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Justin and Jason discuss how many subscribers Techzing has vs StackOverflow, the awesomeness of PrintFriendly.com, TweetMiner’s growth potential based on HootSuite’s 400K user base, whether Justin should work on his secret project or TweetMiner, Techzing as a public masterminding session, how Jason’s brother saved a soldier’s life in Afghanistan, HipHop (HPHP) and the trend towards compiling scripting languages, migrating to a VPS (virtual private server), why ChatRoulette has been such a big deal on Hacker News, building towards financial independence with bookmakers, the advantages of juggling multiple consulting projects, how the fun is in the doing, Jason Cohen’s article on sunk costs and Justin’s love of food.
Generation Zero is a cool name but i don’t really think it matters what you call the podcast as the content will dictate if people will listen to it or not.
Justin, I think regarding tweetminer, Jason is right, stick with it and reap some of the fruits of your hard work. If another app takes over twitter as being flavor of the month, jump on that band wagon as well.
another enjoyable show!!
Generation Zero makes me think of a Coke commercial. Probably some mixture of being abused as a child and Coke Zero.
TechBiz podcast?
Use feedburner and ONLY feedburner as your feed. Do not give any alternate. You will have good, accurate tracking that way.
Justin, what is this other project of yours exactly? “Mesh api” you called it? What does it do? Will you share some more now that you revealed its name? 🙂
And you said it’s a “blue water” project. If it ends up being any good, it will draw attention and the waters will turn red quickly, no? Do you think you will have enough of a lead by then?
And if noone is doing it, are you sure it is a good idea? Why do you think noone is doing something similar in some shape or form?
Actually, it may be that there are others, but they are invisible at the moment and will be revealed in 6-12 months time. (ex: many of the personal finance webapps (mint, wesabe, buxfer, etc) apparently started at around the same time, so they couldn’t have known about each other even if they googled!)
BAMS did not know about HootSuite.
PS: I now consider myself famous.
Dude, keep working on TweetMiner. HootSuite is the “professional” twitter client. For enterprisey people. Is that your goal?
If HootSuite has 400K users, there are probably another 400K users out there.
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh If a tiny startup like HootSuite has 400K users after little more than a year, I’d say there are probably many millions of potential users. If Justin just stays focused on delivering value for his paying users, then he should have no problem growing TweetMiner.
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh You will be famous, or at least to about 400 people. Hey, it’s a start, right? 😉
@Emrah
mashAPI – It’s a new type of web OS that you can build websites on top of.
@Emrah Exactly! The water may look blue, but there are likely sharks under that water and once one of them bites off your leg, that water is going to be red as all hell and plus you’ll missing a leg. 😉 At least if you jump into red water you know what to expect and what you’re up against. Justin is off to a great start with TweetMiner and his doubts are the doubts of all entrepreneurs. He just needs to fight off those demons and not give up.
Justin if I may suggest: drop the MBA and hook up with someone who has actually executed on a business idea. I suspect they would be less enamored with geocities 2.0 (mashAPI) than Tweetminer.
How many paying accounts does 400K users translate to for HootSuite?
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh
HootSuite don’t have any paid plans yet. They are making a land grab pre-payment plans. And they can afford too due to lots of funding.
About mashAPI: That one-liner sounds just like MS Azure and its ilk. 🙂
Is it going to be like a “cloud computing platform, build stuff on our infrastructure” type of thing, or more like one of those “we make it really really easy to build websites/online stores without you knowing any coding, css, server admin stuff, etc” kinda thing (SiteSell, Shopify, Weebly, Wix, SquareSpace, Rackspace Cloudsites,…)?
If it’s neither, then what is it? Do you have a tagline? There is probably more you are not telling that makes it a blue water type of deal, but so far it doesn’t look that way.
Btw, is that name going to give you any trouble with SEO?
