Episode 8
· 40:04
Hey, welcome to Product People, the podcast for people who build their own products. This is part two of our interview with Sasha Graf. Sasha is a designer and coder from Paris, France, but he's now living in Osaka, Japan. He's worked with companies like Hitmonk, but he's best known for his cool side projects. His most recent, called Telescope, is an open source platform for creating your own hacker news.
Speaker 1:In this episode, we talked with him about how to find a partner and the pain involved in building up a product income.
Speaker 2:One thing that we've talked a bit about on the show is choosing a partner. How did you choose your partner on Telescope, Tom Coleman?
Speaker 3:So that's a really good question. So like I said, first I chose to I tried to choose a partner in, I guess, more active way. Like, you know, I posted on my blog that I was looking for partners. I got in touch with, like, 20 people. I tried to screen the best person, and that didn't work at all.
Speaker 3:So what happened with Tom is I simply saw that he was really knowledgeable about Meteor, and he was very active on the mailing list. And I asked him a few questions, especially on the Meet Your Chat Room. And over time, he started contributing to the project and getting more and more involved. So think what that illustrates is you know, if you try to motivate people with external things like money or doing something for them in return, it gives you different people than finding people who are motivated for internal reason because they're interested in the project and that's really the kind of people we want to find.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So you found that money was a bad motivator for finding a partner, finding someone that was really passionate the actual core of what you wanted to do, that was kind of the key.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of a paradox because I wouldn't like, if somebody came to me saying, Hey, I have a really cool app. I can't pay you, but do you want to be my co founder? I would say, Hell no. If you want me to help, just pay me or But help me in it turns out that, yeah, I wouldn't be a good co founder in this case.
Speaker 2:Unless it was something you were really interested in.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So but it's very hard to get people interested in a project. That's the thing. It's worth it. Now I think it's worth it.
Speaker 3:So for my next projects, would definitely try to find somebody who's interested in the project itself and not doing it for their money or another reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know what I think you've done really well, Sasha, is that you have all of these projects. And with all of these projects, you've become very visible. So whether it's your blog, your book, or these other kind of side projects that you've done, you've become very visible. And I think at some point, if you did want to launch something, there could be a lineup of people that just want to work with you just because they've seen what you've done already.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's a bit naive because I did try that approach, like saying, Hey, I want to build something cool. Come help me just because I have 6,000 Twitter followers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that doesn't really work. Maybe when I'm at 60,000 or 6,000,000, but yeah, people are busy, they have jobs. You know, if you take that approach, people are gonna be really enthusiastic in the beginning, and then, you know, they're gonna have to pay the bills or do something else and Project on hold.
Speaker 4:Like
Speaker 3:people, it's not a good enough reason just that you read my blog and you wanna do something with me. The project needs to be interesting to both of us, basically.
Speaker 4:That's right. Yeah. Because like, I'm sure you've found, both of you guys have found that like, if you're starting something new, even if it's fun and exciting, there's, at some points it gets to be a grind and an uphill battle on even the funnest projects. Yep. And especially if you're doing it on the side where you're not being directly compensated, the only thing that gets you through is that like fire in your belly that's like this is something that I wanna see through and if you embark on that with somebody who's not as invested with you, it's kinda gonna end poorly probably.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, people Most of the people I've met in this industry are all really cool guys or girls, but what's hard to find is people who are really motivated and self motivated and, you know, serious or reliable.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's like if you've ever tried to start a band, it's like there's tons of good musicians out there, it's really hard to find people who are good and who kind of want to take a serious, intentional approach to a project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good comparison.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's perfect because it's really easy to find people to jam with or just fool around with. But if you wanna do a band and practice like seven hours a day and get great, then that's really hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Who's actually going to hit the road with you when you wanna go tour or whatever?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You mentioned Sasha something about how you have 6,000 followers and that's maybe not enough to find like the perfect sort of co founder or whatever, but it kind of brings up an interesting point that, right, which Justin mentioned earlier, that you've got fairly good visibility because of your blog and your projects and things like that. And one of the things that you've posted on your blog is the side project project.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And you talk about how you think it's important to have side projects because they make you special. So I totally agree. I think that at some point, the people with visibility are the people who have just gone out and done things and released things for free. Like I was thinking earlier about how when you said with your ebook, it wasn't this huge strategic decision where you validated a market or anything like that. You just decided to do it and so you did it and you put it out there.
