Benedicte: 00:08

Welcome to Slow and Steady, the podcast where you get to follow along as we build projects in public. I'm Benedicte, and I'm feeling unfocused.

Benedikt: 00:15

Each episode gives you an honest peek into our lives and share our struggles, our wins, and everything in between. I'm Benedikt, and I'm feeling excited.

Brian: 00:24

And I'm Brian. Today is September 29. This is episode number 250, like an emotion on the feelings, Will, but this is surreal, y'all. This is really... Thanks for the invite.

Brian: 00:51

It is.

Benedikt: 00:53

It is Thanks for thanks for agreeing to join for this Course. Celebratory. It's one one quarter of a thousand episodes. I

Brian: 01:02

know. 250 episodes. That's wild.

Benedicte: 01:07

That is insane. That is insane. I I don't think we ever remember the came in at around 100 and something.

Benedikt: 01:17

Yeah. I feel like you recorded more episodes than Brian at this point.

Benedicte: 01:22

And then we all three were on for a while, and then it was Benedicte and me. And for newer listeners, it's kind of funny because I'm Benedicte Raae. Brian is Brian Rhea, and then Benedicte is Benedicte. So we we gotta share at least last name or first name to be on this podcast. Yeah,

Benedikt: 01:42

that was the

Brian: 01:44

craziest coincidence of the cosmos. Yeah, for sure.

Benedikt: 01:50

Yeah. Only if, well,

Brian: 01:53

if I if my name were Deicke Raae, that'd be better.

Benedicte: 01:57

Yes. Oh, yeah. That's really... Anyways,

Benedikt: 02:04

Brian, how have you been?

Benedicte: 02:06

Yeah. What you've been up to in the last 150 episodes?

Brian: 02:10

I know. For the last 150 episodes. Let's see. I mean,

Benedikt: 02:15

you've been you've been a guest on the show, I wanna say, 120 episodes or something like that ago, two years ago.

Brian: 02:22

Yeah. Think something like this. Think something like that. So I'm trying to imagine, I really I should have looked at this specifically. But I think the last update was, you know, I've been at GitLab for a little while.

Brian: 02:33

Or I was I was at GitLab for I don't know, a year and some number of months. Not a great, honestly, just not a great experience. And, and then went back into consulting and everything. The startup I'm at right now is called after.com. And we do, you know, direct cremations try to make it easier for people to, you know, plan and do their their cremation.

Brian: 03:00

From the comfort of their company, comfort is a tough word there, but like true, but truly from the convenience and comfort of their own home on their phone without having to go to a fancy overpriced funeral home. Like, that's the pitch. And it's, I mean, it's a whole lot of fun. It feels very, I enjoy it, because it's got a real world component. It's like a real, like, genuine difficult problem.

Brian: 03:24

And, yeah, feels feels fun to be a part of trying to make it easier and better and more affordable for everybody.

Benedicte: 03:30

I have some experience now, it's it's costly as,

Brian: 03:36

you know.

Benedikt: 03:36

As if?

Brian: 03:37

It is costly as heck. Yeah.

Benedicte: 03:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Benedikt: 03:41

Is your mom still there with you, Benedicte?

Benedicte: 03:43

Oh, no. I actually moved. So my mom, who was cremated in April ish, she used to stand right behind me, but we were, somebody else is borrowing the house and sleeping. This is also a Murphy bed behind me, and I was like, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna move her.

Benedicte: 03:59

But she's gonna come back. She's gonna come back. I miss her. So she's gonna come back. She's, like, a good presence behind my my shoulders.

Benedicte: 04:07

But right now, she's she's upstairs somewhere kinda like just... And like, untucked under something. She's roaming around like exploring. Exploring. She's roaming around upstairs, know, somewhere up there.

Benedicte: 04:20

Then she's gonna come back. But then in Norway, legally, I have to... She's gonna go in the ocean. I can't keep her forever. I think there's different rules Oh, really?

Benedicte: 04:29

In in The States. Yeah.

Brian: 04:30

Yeah. For how for how long? That's really interesting. I've not heard that.

Benedicte: 04:34

Well, let's not talk about that because somebody might have overstayed. Got it.

Benedikt: 04:40

Deal. So I mean, she's not here anymore. She might as well know you're already in the ocean. Right?

Brian: 04:44

That's right.

Benedicte: 04:45

For sure.

Brian: 04:46

For sure.

Benedicte: 04:46

For sure. But I can relate also to what you said about real life component because I've been working at WE now with with bikes, and and it's even more real world because I can see them in my city. So I'm, like, walking around, and I can see, like, a We Bike, because we... They're all branded, kinda bike buy. And it...

Benedicte: 05:07

It's a little bit of an extra motivational boost to to kinda have that real world component after so many years of being chronically online.

Brian: 05:19

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree.

Benedicte: 05:21

What were you gonna

Benedikt: 05:22

ask, I just checked the notes, and it was episode 195 when we were last on, on 02/06/2024.

Brian: 05:32

So... February 24.

Benedikt: 05:36

'55.

Brian: 05:37

Yeah. So... Yeah. So later later that year is when I joined after.com. Mhmm.