At the end of the day, if you want to be happier, you have to follow your heart, right or wrong, and ready to face whatever results it brings. Following someone else’s right (even if it is really right) is unbearable unless you can learn to like it and follow it with your own free will. 🙂
Maybe HootSuite isn’t planning to build a long-term business at all. They just want to grab a zillion freeloaders in a few years time, sell the whole thing to the next sucker (probably doesn’t have to be Google or MS) and cash out. Isn’t this the usual mentality if you get VC funding? The question is, does their existence help you or hurt you?
If you focus mostly on paying customers, those who see value and can calculate ROI and will use your tool to make or save money for their businesses, then there may be a business there.. (assuming Twitter doesn’t just vanish or something)
@Emrah
mashAPI is a “cloud computing platform, build stuff on our infrastructure type of thing”
Long time listener, first time poster. Heh, always wanted to say that. I have been listening since the AI Wars interview and ended up liking the podcast. I downloaded all the previous and subsequent podcasts and have listened ever since. It is one of my regular listens while I drive to and from work.
As far as the name Generation Zero, I think it is ambiguous enough you could get away with using it, but do you want to make a name change now? I guess you are small enough that it wouldn’t be that hard to change, we early adopters are easy adapters. One thing you guys always touch on is how you aren’t always talking about tech, but add life and other topics in. Maybe a rebranding such as Generation Zero will draw a wider audience while not alienating your existing core audience. Though we have stuck with the banter for this long, would be hard to shake us off now, maybe an hour of white noise would do it.
As far as Justin and Tweetminer, I agree with Jason that he should stick with it. Even if he were to slow down active development and work more on MashAPI, you really can’t drop an active money source like that. If it continues at the same rate you have experience so far, you will be making much more after a years time and if you want to exit then, your pay off will be even bigger. You have a sustainable product/business, why sell it just for the uncertainty of something new? I would understand if you took VC or Angel funding and wanted to get out of it then, but this is a profitable business, and will only continue to be. The more money it makes, the more valuable it gets, the more chance you will get a much bigger pay off.
The fact is, unless you have received an offer to sell it, I would not entertain selling it. You are wasting your time worrying about it.
About being solely reliable on Twitter, you should think of expanding it to other services like Facebook and FriendFeed. It might not be 1 to 1 like it is for Twitter, but it will only increase the value proposition to customers and lock them in. It will also buffer yourself if Twitter does take a nose dive. You might want to look into rebranding though if you do expand.
Keep up the great work guys, I really enjoy listening. As an aspirational entrepreneur I like your advice, just need to follow it!
Hi Justin and Jason,
Love the show, keep it up.
In regards to the Tweetminer debate, perhaps there is a middle ground. You’ve completed the basic functionality. Justin doesn’t believe that it will definitely grow into something large. Let the product make that decision for you. Minimize your time committement to it. Do the basic business tasks: billing, customer support, some marketing, etc. Don’t do any other ‘investment’ which may mean don’t add more functionality.
Cheers,
Peter Gadzinski
@Peter Gadzinski That sounds like a very reasonable solution. It sounds like we should send you to the U.N.! 😉
Name – not important, I read once “content is king” 😉
Tweetminer or mashAPI, I cant help agreeing with Jason, Justin, your chasing your next “hit” so to speak. I understand the need, want. My current “hit” I cant believe if I was making $3k from it, I would want to pack it in. Ultimately its upto you, im sure hearing about mashAPI will be just as fun.
@Justin, in a sentence or even 140 characters, if it must be. Try and narrow down “the reason” for wanting to move on from Tweetminer. Equally in a sentence explain why “mashAPI”. ( I have noted your quite good with your words ). Look forward to what you come up with, be it in the comments of in a later show.
@Jason, I listened to pod cast 18, where you talk about your project, the secret one. Pod cast 32, and still no sign 😉 Just pulling your chain a little.
Good show guys, kept me entertained.
Generation Zero +1
Techzing +1
Oh yes, @Justin, thanks for pointing out you wrote the intro, its very catchy!
Thanks for the podcast guys, great show. I think you do a better job than Joel and Jeff from StackOverflow. At least for me StackOverflow podcasts can be quite boring and I find myself fast-forwarding a lot when I listen to StackOverflow. Not so with Techzing, although show 27 and 28 where a bit too low on content for my taste.
