005 — Launching instrumental.dev (Rails starter kit + UI) w/ Brian Casel
But, yeah, welcome to Jam Sessions. Dealing with some random technical audio difficulties. But welcome, Brian.
Brian:Yeah. Thanks for the invite.
Ryan:Last time we talked, it was, like, January.
Brian:Okay. Yeah. That's about right.
Ryan:And I think we were both kind of, like, figuring out, you know, like, what our initiatives were for 2025 and what were you planning on launching and stuff. And, obviously, you were working on instrumental components back then, and I think you're also working on block editor and thinking about community and a bunch of other stuff.
Brian:And Let's see how many of those things I actually did and how many things I abandoned.
Ryan:Well, you know what? I feel like you gotta dig into some of that stuff.
Brian:Yeah. I'm curious about your stuff too. So you're
Ryan:Your curiosity. Yeah.
Brian:I I see you talking about starter packs. I'm curious to hear how that's going. I I'm also wondering about how these are going, like the livestreams. Are you are you getting, like, audience traction with this?
Ryan:I haven't done many jam sessions. Actually, you were the last episode. I haven't done another jam session since January.
Brian:But post, like, your own?
Ryan:I've been doing some, like, solo jams.
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:I've been lately, like, the last three weeks or so, I've been sharing, like, development of a new product that I've been working on. Mhmm. So essentially, I've been working on skylounge.social. And social. Actually, you know what?
Ryan:I'm change this audio. I think I know it's coming. Alright.
Brian:You want me to give you like a live teardown? Because this isn't gonna be the first time that I actually look at look at it.
Ryan:Oh, well, this is just a landing page right now.
Brian:Alright. So don't even tell me what what it is. I know is it's skylaunch.social.
Ryan:Sky Lounge.
Brian:Sky Lounge. Okay.
Ryan:Yeah. I
Brian:was gonna say your site's down. That's the wrong site. Loading.
Ryan:Help space to
Brian:converse and connect. X twitter spaces alternative. Oh, okay. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did did Blue Sky just launch their live thing?
Ryan:So they didn't launch live. Oh, man. That's even worse. Or do you have
Brian:Yeah. I just got echoey.
Ryan:Yeah. What's going on with that? I guess I'm gonna go back to this. So they did launch live status, but the thing with the status is you can basically have a live status on a profile, but the source can be YouTube, Twitch. They did it with the NBA, so probably any sort of, like, live TV streaming thing.
Brian:I don't even know. I I only saw their announcement. I don't even know, like, what it is. So what is live status? Is it is it like a live stream?
Ryan:It's a it's really just a a live indicator around your profile. And when you click on that live thing, it will give you a link to where you can then go watch whatever is live.
Brian:Oh, and that could be elsewhere. That could be like YouTube.
Ryan:That could be elsewhere.
Brian:Oh. So it's like just a it's just like a live indicator and a link out.
Ryan:Correct.
Brian:Oh, super simple. Okay.
Ryan:Yeah. Which is actually really cool because it
Brian:Yeah. I like that.
Ryan:Doesn't lock in anything.
Brian:Yeah. They're not locking you into Blue Sky. So you are building some sort of, like, actual live streaming service inside of Blue Sky?
Ryan:Well, it's actually off of Blue Sky, but the idea is that it would use your Blue Sky authentication. It's basically Twitter spaces, so, like, audio discussions. And then anytime a session goes live, obviously, it would post out to Blue Sky, and people could join. And then it just creates a space where you can have these discussions. So I'm starting with just, like, ephemeral chat rooms where people can kinda get in.
Ryan:And then eventually, I'll add, like, the fact that you can record it and then archive it and have it on the site.
Brian:Cool. Nice.
Ryan:And I think there's some tie ins with starter packs. So, like, essentially, I was thinking you could actually have, like, a starter pack associated with the room or session, and any guest and speakers that are in there, they get added to a starter pack. Mhmm. So I think that I'm gonna try to figure out some sort of like integrations across the other one and have one drive traffic to the other and vice versa.
Brian:Interesting.
Ryan:Yeah.
Brian:Where are you at, like, in terms of the those pro like, packs or anything else? Like, do you have, like, customers or revenue? Or, like, how is this working as a start as a start up or a business for you at this point?
Ryan:So, yeah, starter packs is really not working as far as a business. I think what it does drive is eyeballs.
Brian:Yeah. Because you got like a ton of traffic on it. Right?
Ryan:I was getting a ton, and I'm trying to build it back up to more. But it still gets pretty good amount of traffic. And there are people connecting and checking out their sites and the starter packs that they appears appear in. So it it's it's getting some traffic, but I think it's gonna be more like a lead gen that I could try to push other stuff to.
Brian:Yeah. Interesting.
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe if the traffic gets up a little higher, sponsors slash, like, kinda promoted profiles or content. Yeah.
Ryan:Could end up making a little interesting.
Brian:Yeah. So I would I would wanna I'd I'm curious to know, like so you have a bunch of traffic. It's sort of gone up and down, but is that who are these people? Are they just general Blue Sky users, which is pretty broad? Or is it, like, businesses trying to use Blue Sky?
Brian:Or is it, like, social media agencies?
Ryan:Yeah. That's a
Brian:good question. Clients?
Ryan:I don't know.
Brian:Yeah. I
Ryan:mean, it's kinda you know, I think even back in January, we're talking, I knew that January through at least March or April was gonna be kind of heavy with me for client stuff, and it totally was. And now it's it's kinda freeing up a little bit, and but I'm realizing that there isn't enough traction to just try to monetize starter packs alone. So that's why I've I've also been thinking about this, the serendipity of Twitter spaces and how having these conversations and then being able to follow people who are not only speaking, but a guest in the room and kinda having that finding like minds and kind of, like, feeding off that. I don't know. So I'm trying to figure out the thread.
Brian:Yeah. It's interesting. I think it's I think it's really ambitious to go for for, like, a social networking type of product as a business. You know? Like, I I like the idea of, like, community and and content and audience building and and stuff like that, but I think it's really hard to make that work as a business, as a bootstrapper.
Ryan:No. I totally agree. And actually
Brian:And I I think I think I made that mistake last year when I got into doing Ripple. You know? I think that's why I sort of like it's still a thing, but I think I'm I'm either gonna shut it down or convert it into some other something at some point. But like, it's not like, stopped thinking or working on on that. Because it's just like like, it it went down the road of like, there should be a social networking play around podcasts.
Brian:I still believe this. I still think that podcast audiences should should be better networked than they are. Yeah. But there's no real business there unless I were, like, a big podcasting company, and I'm not. So
Ryan:Yeah. I I definitely agree. Let me see here. I'm just gonna can you still hear me now? Mhmm.
Ryan:Okay. This might get up the echo on that. I'm so sure. We're just getting some reports of echo. But yeah.
Ryan:So, actually, I've so so with Skylines, I'm time boxing it. So I'm gonna launch it May 30, and I'm not actually expecting even trying to monetize it. It's more of a shake the cobwebs off, get out of, like, client thing, kind of, like, explore a Yeah. I know that feeling
Brian:for sure.
Ryan:Just explore a curiosity, and then just put it out and just see if it takes traction, but then move back to something that actually is something that is, like, monetizable. So, essentially, I'd probably end up doing, like, Open Graphs, which is, like, the OpenGraph image slash, like, OpenGraph tag management thing. Oh, yeah. I was talking about a while ago.
Brian:That's a good, like, small product idea. I saw who was doing that? Peter Soom was playing around with that a few months ago. Yeah. That's a nice one because and, like, that to me is, like, a very bootstrapper friendly type of product or problem because it's so small, and it is painful to, like, update and set up your OpenGraph image images for your website and stuff like that.
Ryan:And it's also, like, kind of annoying to update. You know, like, do, like, a a mass update or, like, a mass purge or, like, overwrite one. Like, you might have a template going, but then if you wanna have, like, one specific one
Brian:Yeah. For sure.
Ryan:To be able to swap that out.
Brian:Yep. I always have, like like, one default that goes on the home page and and any other page. And and then I have, like, the ability to, overwrite it on specific pages if I want to, which I never do. Yeah. But but that yeah.
