandparents related days Like
those.
These are like the majorholidays, that where our product
makes sense because of thosetwo pieces again, but of even if
you took all the meaning behindwhat we're trying to do and all

(34:30):
the like responsibility ofholding family memories and oral
history, if you took all thatout, people still have the
problem of not knowing what toget parents or grandparents, and
ideally it gets somethingthat's like meaningful and cool,
right.
So when it comes to pure problem, solving that problem ends up
being the most important for alittle while, and then after the

(34:52):
holidays, then it goes back tobeing the well, you should kind
of do this.
And here's why there's like alot of compelling arguments,
like if you're about to have ababy, you should probably do
this, or like if yourgrandparents are in hospice you
should do this, or there are allthese other use cases that
start to come up just in regularlife.
But yeah, so we're basically ingear up mode to hit that

(35:17):
holiday buying season.
Right now We've got the iOS app, which is about to be submitted
here, and we've probablyretooled all the language in the
website and everything 100times after talking to friends
and family, and we've got a fewlike very tiny ad campaigns out
just to try out differentmessaging and imagery and see
how that ladders back to thewebsite.
So we've got all that kind ofgoing in the like science

(35:40):
experiment mode.
But then, like Danny said,we're going to we're going to
really open it up in November to, you know, try to make a
significant dent in the market.

Okay.
So you, I like the, I like theaudience that you're targeting
and you're thinking aboutmoments in which they would like
what your product has to offer.
You're thinking about it thatit might be seasonal, so you're
thinking about timing, um, andyou, you have good reasons why

(36:16):
someone would use your product.
I'm really curious how you aregoing to get that in front of
people and basically deliverthat vision, deliver that
solution to people.
Um, you know, whether it'sthrough, like paid advertisement
, whether it's through contentcreation, like anything like
that, how like it feels like youhave your messaging down.

(36:38):
How are you getting or planningto get that messaging out?

Don Hansen (36:42):
I think you said November, yeah, I mean, I think
I think there's a.
There's a, you know, acombination of things that Danny
and I have done in previousentrepreneurial things or
projects where we've gottenvisibility.
So like, for instance, one iswe have a number of media
contacts, some of them that arerelevant to this.
Like Fatherly is one of them.

(37:02):
I've had previous apps, thingswritten up in there.
It has a huge, hugefamily-based audience.
You could make a compellingargument for, you know, for
multiple reasons, why this mightbe a good family gift to get,
and obviously that's orientation.
So there's, there are groupslike this that have wider
audiences that we would you know, I think you know try to court

(37:23):
for this this quarter to get onsome of those lists.
So that's that's one tacticalthing.
I think.
The other one is there is a lotof orientation toward people
who have effectively beendiagnosed with Alzheimer's but
are early in the stage.
This is something that ourfamilies dealt with and it puts

(37:47):
an additional time crunch oneveryone being like, okay, let's
get our acts together, what dowe need to do?
And obviously storytelling andsome of that memory keeping ends
up being a pretty major part.
So there are.
It's just to say that there area lot of like subgroups of
people that we could target thatmaybe have a more urgent need

(38:11):
to do something like this,rather than going full wide
market look and saying like, hey, anyone could gift this to
anyone for the holiday, justbecause you don't want to
compete with that group, wedon't have the millions to put
into a proper B2C startup.
So those are like a coupleexamples of areas.

(38:33):
I think what's unique aboutgolden record is we have we have
a few inner nerd plays in therefor one, the whole Carl Sagan
golden record thing.
If you told anyone who's intoastronomy about golden record,
they'll know.
They'll immediately know whatyou're talking about.
And there is kind of a littlekind of inside connector there
in terms of again sub-targetingthat audience, right.

(38:53):
And then the same goes for,like audiophiles, the fact that
we've got a vinyl offering andthat's something pretty cool and
unique.
We've got an ability again totarget audiophiles and people
who are into music productionand are kind of into that
nostalgic thing to kind, of,like I said, production and are

(39:14):
kind of into that nostalgicthing to kind of, like I said,
use the product itself as alever to get them interested in
what we're trying to do.
So I think it's been myexperience with, like the other
startups I've created and littleniche apps I've done.
It is really helpful.
If you can just think aboutgetting the seed to sprout, you
know what I mean.
You're not trying to likecreate a whole plant or like

(39:34):
plant a field.
You're just literally puttingthe right amount of money and
investment in this like micromarket so that they can help
tumbleweed.
You know the referrals youmight get from it or the use
cases, or to build on to thenext, slightly larger market.

Just to ask a question about what you're
saying.
So you really have youraudience down and I understand
that you're trying to niche down.
You're saying you're going totarget these specific people.
I'm kind of curious how are yougoing to target them?
Because you talked about theAlzheimer's group and you talked
about other people that canrelate to what golden record
means.
How are you going to find themand talk to them?