Benedicte: 05:44

Yeah. Because I think you were working on, like, an AI version of the user... Like, doing user research of the jobs to be done.

Brian: 05:54

Yes. Yeah. I was working on a... Yeah. Every now and then, I kinda kick myself that I didn't stick with that one a little bit longer.

Brian: 06:03

So it kind of flattened out a little bit. It's called job lens. And it was, yeah, it was like, know, jobs to be done research with AI. And I mean, the Yeah, and like, the way I stumbled on it was like, was doing jobs to be done consulting work. And I would, I would do my work, you know, completely isolated, you know, just me as I had always done it.

Brian: 06:29

And then in parallel over here, I'd be like, Okay, what what if I had not done any of this work, and was only using AI? And, and like, the overlap was like 80%. Like, there was always stuff that I was finding that that the AI at the time, you know, this is like 4.0. You know, wasn't finding. But like, that was, I don't know, there's, I've always felt like, like, my take has always been anybody saying that AI will never be able to do fill in the blank, like, I just don't agree.

Brian: 07:05

Like, we can argue about whether or not like, that's a good or a bad thing. And like what the impacts are going to be. But I fundamentally disagree with the AI will never be able to blank. I think that's actually a real problem that we have to solve. But like, even way back then at the time, was like, wow, this legitimately good.

Brian: 07:25

This is already good.

Benedicte: 07:28

Remember you being early. You were being early. You were probably too early, right? If you'd started working on this idea in I would say mid last year, like a year ago, even like a little bit later, people would have been much more receptive to the idea.

Brian: 07:45

Yeah. Could be. Yeah. Yeah. Could be.

Brian: 07:48

I think I I wasn't daring enough with it. Like, I think I was a little I Yeah, I was I was a little concerned about the implications because so many people in my network are jobs to be done researchers, you know, and I'm like, I was, I was not bold enough about like, Hey, this freaking works. This is 80% as good as we are now. And it's only getting better. And there was something about that, that I was like, I don't know if I want to be the guy that's saying your job is irrelevant.

Brian: 08:23

And, and so I didn't. Yeah, anyway. And now here we are, like software engineers. Looking down the... Staring Fable five in the face.

Benedikt: 08:37

Yep. Yep.

Brian: 08:38

What what are y'all what are y'all... Yeah. What are you... What's what's happening with you guys on that? What are y'all thinking?

Benedicte: 08:43

Do you wanna start, Benedicte?

Benedikt: 08:47

Yeah. I mean, there's no denying that we, at least on the engineering side of things, are using AI a lot these days. I'm still conflicted about it in a way. Like, I don't deny that it's useful. I'm not sure it makes me faster.

Benedikt: 09:06

It makes me more ambitious. That's what we noticed for sure. But it's not necessarily... I mean, it feels like, yes, you're maybe shipping bigger things, but you're not shipping them faster because they're now bigger things. Therefore, more things to consider, more things to think about, more things to polish.

Benedikt: 09:25

And even with stuff that you are just really pushing boundaries a little bit in terms of this stuff hasn't really been done before or not a lot of people have done this before, I feel like you get to a first version first very quickly, and then you learn about all the edge cases as you start using it. And then you notice how the UX is slightly off and how you actually want it to be. Whereas previously, like before AI, it would be somewhat the other way around, where you start doing this manually and very quickly run into the edge case and all the open questions. And then you have to figure them out and eventually build to the solution. I feel like now you get the solution, and then you have to poke at it long enough to figure out all the problems with it and then think about fixing the problems.

Benedikt: 10:22

And in total, those two compared are probably taking the same amount of time, I want to say, but it's hard to quantify. I guess it's more like a gut feeling type of thing. What I really enjoy, especially with the more ambitious stuff that I work on these days, is I get to the refactoring state immediately. You type your prompt, you get a first version, then you can look at it and be like, Yeah, this needs to be different. We need to slice and dice this differently and move this over there and move that over here.

Benedikt: 10:59

Some might argue that it's useless to do this at this point and the code doesn't matter anymore. I still don't quite agree or I don't want to agree, I guess, because I've always found that if I spent that time to get the architecture right, the subsequent work AI does is also better because the boundaries are clearer and the concerns are better structured and stuff like that. So I still feel like there's some value in that. But yeah, no denying that software development at Userlist is way different than what it was a year ago.

Benedicte: 11:34

Yeah, I was totally in the AI psychosis, I would say. In January, February, I was having so much fun. It would amounted to something super useful, but it was, like, in the kind of, like, rabbit hole of, like, learning. It was a long time since I've kind of learned something new or experienced with something new, and that was a lot of fun. But when I came out of that and, like, use it for software development, I would say the software development part is a little bit more boring.

Benedicte: 12:05

Mhmm. I still... But I still wanna hand type it. Like, you know, I'm I'm over that. Like, I I don't wanna do that, but the job has shifted very...

Benedicte: 12:14

And I saw somebody talk about it, like, you know, a lot of the job was, like, little problem solving throughout the day, and you get kinda, like, the dopamine hit of, like, problem solving or, like, figuring things out. While now you're not figuring it out. You're kinda, like, sending somebody off in in the direction to do it. And for we, which is... It's such, like, a crud app.

