Ep. 29 - The SaaS Subscription Pandemic
...and also Google's crab emoji, our Chief Dog Officer, and the first ever Metacast All-Hands!
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Remote work is amazing. I can’t imagine going back to spending hours on commute in order to be locked up in a concrete and glass cage for a full day. The only real disadvantage of remote work is that it’s very hard to connect with people you work with.
Even though Arnab and I spent years working together in an office, we too need an occasional in-person meetup. This week, we’re in the beautiful British Columbia for the first ever in-person Metacast all-hands! We started with team building activities by going to the Vancouver Island for some amazing hikes and standup comedy paddle-boarding.
In this episode, we cover the topic we wanted to cover for the last few weeks but always ran out of time. It’s the topic of SaaS subscriptions. As a business that doesn’t yet make any revenue, we pay quite a bit in subscription fees because these days everything is a subscription. Apparently, soon we’ll be paying a subscription to heat our butts in cars — on the episode, Arnab tells a story of a car manufacturer that will ship cars with all the hardware, but will disable “premium” features unless you pay a monthly fee.
Today, we also introduce our lovely Chief Dog Officer who often inserts a few soundbites into our podcast. Sometimes he takes a bite too. He’s a star employee and we love him. If you want to see Boomer in action, check out this YouTube clip.
We covered a few other topics like how producing TikTok worthy content changes who you are and the crab emoji at Google that can be funny but also passive aggressive.
Listen to Metacast wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on YouTube.
Segments
[00:38] First annual Metacast all-hands
[02:33] Creating TikTok worthy content
[05:58] Active listening strikes back
[08:05] In-person recording setup
[10:03] Introducing our CDO, Chief Dog Officer
[10:52] Crab emoji at Google
[12:09] Reflection on the Jason Fried episode
[15:45] User research studies for our app
[20:58] The original name for our company
[22:56] The SaaS Subscriptions Pandemic
[33:55] Google vs. Amazon culture
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Show notes
Podcasts
Metacast Ep. 8 - SquadCast Founders on Remote Collaboration in Podcasts
The Google Graveyard on the Rework podcast
Are Bootstrapped Startups Less Valuable Than Venture-Funded Startups? on the Startup Therapy podcast
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Email: hello@metacastpodcast.com (both of us get it)
Arnab’s Twitter: @or9ob
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Bye for now.