In this episode, the hosts interview Adrian Marin, the creator of Avo, to discuss his journey from PHP and Node.js to Ruby on Rails. Adrian shares insights into the development of Avo, an internal tools and operations framework for Ruby on Rails apps, and the challenges he faced transitioning from a developer to a business owner. He also touches on the importance of positioning, marketing, and sales in building a successful product. Furthermore, Adrian talks about organizing the Friendly RB conference to foster community and knowledge sharing in the Ruby on Rails ecosystem.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:19 Discovering Ruby on Rails
01:34 The Birth of Avo
03:39 Challenges in Marketing and Sales
04:49 Transitioning from Developer to Business Owner
06:32 Insights on Business Development
08:35 TinySeed and Team Expansion
11:29 Understanding Avo's Use Cases
16:41 Integrating Avo into Existing Apps
17:27 Engineers' Weekend Experimentation
18:26 Building and Transitioning to Avo
20:24 Challenges and Benefits of SaaS
23:23 Managing Feature Requests and Development
27:03 Organizing the Friendly RB Conference
32:42 Conclusion and Contact Information

LINKS

- Adrian's X/Twitter

- Adrian's LinkedIn

- Friendly.rb

- Avo.cool

- Ryan's Website

- Brendan's X/Twitter

- Brendan's Bluesky

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The hosts welcome back Jason Swett to the podcast. He discusses the recent Sin City Ruby conference, including notable highlights such as having Dave Thomas as the keynote speaker. Jason provides insights into the conference's history, the challenges of organizing events in Las Vegas and the financial factors leading to the decision to discontinue Sin City Ruby. Other topics covered include Jason's personal perspective on balancing multiple professional commitments, and some Docker debugging.

00:00 Welcome Back, Jason!
00:09 Sin City Ruby Recap
01:22 Dave Thomas: The Keynote Surprise
03:08 Conference Highlights and Extracurriculars
04:34 Challenges and Future of the Conference
11:13 New Beginnings: Jason's Career Shift
18:36 Improving Developer Onboarding
22:08 Challenges with Docker and Testing
24:12 Exploring Docker Configuration Issues
29:22 Balancing Multiple Projects and Burnout
32:26 Deciding What to Cut
35:48 The Value of Podcasting and Networking
37:16 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Links:

- Jason's Website

- Jason's Podcast

- Jason's Book

- Ryan's Website

- Brendan's X/Twitter

- Brendan's Bluesky

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In this episode, Colleen Schnettler, co-founder of the SaaS Marketing Gym, shares the challenges and successes of building SaaS businesses, and her current work coaching technical founders on effective marketing strategies. The conversation also covers various other topics like AI role in marketing content, Rails Upgrades and more.

00:00 Introduction to Colleen Schneller
00:14 Colleen's Journey into Programming
02:49 The Birth of SaaS Marketing Gym
05:32 Challenges and Insights in Marketing
08:44 Tailoring Marketing Strategies for Founders
17:43 The Role of AI in Marketing
19:41 AI Struggles with Nuance
19:56 AI in Cold Emailing: A Disaster Story
20:48 Using AI for Research
22:48 Rails Upgrade Challenges
23:29 Active Storage Encryption Issues
29:07 Front-End Framework Dilemmas
32:25 Maintaining Software vs. Rewriting
33:40 Conclusion and Contact Information

Notes

- Colleen's LinkedIn

- Colleen's X/Twitter

- Colleen's Bluesky

- Ryan's Website

- Brendan's X/Twitter

- Brendan's Bluesky

Send us a text