Benedicte: 12:36

Like, I'm not on the forefront like Benedicte. Like, I'm not figuring out how to send millions of emails without any delay and all of that stuff. So it does really, really well. Right? So it's more about figuring out what we're making, why we're making it.

Benedicte: 12:50

And that is still fun, but I do... And I think I, like, wrote about this even in the beginning of the year. It's like, it takes away the breaks that we're just making it. Like, when you're typing something out, you're on a... Like, you're using a different part of your brain.

Benedicte: 13:03

Like, you're problem solving, and then you're typing, and you're problem solving, and then you're typing. So I've noticed I have to be much more mindful of, like, going for a walk or do something differently if I'm not gonna be hand typing everything. And in that regard, I'm not gonna be... And I see this now with a lot of friends too that thought they were gonna be productive for the same amount of time. Like, okay.

Benedicte: 13:27

Well, now I can code five times as much because I can just prompt AI for seven hours every day. And you can do that for a couple of months. But then I've seen everyone and myself included, you're like, no. I can't do that. I can only do that for, like, three hours, maybe four.

Benedicte: 13:43

So I'm not producing anything more as long as we're still kinda running the AIs. But I do have friends now who, you know, have these, like, team of agents who are kinda running themselves, which then you're in a different territory. But also, we don't need to move that fast. I don't think we should move that fast with what I'm doing at We, where we just need to slowly replace things over time. And and there's people...

Benedicte: 14:05

We even noticed that now we changed support system. You know, there's people in the business. They need to learn the new system. I can't just, like, throw new things at them every week for them to to start using in the workshop and in the... So even if I can code it that fast, like, I shouldn't code it.

Benedicte: 14:21

Or not me. The AI can code it that fast, like, I shouldn't. So I'm I'm conflicted in the sense that... Not conflicted. I just...

Benedicte: 14:30

We... I just need to live differently, I guess. And then I went on an analog, like, spree this this summer, like, doing my plumbing chorus and my carpentry chorus and just wanting to, like, make stuff with my hands.

Brian: 14:51

Actual human hands.

Benedicte: 14:52

Yeah. Actual human hands. And I think that was spurred on by AI, but then on the other hand, I've seen software developers at my age do this before AI too. Like, I've seen 40 plus or, you know, software developers getting into woodworking before. Like, that is not a new thing.

Benedicte: 15:10

I

Benedikt: 15:10

I For sure.

Benedicte: 15:11

Know, I I feel like that's because of AI, but I don't think so. I think just that we... And like you said, you know, you're you're working on something that has a real world component, and I said that with we as well. I, you know, I think staring at a screen, chronically online and living chronically online for, you know, a lot of my my formative years, you're... In the end, you're just like, I have to get go out and like prune my roses and just be in the physical world because I...

Benedicte: 15:42

It it just doesn't work anymore for for the brain. Mhmm. I believe people have philosophized over this in much better ways than me before. And there's probably books and poems and art about this that we should lean into. Right.

Benedicte: 15:57

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. How about you, Brian? Are you, like, coding more now in a way?

Benedicte: 16:04

Or are you, like, being more technical because of AI? Or Well... Like, what... How has your job changed? Like, are you making prototypes that somebody else can build or, you know, taking your research further into, like, product?

Benedicte: 16:19

Or what's your role?

Brian: 16:20

What's really what's what's really interesting about being at After is that... I mean, I've always been able to, like, full stack Ruby on Rails. But this... Our entire stack is react and just all sorts of other stuff that I never even learned and and still have not learned. And yet, I create PRs for, you know, changes and features that I want to see.

Brian: 16:48

And so, yeah, like, I'm contributing to a code base that I would either not contribute to or wouldn't have spent a bunch of time, you know, learning a language that no offense to react people, but that I really, really dislike. Like, it just does not bring me joy to and so and I don't so I don't have to. And, and then like a lot of just the other like menial, product manager type stuff, because I don't have any direct reports, we're a product team of one me. And so like all the product manager stuff that needs to get done that I wouldn't want to do that's more like admin y and you know, stuff like that, like that gets done to a degree. It's still like I, you know, I still have to do a ton of review, etc, etc.

Brian: 17:34

It really does feel like you have a couple of you know, junior employees, which I think is like, the common and pretty accurate description of what the workflow is like. So that's, that's all good. I feel like the thing that I've really, really noticed over like, probably the good last year, that I am like, I think I hear other people talking about this, I think it's like an actual real issue is, I don't know the last time I felt like I ended a day in flow. Whereas, like back in the days of, you know, app development, I could put on my headphones, I would put on an album, and for eight hours would just like be in flow. I don't remember the last time I felt like I was in flow for even an hour or two.

Benedikt: 18:21

That is interesting, though. I... Like, last week I was in Iceland, so I didn't do any of it. But the week before, I felt like it wasn't flow the entire week. Really?

Benedikt: 18:32

And that was mostly... Well, maybe not the entire week, but good long stretches of time working with the AI and really pushing stuff forward. And similar to what Benedicte said earlier about in the beginning of this year, being even in this hype state of doing nothing else but working, that still happens to me. Not always, but the week before. What's your

Brian: 19:03

loop that you felt like, Okay, give input, get something back, return?

