Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats.
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company
Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Three bootstrappers talking weekly about building a software business together.
Founders and Indie Creators: How to find the audience for whom you build your product – and what to do when you meet them!
Learning new things, feeling like you're a bit out of your depth, pushing to the next level: that's the job of being an entrepreneur, and Colleen and Michele are both experiencing that in different ways. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a y…
Michele and Colleen catch up on Michele's conference talks... and try to figure out how to make her life work. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffi…
Folks seem to love our casual banter, so here's what Zoom captured on our backup recording before we started the actual recording for next Tuesday's episode.By Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler
Colleen and Aaron talk through use cases for Refine that may actually get people excited. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
It's finally August, and Colleen is coming up on the deadline for Refine to support her working full-time... or is it? Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevi…
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Software Social


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Starting a Business - Even When Your Family Doesn't Want You To
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34:40
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34:40
Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/ See her husband Dagobert's memes: https://twitter.com/dagorenouf Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris fro…
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Software Social


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Vision and Empathy with Lucie Baratte of Logology
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39:13
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39:13
Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/ Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin And Mike from Ge…
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Software Social


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What's Hammerstone? A Broadcast of the Hammerstone.dev Podcast with Colleen and Aaron
45:38
45:38
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45:38
Check out Hammerstone here! Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin And Mike from Gently Used Domains, who has a nice personality Dave from Recut Ma…
Aaron and Colleen are both back from vacation with a lot of updates to share. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
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Software Social


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From Side Project to Full Time with Damon Chen and Michael Rouveure
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45:06
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This episode was sponsored by Calm Fund, an ecosystem of founders and funders of profitable, sustainable, calm businesses. Calm Fund invests early in profitable businesses that want to maximize their chances of success and build for the long-term. Calm Fund was founded by an exited indie SaaS founder, Tyler Tringas. Michele Hansen is one of the man…
Follow Vic! https://twitter.com/VicVijayakumar EveryOak, Vic's preschool communications SaaS: https://www.everyoak.com/ Try out HeyTexting: https://www.heytexting.com/ Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters…
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin And Mike from Gently Used Domains, who has a nice personality Dave from Recut Max of OnlineOrNot Stefan from…
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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Email Outreach, GitHub Actions, and a Demo Site
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26:02
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Aaron got stranded in Dallas thanks to two cancelled AA flights. We're sending outreach emails and doing a bunch of ancillary product work. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger…
Check out The Art of Product Podcast and Default Alive. And of course, Colleen's favorite twitter thread by Nathan Barry. Also mentioned, Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on what makes the top 10% of founders different. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter …
We're starting to have calls with customers! Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin Mike from Gently Used Domains Dave from Recut Max of OnlineOrNot Stefan from Talk to Stefan Brendan Andrade …
Things are starting to look up! Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin Mike from Gently Used Domains Dave from Recut Max of OnlineOrNot Stefan from Talk to Stefan Brendan Andrade …
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Software Social


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Betting on Multiple Horses with Dan Rowden and James McKinven
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36:52
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Follow Dan! https://twitter.com/dr See all of Dan's businesses: https://danrowden.com/ Follow James! https://twitter.com/jmckinven See all of James' businesses: https://jamesmckinven.com/ Listen to No More Mondays: https://nomoremondays.fm/ Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a …
We sent the Nova email! And it didn't go quite as planned. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin Mike from Gently Used Domains Dave from Recut Max of OnlineOrNot Stefan from Talk to Stefan Brendan Andrade …
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Software Social


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Be a Champion with Zuzana Kunckova, Founder of Larabelles
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49:19
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49:19
Follow Zuzana on Twitter. Zuzana's website. Check out Larabelles. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin Mike from Gently Used Domains Dave from Re…
Check out Colleen's new product, Refine: https://hammerstone.dev Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters. Chris from Chipper CI The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin Mike from Gently Used Domains Dave from Rec…
Tech time is over, it's time to business. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
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Software Social


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Positioning for Maximum Impact with Zach Goldie
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28:55
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28:55
Check out Zach's website: https://www.zachgoldie.comBy Colleen Schnettler, Zach Goldie
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Software Social


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Founding, Selling, and Starting Anew with Adam Pallozzi, Exited Founder of Junior Rockers and Co-Founder of SleepHQ
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49:29
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Follow Adam: https://twitter.com/adampallozzi Check out Adam's new business, SleepHQ: https://sleephq.comBy Michele Hansen, Adam Pallozzi
The Nova landing page (with a buy now button!) is live. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Some big changes happening at Hammerstone. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburgerBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Bento. Bento is an email marketing and automation company for more technical-minded marketers. If you're using drip MailChimp or Active Campaign, but wish it was a bit more developer-friendly, Bento's the email product for you. With libraries for Ruby, Laravel, Node, and JavaScript, Bento can hel…
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Software Social