Don Hansen (40:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think.
I think I mean the easy, theeasy way to do it or the.
I guess maybe the lazy way todo it is is to do targeted
advertising, because people whofollow these things are very
easy to profile they're.
They live in this like postcookies world where the pages
they like help identify who theyare Right Um, including like
are right, including thedifferent associations and
things around some of thesesubjects.

(40:36):
So that's the kind of easy way.
But also, I think for us we'relooking really closely at who
are the influencers in thesespaces.
Are there opportunities totarget these micro-influencers
and see if there's anopportunity to either have a
chat or sponsor a show and bekind of part of the larger

(40:57):
micro-ecosystem, so to speak?
So I think tactically those area couple ways It'll be
interesting to see.
I mean, there is a chance that,because of the nature of this
being very family-oriented, thatit does have a large network
effect.
But we don't have any socialproof of that yet.
We're not exactly sure what it'sgoing to look like once

(41:20):
somebody's done this right andthey see like, oh, maybe I
should do this, for you know,your partner wants to now do
this, and things like that.
So there might be this like10-year plan of referral network
kind of the way story worth andsome of these other companies
have done where they've justlike literally just grown
organically year over year.
And sure enough, here here weare talking about them.
So so we'll see, I think.

(41:41):
I think we're pretty open toboth approaches, while also
knowing that we really do needto niche down.
I mean, there's no questionabout that.

Danny Peck (41:49):
Yeah, and I think we need to build authentic
connections rather than justrunning like generic advertising
campaigns because, like, Ithink the key for us is just
understanding that, you know,this isn't just a tech product,
like it's a tool for preserving,like emotional legacy.
So, like the marketing needs toreflect that like sort of depth
and sensitivity, while makingthe urgency, like you know,

(42:13):
clear, making the urgency clear,that like sort of depth and
sensitivity, while making theurgency, like you know clear,
making the urgency clear that,like these are, these are voices
and stories that, like, wecan't afford to lose.
So, like by focusing onspecific communities and moments
, uh, like where, when memorypreservation like becomes like
particularly meaningful, like,yeah, I think we can build
authentic connections ratherthan just running like generic

(42:35):
advertising campaigns.

For sure, okay, yeah, I like without kind of a
large audience built up in anyof these specific communities,
like you know that paid ads,targeted ads, are really
effective and even just kind ofgetting your name out there a
little bit, um, but you, youknow what you mentioned, danny.

(42:59):
Um, you know, really having anauthentic message is something
that you guys care about, andthat's the tricky thing.
It's like.
I think urgency is like a realconcern for your audience, right
and um, it's also somethingthat you probably want to sell
in your marketing material, andthen you kind of have a fine
balance of like what is a littlebit too pushy, what is kind of
predatory, but like it also isimportant.

(43:19):
Urgency is important in thisbusiness.

Don Hansen (43:21):
so that's, yeah, I find that interesting well, and
I think I think too, our, ourgeneral.
You know we don't have a formalbrand voice established yet,
necessarily anything like that,but I think, um, you know we
don't have a formal brand voiceestablished yet necessarily, or
anything like that.
But I think you know there'ssomething we said of we don't
want this to be a, we don't wantthis to be predatory in any way

(43:44):
or like or to be shining alight on the fact that our time
together is limited.
We don't want to take the darkroute.
We want it to be the kind ofpositive thing that you'd add
and you'd do and you'd feel goodabout, and then, yeah, you'll
maybe be relieved or rewardedlater in life when you're like
I'm so glad we did that, butthat's not the focus.

(44:04):
So, for instance, one of themessaging slash campaigns we're
working on right now is, youknow, kind of showcasing the
birth of a child and a grandmarocking that child, and in the
messaging is basically likeshe'll, she'll, she'll always
know grandma's favorite lullabyand basically capture her voice.

(44:26):
So so it's.
It's kind of playing off theevent in timeliness.
It's like if you have a newborn, the sounds of that newborn,
the sounds of life at that time.
It's a tiny window.
Everyone knows that it's a lifeevent.
You've also got this momentwhen a grandparent is connecting
with a grandchild for the firsttime and how special that
brings everyone together andyou're kind of shedding a light

(44:50):
on all, on how special family isall at once.
It's like grandma newborn,grandma's favorite lullaby
family.
This is all very cool, like thisshould be captured and I think
I think that's the kind of thingwe want to promote it's.
It's almost like we want toraise the stakes of that and how
important these moments are,rather than being like oh, time

(45:13):
is almost up, you better getgoing.
You know what I mean.
It's like oh no.
Like, if anything, you don'twant this gift.
Your parents get this gift, orgrandparents are like, oh no,
they think I'm gonna, I thinkI'm going tomorrow.
My stories are almost gone.
So I think I think you know,like, like danny said, we do
have a sensitivity to that, butI think our brand voice is
always going to be the light.
It's not going to be the dark,it's going to be like the joy of

(45:34):
life, the joy of stories.
You know it's a celebration oflife.
It's not a, you know, acataloging of life.