Benedikt: 19:11

Basically that. Yeah. Write the first version, then prompt it to change it, prompt it to change it, polish it, polish it, polish it, polish it. And by now, it also feels like it's fast enough that the feed book stays intact because I think that sometimes is a problem, when it takes too long that you then wander off. But at this point, I'm basically watching it write the code, and I'm starting to review it while it's working on it and then maybe even start writing notes of what I want changed and stuff like that.

Benedikt: 19:42

And feedback loop just keeps me, I want to say, engaged easily for an entire day without skipping lunch because I forgot it's already lunchtime. Then, Oh yeah, do a break in five minutes and then, Oops, it's the end of the day. So that's still true for me.

Brian: 20:02

Yeah. I what you're probably doing that I'm not doing well enough is one session, one window, like one project.

Benedicte: 20:14

Not five of them?

Benedikt: 20:15

Yes. Yeah. I tried the five things in parallel thing. That was a mess. Mean, similar to just before, at least for me, the context switching just kills it.

Benedikt: 20:28

I cannot follow so many threads in my mind. So I can see that being, I don't want say a problem, but that causing you to not get into flow,

Benedicte: 20:39

Yeah. Because I feel like I can still... Oh, it's been a while now, but I... Well, no. I I did, like, a side project thing where I really got into into that flow, like, really feeling like things were happening.

Benedicte: 20:51

But as I said, I feel like it's on a different level, so I get more tired. Like, I can't do that eight plus eight plus eight. Like, it... I can do that and I get into it, but then I'll need more rest time afterwards. So the amount of, like, work hours in a week kinda or the output in a week is still similar ish.

Benedicte: 21:11

I would say it's higher though. There are things that... There's a lot of things I get it to do that I probably would not taken the time to do. I like to kick off like some simple things in the background and then go work on something that I can stay focused on. And then go review the simpler things, you know, afterwards where I know I'm gonna get back to that context because it's not that hard.

Benedicte: 21:35

But if you're, like, in a hard context kind of problem, then then you gotta stick to that session. I feel like. But I had one fun, like, because a lot of people who are not technical who are like, okay, oh my god, I can build anything. And I had that feeling now because we've just started homeschooling Lillian. I had to figure out the competency.

Benedicte: 22:02

They're called competency goals in our way. So she's supposed to, like, hit these competency goals or actually... Or or be... See the subject or, like... And it...

Benedicte: 22:11

They've worded very weirdly. And they are... You know, you go to their website. You have to, like, click through. It's just like you can't get any overview of anything.

Benedicte: 22:22

And then I just started with Claude just describing what we did in a day, and it was like, that's probably, you know, that kind of learning and that kind of learning. And then I saw somebody said, you can actually... There's an API for all of these. And I was like, yes.

Brian: 22:35

Now we're talking.

Benedicte: 22:36

Now we're talking. And I got it and I got it to, you know, download all of them, rewrite them in kinda like normal Norwegian, and give examples of what we could do, and then make a little website that was more visually pleasing, easier to click through and scan through. And that's when I kinda got that feeling that I think non technical people have. Like, I could make this without... I I mean, I don't even know how that code looks.

Benedicte: 23:02

Like, I don't care. It's such a simple app. Right. It works. Like, it's, you know, we're not sending emails.

Benedicte: 23:06

It's just like drawing something on on the website. And I... And then I asked some other people, like like, is this helpful? And they were like, yes, I put it up on the URL. People are super happy.

Benedicte: 23:16

But, you know, I got there so quickly, and it was so helpful. And was this, like, little mini tool. And you feel like, you know, I I think if I'd... If I didn't know how to code, and I was able to produce this, like, I I, you know, I would feel like a superhero. Like, I could just make this thing.

Benedicte: 23:34

I didn't even... I just said, I think there's an API, and it went off. You know? And I need to know what an API is though. But like, other than that, like, it even crawled this page first.

Benedicte: 23:45

So it actually had like a kind of a concept of this even before the API. But then I I was like, okay. This is super cool. But then also, that superpower in a company, you know, I know development teams now that kind of would have then get handed this, and that is just like a prototype of something much more complex, like, you know, sending emails. And they're like, I need this next week because, you know, it's this easy.

Benedicte: 24:10

I, you know, I made it in two hours.

Benedikt: 24:13

Yeah.

Benedicte: 24:13

And it's much more complex. So I think it's gonna be like a period of time where there's gonna be a lot of of of weird kinda interfacing between kinda sales, marketing, CEOs, kind of, and and development teams Mhmm. Because they they, you know, they think what kinda like I made is as complex as what Benedicte is making. And it's not like getting these things and listing them on a website that doesn't need maintenance. But like a SaaS needs maintenance.

Benedicte: 24:45

Right?

Benedikt: 24:48

Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, I noticed that those one off tools that you can now just quickly write, that's actually pretty helpful. I think most of it isn't stuff you'd ship to production or charge money for, and I mean, who would pay for it if they can generate it themselves in five minutes. But I noticed that I'm doing that, I don't want to say a lot more, but from time to time, like recently. I don't know.