I really liked when you did interviews. I found out about Techzing because you had Jason Cohen on, and I’m a long-time listener since then, so some people do stick with the show after interviews. I think you have a knack for interviewing people, you ask interesting questions and the whole interview sounds like a couple of friends catching up. Hope your guests feel the same way. More interviews please!
I don’t really care about the name, just keep the shows coming 🙂
@Justin
“mashAPI is a “cloud computing platform, build stuff on our infrastructure type of thing””
Building your own platform sounds much more stable than relying on twitter or facebook for sure, but I fail to see how that’s a blue water project. Wouldn’t you be competing directly with Amazon (EC2), Google (App Engine), Microsoft (Azure), Rackspace (Cloudsites), and so on? Maybe you can dive further into why you think the way you think in the next show. 😉
@Michael Rakita
“show 27 and 28 where a bit too low on content for my taste.” what do you mean when you say “content”? 🙂
@Emrah
mashAPI is not like the services you describe… but you give me an idea. How about if I do a full presentation of mashapi via web conference to say 50+ techzing listeners. I would do it if we could get a high number of techzing listeners because then I could once and for all get the kind of market feedback I need…
Well, let’s just say that I want my 20 minutes of startup/tech stuff in 1.5 hours podcast 🙂
@Michael Rakita
That’s a really interesting little business you have at traysoft.com – Nice 🙂
I don’t know if I am your target market, but I’d love to listen. One can always learn from someone else’s pitch. And you got me curious about how your idea is different from the big boys’.
I would enjoy hearing your pitch as it were. I really don’t know enough to comment on it, but if it really is blue water like you say, then I am really interested in how. On that note, maybe your short description needs altering? Or you can just make us see what you see.
That kinda thing happens to me all the time. For example, I’ll have this entire thing in my head, but I’ll utter only one or two sentences to my wife (in an attempt to get away with as little as possible). She goes “What are you talking about?!”. Then I spend the next 5 mins explaining the rest of what I had in mind and she’ll say “and how was I supposed to infer that from the first thing you said, I had no idea”. I imagine this happens a lot to businesses. 😀
Justin, you have a great thing going with Tweetminer and I think selling it at this point would be a mistake. I am sure Tweetminer can grow to the point where it makes enough so you don’t have to do consulting. Consulting doesn’t scale. Yes, you get nice income but when you stop working the money stop coming in. For every hour spent working on your product you’re getting paid at increasing rate for years to come. Here is an interesting metric for you: last year we got $3 per each line of code in our new product, including empty lines 🙂 This year we are making more and the bulk of the code was written a year ago. We are still getting paid for the code that I wrote in 2003! Yes, the pay rate sucks in the beginning but you get great compound interest 🙂
With Tweetminer you have subscriptions and it’s a HUGE deal. Customer acquisition is one of the most expensive activities, both in time and money. With subscriptions you just have to get customer retention high enough and you can grow even if you’re not getting new customers very quickly. I would concentrate on that first. We all like positive or vanity metrics like Eric Ries calls them, but you have to be obsessive over negative. How many users cancel subscriptions? Why do they cancel? What they don’t like about Tweetminer? How many users sign-up and try Tweetminer but never use it again? Do they understand what Tweetminer does? Is it hard for them to use? Are you missing some crucial features?
I would suggest to send an automated email to all who cancel and to users who sign up but don’t use Tweetminer. Make it short, informal and very friendly, something like: “Hey, I’m Justin Vincent, developer of Tweetminer. I noticed that you don’t use Tweetminer anymore. Can I ask you …” and ask 2-3 most important questions. Most people won’t bother but some will answer. It’s important to listen to paying users but it’s even more important to understand why people don’t pay.
@Michael Rakita That is all great advice, especially the suggestion to implement an automated “exit interview”. That’s probably something we should talk about on the show because I’ve never heard anyone mention it before and it makes a lot of sense. Interesting.
Hi guys, had a great time listening to the show on the snowy roads down to Denver.