Danny Peck (45:42):
Yeah, the message isn't about scarcity or fear.
It's about, like, abundance andappreciation.
Basically, we're not sellinginsurance against loss, we're
offering a way to amplify thejoy and connection across
generations.
So, like, it's the differencebetween saying like you know,
don't let these memories slipaway, and like let's make sure
this beautiful moment livesforever, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I think both of you are really good
with that messaging and itsounds like you guys are pretty
much on the same page with that.
So, um and I've even checkedout your landing page, um, as
well, and I I like it.
I I think your messaging isreally good and it'd be
interesting to see, like, howthat translates into your
marketing campaign and your adsand stuff like that, and even
just watching people shorten it,summarizing it, because you

(46:23):
always want to expand, like, butthey don't know enough and you
got to just figure out, you know, the few words that are really
going to make it count.
Um, so, um, what I think.
I'm just going to ask this Doyou guys have any doubts about
this project succeeding?

Don Hansen (46:40):
Definitely 100%.
I think, yeah, I think I, Idon't know.
I'm sure, dan, you have adifferent perspective because
we've built a lot of things, butI think you have to doubt it
because it's sort of a new thing.
I know it's, I know it's an,there's an analog and that's,
that's at least a, an olivebranch, you know, to being like,

(47:03):
oh, maybe this is okay, but theidea of people talking into
their phones is maybe it'll getnormalized more as we go forward
with AI and things like that ismaybe it'll get normalized more
as we go forward with AI andthings like that.
But I think the idea of peoplesharing into a mic, I think you
know, I think Gen Z is prettyhappy to do that and share the
odd random voicemail againsteach other on WhatsApp or
something.
But I think for you know, aboomer to use their mic to

(47:29):
record stories, I think it'sstill TBD whether they're
comfortable doing that.
I think it's more comfortablethan other means, but that
doesn't mean that they will be.
So I think that is interesting,which may cause us to pivot
this to a younger demographic,which I think again plays into
different life events.
But I think that's one of thebiggest risks, I think the

(47:54):
second one is just the fact thatit is so broad.
Anytime you're entering a marketthat could be like anyone, you
know, red alert.
You know there's a reason whythe B2B developer market is so
red hot because you actuallyknow your little audience.
You know how to solve it andyou're gonna.
Then they're willing to spend xamount for it and so you've got

(48:15):
you know.
For I think for most investorsin particular, like okay, like
you've nailed down a number ofthings, including an exit
strategy, whereas what we'redoing is the classic thing you
shouldn't do, which is go b to c, uh, go up against companies
that have enormous budgets andstill try to win over a lot of

(48:36):
hearts in the process.
So I think the odds are totallyagainst us.
But I think on the plus side iseveryone we tell about this
thing.
They're pretty on board and orthey're saying like, oh, I'm
going to do this.

Danny Peck (48:52):
So there's this kind of push and tug of like
confidence building and worry aswe sort of enter the market
yeah, but I do think we havelike certain valuable truths
that we we're realizing is that,like you know, everyone has
lost a loved one.
Like wishes they had morerecordings of their voice.
Like I'm guilty of, like youknow, listening to like

(49:14):
voicemails of like loved onesI've lost.
It's like why is this the onlyaudio I have of them?
Like this is a problem.
You know, the technologybarriers are getting lower every
day, like voice interfaces arebecoming like increasingly
normalized and like youngergenerations to john's point,
like are already comfortablewith voice as a medium.
So like I think the questionisn't like whether preserving
voice and stories is valuable,like we know, we know it's.

(49:38):
I think the question is whetherwe can make the process like
natural and accessible enoughthat people actually do it, and
so like that's a design and userexperience challenge, like not
a value proposition challenge,at least.
So like sometimes I think themost worthwhile projects are the
ones that make you nervousbecause they're asking people to

(49:59):
care about something they mightnot have thought about before,
but we'll be grateful for later.
So it's a new thing.

Okay, so it's not about the value proposition,
it's more about making this aseasy as possible and, you know,
also considering that you'recompeting with other companies
with a larger budget.
I really like you guys kind ofjust keep mentioning it in just
different formats, but likeyou're, I mean you kind of just

(50:28):
spelled it out, John, liketrying to win the hearts.
And that's what a lot of largecompanies don't do, as well as a
lot of smaller companies that,like, truly still are passionate
about their product and they'reon the ground floor talking to
customers, and you know, they'renot replacing their customer
service with AI, like, they areactually talking to their
customers.
They they're not trying tocreate a bunch of automated

(50:49):
systems to profit.
They truly care about thisproduct and I think that's the
strength of smaller founders,that's the strength of
passionate founders over a lotof larger companies, and you
almost have to triple down onthat, um, because that's what's
going to be shared with familyas well, um, I, so I again, like
I'm going to keep tabs on thisproject.