Brian:And then, like, the whole process of, like, testing it to make sure it's actually showing up on each network is is a pain. And, like, I don't know. I don't even know how you wave a magic wand and, like, clear Twitter's cache of of that stuff. And, like, you know, like, that whole space is painful and important because, you know, like, when you wanna, like, promote a link or or run campaigns or stuff like that, like, you you want the images to
Ryan:up. Good.
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah.
Brian:Like, the worst is is that, like, broken image when you tweet something. You know?
Ryan:Exactly. Yeah. But yeah. So, yeah, I think that's the next move and the fact that I have these sites that I can apply it to. So, essentially, like, you know, custom dynamic OpenGraph images for every Blue Sky profile and starter pack that's on starterpacks.net as well as all the rooms and sessions that'll be on SkyLounge.
Ryan:So I have some, like, good case studies. And, actually, like, starter packs is getting kind of, like, crazy, like, bot traffic crawled right now on a Tuesday because I had, like, a 535 a $535 hosting bill last month Damn. On Vercel because of all the traffic to the site.
Brian:Oh, wow.
Ryan:So I ended up doing, like, incremental static regeneration, which is, like, basically, a way within Vercel, and I think Remix and some other frameworks do it. But, essentially, the first time you request a page, it caches then just serves that indefinitely until you revalidate it.
Brian:Yep.
Ryan:And then every other subsequent page or request for that just serve that cache image or other cache to the page. So, hopefully, that'll reduce the all the function calls of making those requests to generate those pages because they really they really added up.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I I wouldn't that seems crazy to have such a high bill just for a high like, I know you have high traffic, but it's not, like, crazy high. Right?
Brian:Like, it's because, like, you're you're you're hitting, like, the API so much.
Ryan:Well, the so, yeah, it's it's actually seems like it's mostly bot and crawler traffic that is actually generating all this stuff. So on Tuesday, I released that ISR update. And since then, it's generated, like, 4,200,000 pages. Damn. Which is actually I mean, I last month, I specifically made updates to make it to where the site was really easy to crawl.
Ryan:So I had a lot of, like, infinite scrolling and dynamic loading and all that kind of stuff, and I made it to where all those were, like, crawlable. Essentially, links at the bottom of those infinite scrolls. And it that worked, but a little too well. Yeah.
Brian:It's crazy. The site is looking looking good.
Ryan:Thanks. Yeah. I actually did launch prices and subscriptions and stuff, but not really getting many bites on those.
Brian:$7 a month or a hundred a month. Yeah. So like I I would wanna think about, like, who is this really for? Yeah. You know?
Brian:And I feel like to just I'm just a just this is just a guess. But, like, I think selling to agencies Businesses. Well, like, not just businesses, but, like, social media management agencies
Ryan:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Brian:Who need to prove their value to their clients by showing, look at this activity or this engagement or this or or this stuff that I that we're generating for you on Blue Sky. And they could be using your tool to get those insights and produce those reports and show it to their clients. Like, I I feel like they would pay like, that's something that they are getting paid for, so they they would pay for tools for. That that would be my first guess at at a product business like this. Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. I would agree.
Brian:But I have no idea.
Ryan:No. I I I totally agree. I think the I think the one thing that basically Starter Packs has right now that's a moat from other things is the fact that we have, like, 270,000 starter packs. There's some other sites like Witchpack that give you a list of all the packs that you're in, but they only have, like, 60,000 acts indexed.
Brian:So Interesting. So then, like, the other the other play here could be, like still, I I still think along the same lines of of, like, sell to agencies, but, like, you could be, like, the HREFs of the blue sky space.
Ryan:Yeah. Which I think is almost a totally different surface. I think starter packs is its own thing, and then you make, like, the what was some, like, the Twitter ones? You know, like, the Twitter analytics tools?
Brian:Yeah. Right. There was, like, there's, like, tweet deck. Right? And, like and and the I forgot.
Brian:Oh, like like a Hootsuite and stuff like that.
Ryan:Yeah. And, I mean, there's like buffer that you can do like scheduled suites on. But I don't know if they really give you much analytics on it.
Brian:Yeah. Like, that's why I said something like, h reps, I feel like a big part of their value, aside from all the tooling that they have, really, they they've, like, crawled the Internet, and they have all this data on, like, all these long tail keywords. Right? Like, that's how you're able to run those big keyword reports. It's because they have massive dataset.
Brian:I feel like you're you're building that dataset for Blue Sky. So so if you can make that, like, reportable for for the purpose of, like, marketing on Blue Sky, which, you know, like that I'm just thinking about, like, cases where people would pay for social media related tools. It it tends to be, like, agencies. Yeah. You know?
Ryan:Yeah. Totally. I mean, you know, they could probably do interesting queries where it's like, which starter packs is this person in? Who are the people who created those starter packs? Who are the other people in those starter packs to try to then figure out demographics and groups of people that they could target and who, you know, like, how to get into those packs potentially if they wanna reach those people.
Brian:Yeah. Because I also think about, like, even even just individuals, like, just the fact that they want to know things about themselves or their audience on Blue Sky. Like, if if you're, like, a quote unquote influencer and you wanna see, like, how how much your how well your audience engagement is performing and stuff, I don't even know if that's even worth paying for. Individuals might just be interested in that, but they're not interested enough to pay a SaaS for that. Know?
Brian:Yeah. Even if they're like a large influencer with a large audience, if that info is not valuable to them, then they wouldn't pay for it. But again, a business who's trying to either market their brand or or an agency who's trying to market their clients' brands. There's there's actually, like, client relationships involved there that that, like, unlock the revenue. That that would be my my one path that I would look at for something like that.
Brian:Yeah. I don't think it's hard, though. I think I I also think that selling to agencies is hard because, like, they can be very fickle, and and like, they depend on their client's business. So like, once their client once their big client cancels their contract, then they're just gonna go cancel whatever services they use, you know?
Ryan:Yeah, exactly.
Brian:Or they or they might be really interested in it, and then they're like, okay. I'll come back when I someday get a client. You know? I've I've seen that play out, you know, way too often.
Ryan:Yeah. That's kinda why I'm not really putting too much into starter packs right now just because I I think it's a thing. It serves a purpose. I added the like, a quick pack editor to the site, so it makes it a lot easier to create starter packs. And it's also a lot easier to add people to existing starter packs.
Ryan:So I kinda created a little bit of free utility. And, you know, you have to obviously connect your Blue Sky account to enable to use that. So I think I'm just gonna leave it as is as long as it's not costing me a crazy amount of money. And then if I can keep traffic coming to it, again, just using it as a way to push people to other products that might have a revenue model behind them.
Brian:Yeah. Cool.
Ryan:Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, obviously, with everything that you push out there and try to maintain, it's a it's a little bit of cognitive load on Yes.
Ryan:On how you can then move forward on future stuff.
Brian:Yeah. I mean, I I have a lot of projects like that where but for me, I I just lose interest in it very quickly if there's no business case. And and I have stuff even now that's just like, why am I still running that again? But but, like, the yeah. Like, I I don't like to create projects and ongoing tasks and maintenance work for myself unless it's worth it.
Brian:And then even then, if it's a if it's a business that has some activity, like, has customers and stuff, but it's not my primary focus, then I then I at least wanna get it to a place where I can hire someone to manage it. You know? Like like right now, I would say I'd say I have three focuses. There's Clarity Flow, my SaaS. There's my consulting, which is currently one project at a time Mhmm.
Brian:And which is like building MVPs for clients. And then and then instrumental components, which I which I just launched. Right now, my my personal focus is instrumental components. I'm solo working on that. I I do everything and built the product, the marketing, like doing the sales, doing the all of it.
Brian:So Clarity Flow, I have a full time developer working on that, and I just dip in one day a week to oversee the roadmap and make sure that my developer has a queue of issues to be working on and stuff is sort of taken care of there. I lately, I have been doing a little bit more support on that, because I I did lose my support person on that recently.
Ryan:Mhmm.