I actually like the name Techzing but Generation Zero is a pretty cool name. As Justin was explaining the inspiration for the name, it made me think of “level zero” and the idea that technology is still on the ground floor and has plenty of room to grow into. So I like G0.
I listen to a bunch of podcasts including Stack Overflow, Dot Net Rocks (I really like that one), Thirsty Developer, Ruby On Rails Podcast, and a few others. And TZ really stands out with its own personality. I like the fact that it also sounds more authentic, more friendly (you get the feeling of being there), and not trying to be as “sophisticated”. Also being european myself I enjoy the two different cultural viewpoints.
I am siding with Jason on encouraging Justin to stick with TweetMiner. Justin you have shown great passion with it so far, so I know you can grow it over the long run. Plus TweetMiner as a concept may have a much wider reach than Mash API in the sense that people who are not technologists can “get its use” and become customers.
Since I started to listen back in the summer, you have given me the motivation to work on my own web concept, and after trying to stay aligned with Jason’s timeline, I finally put my concept out there a couple weeks ago (www.myskillsmap.com). It’s definitely tough to do that if you have never done anything like it before. So I am trying to follow your advice and learn from this adventure. I never realized this took that much energy and motivation to actually go from prototype to a launched site with basic features. I tell myself that even if this takes a long time to even get to TweetMiner’s adoption I would have at least picked up a whole bunch of skills during the journey.
So keep it up in terms of sharing your experience with us would-be or future entrepreneurs!
@Philippe Monnet
Thx for the kind words 🙂 On another note, would you mind if Jason & myself critiqued myskillsmap.com on the show?
@everyone – This is a fantastic amount of feedback in general and will give us a lot to talk about on the next show. Thx so much for posting 🙂
Just wanted to comment on Justin’s idea of “retirement” as working on anything you want and have other people develop your ideas. I was actually thinking a lot about that topic lately. It’s 3am here so please bear with my ramblings 🙂
I think we have to decide for ourselves if we want to build a business (or businesses), or want to be developers and work on interesting tech stuff all the time. It’s almost impossible to do both. I’m like you guys, I get those great ideas, I get excited and I want to go and solve hard problems and work on something new. I get bored when the hard problem is solved and you just have to do constant small improvements and do “business/marketing stuff”. But without that you can’t really grow a business. And when you go and do something else, something interesting, your business usually suffers. Plus most interesting and hard problems don’t make a good business, at least not a small business that you can bootstrap and grow organically. I did my share of side projects that didn’t go anywhere because I lost interest when everything became straightforward and boring. Now I resist the temptation and just write docs and put them into Ideas folder. Saving for the retirement you might say 🙂
Everyone is different but I think most of us programmers would be happier just figuring out how to solve the problem and code the first version, then have someone else run with it and develop a business. Partnering with a good business person helps a lot but unfortunately doesn’t happen very often. And those partnerships have their own problems. So I can certainly understand why you, Justin, want to sell Tweetminer and work on Mash API. I’m sure it’s more exciting and more interesting problem.
Maybe working for a company like Google on something challenging would be more rewarding then trying to build your own business. Sometimes a funded startup is a great place to try some ideas and develop something new. At least you’re doing that on someone’s else dime 🙂 Bootstrapped startups can be too constraining and require a lot of non-technical work.
So think like an entrepreneur but only if it’s more fun for you personally 🙂
@Justin
Sure – that would be intimidating but a great way to get feedback. I guess you have to jump in the cold blue water at some point! 😉
DM me via Twitter (techarch) if you need anything.
Justin,
Stick with Tweetminer. You’ll always find yourself in this position with product development, will you always quit?
At one point you said the only thing left to do is market Tweetminer. Well, that’s what you need to do then. I wish I could tell you how, but I don’t know myself. I’m in the same position as you, about 1K a month, but I’m not going to give up.
Sometimes thinking about marketing as a technology problem is helpful. There’s a lot of critical and analytical thinking to do. I sat down to review my user base and discovered several different groups of users (markets) that are *paying* for my service. Now that I’ve done that, I’m going to start marketing directly (off-line) to these markets. Right now I just need to money for this marketing campaign, so it’s back to consulting.