Speaker 4:And it ended up being good because it's a good quality piece of content. So I guess maybe you want to talk a little bit about your side project project specifically, or we can just talk about kind of how important side projects have been for you in getting that visibility, which kind of helps give you a platform to launch your other products.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, first of all, I wanna talk about why it's important to have that platform, because the really cool thing with the web is that it's, you know, anybody can have a hit and anybody can make something great, and it goes viral, but at least that's what we like to think. But the truth is it helps a lot if you already have a network, if you already have an audience. And that's something I noticed when I launched Folio, is that I didn't really have that network, and it was really hard to get people to care about the product. So yeah, I made a deliberate decision to build that audience so that the next time I launch a product, at least that part would be a little bit easier because I think getting people to pay attention to what you're doing is really the hardest thing to do on the Internet.
Speaker 3:There's just so much stuff. Mhmm. And to pick an example, so you've heard about Medium, the new project by the Twitter co founder.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So Medium is awesome. It's a really great user experience, and it looks great, and they have great articles on there. But ask yourself, would it have the same success if, you know, you had created the exact same product or somebody, you know, in France or in Japan or anywhere else than Silicon Valley had created that product? And I don't think it would have the same success. So like, who you are and who you know does have a very big impact for a lot of products.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think, like, in your side project project post, you talk about the zero by infinity workshop and which is kind of a reference back to Amy Hoy and her 30 by 500 workshop. But she has an interesting, video she posted on her blog about stacking the bricks where she kind of talks about sort of the importance of doing that, of sort of starting with a base and building it out as you go, because you can't just if you don't have an audience, you can't just launch no matter how great or compelling it is. You can't just put your first thing out there and expect it to be your big hit, right? Like any successful internet entrepreneur you talk to, that seems like an overnight success. It's that's the farthest thing from the truth.
Speaker 4:It's been a five year process where they've been building other things out, building out their network, building up an audience in other ways.
Speaker 3:So Yeah. And that's why side projects are important for me, because if you think about it, like, there's two sides to the equation. One side is, you know, having people pay attention, and the other side is having people pay money. So step one is doing something that's popular and that people are passionate about, and that's what side products are great for. I feel like once you've met that side, then you try to get people to actually buy your products.
Speaker 4:For sure.
Speaker 3:And I
Speaker 4:think one of the interesting things too is you just mentioned paying for products. I mean, you could talk for days about the psychology behind buying decisions, but one of the core things that factors into a buying decision is trust. And do you trust this person to deliver on whatever they say they're going to give you? And I think that by laying that groundwork of building an audience and getting people's attention so they know who you are, they know what you're about, giving them free things so that they know the kind of quality things you give out, you're really laying a strong foundation of trust. And that makes getting people to pull out their wallet to give you money for something else a whole lot easier than if you've got somebody cold coming to a website and you're telling them.
Speaker 4:Because then basically they're just having to trust what's on your landing page, right, rather than trusting your reputation. That's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you know, if we think about Amy Hoy, the first time I ever heard about Amy Hoy was with twiststory.com, which is just a fun little side project, basically. And that was the first time I'd ever heard about her. And from that, I think I maybe started reading her blog. And then from that, I went and checked out Freckle.
Speaker 2:And you keep kind of going down the line. And with 37, the first time I ever heard them is someone sent me a link to their book, Getting Real, and I read it. And it was free online. And I read it and loved it. And I've been kind of a thirty seven Signals fanboy ever since.
Speaker 2:So it's funny how there is kind of these gateways that get people interested in your stuff and do help to build trust down the road.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think people probably know that. In my experience, the only mistake people make is that they think too big for their side projects. They're like, Hey, I'm going to do a side project, a social network for people interested in saxophone or whatever, because that's what they like. Yeah. And it ends up being a huge thing of, okay, comments, private messages, and then people can do this and that, and then, you know, they never do it because it's just too much work for a side project.
