👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

It’s been a year since we started working on Metacast. In this episode Arnab and Ilya reflect on the journey and compare working on a startup with the old corporate days.

Segments

• [05:14] No going back to corporate

• [06:00] Annual reviews

• [13:22] Best year of Ilya's career

• [15:28] Frustrations with corporate

• [20:11] Anxiety and collaboration

• [26:20] Playing a long game

• [27:12] Letting go of old habits

• [33:52] Getting back into coding

• [37:01] What's new in the app

• [40:34] Book & podcast recommendations

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

Links

• Ilya’s LinkedIn post with reflections

Podcasts

• Metacast Ep. 24, part 1: Leaving jobs at Google and Amazon to start a podcast tech company

• Metacast Ep. 24, part 2: Non-linear career paths, culture at Google vs. Amazon

Books

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

• Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

• Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa

• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

• Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Podcasts

• What Are Sperm Whales Saying? Researchers Find A Complex 'Alphabet' on the Short Wave podcast

• Was the 401(k) a Mistake? on The Daily podcast

• Google Eats Rocks + A Win for A.I. Interpretability + Safety Vibe Check on the Hard Fork podcast

• Adam Mosseri on the Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin podcast

Movies & TV

• Shogun TV series

• Revolutionary Road

• Ford v Ferrari

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

We're discussing the dilemma of positioning Metacast as both powerful and simple, break down the recent power struggle about 5% transparency of a UI element, and share our experience with the DUNS number that developers have to get to be in Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Segments

• [01:36] The positioning dilemma

• [09:51] Remaining features to launch the app and recent updates

• [13:06] Power struggle between Arnab and Ilya

• [17:16] DUNS (doh...)

• [22:44] Book and podcast recommendations

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

Links

• D-U-N-S Number

Podcasts

• Microsoft episode on Acquired

• The Point of Convergence

• The Emerald: For the Intuitives

Books

• Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

We're back and this is a massive update on what we've been up to since our last episode!

Segments

• [00:00] We're back

• [02:59] Tangent about our names

• [04:36] First full-team offsite in Florida

• [08:03] We made Android cool again!

• [12:20] Paid app subscriptions with RevenueCat

• [15:40] Reflection on working in person vs. WFH

• [20:36] Seeing alligators in the Everglades

• [23:44] How we got an intern/contractor to build a website

• [27:09] We've applied to YC for the third time

• [27:49] Filing corporate taxes for 2023

• [31:17] What we're listening, reading and watching

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

Software

• Next.js

• Vercel

• Outstatic

• Fondo

• Gusto

Podcasts

• Microsoft episode on Acquired

• Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin: Edward Norton, Jon Kabat-Zinn

Books

• Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

• Dune by Frank Herbert

• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

• Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Movies

• Three-Body Problem series on Netflix

• Dune, Dune 2

• Star Wars

• Revolutionary Road

We took a leap of faith and left our jobs at Google and Amazon to jump into the unknown. It wasn't easy and required quite a bit of planning. This is a rerun of June 2023 episode where we talk about how we did it.

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

• The Pragmatic Podcaster book by Ilya

Links

• See original show notes for part 1 and part 2.

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

We got asked how we were thinking about product-market-fit, potential revenue, and entering a market that already has strong players. We’re giving a full breakdown of our thought process.

Segments

• [01:35] Ilya's “fun” interview with Google (tangent)

• [05:52] How we chose the market to go after

• [21:42] Our financial model approach

• [27:06] Thinking about the company size early on

• [31:09] How much money do we personally want to make

• [35:33] Non-financial motivation

• [38:51] The value of an MBA

• [41:03] Books, podcasts and movies recommendations

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

• The Pragmatic Podcaster book by Ilya

Podcasts

• Earned Secrets on the a16z podcast (August 4, 2018)

• 21 Brutally Honest Lessons About Life - Alex Hormozi on Chris Williamson’s podcast

• Controversial Truths You Need To Hear - Pt.1 (on the Modern Wisdom Podcast) | Ep 673 on the The Game w/ Alex Hormozi podcast

Books

• The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne

• Dune by Frank Herbert

• Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

• Bone by Jeff Smith

Movies

• Interstellar

• Harry Potter

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

We broke Metacast just before launching it in open beta. Ouch.

