Indie Maker Journey artwork

Indie Maker Journey

25 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 2 years ago -

Two indie makers talk about building their software businesses.

Business Technology self-funded indie independent maker business software technology saas
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Episodes

20: A bit of everything

June 11, 2022 19:43 - 33 minutes - 31 MB

Recorded on March 22, 2022. Legos are fun and timeless. Mario’s business entity is finally formed and a business bank account is in place. Alan wants to play around a bit with the pricing model for DotPlan. We talk about the original idea for DotPlan, creating a short video pitch, dealing with landing pages, content, and UI for Japanese audience, and more.

19: Legalize it

May 19, 2022 03:57 - 46 minutes - 42.6 MB

Recorded on March 8, 2022. New Fusioncast features, plus other minor improvements and bug fixes. Mario will start working on things to prepare for launching, filed for a legal business entity, and is working on terms of use and privacy policy using iUbenda.com. We talk about pricing and figuring out possible ways to do a trial period with Fusioncast. Alan deployed his React Native wrapper app for DotPlan on Google Play. Building  with Elixir keeps Alan learning new things and enjoy...

18: Taking the Elixir and Paddling to revenue

May 18, 2022 04:37 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MB

Recorded on February 23, 2022. Alan got the booster covid vaccine. React is good but more verbose than Vue. Playing around with Alpine.js. Mario’s continued working on refining how Fusioncast.fm handles some edge cases. Upgrading to TailwindCSS 3. Dealing with challenges building with Elixir. Alan created a React Native wrapper app for DotPlan.io, plus refactoring and cleaning things up. Dealing with multiple projects and context switching. Mario is considering using Paddle for bil...

17: Progress updates and some of the tools we use

May 18, 2022 03:28 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MB

Recorded on February 1, 2022. Fixing some challenging issues in Fusioncast recording workflow, dealing with a participant’s sudden loss of network connection. Alan talks about adding a time-card feature to DotPlan for a specific customer, the reasons behind it, and dealing with Japanese time-card business culture, and time zones. We’re grateful for our early customers who have given us their vote of trust. Alan is using a tool called Tango.us to easily create screenshots for a know...

16: DotPlan has launched! Plus other updates

May 17, 2022 00:00 - 51 minutes - 46.9 MB

Recorded on January 18, 2022. Happy New Year! Back after a long break. Alan had some nice time off for the holidays. Alan also shares that he launched DotPlan and has a paying customer. Also added a timer feature to DotPlan, and pitched his app to a Japanese audience. Finding ways to work on product and on marketing. Mario reworked parts of the Fusioncast recording engine to make it even more reliable. Alan’s side-side project LinkSpeed.io is gaining traction. A simple idea with a ...

15: The credit card upfront dilemma

May 16, 2022 01:09 - 36 minutes - 33 MB

Recorded on September 21, 2021. Alan continues integrating Paddle to handle billing for his SaaS. Update on Alan’s participation in Kobe mentorship program. Thoughts on pricing options for DotPlan. To require credit card up front or not, and handling the transition from trial to paid subscription -the nature of the product and target audience matters, no one size fits all.

14: Paddling in a kanuu

May 16, 2022 00:29 - 43 minutes - 39.4 MB

Recorded on August 31, 2021. Alan was accepted to a startup mentorship program with Kobe city for early stage founders. Alan is integrating Paddle using another service called Kanuu.io. Mario started a new day job, working remotely. Fusioncast backup recordings are now started/stopped  at the same time as primary recordings. Alan has been using Linear for issue tracking and is very impressed by it. Getting feedback, improving DotPlan, and experimenting with features. Cleaning up th...

13: Off the grid and back

May 15, 2022 23:34 - 32 minutes - 30 MB

Recorded on August 17, 2021. Taking time off to disconnect and go camping. Climate change. Design work and learning design principles. Tailwind UI has been very helpful to Alan. Working with TailwindCSS. UI design challenges. Marketing and onboarding for Japanese market. Alan was advised to narrow down his target audience for DotPlan.