Speaker 3:So my advice is to really boil it down to the minimum side project. Rule is it should take you less than ten hours to build it. So if you can build it in less than ten hours, it means that there's a good chance that you will actually do it, rather than, you know, something that you will need three months of full time work to get out the door.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And what do you think about so it's kind of funny because you, in some ways, have like the way you've described how you choose to do a product or a project, you almost go against the lean approach, right? Which is you sort of start with a small thing and you validate it and then you decide to kind of do it big. So like with your UI design book, you said you just decided to do it, so you did it. I'm wondering what do you think about that approach?
Speaker 4:Do you think it's better to Something that you want to build to just do it and put it out there and sort of see what happens? Or take sort of a more methodical approach of testing, seeing what works. If it doesn't work, turning it into something a little bit different?
Speaker 3:I actually think that I do use the lean approach because all the projects that are out there are basically MVPs. It's just that I never go further than that step.
Speaker 4:Ah, that's a good point. I guess, like you said, if your projects like one of this kind of deciding factors is it should be able to be built in in ten hours. So yeah, I guess there's no like, I would say that does qualify into taking a pretty lean approach, like minimizing waste while no more than ten hours.
Speaker 2:That's perfect too because if you have a small project that took you less than ten hours to build and then all of a sudden people start they just go crazy over it and they start asking you for more features and more support and etcetera, then you know you have a hit on your hands and that you could probably build it out and charge for it. But if you release something and they say, Well, this is kind of neat and cool, but there's not kind of that sense of it being a hit, it might not make a good business. It might be something interesting, but not necessarily a good business.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's true.
Speaker 4:And I guess even if, like, you know, you launch something because you think it's gonna be cool and it's gonna be fun to work on and you get it out the door, kind of the MVP or whatever, and, you know, people find it interesting and it gains some popularity but it never, you know, has sees explosive growth while it's still one more thing to add to your to your back pocket, right, of things that you've done that can bring visibility to you so that your next project has, you know, another couple thousand people that you could potentially reach.
Speaker 3:Yep. Exactly.
Speaker 2:And are are you thinking about building another big web app sometime in the future?
Speaker 3:Actually, well, yes and no. So that would be Sidebar, which is I don't know if you could call it a big web app, but I certainly intended to be my main project in the future.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about Sidebar. What's the basic idea behind it?
Speaker 3:So the basic idea is there is no place for designers to share news or what they're working on or when they write a new blog post, when they have a new product. I mean, where would you go if you wanted to talk about this podcast? If you wanted to advertise the fact that you've recorded this podcast, where can you do that? I mean, yeah, I'm asking you.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, right now, we've been just kind of building up an audience the old fashioned way. Like, just tell people about it and, you know, have people sign up for our mailing list. And we've tried Twitter. We've, you know, we're kind of going through that. We have the podcast in iTunes.
Speaker 2:But you're right, it's hard. Sometimes you go, Well, there's not really a good We wouldn't post it on Hacker News. So, yeah, where would we put it? I don't really know.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you could post it on Hacker because it's pretty product focused, but for something that's really about design, like if we were talking about typography or rounded corners or whatever, it would really not be a good fit for Hacker News. So in that case, you really don't have any good place to put it. So this is why I wanted to start Sidebar, and at first I thought that the best way to solve that problem would be with a Hacker News clone. So that's why Telescope exists. I got it for Sidebar.
Speaker 3:But after So it took me about three months to build Telescope, and after that time, I started realizing that, you know, a sidebar should be its own thing, not just a clone. So I decided to kind of go in a different direction, at least at first, and right now, sidebar is just a list of the five best design links of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's like if you took the five best links that I can use, and you send that in the newsletter every day, basically.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And I think that's actually a great idea because I don't know. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if it's going to be a side or a byproduct of of taking that approach of starting with curated content. But, you know, thing about Hacker News and Reddit is always that it starts like the the reason it's popular is because of the community and the like minded people that it attracts. And I actually think that there's already a lot of design link sharing sites.
Speaker 4:But the problem is they're not very good because most of them will be like, you know, 40 seamless wallpapers or you know, 10 or 110 free fonts. And it's kind of like link bait sort of stuff. There's nothing really more thoughtful and curated and by starting with a curated like a really carefully selected hand picked list of links you're getting sidebar kind of known as a place for, I guess you could say like the thoughtful or practical designer who's moved on from the pop culture design world, I guess. And so once you turned it into a full community, you've kind of already built that reputation for Sidebar as being that kind of a place.