Brian:So that that could be a little bit distracting. And then the the other one is the consulting, which I'm in touch with the client, but I do have a developer working on that. So like, again, it's a similar thing where it's like one day a week. I'll sort of like make sure that my developer has stuff to do, and I'll and I'll review his work, and I'll I'll pop in and do a little bit of, like, UI work on the code base. And then I'll send the client an update.
Brian:But, like, everything is async, and it it really doesn't take much time at all. And so, like, that those those two things, Clarity Flow and the consulting sort of, like, pay the bills and and and keep and keep, like, some just steady thing keeping things steady and afloat. And then I'm spending 80% plus of my week and my time and my focus on building the next product. And right now, that's instrumental components. I mean, in my mind space, I'm starting to think about what's the next thing after instrumental components.
Brian:I have some But like, because now instrumental components is not fully launched, but it has its first customers and now I'm like, it's transitioning into into being like an active product in the market, which is more of like a maintenance sort of thing.
Ryan:Yeah. Mean, are feeling about it? I mean, that's kinda why we're on this stream is dig into instrumental components and explain what it is and what people get.
Brian:About it. I mean, within the past one one week, it it now has revenue. So, like, that that makes me feel better about it, and it and it, like, sort of justifies my time going forward on it, I think. It's it's not like it necessarily pays for my time. Like Yeah.
Brian:It's not a ton, but it's not zero. So it's I've already put in so much time already, like, like, pre revenue.
Ryan:How many people did you have on the launch list?
Brian:It's about 800.
Ryan:Oh, nice.
Brian:And I've only sent invites to, like, 60 or 70 people so far.
Ryan:Cool.
Brian:I think as of today, it has, like, fourteen or fifteen first first paying customers. And so, like, every couple days, probably, like, my next batch will be Monday, I'll I'll send, like, another batch of, like, 50 invites. And then I I think, like, pretty soon, just in the next couple weeks, I'll start to, like, just open it up to a few hundred more. And then, probably within a month, just because I'm impatient, like, I'll just open it up to the public for anyone to buy. It's like, I don't it it it is a product in the Ruby on Rails space.
Brian:So, like, I I don't have really, like, high hopes for, like, this being a huge, you know, rocket ship type product. I think it's gonna be it's always gonna be a very a very niche within a niche type product. And I think that the people who use it will, I hope, will will love using it, and and maybe they'll talk about it. And it's a tool that I use on stuff, but it's it's sort of just like one thing. And then I'm I'm just gonna kinda and I'm also gonna, like, use it to to, you know, make building apps much faster.
Ryan:Build the next one. Yeah.
Brian:Yeah. I think a lot of the content that I'll do going forward is, like, showing how to build apps really quickly using both Rails and and using AI. And this can be this can be a tool in in doing that. And, like, building apps for the sake of, like, material to show on on the YouTube channel and maybe get into, like, some training stuff. You know?
Brian:That's sort of what I'm thinking.
Ryan:Cool. Yeah. I mean, you're kinda straddling two different worlds. Right? It's like you have a little bit starter kit with some baked in stuff for what, like, off subscriptions?
Ryan:Yeah. You know
Brian:When I
Ryan:started building it for, like, a SaaS.
Brian:When I started building it, I was sort of, like, promoting it like it's like it's a UI components product. And then as I as I got into it, it it morphed much more into like the starter kit realm. So now it's sort of both. It's like a UI components and starter kit. It functions more like a components product because it you can install it as a gem into a Rails project.
Brian:And and so then you can just install individual components. Like, you don't have to whereas, like, with a starter kit, it's typically like one GitHub repo that's like one template for one whole app, and you can only use it if you start a fresh app on their template. Right? I do have a private GitHub repo that customers get access to if they wanna build a fresh app using that route, like a typical starter kit. But the recommended route is just install the gem, and then, yeah, you can you can install our authentication component, our commerce component, which is like a Stripe integration, and and more than just a Stripe integration.
Brian:It's like a whole SaaS checkout. Like, you get pricing pages, a checkout flow, even like dunning emails and like customer portals and all this different stuff. And then there's a team's component. So so it sets up your accounts and user models and and team member invitations. There's an admin dashboard component.
Brian:So it gives you gives you, like, as like the super admin, like a back end dashboard. And then and then all these those are like the big app components, but then those kinda pull in all of our little UI components. So like, all all those features are made up of buttons and drop down menus and layouts and all all the things. All the little UI stuff, those are all individual components that come bundled into it.
Ryan:Great. Done. Yeah. It's really cool. That's what I was gonna say.
Ryan:It's like starter kit, UI component library
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:Kinda mashed up into one. Because it's kinda nice that you can actually use those components for consistency, but then still have them already, like, pre composed into the pricing page and the checkout pages, and then be able to probably tweak those as well.
Brian:Yeah. And, like, the other thing that I think makes it a little bit different from a lot of these a lot of, like, the UI component libraries out there, is that, like, some especially in the Rails space, there's this tendency to, like, create these component libraries where they just invent their own component, like, templating system and or like Yeah. Syntax.
Ryan:As opposed to just like wrapping everything in Tailwind and then
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:Going from there.
Brian:Yeah. Like, I I just some of the stuff that's out there is like kinda cool and interesting, but I just don't agree with the approach of, like, inventing a whole new templating system and language. And and especially now that that everyone is building with AI and Cursor and Windsurf or whatever, like, the more conventional your code base can be, the better it is. Right? So, like, with Instrumentl, like, when you when you install a component, you are just installing Rails code, ERB partials, ERB views, Talend, Stimulus JS.
Brian:Like, just conventional code right into your project. And it's not like it's not wrapped behind these, like, components that, like, you can't even edit. Like, you just get the source components installed right into your project and you can just edit them. But, like, that is code that, like, you already know how to how to work with if you're a Rails developer, and your LLM knows that code as well. Like, it reads it just like any other Rails project, you know.
Ryan:Yeah. No. That's great. Yeah. I mean, I think this so you're seeing this being well received, like, by the people around
Brian:The US? Yeah. Like, the first customers, you know, it was good to to send it out to a first few who who immediately sent me back, like, a few a few bugs and things. So I'm getting those fixed. And yeah.
Brian:Like a a like, one guy was like, yeah. I just built three new apps with it. You know? The like, the other the other thing that I'm I'm still, like, experimenting with the pricing and everything, but, like, I'm offering you can use it on unlimited projects. Cool.
Brian:Whereas the other ones tend to charge per project. It's a little bit
Ryan:higher annual annual subscription. Right?
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. It's right now, as it as it's launching, it's like, the official price is $4.99 a year for a solo developer. But early access people are getting it for $2.99 for the first year. And then there's a team license.
Brian:So I built like a whole licensing system that sort of registers you and your device. And then if you have team members, it'll register them. So you can it'll validate whether you're on a team license or a solo license. But the idea
Ryan:is that into instrumental components?
Brian:The licensing system, I don't know. Like, I don't I don't know if there's, a a larger use case for that. Like, I I built that piece of it custom just for my use. Yeah. But but the checkout, like the way that you purchase instrumental components uses uses our commerce component.
Ryan:Yeah. Keep it meta.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, like building that whole licensing thing was way more complex than I thought it would it would be.
Ryan:That Yeah. Do have to do like a private gem repository in order for the
Brian:I started down that So it is it does it is a private gem. But I I started down the road of, like, being a private gem server. And this is where, like, my limitations as, like, a back end DevOps kind of kind of person come come into play. Like, I started trying to get that working, and I ran into all sorts of issues. So I so now the way that it works is I released a public gem on on rubygems.org called instrumental components.
Brian:And and that's just our installer gem. So you get that. Okay. You you put that in your project for free, and then then that has a command to, like, install the actual gem. And that But have to authenticate.
Brian:Yeah. That'll, like, authenticate or that will, like, validate your license key and download the latest version of our actual gem from our from our server, installs it on your system, installs it in your project, and then you're you're off to the races. Yeah.
Ryan:Cool. I mean, that actually might even be a little bit better. I think you kind of end up in the Ruby gems world. People discover it, and then they could The other thing. Click over and get the license.