Benedikt: 25:20

I don't wanna get into the details of the why, but I recently built a little website that would read barcodes and then show you who produces that product in the supermarket. And that was basically Claude doing this in thirty minutes or so. And it even researched the product barcode numbers and stuff like that and built a database by itself. So it's kind of wild that you can just- Crazy. Fire off these things and they just sort of work.

Benedikt: 25:49

I mean, when I was in the store actually trying it out, it didn't recognize most of the barcodes, but at least some of them worked, right? So again, not good enough to ship it to production, but still useful enough actually give it a try, I guess.

Brian: 26:12

Well, hey, I mean, I'm just a guest here. This is y'all's house. So but I I do build

Benedikt: 26:19

this house, right?

Benedicte: 26:21

Do have a handful.

Brian: 26:23

No. I have a handful of questions for the two of you that that if we have time... I'm I'm not sure what the rest of the...

Benedicte: 26:30

You are very good with the questions. That's why we're talking. We were gonna get you to talk, but you got us to talk. Well... We have time.

Benedicte: 26:38

Okay.

Brian: 26:39

All right. So y'all y'all open for a, you're up for a couple. The first thing I'm curious, from the both of you, since Benedicte from episode one, Benedicte is from 100 and whatever ish. But I'm curious if there's something that you believed then, or that you look back on now that you've since changed your mind about. I'm curious, like, how the progression of time and like doing this podcast for as long as you have been and thinking in public this way.

Brian: 27:16

Is there something... It can be personal as well. But I am kind of thinking about like the business that you've been working on and, and sharing about. And are are there things that you think you've changed the most about?

Benedicte: 27:30

I can say an easy one because I was very negative when we... You were on talking about AI. So I've, you know, my perspective on that has changed. I was like, it's just guessing. Like, it's never gonna make anything.

Benedicte: 27:47

That was an easy, easy one, an easy one.

Brian: 27:49

That is easy.

Benedicte: 27:54

Other things. Do you have any do you have because you, Benedicte, have been working on the same thing. So, do you have any truths in your business that you've changed your mind about or evolved?

Benedikt: 28:06

I mean, the one thing that always comes to my mind when I get questions like that is that, do you know this poster? And I think we mentioned this before. It's like, we are not doing that because it's easy. We're doing this because we thought it's going to be easy. I feel like that.

Benedikt: 28:24

There's so much wisdom in that. We're coming up on year nine of building Userlist. It's freaking hard. I don't think I would have anticipated this being this hard.

Brian: 28:46

If you had known it was going to be this hard, would you have done it?

Benedikt: 28:50

I honestly don't know. I feel like the good or maybe also the bad thing was it was always working sort of good enough to keep going. Right? But looking back at... Before we started doing this, we had this exercise with the three co founders back then, envisioning where do we see ourselves in a year, in five years, in ten years.

Benedikt: 29:21

And especially in terms of what the company looks like, what the revenue looks like, and what we're going to do. That was just super naive what we came up with back then. And we keep telling the story of when we launched, or the plan was that when we launched, we're going to be at 5 ks MRR six months after. And I think it took us a year or even longer just to get to the 5 ks, which would pay for any of us, right?

Brian: 29:54

Was just

Benedikt: 29:55

this milestone. And sure, we eventually got there, but I think at least MRR wise, we missed the goal we had for the five year mark. And honestly, I don't even dare to look at the ten year mark. And I want to say that back then, when we set the vision, I think for the ten year mark, we were like, Yeah, it's probably sold. We're doing something else.

Benedikt: 30:23

Maybe if we haven't sold this, this is run by someone else, which

Brian: 30:28

is running on the revenue

Benedikt: 30:30

or the profits from it and everything's hands off at this point. Spoiler, that's not going to be the case. It's unlikely that we're going to sell it until then and it's unlikely that it will be a hands off thing by then. So I feel like that's the biggest realization, learning, things that changed my mind. And I guess what came up in conversations while recording this as well is like the moving goalpost thing, right?

Benedikt: 31:01

Like that, I wasn't aware of that in the beginning. But now I'm like, yep, you set the goalpost and then when you get to it, maybe not even to it, but close enough that you can see past it, then you actually raise, Oh, no, this isn't the goal. The goal is somewhere else. That realization and that learning is definitely something that changed the way I think about all of this.

Brian: 31:31

Well, I was just listening to you talk. I mean, think it's a triumph to have been able to build something that you can still work on nine years later. Like, not a lot of people can do that, especially in software these days.

Benedikt: 31:44

I guess. Yeah. And I mean, for the most part, it's still fun. Like, we still Yeah. Still enjoy it.

Benedikt: 31:52

So... Yeah. We should just keep going.

Brian: 31:54

That's an that's an accomplishment. That's awesome. Okay. Do you do what... Do you each have a a favorite episode?

Brian: 32:04

Or is there a... An episode that you think back on?

Benedicte: 32:11

I do remember the interview with the TL draw guy, mostly because he's been doing so much crazy... Like, their product has just been evolving and and doing crazy things. And I think, kinda to Benedicte, what he's been talking... That he talked about, like, it taking... It's been nine years.