Speaker 3:Exactly. That's exactly what I intend to do. And yeah, I built Sidebar because there wasn't any place with the content that I would like to see. Like, I care a lot more if Skype comes out with a new responsive site than about 110 seamless textures.
Speaker 2:And can you show us behind the curtain a little bit with Sidebar? What's kind of coming next? Where do you want to eventually take Sidebar?
Speaker 3:So my inspiration for Sidebar is of daring fireball, but multi user daring fireball. So what I mean by that is that I would like to add not just the ability for designers to post links, but also to provide a short commentary or, you know, what they think about that particular link. So that's probably what's coming next, and we'll see how people will like it, and if they start using that, maybe comments after that. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, when I say comments, for me what's interesting with comments on Reddit or Hacker News, it's not so much the, okay, let's say, what's really not interesting is back and forth conversations, like somebody says A and somebody says B, and they start, you know, having their own private discussion and then there's 200 comments with the same guys arguing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, destroys
Speaker 3:I don't the know about that. Yeah. What I want to do is something more like branch, where people will, you know, give their opinion on the initial link rather than on whatever somebody else said. So I'm going to try to orient the discussion in a more, you know, thoughtful and basically stand alone comments, almost like short like what, you know, John Gruber on Daring Fireball does, like short pieces on the content. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And are you thinking like, have you started thinking about a business model for Sidebar? Is that even something you're thinking about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's something I'm definitely thinking about. And it will take a couple forms. One way to do it would be sponsored links. So, yeah, like on Twitter, if you have a new product, you can pay to advertise it on Sidebar. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Of course, the product would have to be relevant to design it. It would have to be endorsed in some way by Sidebar. But that's one way. Another way is job ads. So a lot of companies are looking for designers right now, so Sidebar could be a good way to help them find one.
Speaker 3:And after that, we'll see Probably the sponsor links is going to be my first attempt.
Speaker 2:Interesting. And has the response been fairly good so far? Did you have a lot of people sign up for the email list?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think the response has been really good. I've had about 3,000 sign ups so far in Oh, wow. A month and a half. But more than that, what I'm really happy with is the response on Twitter.
Speaker 3:And if you search for sidebar. You can see a lot of people are really enjoying the newsletter. Another good sign is the open rate for the newsletter is, I think, 70% or something really Oh, wow. Like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good. I I
Speaker 4:think, again, like this whole this all speaks a bit about how, like, desperately people want curation in the design world. Like there's so much noise happening on Twitter and blogs and everywhere that to get everything boiled down to like, here's five links that you should care about. That's it. You don't have to feel like you're missing out on a whole bunch of stuff. Like, here's Read these five links and you're good.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And that's super appealing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, it's so easy to miss out on stuff. Like, you know, sometimes I'm on Dribbble a lot, sometimes I still miss out on Thread with, you know, 200 comments or whatever the latest controversy is just because there is no central place to say, hey, this is a cool, interesting comment thread on Dribbble, or hey, this designer has redesigned his portfolio, or, you know, Microsoft have a new site. Well, okay, Microsoft, you would probably know about it, but recently on Sidebar, I featured Snowbird, which is a ski resort and they have a really, really, really awesome site that was done by Go Rally. And unless you really follow Dribbble religiously, where else would you hear about, you know, they have redesigned their sites because it's not really news in the traditional sense, but I guarantee you will learn a lot more about design by just browsing their site for five minutes than, you know, checking out the 500 free fonts.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This Snowbird site is amazing. When you mouse over the weather and it shows you the weather for the rest of the week. Yeah, this is awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Sasha, you mentioned Well, I guess we were just talking about kind of the business model behind Sidebar IO and how you would like to eventually maybe make that your full time thing. One of the things that, like I know myself, I've struggled with and I know lots of other people had, have, is how you balance sort of your time between, especially when you're freelancing. In some ways you could think about any hour you spend not working on client work, you're losing money in a way. How do you, I guess, find time to work on the million side projects that you have going?