Brian:I yeah. Then it it was also, like, a matter of, like, reserving the name. And so, like, I somebody already has a gem called instrumental. And it's like this gem that that literally hasn't been updated in thirteen years, you know, but they own No region. Gems.org/Instrumentl.
Brian:It's like some super obscure thing, like, downloaded by, like, a hundred people or something like thirteen years ago. Yeah. And I'm not I'm not even going through the hassle of trying to, like, contact them or
Ryan:Yeah. I'll obtain it.
Brian:Yeah. So so anyway, like, mine so so I I was able to sort of reserve and get the name, like, instrumental components on RubyGem. So that is our installer gem. And then when you do that, it'll install our actual gem, which ends up being called instrumental components library.
Ryan:Cool.
Brian:Yeah. It's a whole whole thing.
Ryan:Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that stuff gets wild. But that no.
Ryan:That's really cool. The how did you go about figuring out pricing?
Brian:Picked a number? Yeah. You know, I I knew pretty early on that I did not wanna do a free thing. So, you know, a lot of these things have either are just totally free or they offer like a free version. That could be a play at some point, but I'm I'm just not interested in doing freemium anymore.
Brian:Like, if I'm putting this much effort into a product and I'm making it as valuable to myself as I want like, for my own use case, like, I wanna charge for it. I I understand that's gonna lower that's gonna put up a barrier to entry and and, like, it'll, you know, it'll just be a lower volume of customers and users. And that's fine. I think right now, I'm just more interested in having, like, a a really high quality product that I could put a lot of time and and, like, love into. And for that to work, I need to I need to charge for it.
Brian:So I don't even know if $4.99 a year is gonna be the final price. That's what I'm starting at. It is a subscription. I know, like, some others do, like, a a price for life. I'm not really into that idea either.
Brian:I am sort of open to, like, adjusting it so that, like, you pay the fee for the first year and then maybe you have a discounted renewal. But, yeah, like, the subscription gives you access to all the latest components and updates that I'll push out, access to support, access to a customer's chat or community, which I I still haven't launched yet. I plan to set something up in the next week or two as like a like a customer chat space.
Ryan:Yeah. Are you gonna have like a Discord or something?
Brian:Alright. So I'm curious to hear your your take on this. Like, should I u yeah. I I wanna have a a chat space for customers to connect with each other, to connect with me. It won't be like the official place to ask support questions.
Brian:For that, I'll probably use GitHub issues or something. Right now, it's just they're sending me emails. But I do wanna just have a chat space where people can like share their projects and get and get feedback and be a little mini community of of users. Right? So I guess Discord is the thing that a lot of these types of products use.
Brian:I I just personally hate Discord. Yeah. And and okay. So but I I might just use it because that's what's most familiar in this space. And maybe I'll just sort of get over it and and learn to love it, but I just can't stand the UI in Discord.
Brian:And then there's Slack, which that's the one that I am a member of of several Slacks. And I I've come to, like, be fine with with Slack as a as a UI and a product to use. I actually like how Slack handles threading now. Yeah. You could have these, like, threaded discussions.
Brian:The thing, of course, with Slack is that, like, I'm not gonna do the paid version of it. I can't pay per user for a community. And if I don't pay, then
Ryan:You'll lose your messages after so
Brian:many Yeah. You lose history. I forgot what it is. Like, ninety days of history or something. So it would be nice to be able to, like, save threads that people can search and and bring up BART in the future if something has already been discussed.
Brian:And so then then the thought was like, alright. Well, maybe I'll use Slack and have some sort of, like, bot that can consume these threads and then save them to a Rails app So that's a thought. I don't know. And then and then I guess the other thought is maybe using Campfire
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian:From from thirty seven signals. I'm a fan of of them, and I'm a fan of their new once model. And and I'm I've I've been in one or two of these Campfire chats from other communities, and they're okay. I I I do have some issues with the UI. I I don't think they even do threading, if if I recall.
Ryan:Oh, wow.
Brian:I might be wrong about that now. But so the nice thing is that that's installed on my own server and it's Rails based. So I might do something like that. It's sort of between those three, like Discord, Slack, or Campfire. I don't know which one I'm gonna go with.
Brian:I I I might just go with Discord and see if I can learn to learn to like it. I don't know.
Ryan:Yeah. I I totally feel for you on that, like, that struggle between the the different approaches. I mean, the one thing you wanna have is a community within an app or an environment that people are actually in on, like, a regular basis.
Brian:That's the thing.
Ryan:Because I feel like the Campfire thing, you're gonna forget about it or you're gonna have to go remember, like, whatever weird URL it is, and you're not gonna get notifications and stuff. So then I
Brian:feel like that used to be Slack. Like, used to be that, like, everyone's in a Slack, so just launch a Slack. And I feel like now that that has shifted to to be Discord, if I'm not
Ryan:I would say in the developer product community, it's definitely shifted to Discord.
Brian:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think I might have to learn to love it.
Ryan:Yeah. I know. I mean, I agree. I think stuff gets lost in there a lot. But stuff gets lost in Slack too.
Ryan:Yeah. The threading is not feel like
Brian:I'm just like it it did take me a while, but I I've learned to actually like the way that Slack handles threads. And Yeah. And if I'm last time I was in Discord, I I I remember, like, just two weeks ago, somebody mentioned to me in some other Discord. I was like, where is it? It, like, took me twenty minutes.
Brian:And I'm a product UI person to even find the place where where I like, know I'm being mentioned. I can see the the the but I can't find the actual view of of the message. Like, it was ridiculous. You know?
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. The yeah. There's no there's no perfect spot right now. Maybe we need to build that one next.
Ryan:Yeah. No. No. So how have you been I mean, obviously, you had the 800 people on the list. How are you looking at trying to, like, promote and get distribution on instrumental components right now?
Ryan:Well, far. A lot of YouTube. Right?
Brian:Yeah. Actually, lot of that list came from YouTube, which is pretty exciting to me because, like, before this, I didn't really have a good distribution channel for anything I've I've done before this. It was always just like people either follow my podcast or or just have been following me for years, and maybe some word-of-mouth. And occasionally, would I would have like an SEO play that sort of works. But like, nothing that's like, nothing that can predictably bring total strangers into my product.
Brian:YouTube seems to be the first thing that has actually worked for that. So this year I've been publishing a lot YouTube content. Almost all of it is showing off instrumental components or showing my progress on building it. And then that sends people over to Like those videos, I'll send people to instrumental.dev where I have an email opt in which leads into a survey. And on the back end, like, there's a pretty long survey, like a lot of questions.
Brian:And not all of the eight eight hundred have like filled that out. Probably less than half of them actually filled it out. But like a lot of those like do write a lot of detail. And it's just really interesting to me to see people actually write multi paragraph answers into a survey, and they just discovered it through my YouTube videos, and they've never followed my podcast, don't follow me on Twitter or Blue Sky, they don't know me or my history or anything, just the YouTube algorithm, like, served them this video. You know?
Brian:Yeah. And it's like, that is a really interesting, exciting thing to me.
Ryan:How many subscribers did you have redoing these videos? Do you have a couple thousand?
Brian:I think today I have I have about 3,000. And last year, like, I okay. So, like, I've had my YouTube channel for, like, over ten years. But most of that, I was not posting anything. Yeah.
Brian:And then only last year, about a year ago, I started posting more. And then really in the last six months, I started posting like every single week. And I think just in the last six months, it went from like low 2,000 something up to 3,000. Still not huge. Like, that's still basically nothing in in the world of YouTube.
Brian:But I'm I'm adding about like a 50, two hundred subscribers a month right now. Every video I do probably gets between like two and five hundred views in the first month. Yeah. Which is really not not much at all. But some of these videos, especially the ones that are very Rails based, the algorithm is serving them directly to Rails developers.
Ryan:That's correct.
Brian:You know, who are sort of hungry for UI components, and that leads them straight to my product. So that's, it isn't, I think YouTube is perfect for getting exposure, especially if you are a niche offering. It's really hard. I still don't think I'm very good at doing YouTube. And I'm I'm constantly, like I'm putting a lot of work and effort into, like, how I create on YouTube, how I, like, how I go about planning content, the editing approach, the the thumbnail, and and the like, every every time I do a video, I'm trying to improve on one or two or three
Ryan:Demise it.