On this episode, we talk about the launch, how it went, and what we’ve learned.

Segments

• [02:13] Get The Pragmatic Podcaster book for free

• [03:33] We broke Metacast just before launch

• [08:39] How we fixed the problem

• [14:04] The other way we broke the app

• [16:27] Publishing to Apple and Google

• [20:04] Marketing for open beta

• [24:10] Business metrics

• [30:38] This is just the beginning

• [34:20] Podcast and book recommendations

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

• The Pragmatic Podcaster book by Ilya

Open beta launch content and mentions

• Reddit post

• LinkedIn post

• Pod News mention

Tools

• Tramline - CI/CD for mobile apps

Podcasts

• Metacast Ep. 40 - Automating mobile app releases with Tramline founders

• Builders Gonna Build

• Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

• We Tried the Apple Vision Pro + Can Congress Protect Kids Online? + Cruise’s Crash on the Hard Fork podcast

• The Vision Pro Reviews Are Here on the Techmeme Ride Home podcast

• Zuckerberg on the Vision Pro vs. Quest (video)

• How the Acquired podcast grew, and why they switched to Transistor on the Build Your SaaS podcast

• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang on the Acquired podcast

• Charlie Munger on the Acquired podcast

Books

• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

• Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify.

We had our first existential crisis when Apple announced that they're adding transcripts to Apple Podcasts. We panicked for a few minutes, regrouped, and decided to ship Metacast in open beta ASAP.

On the episode, Arnab, Ilya and Jennie discuss the whole ordeal as it was happening.

Segments

• [01:09] Launch stages at Google and Amazon

• [07:21] Our secret sauce

• [13:00] Why we decided to start talking about the app openly

• [17:22] Our first existential crisis

• [31:07] Re-evaluation of priorities

• [34:35] Building a community on Reddit

• [38:03] Books and podcasts recommendations

Show notes

Metacast

• Get Metacast for iOS and Android

• r/metacastapp subreddit

Podcasts

• Interview with Christian Selig on Builders Gonna Build

• Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

• The Game w/ Alex Hormozi

Books

• Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz

• The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White

• Learn Spanish with Paul Noble for Beginners by Paul Noble

• Next Steps in Spanish with Paul Noble for Intermediate Learners by Paul Noble

• Bone by Jeff Smith

• Sandman by Neil Gaiman

• Dog Man by Dav Pilkey

• We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1 by Dennis E. Taylor

• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Shows

• Queer Eye on Netflix

We took a break from the startup for the holiday season and were welcomed back to work by a warm embrace of guilt. Should we feel guilt when building a startup?

Today we also discuss the launch of our new podcast Builders Gonna Build and how we made the decision to start it. We talk about writing a doc, just like in the good ol’ days at Amazon.

👉 Listen to the episode: Metacast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [02:57] Snowmaggedon in Vancouver

• [09:04] Post-vacation guilt

• [21:32] Not building a unicorn

• [24:30] Introducing Builders Gonna Build

• [32:15] When in doubt, write a doc

• [38:07] Readers gonna read

What was 2023 like to Metacast, what's ahead for us in 2024, and our favorite podcast recordings of 2023.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [02:39] Year 2023 in review

• [18:59] Could we have shipped the Metacast app faster?

• [23:45] Our plan for 2024

• [31:36] Our favorite behind the scenes episodes of 2023

• [39:04] Books and podcasts recommendations

To close off 2023, Arnab and Ilya sat down for a lighthearted review of our favorite books, podcasts, products and experiences of 2023.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [01:51] A lesson in geology

• [03:16] Our top books of 2023

• [23:46] Our favorite podcasts of 2023

• [41:04] Our favorite products

• [49:34] Experiences of the year 2023

Show notes

Books

• Arnab’s

  • The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir

  • Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

  • The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick

  • Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor

    • By His Bootstraps by Robert Heinlein

  • Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

• Ilya’s

  • The Three-body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu

  • Books about Apple and simplicity

    • Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

    • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

    • Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall

    • Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

    • Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

  • Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon by Dr Joe Dispenza

  • Music, addiction, etc.