(51:10):
I want to see how it does overthe years, for sure, but you
know, if everything goes well,what are your long term plans,
if you have any, for this app?

Don Hansen (51:22):
Well, you know, it's interesting because there there
was recently, well, ok, sothere's there's been a lot of
recent articles in like FastCompany and places maybe it's
like HBR or something regardingthis kind of this new market or
a new sector or startup space inimmortalization.

(51:46):
Right, it's all aboutmortalizing how do we
immortalize people, and that cango a lot of different ways.
Obviously there's, you know,the biosciences that are doing
their shtick and Facebook hasits own way of doing it, and
obviously there's companies likeLegacycom and Ancestry that are
doing what they can.
So I think, you know, we sortof naturally fit into that, I

(52:09):
think long term, thatimmortalization piece, because I
think once someone does that,does this with our platform I
mean, it isn't the case that wekeep them from their files and
things, but our hope is toalways have the sort of best
tooling for revisiting thosememories or searching through
them and that kind of thing,right.
So I think we're seeing kind ofthis natural movement into okay

(52:35):
, does does this take on anyother form factors?
You know that could start with,like, on the keepsake side,
things would evolve.
Um, in terms of that continuingto evolve, like we've talked
about, how you know, currently,when you you go to a cemetery or
gravesite, the headstones don'treally mean anything.

(52:56):
There isn't any takeaways fromthat, but perhaps this is an
opportunity for a family whowanted to be able to utilize
some of the audio clips and haveit in some way available to
someone who's on their mobiledevice.
There's obviously a lot of workbeing done in synthesizing and

(53:22):
restoring a person just fromthat sort of fine-tuned model of
that person that we could visit, if the market kind of goes
that way.
So I think there's a lot ofvalue in still maintaining audio
as the foundation for this.
I'm still a big believer thataudio is the ultimate form of
soul capturing and that's nevergoing to go away.
But I think there's a lot ofways that then you can do things

(53:44):
with that audio to createexperiences or create other
mediums for kind of revisitingthose memories.

Well, you know, there are even AI tools and
maybe this is what you'realluding to that will capture
enough audio and enough contextand about that person, where
you're basically talking to anAI that reflects that person
that you know, yeah, and I thinkwhat's interesting because for
a lot of the early investormeetings we had, this came up

(54:14):
it's like the current LLMtechnology would allow you to do
something more with thisminiature trained thing.

Don Hansen (54:22):
Right, you've got a certain amount of transcript,
you've got the mannerisms,you've definitely got something
you could use today, and I thinkwhere we kind of ended up is
that we have to be, as a brand,pretty careful about what role
AI plays in who we are as humans, Because I think at least this
is totally my personal opinionright now is that there is going

(54:44):
to be this anti-tech AImovement, big one, and so any
company that uses AI beyond thetooling for generative purposes
might lose their connection andauthenticity, and so I think we
just have to tread verycarefully into this space of
like, yeah, you couldimmortalize someone and have a

(55:07):
chat and ask your dad for adviceagain 50 years after he passed,
but I don't know if that's agood idea actually like, maybe
not, maybe don't do that, uh Imean so I don't know so, but I
think I think the market youknow that's where I see, you
know there is.
that's where this uh, where theopportunities are really
fruitful, and that what ai doesdo outside of the generative

(55:30):
side is allow us to interpretand do more with the content or
produce other things with thecontent that you wouldn't be
able to do otherwise.
I mean, I feel like there's alot of new audio capabilities
now where you can get audio intodata forms much easier, so
that's going to be, in the nearterm, really exciting to see

(55:52):
what we can do with that.

Danny Peck (55:54):
Yeah, and audio to text as well.
Like once someone has builtthis archive of like stories,
you know we can take thetranscripts and we can do all
sorts of things.
Like you know, sentimentanalysis or like grouping sort
of similar stories together and,like you know, show me all the
stories where my dad mentioned,like you know, working on a
certain car and like it justkind of brings all those pieces

(56:16):
together.
Like you know, that's where wecan use AI and kind of a
thoughtful way to just like makesense of large amounts of like
tech or data and like organizeand like make it easier for
people to find the clips they'relooking for.

I think that's yeah , I think that's really
insightful because yourquestions themselves might
expand.
Right, you don't really knowthe questions that everyone
wants to answer and you'reprobably going to look for
patterns of like.
Maybe they choose 10 out oflike 300 questions that you
provide.
Maybe you just randomize themand then you can provide kind of
a system for feedback or likewhat you know older folks choose

(56:54):
to record of themselves thatthey think the younger
generation wants to know, orwhat questions does the younger
generation like choose for theirgrandparents to record a lot of
that and be able to justprovide like kind of a more.

(57:15):
Just get them, get thequestions in front of them a lot
faster and make it moreappealing for them to actually
use your application and followthrough with it.