Just keep trying new things.
Those numbers for Stack Overflow are way off. It’s syndicated on IT Conversations so it gets tens of thousands of listeners there (I think they have 30-40K subscribers). Many fewer people use their direct feed.
As far as TweetMiner/mashAPI goes, while it is tempting to chase the new exciting tech (we’re all guilty of it), every idea requires business work. If your real goal is to have enough money that you can do whatever you want, then you’re going to have to do the business work sooner or later to get there. Since Tweetminer has traction in a growing market, it’s worth sticking to unless it becomes absolutely unbearable.
Justin,
FORGET Tweetminer.
Either sell it, give it away or shut it down.
Build what you are you’re really passionate about.
DM me if you need reasons.
Hello everyone! It’s Ozzy, your number one, duly appointed dancer/follower. Yes, I am the official ‘Bez’ of TechZing! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bez_(dancer)
Btw, lots of great comments here, Bez approves 🙂
Okay, so here’s my super long rambling comment:-
______
The Name: I give my +1 for Generation Zero, as I and others have mentioned, it’s a great name, and you already have the music to brand it etc. Again, it’s not so much that GZero is “omg it’s the most perfect name eva!”, it’s that Tech Zing is annoying as hell, bloody hard to remember and phonetically confusing. 🙂
In fact, when I first came across your show (it was when you interviewed that TR.IM dude), I forgot to bookmark/subscribe and I had a hard time trying to find your site again — “Tech what?” — I couldn’t for the life of me remember that “zing” part.
I also think that the whole use of “Tech this” and “Tech that” is a bit overdone and verbose… and all the other “tech blogs and podcasts” (like Stack Overflow) are bloody boring (sorry Jason :)) — I think you can still be tech focused without the “tech” name and simply infer it by what you say and do…
It was also great to hear that Justin wrote the song and learn about the reasoning behind it — the fact that we live in this “zero generation” and we don’t really have an “era” — that we live in a time of “mash-ups” where we regurgitate the art and styles of previous generations and we don’t have a defining one of our own. I agree with this sentiment 100% and I’m glad someone else out there feels the same way. Just look at American Idol for chrissakes… where’s the originality of this generation?!
To me, the idea of having to say “tech” all the time is not necessary because we live in a time where “tech is the default”, there’s no need to keep mentioning it. Besides, haven’t you noticed that everyone is a coder or web dude these days? What else is there? 🙂
Anyways I digress — of course you can spend hours and days coming up with the “perfect name”, so let’s see what the options are:
1. Techzing.
2. The JJ Show 🙂
3. Generation Zero
4. Generation Dot Zero (since generation zero is a bit too generic these days?)
5. The Secret Project 🙂
Finally, since I’m all about showing the love these days, here’s some motivational inspiration for you guys:
http://toxicdesign.com/stuff/g_zero_mock.gif
🙂
Tweetminer: Sell it? Don’t be stupid mate 🙂 Like Jason said you’ve already proven that it works — my old man said “if you can sell your product to 1 punter then you can sell it to a million”.
You’ve already invested the time to build the bloody thing — it’s a great product — why give it up now? To me, the ONLY thing you need now is to market it. If you spent your time on promotions and the “visual stuff” you’ll see more growth. Hell, you already bank about $1000 /month — you’re not too far from hitting $1500 then $2000 then $3000 etc. — and you’re a one-man operation, now that’s good business.
(Remember too that you guys are an inspiration to all of us who want to start a REAL online business that actually CHARGES money and is not based on that Silicon Valley VC funding malarky).
Furthermore, I know about Hootsuite — I use it sometimes — but I think you’re product offers many things that hoot doesn’t. i.e. the “mining” features — hoot doesn’t do half of that, and Hootsuite differentiates itself from the other twit-clients by offering SCHEDULING and multi-account managements, thats it…
Again, hoot has a great UI and great branding — to me, that’s the big differentiator between you two irregardless of price.