Brian:Little aspects of it, you know.
Ryan:Yeah. Are you as far as, like, the approaching rails, are you kinda, like, loading up the description of a video with a lot of SEO ish rails terms and trying to really flesh that out?
Brian:There's a little bit of that, but like and there's like some tags on YouTube. But like, from what I understand, that stuff doesn't really matter anymore on YouTube. I think that YouTube's algorithm Just
Ryan:the title and thumbnail?
Brian:Yeah. Title and thumbnail is very, very important. And that's not even algorithm based. That's just like, just it for like, I guess, step one is make sure that you are creating content, creating a video on a specific topic that answers a question or solves a problem. And and, like, based on the content, that's what YouTube's algorithm will use to make sure that you get shown to the right people.
Brian:So that's, like, step number one. And then step number two, like, once you are in the feeds of the right people, it's your thumbnail and the title that will convince them to actually click it, you know.
Ryan:Oh, so you think it's actually more like the transcript of the video that they're kind of then using to serve up to people?
Brian:Probably. Yeah. Like and there might be a little bit of, like, keyword stuff in there, but I think it's even smarter than that. I think I think YouTube knows what is this content about, and what's the what's the tone, and what's even, like, the personality of this person on the video, and and and what kind of user profiles is that gonna vibe with. And and so when that person in South Korea is on is on their YouTube home screen, the videos that surface from their algorithm, whatever range of factors they think that, like, my video is going to they're gonna find interesting,
Ryan:you know? Yeah.
Brian:And then and then I I it's a game of thumbnail has to be compelling enough for them to click, then they click it, and then it's like you have to sort of hook them in the first thirty seconds, you know, like Yeah.
Ryan:And today, we're gonna do, you know, like, whatever they like spiel.
Brian:Yeah. So, like and and, like, I hate I hate that whole game of, like, thumbnails and stuff. And I and I try not to do the the the cheesiest, most cringiest kind
Ryan:of Over the top exaggeration.
Brian:Yeah. And you do see a ton of that, like but you do have to play that game a little bit. And and I try to walk that walk that balance between, like, being authentic to who I am, like, my personality, and just not being over the top with it. But it it does have to be pop. It doesn't have to, like, pop and actually get you to actually click, you know?
Brian:Yeah. And then, like, I and then just trying to put a lot more effort into, like I don't really write scripts for videos. I still just sort of like talk off the cuff, but I do sort of script out like the first three or four sentences of the video to just make sure that like, I'm real I really have a tight opening that will get you to stay at least for now and try to convince you to stay through the rest of the video. You know? That's Yeah.
Brian:That's my that's my approach right now. I'm still still iterating on it.
Ryan:Yeah. I totally agree. I feel like the the toughest thing is, like, figuring out the story that you're trying to tell and then the the value that you're trying to deliver within that story. Right? And then condense it down to that one tagline or that that two sentences that just kind of hooks them.
Brian:Yeah. And like the other thing that I I think about is like, a lot of my stuff is it's better when I'm actually showing a product or showing some code or showing my design on a certain thing, because then I can like, sort of flip it back and forth between my camera and my screen, and I'm I'm changing screens, I'm changing to my code editor, I'm showing this. And so there's a lot of, like, action. Mhmm. But then, like, maybe one in every three or four videos, I'll do one where it's more of a thought based thing.
Ryan:Like, talking head?
Brian:Just talking head, like where I'm maybe talking about a business strategy or or something where I just don't have anything to show. And right now, I'm thinking about, like, how can I do videos like that and still make it engaging and and not make it just me on the camera? Like, maybe I gotta do some b roll and and stuff like that. But so just it's that's like being a content creator, producer
Ryan:Yeah.
Brian:Kind of thing. Like
Ryan:Well, I mean, it's kinda it's basically your one of your marketing strategies. Right? Is to do this kind of, like, organic video content that will hopefully drive people to Instrumentl Components or Instrumentl.dev.
Brian:Yeah. And I I like it as a like, if if I'm gonna do any sort of marketing, like, yes, I'll I'll do the bare minimum in terms of, like, making my website optimal. And I I did I did put up a few pages that should be SEO optimized. But I do think that the SEO game in general is, put it up there, hope for the best. Definitely the days of just publishing blog posts every week, that's not really gonna work very well anymore.
Brian:Advertising is just way too expensive, especially for a bootstrapped business. So I like the idea of like, if I can just really lean in and go all in on the idea of like being a creator on YouTube, that that seems to fit me and and my strength. Not that I'm very good at YouTube, at least not yet, but like, I like I like to create stuff. I I like to write too and and share ideas. So if if that's what it means to be a marketer in 2025 for a for a bootstrapped software product business, like, I could I could do YouTube.
Brian:Like, that that seems like a good thing to put my effort and resources into. You know, because I feel like most other marketing stuff to to me tends to tends to feel like bullshit or or like or just a crap shoot that like, who knows if this is gonna work, like built on hope. Yeah. Whereas like with with YouTube, what I like about it is that like it it their the YouTube algorithm is so good that like it actually does reward quality creativity. Like, it's not easy.
Brian:It takes a lot of work, and it can be very tiring to do video. But if you put that effort in, like, you should be rewarded over time. And like, even though I don't have high numbers, like, I I still managed to build a list of 800 people interested in to buy this product just from
Ryan:Primarily off of just that, those videos, which
Brian:is great. Yeah. That's my thinking on it. I might be wrong about this, but I feel like that's where the bet is. And these days, really, think, yeah, I do podcasting, and I'll do some tweets and stuff, but that's just more me being out there talking to friends.
Brian:That's not really gonna grow my business very much. It did maybe a few years ago for me, But, like, now, I I feel like video is is where it's at.
Ryan:Yeah. I mean, I think also it's just like whatever feels good. You know? If it's something that you can create consistently and you feel good about it. Yeah.
Ryan:Now granted, it helps to get the feedback of the views and the likes and stuff just to kinda keep that going. But if it's also the path of least resistance, then follow it. Yeah. You know? And then at the same time, is there ways that you can essentially compound the returns on that effort?
Ryan:So, like, I mean, I haven't been doing it much. I'm curious if you've been exploring it, but have you been doing anything like shorts or Reels or been trying to repurpose that content
Brian:on other Yeah. Did. Earlier in the year, I I had a video editor that I was working with, which was really nice because I would just do the recording and then drop it in Dropbox. And then he would do all the editing, get it up on YouTube, and he was, you know, repurposing it into Shorts. So on my channel, like, I do have a bunch of Shorts kinda clipped from my long form videos.
Brian:I have no idea if those even helped or not. I guess they show that they got some views, but like, like, I haven't so he he had to leave to to take a job. So in the last, like, two months, it's it's just been me doing my own editing. So I I sort of stopped doing any any shorts. I occasionally, I'll do a very short thing just to put it up on, like, Twitter or Blue Sky, more like built in public, like, show my my work on something.
Brian:Yeah. But, like, not actual I haven't posted anything to TikTok or Reels, I don't think. But my my YouTube channel has some shorts on it. Maybe I'll experiment with it again in the future. But for right now, doing it solo, I'm I'm sorta just focused on the long long form stuff.
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. No, I
Brian:mean I was able to repurpose just the last couple of videos. I did two last week, and one this week. And those are also being used on instrumental. Dev as my main demo videos. Mhmm.
Brian:So it's you know, that's like, the effort is going in both like, I I didn't have to create a separate demo video for the product. Like, I just used my YouTube video that I that I made the other day. Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Because, I mean, you've also been publishing newsletters. And I think that even those might even be a thing if you had a space on your site where you're talking about the development and talking about maybe, like
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:A podcast that you're on or whatever. It's like you're already writing that. If it was just published on the website as well, now you're kind of, like, just kind of, like, again, kind of, like, single point of effort, but spreading and duplicating the potential and the surface area of people stumbling across it. So that's kinda where my head's been going. It's like, how do I optimize the effort and then just keep, like, syndicating it to where it can just cover more surface air?