Don Hansen (57:20):
Like you're right, ai can do a lot of that well,
and we've got a bit of thatalready, because in in our, our
early version of of the app um,of the web app app um, you know
you just you created yourquestions, or we had like a set
of 20 questions that are commonfor creating, uh, you know, some
kind of memoir.
Uh, and those are pretty good.

(57:41):
I mean, they're pretty in there, but you know there would be,
you know, the certain questionsthat you probably wouldn't want
to ask because they might betriggering.
Or maybe you know someone inthe family you know had a
different relational situationthat evolved over time or who
knows right.
So they don't always work.
They might work a lot of thetime, and so one of the first
things we tooled from an AIperspective is the question

(58:03):
generation itself.
So when you're, when you'recreating a golden record, you
provide just a few details aboutthe person.
You know their name, some oftheir interests, their hobbies,
maybe some things that youwanted to know about them
specifically, because you hadsomething in mind for this.
You just give it a few inputsand then it generates questions
that are completely relevant tothat person.
In addition to giving it a bitof that, you know we're creating

(58:29):
biography style question making.
So it kind of peppers in thelike, specific, like, for
instance, for my dad's, like Iwas like you know, he loves to
play French horn, he paintsclowns, he's into yoga, he's
healthy, like you can add thesekind of arbitrary things in
there and then it'll ask youknow, one of the questions it'll
create to you know, get youstarted, you can modify them or
add is like what what you know?
Get you started, you can modifythem or add it's like what,

(58:51):
what you know, why did you getyou know?
What made you get into Frenchhorn playing?
And it allows him to kind ofexpand on that and sometimes
it's not totally on the noselike that.
It's using that to kind ofinfer you know how they got into
music or what their favoriteclassical artists were and
things like that.
But that's again a greatexample where AI tooling is
enhancing the human side of whatGolden Record does.

(59:17):
And to kind of take it further,one of the things that so my
wife and I we've been together10 years and next month will be,
are like 10 years of knowingeach other right.
So we've got like three kidsand we've lived our lives right.
We've done all these kind ofadventures in life.

(59:38):
But one of the unique thingsabout us is that at the
one-month anniversary of beingtogether, we recorded an audio
journal and we kind of did it asa joke, meaning we were like,
you know, let's see how longthis lasts, kind of thing.
And once we did it, we kept upwith that and we've kept up with
it for our entire relationship.
So we've got our earlybeginnings, our getting engaged,

(01:00:02):
married first, kids, you know,like we have.
You know, I think you know we'vebuilt up this enormous
inventory of audio.
Each one is like 20 to 30minutes and we've got, you know,
120 of these.
And so for our kids, they'll beable to pinpoint how we mess
them up, which is great, andthey can just give that whole

(01:00:27):
audio file to the therapist andit's like who's going to sit
there and listen to us yabber onabout you know that month's
goings?
And so instead, like Danny wassaying, as a use case, if
Charlie, our middle, he can likebe like, you know, bring up all
the audio times when you hearme in the background, you know.

(01:00:48):
Or bring up all the times wewere talking about going to
Disney World, or you know what Imean, and just quickly get to
that.
It's like I just want to hearthat.
Or how many times did myparents, you know?
Every time my parents swore Iwant to see what the fuck's
going on, you know.
So I think I think there'ssomething really kind of fun and
unique which, again that youknow, I it may not, it might not

(01:01:09):
be AI exactly in terms of froma technical perspective, but it
certainly does empower that typeof curation, the same way that
our photo albums and some of ourvideo now is getting curated
for us in these kind of prefabmemory lockets.
So for me, like you knowtalking, you know.

(01:01:29):
Going back to your earlierquestion, don, about where I see
this going, I know that there'sa tooling that's going to have
to happen at least for ourfamily to solve our problem,
which is like, hey, like we'vegot a lot of audio now.
It's not just a few stories,it's not just 20 questions, it's
actual, it's real life, itsounds real life, like I want to
hear every time Anna wasplaying piano and the kids were

(01:01:52):
playing Lego.
I just want to be there, giveme that, and then I can go, and
then when I, you know, getsenile, I can at least like,
just sit back and enjoy.

John Ostler (01:02:02):
You know hundreds of hours of that on repeat, so I
think you have new marketingmessaging with that story that
you just shared too.
Like you painted a differentpicture than I had envisioned
this app to be as well.
Now, should it pivot to that?
I have no idea.
You guys might not know, butyou know that that it's

(01:02:23):
essentially why your app hasvalue, and it shows the power of
audio and capturing all ofthose moments with your family
and the way, and like justpainting that picture of how you
can use that audio, I just kindof want to live there, I want
to be there, you know, and Iwant to feel their presence
again.
Right, so, like I also thinkyou know, do you really want to

(01:02:43):
heavily plan all this?
No, but having this long-termvision can kind of just help
steer you through some of therough times as you figure out
this application.
So that's pretty cool, okay.
So last question what advicewould you give to developers who
are considering turning theirside projects into a business?

