Shows
Indie Maker Journey20: A bit of everythingRecorded on March 22, 2022.Legos are fun and timeless. Mario’s business entity is finally formed and a business bank account is in place. Alan wants to play around a bit with the pricing model for DotPlan. We talk about the original idea for DotPlan, creating a short video pitch, dealing with landing pages, content, and UI for Japanese audience, and more.2022-06-1133 minIndie Maker Journey19: Legalize itRecorded on March 8, 2022.New Fusioncast features, plus other minor improvements and bug fixes. Mario will start working on things to prepare for launching, filed for a legal business entity, and is working on terms of use and privacy policy using iUbenda.com. We talk about pricing and figuring out possible ways to do a trial period with Fusioncast. Alan deployed his React Native wrapper app for DotPlan on Google Play. Building with Elixir keeps Alan learning new things and enjoying writing code. Alan will record a 10 min pitch for DotPlan.2022-05-1946 minIndie Maker Journey18: Taking the Elixir and Paddling to revenueRecorded on February 23, 2022.Alan got the booster covid vaccine. React is good but more verbose than Vue. Playing around with Alpine.js. Mario’s continued working on refining how Fusioncast.fm handles some edge cases. Upgrading to TailwindCSS 3. Dealing with challenges building with Elixir. Alan created a React Native wrapper app for DotPlan.io, plus refactoring and cleaning things up. Dealing with multiple projects and context switching. Mario is considering using Paddle for billing management. Quick plans and goals for immediate future.2022-05-1852 minIndie Maker Journey17: Progress updates and some of the tools we useRecorded on February 1, 2022.Fixing some challenging issues in Fusioncast recording workflow, dealing with a participant’s sudden loss of network connection. Alan talks about adding a time-card feature to DotPlan for a specific customer, the reasons behind it, and dealing with Japanese time-card business culture, and time zones. We’re grateful for our early customers who have given us their vote of trust. Alan is using a tool called Tango.us to easily create screenshots for a knowledge base with Eager.app. Using Umso vs Statamic for the marketing website.2022-05-1847 minIndie Maker Journey16: DotPlan has launched! Plus other updatesRecorded on January 18, 2022.Happy New Year! Back after a long break. Alan had some nice time off for the holidays. Alan also shares that he launched DotPlan and has a paying customer. Also added a timer feature to DotPlan, and pitched his app to a Japanese audience. Finding ways to work on product and on marketing. Mario reworked parts of the Fusioncast recording engine to make it even more reliable. Alan’s side-side project LinkSpeed.io is gaining traction. A simple idea with a great little product requires minimum resources and maintenance, and can go a long wa...2022-05-1751 minIndie Maker Journey15: The credit card upfront dilemmaRecorded on September 21, 2021.Alan continues integrating Paddle to handle billing for his SaaS. Update on Alan’s participation in Kobe mentorship program. Thoughts on pricing options for DotPlan. To require credit card up front or not, and handling the transition from trial to paid subscription -the nature of the product and target audience matters, no one size fits all.2022-05-1636 minIndie Maker Journey14: Paddling in a kanuuRecorded on August 31, 2021.Alan was accepted to a startup mentorship program with Kobe city for early stage founders. Alan is integrating Paddle using another service called Kanuu.io. Mario started a new day job, working remotely. Fusioncast backup recordings are now started/stopped at the same time as primary recordings. Alan has been using Linear for issue tracking and is very impressed by it. Getting feedback, improving DotPlan, and experimenting with features. Cleaning up the Fusioncast studio UI and fixing some bugs.2022-05-1643 minIndie Maker Journey13: Off the grid and backRecorded on August 17, 2021.Taking time off to disconnect and go camping. Climate change. Design work and learning design principles. Tailwind UI has been very helpful to Alan. Working with TailwindCSS. UI design challenges. Marketing and onboarding for Japanese market. Alan was advised to narrow down his target audience for DotPlan.2022-05-1632 minIndie Maker Journey12: Why we do thisRecorded on July 28, 2021In this episode we talk about starting a new full time job (Mario), problems with editing the podcast in Garage Band, which lead to trying Descript, and Alan participating in two business/founder mentorship events, and pitching DotPlan in Japanese instead of English.We also talk about our reasons behind why we're working on our products, and overall goals for our businesses. We talk about where we stand with regards to the idea of taking