Benedicte: 32:34

Like, he was talking about how he was obsessed with, like, vectorized arrows for, three years before he kinda got to the point where he started thinking about building a product at all. Like, he comes from an artist background. And I think chatting to founders, like, being in this community, even though I haven't had a product for that long, it's it's what I learned is like, it's gonna take that long. Mhmm. So, if you don't really enjoy, you know, if you don't really enjoy working on the thing you're working on, because you gotta enjoy practicing and not just being on stage, like, you do the band analogy.

Benedicte: 33:13

If you don't like being in the dingy, like, garage practicing with with your band, you know, you're, like, you're never gonna make it to, you know, your fourth or fifth album, you know, or on stage at all. And I think that has, in some ways, made me pull out faster maybe because I'm like, I don't wanna be doing doing this. And also, I have an immense respect for people who have the kind of obsession that he has. Like, I've never found that kind of obsession where you're like freehand drawing vector and then, like, arrows, and then that actually feeds into a product that just does that. Yeah.

Benedicte: 33:54

So I think I think about it sometimes when I'm, like, you know, what's my next decade gonna be? Because we're thinking of decades now. That's what I've learned.

Benedikt: 34:04

Right. You know,

Benedicte: 34:05

if if you're gonna start something worthwhile, it's gonna be at least six years and probably a decade before you see the results of it. So you kinda wanna, you know, enjoy the

Brian: 34:17

Believe in it. Enjoy Yeah.

Benedikt: 34:18

Enjoy it.

Benedicte: 34:18

Enjoy... Yeah. And also enjoy the journey. And I think this guy has enjoyed the journey. Like, know, him working on the arrow was, like, fulfilling for him.

Brian: 34:29

Nice. And... Yeah. Rehearsing in a garage is 98% of being in a band. Like...

Benedicte: 34:34

Exactly. Mhmm. Yeah. And I think I found that, yeah, just a little bit with, like, pow... Power.

Benedicte: 34:40

Everybody wanted to me to be, like, this hormone lady and, like, women's health advocate. When, like, what I wanted to be was a technologist, and that made me, like, pull out of it. Maybe prematurely, but it was also, like, an ident... An identity. I see a lot of people do...

Benedicte: 34:57

Making business kinda what we call mistakes because it's an identity issue, not because they're not smart. Like, you don't wanna be the person doing that kind of marketing because you you... You're... Like, your identity is not that kind of a person. Or you don't wanna be like me.

Benedicte: 35:13

I didn't wanna be a, like, a women's health advocate, even though I find it to be, like, an interesting and somebody I've... And, know, I would Of course. I love that some people are doing it and valuable. Yes. But, like, I didn't enjoy doing that kind of work.

Benedicte: 35:27

So I... And I and I think, you know, some people are talking about, like, founder product fit a little bit these days too. Like, if you're gonna be sticking to it for ten years, you gotta find... You know, Benedicte is still having fun with user list and the technical challenges and because you you, you know, you love that kinda, like, architecturing and that kind of work. But if you just, you know, if you don't really like...

Benedicte: 35:51

Well, now you don't have to code, I guess. But if you didn't like kinda coding, you just wanted a SaaS that was gonna make you a bunch of money, and you're sitting there nine years after still working in the same code base, like, you're not gonna be... You know, that might... Should maybe not be something you'd you'd... You should have done, I guess.

Benedicte: 36:10

Mhmm. I'm sorry. Back to you, Benedicte. That was a long winded answer.

Brian: 36:16

That was a great answer. Great answer.

Benedikt: 36:18

That was a good answer. And I'm not sure I have a similar one. While you were talking, was thinking about, is there one episode that stood out so much? And I think it's hard. It's hard to pick one.

Benedikt: 36:33

Not because every episode is amazing, but I feel like there's not one that stands out massively for me. I think the episodes that I enjoy the most... And I mean, you as a listener, this might not come to you as a surprise, but, like, it's not like we prepare that much for those episodes. And some episodes are, I mean, just the two of us or the three of us giving updates, and then not... Nothing else happens in the episode.

Benedikt: 37:06

And I think those are the bad episodes. Like, not that they're super shitty, but, like, the... I think the great episodes is, like, where we start giving the updates, and then it turns into a longer conversation about a certain thing that happens to come up in those updates. I feel like those episodes are always the ones that I enjoy the most and where I, like, hit the end stream button and were like, yep, this was a good conversation. I enjoyed that one.

Benedikt: 37:31

So those are my favorite episodes. Unfortunately, I feel like we can't really force it. I think this happens by chance. It's not really something... I mean, we could probably plan for it better by agreeing on the topic and stuff like that.

Benedikt: 37:47

But let's be honest, at least for me, this podcast is a side project, like a tiny side project. And I'm not sure it makes sense for me to invest more time into it at this point. But I I mean, we're at episode two fifty, so I guess I still enjoy doing it.

Brian: 38:07

Still doing it years later. That makes that makes sense. Like, the nature of the the nature of the... This podcast is like, it's as if you're on a long, slow and steady hike. And you you cannot plan to turn a corner and like see an elk or a moose.

Brian: 38:25

Like, you're just gonna keep walking and showing up and y'all start to have a conversation and then Oh, holy moly, look at that, you know, like, yeah, that's, that's, that's what it made me made me think of. I'm, I'm curious. What is the biggest change that you've seen in each other?