Don Hansen (01:03:07):
Oh man, I if I'll just go first because I can be
the most wrong, but I like the Idon't think you need to make I
think most developers I know,including myself, I don't think
you need to make a total leap offaith to do a startup.
To do a startup Like I think weoverestimate the effort we'll

(01:03:31):
need to put in to do it andwe're like, oh, I gotta, like I
gotta take a sabbatical to dothis.
Like, no, you don't, you know, Iwould say that's the developer
superpower, which is, you know,this Parkinson's law in that we
fill the time we give ourselves.
Like, if we say, like I didthis with one of the agencies I
started about four years ago, Iwas like I decided that Monday

(01:03:53):
through Thursday I was going towork on it from 9pm to 3am and
that's how I was going to do itand it wasn't going to play up
in my normal role or affectanything.
And, sure enough, that was likethose are the most productive
hours I think I've ever had inmy entire career.
Like that was like hardcore.
So I think my advice to anyone,you know, any developer, is

(01:04:15):
like, hey, I'm going to do aproduct, I would I would not
overreact and try to just slamthis out in the weird hours that
you enjoy working on it, thesame way you do a hobby or
something else.
Just like treat it as such,like continue to enjoy it so
that you keep doing it.

Um, yeah, that that would oh, all right, uh, you
still there, john.
Okay, I think he wrapped up hisuh uh thing.
Yeah, I could jump in.

Danny Peck (01:04:50):
I would say like oh there, you back, okay, yeah did
you have anything else to add?

all right.
No, I was just going to addthat I think I think you know
thinking about it a long time is, if you're just creating a tool
to solve a problem that isn'tyour own, I would say it might
not be a good use of time.
I think it's much easier tobuild something and realize it's
hard to market it and stop, andmarketing is kind of a problem.
It's the real problem.

(01:05:16):
So at least do something youreally enjoy, or you, or or do
something you know a lot aboutwhere you're like well, I'm
going to just solve this problembecause I don't have to go very
far to find that I'm going tosolve it.

That's great, yeah I would agree that like, first
and foremost most importantbanner headline like build
something you care deeply about.
So, like when you're solving aproblem that generally like
genuinely matters to you, likeyou'll have that sort of
emotional fuel to just like pushthrough the inevitable
challenges for sure.
So, like I think the transitionfrom side project to like a

(01:05:52):
business requires that shiftingfrom, like you know, what's
technically interesting to likewhat actually creates lasting
value for users.
So it's about buildingsomething that only works not
only works but um matters deeplyto the people who use it.
And you as the creator, as abonus, yeah, and I would say,
like you know, I would veryheavily uh encourage you to like

(01:06:18):
not quit your day job untilyou've like pushed out an mvp,
uh and like solved the sort ofquestion.
The basic question is startingwith why and like focusing on
user value and like thinkingabout sustainability and
building for growth before youlike quit your nine to five.
That was actually like givingyou a paycheck before diving in,

(01:06:39):
I think.
I think you can kind of do bothuntil it's like I have
something here.
I'm gonna you know it's provenitself a little bit, I'm gonna
like lean into it, but yeah,yeah, don't, don't, don't jump
too quick.

Yeah, I think that's really good cautious
advice and I can even give itfrom my end.
I think I dove into contentcreation too soon.
I think it was a really roughjourney for me and like I have a
ton of failures and a ton ofsome months.
I went to debt and I had to tryto make it up and like it was a
really hard journey.
Did I grow a lot from it?

(01:07:13):
Yes, but like I think that alsocarries over into a lot of side
projects, a lot ofentrepreneurship ventures.
They fail right, and you canfind time, like there are
parents with children that findtime to be able to just, you
know, spend a little bit ontheir side project or hobby,
whatever they're passionate with.
I'm not saying it's easy, butit is possible, and I you have

(01:07:34):
to make that time and that'sprobably the way to do it too.
Um, yeah, yeah.
Quit a job without likesustainable revenue and
especially for many, many months, to show kind of a proof that,
like you know, your app has aplace in this, not just like a
quick revenue boost when youpush it out and advertise it,

(01:07:55):
but like sustainable revenuethat's going to be coming in,
especially when you have otherresponsibilities.
I think a lot of people jump ina little bit too quickly and I,
you guys, are right to caution.
You should do it on the side,do it.

Yeah, I would say, cultivate the practice of like
waking early, like it's amazing,like what you can accomplish,
like before work.
I I still have a nine to fivemyself, but like I wake up at 5
am every day and I work fromlike 5 am to like 8 30 am, but
because I'm doing something thatI truly love doing, that like
energizes me, that like it's thereason I woke up, because I'm

(01:08:29):
excited to work on this thing,like it doesn't feel like work,
it actually just feels like play.
So, you know, find that sidehustle that you're really
passionate about where you'resolving a problem and, if you
can, if it feels like you're notworking but playing, like you
you found the right, the right,right idea and just just keep
pushing it.