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think I also think that, like, for for solo people and, like, bootstrappers, I feel like today more than ever, the personal brand matters so much more for or if you wanna call them, indie hackers, like, whatever we are. Yeah.
Ryan:You know? Solo builders or whatever.
Brian:Yeah. Like cause I I used to, like, you know, in the last ten, fifteen years, I I did build and bootstrap, and then and then sold and and exited from a few businesses. And I think going through that process, it it really made me think a lot about, like, when I build a business, I'm building an asset that someday can be packaged up and sold to someone else, and I can be completely removed. And it's a the business is a product in itself that can then be sold to someone else. Right?
Ryan:So Yeah.
Brian:So, like, you know, in in the years when I was, like, building AudienceOps, I I really tried to build it in a way where, like, my face is not on it. Even though I I I was on it to a certain extent, like
Ryan:Oh.
Brian:It it really didn't depend on me. The operations didn't depend on me, the managers, the the team, the delivery, the sales. Like, I removed myself from all that. And so that became really important to me, like, build businesses in that way. But I feel like now, at least for me but I think in general, like, it it's like the pendulum swings back to, like, the solo creator.
Brian:Like, I'm putting myself into my products much more than I used to. Clarity Flow, I think a little bit differently. Like, Clarity Flow feels more like a like a product in a in a box that could be sold someday. I'm not not not selling it right now, but, like, I am somewhat removed from that. And then instrumental components is more like like, hey, like, I'm the creator of this thing.
Brian:If you're if you're down with my style of building apps, like, then this is then this is my product that I made for that, you know. Cool. So I don't know. Yeah. It it does feel feel good to build things in that way at at this stage.
Brian:You know?
Ryan:Yeah. Have you been finding have you been, like, exploring other communities where Ruby developers are hanging around and talking out?
Brian:Not really. I mean, I'm I'm somewhat connected to some, but also pretty disconnected from Rails. I thought about maybe going out to some of these Ruby or Rails conferences, but I I'm I'm not yet, like I don't know how, honestly, much effort I wanna put into this product beyond what I'm already doing. With YouTube videos and just putting it out there and letting some customers really like it. Because like, I don't know how big Rails is in general anymore.
Brian:It's not as big as it used to be. It's still plenty big. It's still super mature, and there's still thousands of thousands of Ruby and Rails developers in the world. But it's clearly not where most of the energy in software development is today. What has me more excited right now is, like, building with AI.
Brian:And I hate the term vibe coding, but that that seems to be catching on a bit. And so, like, if I'm thinking about, like, really what's next and where I'm gonna start to invest more effort and more content on YouTube and and things like that, it's like, not just how to build with Rails. I'll I'll continue to focus on that, but also, like, how to build with Rails with AI, whether it's using Cursor or, like I'm thinking a lot more about, like, how like, maybe getting into more training and helping people learn how to code or learn just enough basic programming skills so that they can transition from totally hacking your way through being like a vibe coder and knowing nothing about the code that it's spitting out to knowing enough to be able to actually architect like a quote unquote real app.
Ryan:Yeah.
Brian:But today, you don't even really need to know how to write programming syntax. You don't have to be a programmer. You just need to think in systems and know some basic general concepts and structures on how things are architected. And then and then, like, and then learning the learning how to actually work with AI. And, like, some like, even my own technique of of using cursor and and and the process of, like, prompting and and and helping it troubleshoot and fix issues and and rearchitect things and, like, approaching a prompt in a in a different way.
Brian:Like, these are totally new skills that that I think we're all sort of, like, learning on the Yeah. Totally. The job right now. So I think that there's a that's what I'm really excited about right now. It's like, or at least I'm just giving a lot of thought.
Brian:I don't know how this is gonna turn into a business or a product. It'll probably be in the training realm. But like, I think that there's a whole wave of like need and opportunity to get up to speed on how to use AI to build stuff, you know? Mhmm. And I think there's different levels of that.
Brian:There's, like, existing developers, like full stack developers who just haven't spent the time to start to leverage tools like Cursor at in in the best ways that they could be because they're just more comfortable programming. And then there's totally, like, people who don't know how to code, but they want to build apps. But it literally doesn't make sense for them to go through, like, a coding boot camp any anymore. Like, it just wouldn't make sense to do that now that now that AI is here. So how are those people going to learn how to build stuff?
Brian:I I just feel like there's a lot to to learn and there's a lot to teach. And that's that's where my head is at at the moment, you know? In terms of my next see, I'm launching a product right now, and I'm already thinking about it. Go ahead
Ryan:with the next one.
Brian:It's kinda ridiculous.
Ryan:Well, you know what?
Brian:I mean,
Ryan:I kinda feel like that's where I am at with starter packs. You know? It's like Yeah. It has a subscription up there. It has traffic going to it.
Ryan:It has some basic utility. It doesn't have my full excitement. And at the same time, I feel like I can see the potential that it has, and it doesn't have enough to necessarily justify the effort to apply to it right now. That doesn't mean I won't ping pong back to it if it starts getting more traffic, and I can then kind of, like, invest the time based off of, like, demand.
Brian:Why doesn't it excite you? Because I or why why are you working on it? And and I'll I'll just guess is that, like, you you built this thing and it actually has some traction with all this traffic coming through. So maybe you feel, like, obligated to do something with that traffic?
Ryan:A little bit. Yeah.
Brian:What are you like, what are your main goals with all of this? Everything you're working on?
Ryan:I mean, it is independence, but I'm obviously not quite focused on the money right now. If anything, I feel like these are all attempts at figuring out kinda, like, distribution.
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:And then I think once I have distribution, then I can probably focus on trying to get some sort of, like, extract some sort of living off of that. Mhmm. You know?
Brian:I mean, you probably already have a lot more traffic to your starter pack site than like any of my sites have. Like, I don't have much traffic at all, you know? So, like, just based on the traffic that you do have, do you have, like, a mechanism to, like, learn from those people or talk to them or get get feedback from them?
Ryan:That's the thing. I need to figure out who they are.
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:And I don't really have a mechanism other than once they connect their account, I can essentially see who is it connected.
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:And then go check out their profile and maybe get, like, a idea who they are.
Brian:I For that kind of stuff, I like to insert surveys, even if it's like a one question survey or a two question survey, but put it right in the onboarding flow. Yeah. So like like, how do starter packs work? Like, you sign up, and then like, you connect your profile, and then you can like see some interesting insights. I would I would do something like, you sign up, and then before you move on to the insights, just here's a preliminary page.
Brian:Just quick Who are who are you, and what what are you trying to what's your main goal with using starter packs today? Or what made you sign up today? That's right. Free form. Free form.
Brian:Let's let them type in whatever they want. Even make it optional if you want. But just collect that stuff over time. And and by putting it up front in the onboarding, you sort of force everyone through it. And just and and with your volume of traffic, even just a couple of weeks of that, you can you can start to get a lot of responses.
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. Although with all the traffic, there aren't that many people connecting. So that's kinda where it's like, who are coming? How are they coming to this site? Mhmm.
Ryan:Why are they potentially bouncing? Because, I mean, essentially, every profile that you see has a follow button, which is essentially a call to action to connect. And then on the profile, I kinda have it towards, like, a little mysterious where starter packs that they're in with a button that says connect to see, and it shows the number. So, like, there's, like, a little bit of a hint to try to prompt them to connect. Because I just wanna see how many people I can get to connect and then figure out how to
Brian:Oh, so, like, anyone can come and and, like, sort of search and find starter packs.
Ryan:But in order to, like, follow all from the site or follow an individual person, they have to connect their BlueScout profile.
Brian:I see. Okay. Could you do a thing? I maybe this might sort of kill your traffic a little bit, but, like, you let's say let's say they're is it, like, search based? Like, like, if I if I'm interested in Mets fans, can I find anyone who's interested in the New York Mets and, like, get the starter packs?
Brian:Right? Mhmm. So, like, if you could return, like, the first five, but tell me that there's, like, 87 more.
Ryan:Oh, and then get them to connect there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan:Kinda truncate the results.
Brian:Mhmm.