Benedikt: 38:47

I think the biggest hard

Benedicte: 38:48

question, Brian.

Benedikt: 38:49

Yeah, those are hard questions. I wish I had some time to prepare for those. I think the biggest change in Benedicte, at least recently, is just focusing on one thing. I feel like Benedicte has been

Benedicte: 39:08

doing so

Benedikt: 39:12

many things in parallel. Sometimes in parallel, but at least after one another. And I feel like this distint at we is significant in that regard. That has been a quite a long time already. And by now, it is mostly your one sole focus.

Benedikt: 39:32

Right? I think you got rid of everything else. And I feel like that is a change to the early days. Or maybe not even that long ago.

Benedicte: 39:45

No, it was February maybe? March? March, I think. Yeah. It's been...

Benedikt: 39:52

That's that's that's seven months. That's the longest you have focused on I mean, this sounds harsh. I don't I don't... Yeah. I know.

Benedicte: 40:03

I mean, there a funeral and a wedding in those seven months. I don't know how much I focused on one thing, but... No worries, at least. It... But but I'm calmer, which has a lot to do with just, like, personal situation have changed.

Benedicte: 40:17

Like, I've... I wanted to do a lot of things. I guess, just like, you know, to keep my mind off of other things. And just like having to keep going and not sitting down and and actually Mhmm. Thinking about about like where or what you wanna do and or where you're, you know, where you are in life.

Benedicte: 40:37

So I am trying so hard not to start anything new right now. It it was easy for a couple of months, but now the itches the itches, you know, it's itch... It's it's itching. But I think we're very mindful the whole family kinda, like, we need now to, like, think in the next, like, what the next decade, like we talked about. And like, have a plan that is semi coherent where we kinda all fit together and we can see ourselves doing things for the next decade.

Benedicte: 41:12

But I also have, you know, I'm older, I'm calmer. So it's not as scary anymore to think about doing the same thing for that amount of time. And to Benedicte, I think I think it's... I don't know what's called... Because you were never, like, stressed.

Benedicte: 41:34

But I feel like you are much better at, like, taking time off and, like, just being okay with things taking longer. Like, you often say, like, oh, no surprise. It took longer than I thought. But but I feel like before, you were more like, and I should have been better, you know, at planning that or should have been different. But now it feels like you're, you know, you're okay with things taking the time it takes and also taking time off, which is new for you.

Benedicte: 42:01

He went on a vacation without his laptop, Brian.

Brian: 42:04

Woah. Oh, you didn't turn

Benedicte: 42:06

it on, at least.

Benedikt: 42:07

I didn't turn it on.

Benedicte: 42:08

Didn't turn it on.

Brian: 42:08

Sorry. You

Benedicte: 42:09

didn't turn it on.

Benedikt: 42:10

The next step is... I'm not...

Benedicte: 42:11

Next step. No. I was telling you not to take it, and you were like, okay. Next trip. We're getting there.

Benedicte: 42:17

Okay.

Benedikt: 42:18

Yeah. I think the team needs to grow before I can safely do that. But... Yeah. I mean, at this point, I'm able to take vacations and be sure the team takes care of everything day to day, and I only need a laptop for when stuff is on fire, which luckily hasn't happened in a while.

Benedikt: 42:36

So

Brian: 42:37

Nice. When you take your laptop with you, do you also take your charging cable? Yes. Yes. Laptop?

Brian: 42:45

Laptop, no charging cable, no laptop.

Benedikt: 42:49

No. No. No. It's like... It's a full setup.

Benedikt: 42:51

Headphones, charger cable, and all sorts of additional cables that you might need to connect to stuff. It's still... But it's my backpack. Yeah. All

Benedicte: 43:09

right. But what about you, Brian? What have you changed your mind about overall these episodes even though you haven't been on them, but in the same time period? Right back at you.

Brian: 43:19

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's...

Brian: 43:21

That is actually hard to come up with. I I feel bad now. I think... Let me think through that. Mean, so for sure, I think the thing that has been confirmed for me is that you know, bootstrapped bootstrap startups are a young person's or not not a young person.

Brian: 43:44

I shouldn't even say that like, I my oldest daughter graduated high school isn't it is in college now, like dropped her off, you know, a month and a half ago. I even if I wanted to, I am not going to start a bootstrap business. Like, it is not in the cards.

Benedicte: 44:04

And well, at least in my mind, like, when Lillian is out of the house, I'm like, I will have so much time. Like, then I could bootstrap something.

Brian: 44:27

All the time in the world. The time in the world.

Benedicte: 44:29

That's bootstrap, never Ben.

Brian: 44:30

Less money than you've had in your entire adult life. And so Yes. Because you pay

Benedicte: 44:37

for college in The States. Sorry. Yes.

Brian: 44:40

Yes. Yes. Do. Yes. Okay.

Benedicte: 44:42

Minor notes. Sorry. I was thinking in a different system. Back to you, Brian.

Brian: 44:48

Perhaps a more enlightened system who's to say? But oh, gosh, so where was that? Where was I going with that?