investment, and the hard-work/reward experience of being on this solo founder journey tackling different kinds of...2022-04-2057 minIndie Maker Journey11: IMJ × Justin JacksonMario and Alan are joined by a very special guest! Justin Jackson, co-host of Build Your SaaS, co-founder of Transistor.fm and founder of the MegaMaker community talks about the state of the Indie SaaS world and the importance of choosing the right market. We talk about the growth of Transistor.fm and dealing with a growing team, not being afraid of building products that you think might already be 'done', and ideas for connecting with your market quickly.You can try out dotplan for free at dotplan.ioSubscribe to fusioncast's...2022-04-121h 13Indie Maker Journey10: Product Manager ThinkMario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan.In this episode, Mario and Alan discuss the difficulties of choosing which product features to prioritize, problems with overheating MacBooks and options for Product Adoption platforms.2022-03-2645 minIndie Maker Journey9: Remote Work ReflectionsWe’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts!Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan.Alan and Mario talk about their experiences of remote working and Alan talks about his reasons for building on dotplan to improve remote communications.The guys discuss difficulties of using color when designing a UI and how challenging UI design is in general!2022-03-2555 minIndie Maker Journey8: Landing Page Learnings & Onboarding ObservationsWe’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts!Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan.Alan talks about the difficulties of launching a product with lots of different use cases, onboarding ideas and subtle problems with microcopy.Mario discusses the latest changes to fusioncast’s landing page.2022-03-2456 minIndie Maker Journey7: Obfuscation Investigations & Time Picker PicklesWe’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts!Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan.In this episode, Mario discusses his JavaScript debugging nightmares and Alan complains about cultural differences in dealing with time and laments about web time & date pickers.2022-03-2347 minIndie Maker Journey6: Life, Challenges, and ProgressIn this episode we talk about life challenges while trying to make progress with our products, technical challenges, UX/UI, tools, cloud services, and more.2021-12-1454 minIndie Maker Journey5: To unit test, or not to unit testWe're back after a short break! We talk about how we tackle testing of their applications and Mario details the latest updates to fusioncast.We also discuss the difficulties of knowing when to let users in, what are the requirements for releasing and how to approach onboarding.Along with the continuing attempts to try to convince each other to launch sooner rather than later! 2021-10-2552 minIndie Maker Journey4: Introductions (finally!)A little late, but better late than never - Alan and Mario introduce themselves and their products. They talk about why they've picked these products, and what motivates them to build them.Mario is building https://fusioncast.fm, a web-based podcast recording tool.Alan is building https://dotplan.io, a daily check-in tool for small teams.2021-09-1437 minIndie Maker Journey3: 99 Seconds of PitchIn this episode, Alan talks about his Founder’s Live pitch and the difficulties of getting your message across in 99 seconds and we discuss the benefits of talking about your product development on twitter. We also contemplate about the time constraints of bootstrapping and application while working another job.Mario’s App - Fusioncasthttps://fusioncast.fm/Alan’s App - dotplanhttps://dotplan.ioFounder’s Live https://www.founderslive.comAlan’s Founder’s Live pitch and Q&Ahttps://youtu.be/HRlq97sRgF02021-08-3126 minIndie Maker Journey2: Nuggets of WonderIn this episode, Alan talks about showing (and hiding!) primary keys in URLs, Mario shares all the new feature updates that he's made to fusioncast. We discuss our options for billing services and the difficulties of deciding pricing for our applications. We also ponder the length of an ideal podcast episode.2021-08-0240 minIndie Maker Journey1: It Worked!In this episode Mario shares about some technical issues developing Fusioncast's recording feature, some UI/UX design mistakes, and more. Alan shares about building his business in Japan, and the challenge of reaching different types of audience. We also talk about the difficulty we have of finding a good stopping point to end a coding session, creating content and owning it, adding in-product help features with video, and more.2021-06-291h 09Indie Maker JourneyTrailerWe introduce ourselves and the projects we're working on. Welcome to Indie Maker Journey!2021-06-1301 min