Well and Well, and here's where the advice I think
when you go purely inentrepreneurial land, the advice
is often especially at theinvestment side is you got to go
all in?
What's the deal?
You know what I mean.
And I think this is where it'sa little conflicting.
It's like the side hustledoesn't sound very official,

(01:09:08):
especially to the investmentcommunity.
It's like I'm not sure you guyskind of need to go at this like
60 miles per hour, 60 hours aweek.
So I think that the real way todo it is, like we said if you
can get this launched in thosebonus hours, whatever ones you
can steal away, because, likeDanny said, you're enjoying it,

(01:09:29):
or, donald, you're saying you'regetting a lot from it, great,
when it comes time to investortime, then you can talk about
how you'd like to do this fulltime and I think from a pre-seed
investment standpoint, they'dbe happy to pay for your salary
to continue the momentum andthat can be the transition
period.

(01:10:04):
So if you're kind of runningdown that line of like I got to
get money for this which I thinknot all developers are
juxtaposition that way, but someof them are then it's still
okay to have that and agree thatlike, yeah, I would love to
spend all day every day, because, yeah, this demands it, but you
can, like Danny said, you canget to that point, or you should
be able to get to that pointwithout doing that, and that's
kind of the trick.
That point, or you should beable to get to that point
without doing that, and that'skind of the trick.
Or at the very least, like Isaid, proved that what you have
is something that people pay for, that has value intrinsic value
, long term value.

Yeah, I, and I think that's fair and that is a
little bit different if you aregoing the investor investor
route.
I think that's definitely fair,that, and admittedly I am not
incredibly familiar with thatroute either.
So I appreciate you bringingthat perspective.

Let me just add one thing From my other consultancy.
There's a lot of consultancieswho are trying to do products
and incubate products.
I've never actually seen asingle one succeed because
there's a juxtaposition betweenthe ability to bill or get a
project now and make that 10months of runway or see if this

(01:11:00):
product will little by littlemake it, and the one always
beats out the other.
It's like let's get the moneynow, like let's feed the beast,
feed the monster, feed the beast, feed the monster.
So I would say that is the onlycase where I've seen now a
couple of consultancies who havecompletely broken off their
product, that they've ideatedthat some developers built in

(01:11:20):
their free time and made it anofficial, totally separate
entity and that which is superhigh risk on everyone but is
using the funds from the company.
I've seen that be successful.
So that's kind of an exceptionto the rule.
I think if you're doing this youknow kind of half-sies program,
but I've never seen it actuallywork where people take their
little bits of free time and tryto stack them together and do a

(01:11:43):
product in a company like anintrapreneur.
I've never actually seen thatwork ever.
So that's one of those weirdthings where.
Why doesn't it work?
And I don't know if it has to domore with like it's not a
passion project or somethingelse like that, but it very much
is about finding, like Dannysaid, like those early morning
hours are rock and productiveFor me that that nine to 3am,

(01:12:06):
like I just I hit my stride at1am and like was good to go,
like just totally focused, thenew cycles over no one'sm.
And like was good to go, likejust totally focused, the new
cycle's over no one's slackingme, like let's go.
So that's what I just do tocolor that, just because I think
it really is insanely difficultto bring a side project to

(01:12:26):
positive revenue, like insane.
And so, and that's thechallenge Like I think the
development community has, andthat we know we can solve a lot
of problems well, you can almostsolve too many problems, but
then knowing where to put thattime and how to market it ends
up being, you know, the achillesheel, the whole process, right.

So do you think that gets easier if you linked
in your how long it's going totake you to build it and try to
be successful with it?
Like versus like, trying topush it out in six months versus
two to three years?

I.
I think it actually gets worsewith time.
I think I think if you can putit out in under in under eight
weeks, you'll be fine.
If it takes any longer, you'lltotally get bored of it because
it won't, it won't be, it won'tbe at least this is my
experience now.
But I just I don't feel.
I think speed is energy.
You have to have speed and Ithink good developers know that

(01:13:20):
when you're going fast andyou're not feeling much friction
, you're awesome and you lovewhat you're doing and it doesn't
even matter the problems you'resolving if you can go fast and
I think the same is true foryour side product and it doesn't
even matter the problems you'resolving if you can go fast and
I think the same is true foryour side product.
If you know you can move fastand you're not like building
with frameworks and you justknow what you're building, you
feel good and you like want toget up in the morning the minute
you start stretching out andyou're like well, in eight

(01:13:42):
months I want to be here and youknow we're going to start
developing the marketingstrategy there.
It's like oh man, like themomentum's gone, like you've
lost it, you lost the love.