Benedicte: 44:56

So I know I didn't want to bootstrap.

Brian: 44:58

Yeah, so like that that has been totally, totally confirmed that I'm not going to bootstrap a business. And maybe that so maybe that's the thing that has changed is I have always thought like, okay, what what could I build? What could I do? What could I build? What could I spin up?

Brian: 45:21

What side project could I could I do? And I think I'm realizing side projects are done for a good five years, or at least like material investment into a a side project. So I think that that has I think that that has changed. It's changed the way I've thought about what would a what would a side hustle or like side consulting look like? That feels like, yeah, I don't know, like I even inside feel like, because it feels like letting go of a dream, to be totally honest.

Brian: 46:00

Yeah. I was about to ask that if you

Benedikt: 46:03

feel like your personality changed or your identity changed. We alluded to this earlier of having this, I'm an entrepreneurial side project type person and maybe that identity shifts over time.

Brian: 46:24

Yeah, yes, which does not feel great. Don't want to Let

Benedikt: 46:31

go of that.

Brian: 46:32

Yeah, I don't want to let go of Brian is an entrepreneur and builder. And no, Brian is a reliable, experienced employee at a company. Like, I don't wanna make that Yeah. Yeah. Don't wanna make that change yet.

Brian: 46:48

So anyway Makes sense.

Benedicte: 46:50

It's a very mature thing, though, to let go of identities if you can get to the point.

Brian: 46:56

I agree with that.

Benedicte: 46:57

Yeah. But it's so hard. It's Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Benedikt: 47:03

It's easier to, like, add more traits to the identity than to let let go

Brian: 47:09

of Just like pruning code or a product, no, new feature. But I remember building that feature. Don't want to delete that. Two people use it.

Benedicte: 47:23

But do you think it helps that you're in a good... It seems like you found a place where... Like, where you're happy. Like, you're...

Brian: 47:31

Yeah. You enjoy the the company. I I believe in the mission for sure. Like, that's that's massive. Mhmm.

Brian: 47:40

You know? Like, I can I can go for a long long way on mission and vision? Mhmm. And, yeah, that's that's really, really important.

Benedicte: 47:50

And it's still in, like, in the startup ish kind of thing because I've done consulting for a larger organizations and and, you know, testing a lot of things, as we said, over the years. And and Yeah. I have... It... I think it's...

Benedicte: 48:05

I find it harder to figure out what I want, but it's easy to, like, be, like, not that. Like, you know, I'm not gonna be working be working in a company that has 10,000 employees. Like, that is not a good fit. I could be an engineering senior something in a smaller company, kinda like I am at We, but we don't have the funding to have me, like, fully employed at a good salary for the next ten years, probably. So I'll I'll I'll still need to have some sort of fraction that's outside of We, and I need to figure out what that is.

Benedicte: 48:41

But I have some time. But, you know, working, that's what I noticed at We Too, that it's it's a small scale. It feels like we're building it together. Mhmm. It's, you know, it's it's a lot of the same vibes.

Benedicte: 48:56

It might not be my original idea, but I realized, like, I'm I'm I'm totally fine with that, you know. Yeah. I'm even thinking that, you know, maybe the next decade, like, find an old Norwegian SaaS and buy it and run that instead of building something from scratch. Like before I wanted to build something from scratch, now I'm like, okay, maybe I just wanna like operate something or or like run a business and and might even have like, know, employees, which I... You know, two, three years ago when when I was managing my mom's situation, I was like, I don't wanna be responsible for one other per...

Benedicte: 49:36

Like, I I cannot be responsible for, like, even half a person. Right. But then I'm thinking, you know, when Lillian is 16 and don't really need me that much anymore, like, maybe I could take on an employee. Who knows? Yeah.

Benedicte: 49:51

Yep.

Brian: 49:53

Things change Yeah, no, we're, we're, we're big time still in startup mode. Like, every week, week to week, I get to work on a new and very important problem. So that fills my entrepreneurial, high agency impact bucket, big, big time. So definitely helpful to be somewhere that I love to be and believe in. So...

Benedicte: 50:22

Suddenly, maybe you make a funded startup.

Brian: 50:25

There's always the artist create...

Benedikt: 50:27

Well, yeah. I don't know about that. No way.

Brian: 50:32

Yeah. I don't know. There's always the the creative itch. It's perennial, you know?

Benedicte: 50:38

That's good stuff.

Brian: 50:42

Well, those are my Do questions,

Benedicte: 50:45

we have any more questions to Brian, Benedicte?

Benedikt: 50:47

I mean, I have tons of questions, but I feel like some of them are maybe better suited for not why we're recording. But I think we should wrap it up. I mean, we're coming up to an hour, and this was a good episode. Might be one of those episodes I really enjoy and look back to and be like, This was a good conversation. So, Brian, thanks for agreeing to join us on this one.

Brian: 51:16

Total pleasure. My pleasure.

Benedikt: 51:19

Little bit unprepared and I want to say short notice, but we just skipped a week where we initially wanted to record this to invite you on. So we managed to make it not short notice. But, yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having good questions.

Benedikt: 51:40

And, yeah, see you around.

Benedicte: 51:44

And, see around the interwebs. Bye.