Finally, you have a great name with TweetMiner, but since you don’t have the “dot Com”, I think that’s hurting you alot. I see the dude who owns tweetminer.com wants $5000 — maybe you should remortgage the house and buy it 🙂 Or perhaps, come up with a new name for that too? Something that is less generic and more brandable?
Do you really think “HOOTsuite” is a “omg that’s the best name eva”?! No, of course not, it was available to them and they ran with it.
Show Direction: I think (as others have stated) you have a great show with a great balance. Don’t change a thing. The only suggestion I would make is to keep having guests on the show from time to time since I really enjoyed the previous guests you’ve had and I think you make great interviewers too and finally…
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!
Cheers!
Ozzy
@Ozzy (Bez) Wow, thanks for the great comment! Your thoughts on the name of the podcast are very interesting.
You’re right, Generation Zero is unique while TechZing is definitely not.
Also, thanks for the cool mock-ups. Those are very slick.
I agree with everything you said about TweetMiner. I hope Justin takes it to heart.
@Ozzy (Bez)
I echo what Jason just said… great comment!
I think that logo you did was very cool, my only concern is that it’s very hard to read. Is there anything similar but that’s real easy to read?
It’s been great to get all these comments this show and yours has helped me consolidate the position on TweetMiner even more so thanks for that 🙂
We’ve already recorded the next episode and I’m hoping to release it by the end of today.
Hey Jason, Justin,
I really enjoy the show but think you should stick with the name! Sorry Bez but I do think TechZing is catchy and afterall, the show is mostly talk about tech right? Generation Zero doesn’t really describe what the show is about.
With regards to content I would prefer you should stick with talking about tech + startups rather than branching out into food and other things. I’m not saying don’t go off topic now and again to lighten it up, but you’ve got a number of dedicated listeners because of the Tech + startup content, so why not stick with it?
I really enjoy hearing about your own startups like TweetMiner are going, it’s inspiration for others who want to do their own. Keep the guests coming too! Get Peldi back 🙂
printfriendly.com is nice, but http://www.printwhatyoulike.com is much nicer.
@Eddy
Bez is happy to dance to any name of the show as long as the show continues and the theme song stays the same 🙂
I second getting Peldi back and that guy from Smart Bear soft, all these gents were very kind and generous with their insights.
@Eddy Seager I’m still on the fence about the name, but what you say is right. Generation Zero sounds cool but doesn’t describe the content of the show. TechZing kind of does, even if it’s a dumb name. 😉
I also agree about avoiding the completely unrelated topics like food and wine which Justin seems intent on bringing up, but as you’ve probably noticed I haven’t really engaged him when he starts going down that road. For him it’s like trying to play tennis with someone who refuses to hit the ball back. It get’s boring real quick. 😉 Justin loves No Agenda, so my guess is that he kind of wants to do a show like theirs, while I’m not quite as excited about that. Anyway, we’ve pretty much agreed to stick primarily to tech and startups, so the show will continue as it has for better or for worse. 😉
I agree we should get Peldi back, but before we do I think we need to make an effort to get a few different guests on just to keep things fresh.
FYI – TweetMiner Google Analytics – http://tweetminer.net/tm-analytics.pdf
@Justin
About the logo/name — I didn’t want to open a whole can of worms here, it’s just a bit of fun.
I was really reacting to @Jason’s comment on the show that generation zero doesn’t seem be “tech”, so I thought I’d try and make the case by showing visually that you can infer tech by using a “techy” font & theme etc.
Yeah, it maybe hard to read, but it would need alot more work in terms of specific use cases etc. It’s just a b/w mock.
In fact, I was browsing new font faces when I was listening and I guess my brain’s “right side” kicked in — here’s the page with the font, it has other executions & examples – in color with various treatments – that are quite inspiring…
http://fontfabric.com/?p=91
@Justin Very cool, I think the most telling statistic is that your average “TIme on Site”, is one and a half hours.
I think that’s a great testament to the product’s usefulness, since folks are really engaged and using it for so long.
I also think your 25% bounce rate is pretty good indicator also, that rate can be pretty high indeed if you have a site that is not meeting visitors’ expectations.