Ryan:And then if you're authenticated, you get to see all of them.
Brian:Mhmm. Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. I mean, I could do that across the board. You know? It's like anytime you're looking at a profile and it says that they're following 600 people, but you only show the first twenty five with, like, maybe the rest of them blurred out.
Brian:Blurred out.
Ryan:Yep. Or like a something like that.
Brian:Yeah. I mean, it you know, it might be a drastic change, but at this point, like, if you have the the volume of traffic and no monetization, then, like, that could be a good next step at at least as an experiment just to run for, like, a month. You know? See what you like.
Ryan:I'm I that's kinda what I look at the site as anyways. It's like testing these CTAs, testing, like, what gets people to engage or interact. So that's that's, like, basically another reason why I'm maintaining it because it it's like a testing ground, not to mention also like an architectural testing ground.
Brian:You know, another thing that I get just sort of like makes me think about, like, the idea of doing, like, seemed like drastic experiments. And something I just got more comfortable with doing just in the past year. I I found that like before, I would just I would just have these sites or products up in the world, and whatever decisions I made in the very beginning, I tended to stick with for the whole life of the thing. And maybe tweak things around the edges, but like, not do drastic changes. With Clarity Flow, I I I I a person reached out.
Brian:I did a little bit of a coaching thing with them, and they and they sort of pushed me to to do a pretty drastic change about a year ago, which was kill the free trial. You know? Mhmm. Like, when I started Clarity Flow, it started as Zip Message. It always had a fourteen day free trial.
Brian:You know. And and even that, like, didn't I don't think I was I was requiring the credit card. Like, it was I was like, if I'm doing a SaaS, the SaaS like, most SaaS have free trials, so I'm gonna do a free trial. Yeah. And and and even pricing, didn't change for many years.
Brian:And then, like, last year, like, how about you just try not having a free trial? Customers have to come, and if they wanna use it, they pay on day one. You know? And you can offer a a sixty day money back guarantee. And I made that change, and exactly the same number of people still signed up.
Brian:Yeah. You know, with with no free trial. And surprisingly, few actually asked for a refund. You know? Yeah.
Brian:And, like so today, like, Clarity Flow does not have your free trial. And, like, I I never would have guessed that, like, I I would have stuck with with that decision. But, like, to my surprise it and actually, it it actually helped the MRR grow a little bit.
Ryan:Yeah. Because basically, anyone who would have been kicking the tires now just has to pony up. And they probably would have anyways, but they didn't weren't forced to.
Brian:Exactly. Exactly. It makes makes them more serious about about signing up. Yeah.
Ryan:Mhmm.
Brian:I mean, the other the other one that I that I switched on Clarity Flow couple months ago was well, I like, I've changed the price a few times. Like, back in the early days, it was, like, way too low. So I raised it, like, by a lot. And and then I just recently, I I lowered it again, but but, like, to, like, a middle a middle ground.
Ryan:Or, like, yeah, like a mid tier. Yeah.
Brian:Like a a like so we have three plans, and I lowered the price on all three plans by, let's say, 20% or so, Yeah. But still stuck with, like, the no free trial. And then that had an effect. That actually had a positive effect, and that, like, by lowering the price, the average account price went up.
Ryan:Because they're picking the middle plan? So the lower plan is
Brian:More so lowering the the price, we've made the the lowest price even a little bit more limited in terms of what they get. So that pushes more people into the middle plan. Mhmm. And and then same thing on the upper plan. Like, before, we were getting, like, nobody on the highest plan, and now some people actually do upgrade to the highest plan.
Brian:So, like, the ARPU or, you like, the average revenue per account went up by, you know, a a significant amount just just by lowering the overall bar, you know. Nice. Been interesting. Do you
Ryan:feel like there's anything you can do to kinda, like, juice Clarity Flow subscriptions or the sign ups?
Brian:That's been the toughest thing. I mean, we we actually for a while, we were doing fairly well with SEO and then and then that got really competitive with other competing products. But then also SEO in general, like Google search in general, is reducing because of the AI results and and all the sponsored posts and things like that. So we still get a lot of SEO and a lot of word-of-mouth from customers. But the business hasn't grown enough for me to be, like, all in on it.
Brian:That's why I do these other things. And so I you know, I'm, like, five years into that business now, so, like, I'm not really I'm not giving it a lot of investment of dollars and time and and effort. If if I was, then I would be doing more things like going out to conferences and maybe doing more, like, influencer relationships with I I found that the coaching market is is difficult to it it can be great in some ways, but then there you you do get a mix of, like, coaches who do really well and then coaches who are just way more aspirational, and that's that can be hard to navigate. So that that all
Ryan:has to interesting. Now that you're getting more into YouTube, there's a big, obviously, coaching presence on YouTube. Yeah. You could potentially maybe even make some videos of like how to optimize their coaching practice and streamline some of that kind of stuff.
Brian:But I could, but I think another learning for me is that like, I'm not really a coach. I I've dabbled in coaching a little bit here and there, but, I'm not a full time coach. And I found that it is hard for me to put my personal energy on the marketing for a product in a niche that I'm not really in.
Ryan:Mhmm.
Brian:I've learned a lot about coaching, right, from selling to coaches and taking their feature requests and building the product that they want. But like yeah. For me to, like, show up and create a YouTube video about coaching every week, the the way that I do about product stuff on Rails, like, I I just don't have the energy to do that. You know? Would be nice if I
Ryan:could, like, hire
Brian:a team or a coaching expert to be but like the the business doesn't really have that sort of budget or investment to do that right now. And and I'm not I'm not trying to build that type of business where I'm just going out and getting all this investment to hire a team and go to the moon with this thing. It's sort of I like the product itself. I like hacking on the product and making our coaching customers happy, and making a good product for them. But like, I'm I'm more of, like, the portfolio mindset now.
Brian:Like, that's that's one. And now I'm sort of focusing on building out other other products. You know?
Ryan:Well, you know, what's interesting is you you have this product, and, obviously, these coaches are pretty invested in using and optimizing your product. It'd be interesting if you could reach out to your clients and see if they have any ideas of, like, a video that they would wanna do as far as, like, how they're optimizing their clarity flow. Yeah. And then you use that for marketing. Yeah.
Ryan:They also use that to get their name out to their own just, like, expand their surface area stuff. And then you kinda have this reciprocal relationship.
Brian:Yeah. We do have some, like, case studies. And and a couple years ago, me and my customer success person did some interviews with with our customers, and we and we did those. Some of them are on video. And I I would like to do more of those.
Brian:That that is a really good idea. Especially, like because some of these custom some of these coaches that do use Clarity Flow, like, they kill it. Like, they
Ryan:Yeah. They probably go all in.
Brian:Yeah. And and some of them, like, do, like, some of them have incredible businesses, you know? And coaching is so much bigger than I ever thought it was. Like, when I when I pivoted into the coaching space, I was sort of only aware of like business coaches and like sales coaches and stuff. Mhmm.
Brian:But like, there are, you know, there's thousands of, like, life coaches. There's, like, music coaches. There's parenting coaches. There's, like, health and nutrition. There's, like we we had one that was like a pet training coach.
Brian:You know? Oh, wow. They're they're just coaches for everything. You know? Kind of
Ryan:incredible. I mean, I've even heard of people getting coaches for video games.
Brian:Yeah. I've I have heard of that. Yeah. It's crazy.
Ryan:It's wild. Yep. No. Yeah. I I it's all it's very interesting to think about, like, how you can basically repurpose the network that's already kind of aggregated around something and then re and then generate some value out of that.
Ryan:You know? Yeah. How many actually, how many customers do you have for Clarity Flow?
Brian:Yeah. I I I usually don't share that
Ryan:Oh, sorry. That's fine.
Brian:Publicly. That that's alright. It's it's sort of like a competitive space. I I try to keep the numbers Yeah. You know, behind closed doors.
Brian:But it's it's sustainable. It's it's relatively small, but it's been around a few years, and we have a a solid, you know, solid customer base, and and they talk to each other. And and, you know, we grow a little bit each month, but it's not like a rocket ship. Happy with it. You know?