Speaker 4:And sort of like how do you, I guess, not only how do you find the time, but how do you justify the time in something that's maybe either gonna be released free or pursued as an experiment?
Speaker 3:Well, the answer to that is that I am actually losing money and not making a lot of it at all. So yeah, I made a decision
Speaker 4:I think that most people are when we start pursuing products. That's kind of the thing is like you've got to be okay with that fact.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, of my projects so Folio, I kind of earn a little bit of money with Folio, but other than that, you know, I had some ads, but I bring in like $30 a week or a month, actually. So yeah, I'm not making a lot of money at all, and I'm making a lot less than the average Japanese salary, which doesn't help because life is so expensive here. But I just made that choice that I would focus on my own projects for a year or two years or however long it takes. And the reason why is I found it too hard to juggle freelance work and personal projects.
Speaker 3:When I have any client work, I just want to get it done, it's really hard for me to, you know, just set it aside because, you know, if you do freelance work, you feel like your personal projects are not moving forward, and if it's the other way around, you feel like you're neglecting your clients. So at the end of the day, I mean, I think you have to pick one or the other. And if you go back to 37 signals, I don't know how long they juggle both client work and products, but I think they move into products as soon as they could because it's really hard to have two different focuses like this.
Speaker 4:I yeah. I totally agree. Like, trying to juggle both things and do it well is is incredibly difficult. Even for big companies I know that have traditionally started off as a services company and have built some products and wanted to switch over to product based income. Like, that's hard for a big company with with good cash flow and things like that.
Speaker 4:So are you are you kind of like so it sounds like your your sort of long term goal. You're going hard on on making your income eventually solely come from products. So in the meantime, you kind of like are you still trying to juggle the two, like freelance and versus the income from your side projects? Or are you occasionally taking on freelance work when you need it to help pay the bills type thing? Or how how are you kind of doing that transition into full time product work?
Speaker 3:Well, I decided to do make that transition about one year ago when I launched Folio, and it took me about six months just to get rid of all my clients. So what I mean by that is, you know, I can decide be like, Okay, hey, by the way, I'm stopping working on the website. Go find somebody else to finish it. I mean, I can't do that. So once I had decided to stop taking on new clients, it took me six months just to finish up on my current projects, support previous clients, and just wind it down.
Speaker 3:So since then, I haven't taken on any new freelance projects except last month where I did some work for a previous client on a new app that they're working on. But that's an existing relationship, so it's easier to manage. So yeah, mean, right
Speaker 4:now So it's pretty minimal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty minimal.
Speaker 2:And is that your idea? You said this year is your year to kind of work on products. Are you trying to build up a product business this year with the hope of you know, by the end of this year, you'll have enough income to just live off products?
Speaker 3:That was my hope. But apparently, it hasn't worked out yet. So I think I'm going to give it another year.
Speaker 2:Got you. So you're a year in right now and you're going to give it one more year?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 2:I love this background because so many people are working on their own stuff. And I think a lot of people struggle with that to feel like, How do I manage? If I'm doing freelance work, how do I manage that? How much time do I give myself to succeed? And you're right in the middle of that right now.
Speaker 3:Go Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 4:ahead, Sasha.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sorry. I think it takes For me, takes three years to build a company. So, yeah, first year, you lose money. Second year, you're kind of even, and third year, you start making money.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I'm one year in. I'm already a lot more successful, and I know a lot more than I knew one year ago. So yeah, I'm gonna keep on doing my thing.
Speaker 4:That's a, it's definitely like a tough slog, but I think that's like if you, like you've obviously got the chops to make it happen and the like will to make it happen. So I think that's definitely the way to do it. Like I know people who have tried building businesses well, and myself included, with Photojournal in the side after hours while doing something else to pay the bills. And it's you're in for an even longer slog if you try and do that. Whereas, know other people who have just, dove head first into it and almost out of necessity, they find themselves, they're like, Oh crap, we have to make this work.
Speaker 4:And it really lights a fire under them to make it happen. And I mean, it's still a long, long slog and it's a lot of hard work, but in some ways, you know, taking the plunge, it kind of forces you to move things a lot faster. And if something's not working, to get off of it quick and get onto something that is working.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me the question is, do you view yourself as a freelancer or employee who's doing a project on the side, or like somebody who has a product or his own company who does freelancing to pay the bills? So yeah, you have to make that choice.