    • It's So Easy: and other lies by Duff McKagan

    • How To Be A Man (and other illusions) by Duff McKagan

    • Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza

Podcasts

Get the Metacast podcast app to open links or reach out to us at team@metacast.app to get early access if the app is not yet public by the time you’re reading this.

• Ilya’s

  • Metacast: Behind the Scenes

  • Mark Cuban: “And for that reason I’m out” on "The Really Good Podcast"

    • Bobbi Althof interviews Drake (bootleg video)

  • E235: The Man That Makes Millionaires: How To Turn $1,000 Into $100 Million!: Alex Hormozi on the "The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett" podcast

• Arnab’s

  • The Bing Who Loved Me + Elon Rewrites the Algorithm on the "Hard Fork" podcast

  • Las cartas de papá on "Duolingo Spanish Podcast"

  • Show 69 - Twilight of the Aesir & Show 70 - Twilight of the Aesir II on "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History"

Products

• Metacast podcast app - the best podcast app. Ever. Period.

• Duolingo

  • Learn Spanish with Paul Noble for Beginners – Complete Course: Spanish Made Easy with Your Personal Language Coach by Paul Noble

Experiences

• What ayahuasca feels like: It opens the heart of darkness | Paul Rosolie and Lex Fridman

Alex Rechevskiy, PM career coach, tells us about his time as a PM at Google, his solopreneur coaching practice, and Comment Armor, his YouTube spam comments management startup.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [01:46] Why product management is hard?

• [07:27] Alex' solopreneur coaching business

• [19:30] Experience working at Google as a PM

• [41:18] Building social media following

• [44:11] Preventing spam in YouTube comments with Comment Armor

• [58:01] Book recommendation

Show notes

• Alex on LinkedIn

• Alex’s website

• Alex on YouTube

• Alex on X/Twitter

• Cracking the PM Interview

• Krazam video on Microservices

• Krazam video I Have Delivered Value... But At What Cost?

• Not Boring newsletter

• Hooked by Nir Eyal

• Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Geoff Roberts, co-founder of Outseta, on a compensation model that allows employees earn founder-level equity.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [00:42] Intro of Geoff and Outseta

• [03:17] How Outseta got started

• [10:25] Current state of Outsetta business

• [18:11] Customer acquisition through content marketing, affiliates and partnerships

• [33:02] Compensation philosophy

• [40:33] Cash vs. equity

• [47:53] Voting rights, scaling, and risks of Outseta's model

• [01:01:27] Hiring

• [01:03:10] Mechanics of the ledger and corporate structure

• [01:06:50] Book recommendation

Show notes

• Outseta All-in-one membership software

• Geoff’s Twitter/X: @geofftroberts

• Geoff's LinkedIn

• Outseta blog

• Outseta operating agreement

• Metacast Ep. 36 - Building a startup with contractors with Melissa Kwan, co-founder & CEO of eWebinar

• No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

• Reinventing Organizations

Arnab and Ilya discuss different approaches to building products from the angle of do-what-you-want platforms vs. opinionated products.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [01:43] The "build in public" movement

• [08:23] Why we share what we do?

• [22:36] Downsides of building in public

• [33:26] Book and podcast recommendations

Arnab and Ilya discuss different approaches to building products from the angle of do-what-you-want platforms vs. opinionated products.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Show notes

• Insanely Simple

• WeCrashed

• Super Pumped

• Blackberry

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

• Fall of Civilizations

• Hardcore History

• What Now?

• Podcast Industry News

• The Metallica Podcast

Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer and Agile Manifesto, on the true spirit of being agile (vs. "doing agile"), common mistakes engineering teams make, and common practices of successful teams.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [00:50] Dave's background

• [09:12] The genesis of The Pragmatic Programmer

• [13:14] People don't know what they want, importance of feedback loops

• [20:50] Doing Agile vs. being agile

• [25:09] Practices of successful engineering teams

• [35:08] Being pragmatic at an early stage startup

• [42:43] Things that are still true 24 years after the book was published

• [53:58] How does a book define its author's identity?