Ryan:Well, I was gonna say, even if, you know, you get five out of a hundred people who would raise their hand to say they do do a a video or two, that could be some good content for clarity flow.
Brian:For sure.
Ryan:Maybe not a crazy lift.
Brian:Yeah. For sure, man.
Ryan:Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I guess you tell me, do you feel like targeting developers has been more challenging or less challenging than the stuff that you've been dealing with Clarity Flow and obviously all your I am. Productized
Brian:Yeah. I'm a little bit up in the air on it. So far, I like it. I had a tweet yesterday that, like, it's true that, like, the bug reports
Ryan:that come I think I saw that one.
Brian:That come from developers
Ryan:So good.
Brian:Compared to, like, customers on ClarityFlow who report bugs in ClarityFlow. Like, on ClarityFlow, they'll just be like, it's not working. Help. You know?
Ryan:You're like, what?
Brian:Like, what's not working?
Ryan:Not
Brian:load. Are you even a customer? Like, what's happening? Yeah. And and then, like, with developer, they'll they'll send me an email, like, yeah, this thing is not working.
Brian:Here's a screenshot of what I'm seeing. Here's exactly the steps on how to reproduce it. And here's, like, the stack trace on on on the logs that I'm seeing. And it happens in this case, on this browser. Like, it just gives me like Nice.
Brian:Everything I need, you know? So that that's been nice.
Ryan:So support is maybe easier.
Brian:Yeah. At least at least early on. I'm only like a week into actually having a product for developers. I this product will continue to obviously be for the Rails developer space. But as I was saying before, like, think the next step I think I'm probably better suited myself to to be more of a teacher for either more beginner developers, or people who don't know development at all.
Brian:And learn how to build stuff for the first time. Like, I haven't done a lot of that before, but I think I have a lot more to offer, more like taking beginners into being more, like being able to build stuff. Then like, I don't know that I would have a lot to offer, like, the really experienced full stack developer, since they're probably more well rounded than I am. Like, I I am full stack, but, like, I I think that especially with this, like, AI wave, I think I have a lot to offer more beginner people to to sort of get up to speed. You know?
Ryan:Well, yeah, it's kind of also interesting as, like, an industry right now. You have a lot of obviously, you have AI, and that could be even reducing the number of roles for junior developers to get into companies and find places to learn. You have a very fragmented remote workforce that doesn't really lend to, a lot of, like, com conversation and mentorship within a company because, you know, just lines of communication are just more fragmented, and everyone's way more async. Yep. And so I really think there is this, like young.
Ryan:Whole crop of young developers that just aren't getting the mentorship or guidance or being presented with, like, the real world problems that they're gonna have to tackle Yep. Because they're just not getting the opportunities. So I think having that one is is a big market. It mean it does question, like, how do you monetize it.
Brian:Yeah. I I mean, I think that, like, training and like like, paying for for training or community or both Mhmm. Is sort of interesting. And that also lends itself that that fits pretty well with, like, a YouTube strategy. So if I were to keep going on YouTube and and focus more content on educational content about this kind of stuff, that tends to lead pretty well into, like, you can join the training and the community.
Brian:That that's sort of where my head is at. I don't know if I'm actually gonna go that route, but yeah. And, like, there's also the route of, like, even not so young people, maybe more, like, middle of your career or or a little bit older, like, your job landscape is changing, and you need to make yourself valuable in your company by by having, like, being able to use AI.
Ryan:To embrace the new AI stuff. Yeah.
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. And, like, wrap your head around MCP's and all the other stuff that are kind of, like, evolving in this, like, daily changing space. Yeah.
Brian:And even just using, like, just using cursor too. Like, so then if if I am speaking to actual developers who who are already in the game of development, like, even myself, just like, I'm I'm constantly even changing the way that I'm using Cursor. Like, I think we're all sort of like learning at a really rapid pace as these these tool even just the rise of of Cursor and there there's Windsurf and stuff. I don't know if you're using these, but like
Ryan:Yeah. I'm using Cursor.
Brian:Yeah. Like, I'm at at this point, like, everyone is using Cursor or WindSurf, and most people are using Cursor. But, like, I don't remember any one of these tools becoming so prominent so fast. Like Yeah. It's just been in the last, like, three, five months that Cursor really blew up.
Brian:You know?
Ryan:Well, also, the fact that the transition from Versus Code to Cursor was so Yeah.
Brian:That's the only thing that's crazy to me that that, like, it's like cursor like cursor is built on Versus code. You know? I like, I I I I think it's probably just a matter of time that Microsoft buys cursor. How how do they not at this point? You know?
Ryan:Yeah. And then, I guess, figure out how to weave in Copilot again. But they already have Copilot. You know? And
Brian:then Like, I saw this thing the other day that, like like, Versus Code is I think they already have some sort of, like, agent thing built into it. But it's like, why would you use Versus Code and agent when you can just use cursor? You know? Mhmm. It's crazy.
Ryan:Yeah. Because, I mean, I had GitHub Copilot when I was in Versus Code, but the integration of Cursor I don't know. It just seems like it it it understands more of what I was asking. I was getting, like, better results out of it.
Brian:Yeah.
Ryan:And it's probably just the models that they were using and the way that they've integrated it, the context Yeah. Of the files and stuff.
Brian:Yeah. They mix in all the all the different models. And I I think that they hack on the interface a lot faster and better than Versus Code itself does. Like and they're constantly changing it. Like, even just every every week, like, the the UI and and cursor sort of changes.
Brian:It tends to change for the better, but I'm I'm just amazed at how fast that they're shipping. You know?
Ryan:Yeah. And it's actually kinda funny. I on this on Skylounge, like, while I'm thinking about how I wanna do the schema and some other stuff, I just actually started vibe coding some stuff to add vibes to the site. So, essentially, you know, I was, like, trying to think about how rooms and sessions are gonna work. But then I was like, oh, well, they're gonna happen during times of day, and it's sky.
Ryan:So, like, maybe I could have, like, a cool WebGL shader that takes the the sky gradient, And then I didn't want it to be, like, totally a linear gradient, so I wanted to figure out some sort of, like, hurling noise slash, like, abstract gradient effect and then add in some, like, punchy colors, kinda like Aurora Borealis. Yeah. And so so while I was thinking about the data model, I was over here just kind of, like, vibing on make this, like, WebGL shader, and it totally created it. And then I tried to amp it up. I was like, I also wanna get, like, a film grain backed over it.
Ryan:But, of course, I ended up taking it too far and it started turning into TV static. But
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can, like, hook into, like, a weather API and be, like, whatever your current weather is in your location, like, show, like, a rainstorm or something like that. Like
Ryan:Yeah. But that way, you can kinda connect with the host. So even if Yeah. It's, like, two p 2PM here, but they're in Europe or something, you join the room and you already kinda know the scene that they're in. So how to be based off their time zone and stuff.
Ryan:But that was just a fun thing to kind of vibe code and integrate into the product. It it it's like, how do you how can you kinda make these, like, remarkable things to add to it? And so I think by using AI to to take the lift, to add these little nuances, you can kinda just up the level of your apps and products.
Brian:For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan:But, yeah, man. We've been going for a bit.
Brian:Yeah. I gotta I gotta get off and get some lunch here.
Ryan:So Yeah. Definitely. For thanks
Brian:for the invite. This is always fun to to catch up with you. And
Ryan:Yeah. I guess if anyone has questions for Brian, drop them now because we're gonna be wrapping up.
Brian:I'm on I'm on Blue Sky, and I'm and I'm on x. I'm not not quitting either one of them. So
Ryan:Yeah.
Brian:Yeah. Keep keep building your stuff.
Ryan:Congrats on the launch of instrumental components. So Thank everyone go to instrumental.dev, especially if you're a Rails developer.
Brian:And Okay. I'm excited to to see where you go with with all all your products. Good stuff.
Ryan:Thanks. Yeah. And maybe I'll actually start making some money here soon.
Brian:Hey. You're you're doing great. That's awesome, Ryan.
Ryan:Alright, man. Have a great one.
Brian:Alright. Have a good one.
Ryan:Later.
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