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Sales for Founders with Ben Orenstein, Co-Founder of Tuple
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53:24
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53:24
Follow Ben: https://twitter.com/r00k Check out Tuple: https://tuple.app Did your latest AWS bill give you a heart attack? CloudForecast sends you daily transparent reports that help you understand your AWS costs, find any overspends, and promote opportunities to save costs. CloudForecast takes complicated data and produces accurate, presentable rep…
Follow Marie: https://twitter.com/threehourcoffee Check out Llama Life: https://twitter.com/llamalifeco Check out Marie's learn to code YouTube recommendations: JavaScript 30 by Wes Bos Dev Ed Traversy Media This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol…
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightco…
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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Aaron's New Job, Balancing Client vs Product Work
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34:15
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Aaron got a new job! We're trying to figure out how to balance client work and product work. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger Sean: https://twitter.co…
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Software Social


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Raising a Business and Family with Anna Maste
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38:38
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38:38
Follow Anna: https://twitter.com/skulegirl This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experie…
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Software Social


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Finding Your Career Niche with Nate Berkopec
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32:41
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Nate's website: speedshop.co This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively t…
We talk about the future of Rails and how it differs from Laravel. Aaron has been experimenting with Cloudflare, Edge Workers, and Fly.io. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://tw…
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Software Social


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Special episode: Two additional ways you can help Ukraine
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5:53
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List of Ukrainian indie businesses/OSS contributors/creators to support: https://ukrainianweb.biz/ Donate to World Central Kitchen: https://donate.wck.org/ and let Michele know your donation is part of her matching campaign (michele@deployempathy.com) This is intended as *additional* help in addition to the many other places to donate to help Ukrai…
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightco…
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Software Social


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How to Use Twitter Effectively (feat. Arvid Kahl)
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36:54
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Follow Arvid: https://twitter.com/arvidkahl Arvid's Twitter course: https://www.findyourfollowing.com/ This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need…
Laracon is over, Colleen is speaking at a conference in March. We got paid! Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger Sean: https://twitter.com/sfioritto…
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Software Social


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Workshopping Pay-As-You-Go Failed Payments
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35:49
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This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with Transla…
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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Bonus: Talking Twitter with Matt Swanson
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1:38:39
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In a long bonus episode, Matt Swanson (https://twitter.com/_swanson) joins Aaron to talk about Twitter. Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Matt: https://twitter.com/_swanson Boring Rails: https://boringrails.com/ ShowCode: https://showcode.appBy Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
Aaron is practicing for Laracon, a lot. Laracon: https://laracon.net/ Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger Sean: https://twitter.com/sfioritto…
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Software Social


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Selling a Business and Scaling Another Amidst Tragedy
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57:31
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Read the post Jesse mentions about his daughter Leia: https://jessehanley.com/blog/2021 Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/ This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translatio…
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The Audience Explorer


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Steph Smith: How to become successful as a content creator
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42:39
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Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. She wrote “The Guide to Remote Work That’s Not Trying to Sell You Anything” and "Doing Content Right". Steph and Matthias join on The Audience Explorer for a chat. Steph shares two interesting topics here: 1) How she found the audience for her first book (and how she was able to write it in…
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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First Nova Install 🎉 and Prepping for Laracon
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48:40
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48:40
Our first Nova user has it installed and is trying it out. Aaron is prepping for Laracon and running out of steam. Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger Se…
Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/ This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of s…
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Hammerstone - Bootstrapping a Software Company


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All the Frontends, Onboarding Nova, and MySQL Stuff
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47:47
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We're wrangling multiple frontends all at once, trying to onboard Nova users, and Aaron did some fun MySQL stuff.By Aaron Francis & Colleen Schnettler
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Software Social


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Redefining Success with Chris Spagnuolo of Jetboost
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32:19
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Follow Chris: https://twitter.com/c_spags Check out JetBoost: https://www.jetboost.io/ Listen to Default Alive: https://www.defaultalive.fm/ This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language …
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The Audience Explorer


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Coaching call with Charles-Olivier Demers, founder of Feedback Farm
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46:51
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Charles-Olivier Demers joins me on The Audience Explorer for an audience modeling discussion, to figure out who it is exactly that he will be helping in his newly founded SaaS business. Read the full transcript of the episode here. Find Charles-Olivier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/co_demersBy Matthias Bohlen