It's interesting to hear that perspective.
Um, cause I I think that isvery true for me.
Unless I keep momentum andthere are some days where I have
to force myself to keep thatmomentum but I know that that
dip I have in motivation itcomes back and I trust that it's
going to come back as long as Ikeep momentum.
When I lose that momentum,that's when it gets really hard.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And if you, and if you and thisis where it kind of gets back
to if you don't care as muchabout the problem you're solving
, or start to not care as muchfor a little while, even that's
where it becomes a real issue,cause all it takes is two or
three weeks of not doingsomething or not seeing them and
be like I don't know if I'mdoing it.
I think I want to try doingsomething else.
I just saw some cool library Iwant to try out, or like, ooh,

(01:14:38):
what if we made this thing?
Danny and I are the worst forit.
I mean, we have bad shiny thingsyndrome.
We've actually introduced onFridays I don't know if we get
into this, but on Fridays we'vestarted to do a 40-minute
hackathon where basically wehave ChatGPT, decide the theme,
and we both force ourselves tobuild something in 40 minutes

(01:15:01):
and show and tell it.
I think it just gets it out ofyour system because you're like,
oh man, I've been trying to dothis weird thing with circles
and playing notes.

It has no business whatsoever worse for tangents
like we, we, we spun off and didlike a mini golf ios game.
We spun off and did like a likea little airline pilot like ios
game.
It just is like an aside, it'slike, okay, yeah, we should get
back to like yeah, you almostneed that.

You almost need that , but you do need it.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty common among
developers.
No, I appreciate.
I'm sure it's very relatable topeople listening.
I'm sure it is um, but you knowthat that's what it's.
It's also about kind of knowingyourself and your personality,
like what long-term things haveyou accomplished, like, and what
did you have to do to actuallyget to that finish line too?
It really is about knowingyourself and hacking yourself a

(01:15:52):
bit.
So I appreciate the differentperspectives.
Well, I feel like I asked allthe questions I wanted to.
I really appreciate you guyssharing kind of your journey
with this.
I'm definitely going to bekeeping up to date with it.
I'm going to include the linkto golden records in the
description, but I'll kind ofjust wrap it up, uh, with having
you guys just share yoursocials, that people want to

(01:16:14):
reach out to you and anythingelse you want to shout out if
it's part of the app or whatever.
Uh, we'll start with you, danny.

Oh geez, Uh.
Yeah, you can find me on uh,the X Twitter, um, at DEP, and
uh, and I'm a music producer aswell.
I just put an album out, likelast couple months ago.

No, it's very good.

Oh, if you go to Danny Peck dot com, that's my
main site.
It's literally just like mymusic portfolio.
You can link off to it.
But yeah, I got a couple otherprojects that I've been kind of
working on the side AI Diary dotUS is just a really simple
little like microsite thatallows you to like daily journal
and it gives you ai insights onthe things that you've been

(01:16:58):
writing and that's kind of fun.
And then another one, uh,little planetsus is uh just a
platform to create like a littlemicro community with your
friends and family.
Click a button, then you getget like a little social network
.
So just two little like fun,like side projects.
But yeah, that's what's goingon with me.

Cool yeah for me.
I'm like LinkedIn guy.
I don't know I'm supposed to beon X, I think, because all the
developers I know are on X, butI'm a LinkedIn person, so just
so you can look up my name.
I, but I'm a LinkedIn person,so just so you can look up my
name.
I'm not sure how you findpeople on LinkedIn.
To be honest, I think you justput their names in, you know.

I'll link your socials.

There we go, but I think, yeah, same as Danny, I've
got, I've got.
I mentioned I've got a few appsin the store that you can check
out under my name under the appstore.
And then Unicorn Road and 8-BitStudios are the two agencies
that I founded and you can checkout that if you want.
I was looking to meet awesomedevelopers.
To be honest, I'm the type ofperson that likes to connect

(01:18:05):
relationships and had the luxuryof working with a lot of really
cool companies, both startupsand big ones, so I was looking
to make new connections.
So definitely, yeah, reach outlike love to connect.

Yeah, all right, love it, dan John.
I really appreciate you guyscoming on and anyone that's
watching this episode is reallyfor people that are just trying
to launch side projects and turnthem into something real.
I know, like I did a poll along time ago, I know a lot of
you want to launch a sideproject, make a little money off
of it, and there are differentways of doing it.
But I think what helps is, atleast for me, is hearing how
other people, quite frankly, arefailing and then overcoming

(01:18:43):
that failure.
Right, I like hearing aboutthat and what they're doing to
pivot and what they're doing tochange their marketing strategy.
And, you know, maybe they spenttoo much dev time which a lot
of us do to build, you know, ourproducts out sometimes.
So, um, but I like hearingabout these stories.
Um, we'll probably do moreepisodes like this, but yeah,
that's pretty much it.
Uh, leave any comments you havein the comments below, but

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