Show notes

• The Pragmatic Programmer

• The Pragmatic Bookshelf

• The Agile Manifesto

Arnab and Ilya reminisce about their first social media experiences with ICQ and Orkut, discuss fixing X-Twitter, read an eulogy for Threads, and strategize about becoming social media influencers.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [02:39] First experiences with social media

• [10:19] Reddit

• [15:46] Threads

• [18:01] Misuse of Instagram as a text blogging platform

• [20:52] Can existing social networks be replaced?

• [23:14] The hard life of a social media influencer

• [24:54] X / Twitter

• [28:31] AI content creation

• [31:50] Value of being an influencer

• [36:37] Downvotes and dislikes

• [39:52] Engagement pods

• [41:34] LinkedIn Lunatics

• [43:09] Our social media strategy

• [53:32] Book and podcast recommendations

Show notes

• Problem Solvers episode "Why LinkedIn Doesn't Want You Going Viral"

• Alex Hormozi on Diary of a CEO

• LinkedIn Lunatics Subreddit

• Death's End by Cixin Liu

• How to be a man (and other illusions) by Duff McKagan

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Jennie Buechner is a Senior Software Engineer and the first hire at Metacast. We discussed leaving Amazon to join an early stage startup and how we thought about equity compensation when we can't afford to pay a salary yet.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [01:47] Jennie introduces herself

• [03:40] ChatGPT introduces Jennie, Ilya and Arnab

• [07:12] Explaining the number 42

• [10:21] Leaving Amazon

• [20:29] Joining Metacast

• [27:52] Working for equity without a salary component

• [45:40] Living off savings

• [49:12] Jennie's role at Metacast

Show notes

• Metacast Ep. 17: From Teacher to a Software Engineer at Amazon

• The Good Enough Job

• Joel Spolsky on Equity for Startups

• Buffer’s Equity Formula

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

What features do you build first - table stakes or what makes you differentiated? What's the difference between an MVP and an MLP? Is it worth applying to YC? ...and a few recommendations of books and podcasts that we're into these days.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [03:59] Differentiating features vs. table stakes features

• [07:16] MVP vs. MLP [14:18] The MAYA principle

• [17:15] We applied to YC

• [23:49] Building a landing page with Carrd

• [26:40] Chaos engineering for customer empathy

• [32:14] The Three-Body Problem trilogy

• [35:46] Elon Musk's biography

• [39:08] Blackberry

• [41:55] Podcasts we listen to

• [45:18] Remembering Reply-All

A conversation with founders of Tramline, a CI/CD platform for mobile apps that we use for releasing Metacast. We talked about release standards (or lack thereof) for mobile and how Tramline solves this problem. We also dug into the founding story of the company, how they sold to first customers, fundraising from angels, and a few more topics.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [10:48] How Tramline was started

• [16:40] The world without Tramline

• [24:43] Incumbents and competitors

• [32:29] Why offer open-source in addition to a commercial product?

• [38:57] Who does what in the company

• [41:00] Positioning Tramline to first customers

• [51:02] Fundraising in a "slow VC" mode

• [58:25] AngelList's RUV

• [01:00:30] Future of Tramline

• [01:03:14] How can startups leverage development agencies in India?

• [01:10:27] Book and podcast recommendations

  ---

Show notes

• Tramline

• Tramline on Twitter: @tramlinehq

• Pratul Kalia

• Nivedita Priyadarshini

• Akshay (kitallis) Gupta

How living on a work visa affects your risk appetite? How does immigration change you? What are some gotchas? Today, we talk about our immigration journeys and discuss these important questions.

👉 Listen to the episode: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube

Segments

• [03:12] Musings about languages and automatic translations

• [08:18] Our immigration journeys

• [15:22] US immigration challenges for Indians and Chinese

• [17:22] How living on a work visa affects your risk appetite

• [31:08] Immigration changes your perspective on life

• [34:13] What we're reading and listening these days