Speaker 2:And for you right now, is it freelancing that's paying the bills, or are you just going purely with product income?
Speaker 3:So I went purely with product income for the past six months, but it was a really small income. Now I'm doing a tiny bit of freelancing too.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. So there's not really any hard and fast rules about this, but it sounds like for you, you wanted to create some space where you could really focus on products. I I think it's probably just like anything else. Once you need to eat, you've got to make some money to eat, but then you want to go back and keep working on those products.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or you can eat less.
Speaker 2:Well, there's no good bread in Japan anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of people mean, if you're a web designer and you have a high paying job in the company, you get used to a lifestyle that might not be sustainable if you launch your own products. You know, ask yourself, am I getting used to luxury too much, or will that prevent me from being free to do my own stuff? And that's something I try to avoid, so I try not to spend too much and not to get used to too much luxury, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good advice. I've heard some other people mention that too, that whatever your cost of living is, you know, a high cost of living is gonna be one of your biggest liabilities when you're building a company or a product. Because the lower your cost of living, the less money you need to survive. So you can just subsist on less, which could, you know, mean a lot if you're in the trenches building something and wanna keep focusing on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I mean, if you're listening to this right now and you want to build your product, just move to Cambodia and you can live on $200 month for six months.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know of a couple companies that and people that have moved to Chile to kinda do the same thing.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Yeah, I know that too. Yeah, I was saying in Chile they also pay you just to move there, so it's even better.
Speaker 4:No way. Interesting. I was I was kind of wondering why it seems like a lot of I see that a lot lately, as Chile seems to be the place that a lot of people are going, so that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They have a a organization called Startup Chile, they where pay you, what, $40,000 and Oh, wow. Basically, they refund your living expenses if you do your startup there for, what, six months or a couple months.
Speaker 4:No way. Wow, okay. Yeah, there's actually I think there's a company here in Edmonton that did start up chilimover.io.
Speaker 3:So No
Speaker 4:that's kinda that's kinda where I heard of heard of it. But yeah, that's really interesting. Cool. Well,
Speaker 3:Sasha If
Speaker 4:you take away one thing from this podcast, it's move somewhere very, very cheap and possibly dangerous. That's right. Cool, guys. Cool.
Speaker 2:Sasha, that was really great. Really appreciate you being so personal and letting people know what it's really like to be doing all this and some of the pressures. Because I think sometimes when you read other people's blogs it can almost seem like, Ah, these people have it all together. You don't see all the hard stuff in between. You don't know what it was like when they were actually building things and it was hard to pay bills and all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yep, that's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah, nobody has an easy ride even though some people make it look that way. Like this is never easy.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:And I wonder if people just forget too, you know? It's kind of like that with parenting. When you have kids, it's so hard when you're actually taking care of kids but once they grow up, you know, your parents say, Oh, it's easy taking care of kids, but they forget about what it's like to be actually doing that every day, you know?
Speaker 3:Well, there's also like selection bias where the people who are not successful, you never hear about them. Yeah. So Right. Or success bias, I forgot the name, yeah. You only hear about the success stories because nobody will write a blog post saying, Hey, I launched this and nobody cared and I didn't make any money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Or if they do, you won't hear about it because, again, so it gives a very skewed picture
Speaker 2:Now the whole I'm thinking that would be a great headline for Hacker News. I launched this, nobody cared, and I didn't make any money.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But then you only hear about the people writing those posts that get onto Hacker News. Yeah. That's right. Hear about the people who fail at their failure post.
Speaker 3:It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:That's true, that's true. Well hey, Sasha, this has been really great. You've given some really good insights on what it's like to actually be, like I said, in the trenches and building a product. So thanks so much for being on the show.
Speaker 3:No problem, this was fun.
Speaker 4:Right guys. Right on. I'm going sign off. So thanks again.
Speaker 3:See Yeah, you for having me on. Bye.
Speaker 2:A great day.
Speaker 4:Bye.
Speaker 3:Bye bye.
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