12: Why we do this

April 20, 2022 01:45 - 57 minutes - 53 MB

Recorded on July 28, 2021 In this episode we talk about starting a new full time job (Mario), problems with editing the podcast in Garage Band, which lead to trying Descript, and Alan participating in two business/founder mentorship events, and pitching DotPlan in Japanese instead of English. We also talk about our reasons behind why we're working on our products, and overall goals for our businesses. We talk about where we stand with regards to the idea of taking investment, and ...

11: IMJ × Justin Jackson

April 12, 2022 03:53 - 1 hour - 67.4 MB

Mario and Alan are joined by a very special guest! Justin Jackson, co-host of Build Your SaaS, co-founder of Transistor.fm and founder of the MegaMaker community talks about the state of the Indie SaaS world and the importance of choosing the right market. We talk about the growth of Transistor.fm and dealing with a growing team, not being afraid of building products that you think might already be 'done', and ideas for connecting with your market quickly. You can try out dotpl...

10: Product Manager Think

March 26, 2022 01:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MB

Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan. In this episode, Mario and Alan discuss the difficulties of choosing which product features to prioritize, problems with overheating MacBooks and options for Product Adoption platforms.

9: Remote Work Reflections

March 25, 2022 01:00 - 55 minutes - 51 MB

We’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts! Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan. Alan and Mario talk about their experiences of remote working and Alan talks about his reasons for building on dotplan to improve remote communications. The guys discuss difficulties of using color when designing a UI and how challenging UI design is in general!

8: Landing Page Learnings & Onboarding Observations

March 24, 2022 01:41 - 56 minutes - 52 MB

We’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts! Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan. Alan talks about the difficulties of launching a product with lots of different use cases, onboarding ideas and subtle problems with microcopy. Mario discusses the latest changes to fusioncast’s landing page.

7: Obfuscation Investigations & Time Picker Pickles

March 23, 2022 05:12 - 47 minutes - 43.5 MB

We’re going to drop a whole load of episodes over the next few weeks in order to get up to date, so hold onto your butts! Mario and Alan detail the latest progress of building fusioncast and dotplan. In this episode, Mario discusses his JavaScript debugging nightmares and Alan complains about cultural differences in dealing with time and laments about web time & date pickers.

6: Life, Challenges, and Progress

December 14, 2021 07:25 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MB

In this episode we talk about life challenges while trying to make progress with our products, technical challenges, UX/UI, tools, cloud services, and more.

5: To unit test, or not to unit test

October 25, 2021 06:02 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MB

We're back after a short break!  We talk about how we tackle testing of their applications and Mario details the latest updates to fusioncast. We also discuss the difficulties of knowing when to let users in, what are the requirements for releasing and how to approach onboarding. Along with the continuing attempts to try to convince each other to launch sooner rather than later! 

Introductions (finally!)

September 14, 2021 07:30 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MB

A little late, but better late than never - Alan and Mario introduce themselves and their products. They talk about why they've picked these products, and what motivates them to build them. Mario is building https://fusioncast.fm, a web-based podcast recording tool. Alan is building https://dotplan.io, a daily check-in tool for small teams.

4: Introductions (finally!)

September 14, 2021 07:30 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MB

A little late, but better late than never - Alan and Mario introduce themselves and their products. They talk about why they've picked these products, and what motivates them to build them. Mario is building https://fusioncast.fm, a web-based podcast recording tool. Alan is building https://dotplan.io, a daily check-in tool for small teams.

3: 99 Seconds of Pitch

August 31, 2021 02:15 - 26 minutes - 35.9 MB

In this episode, Alan talks about his Founder’s Live pitch and the difficulties of getting your message across in 99 seconds and we discuss the benefits of talking about your product development on twitter. We also contemplate about the time constraints of bootstrapping and application while working another job. Mario’s App - Fusioncast https://fusioncast.fm/ Alan’s App - dotplan https://dotplan.io Founder’s Live https://www.founderslive.com Alan’s Founder’s Live pitch and Q&A ...

99 Seconds of Pitch

August 31, 2021 02:15 - 26 minutes - 35.9 MB

In this episode, Alan talks about his Founder’s Live pitch and the difficulties of getting your message across in 99 seconds and we discuss the benefits of talking about your product development on twitter. We also contemplate about the time constraints of bootstrapping and application while working another job. Mario’s App - Fusioncast https://fusioncast.fm/ Alan’s App - dotplan https://dotplan.io Founder’s Live https://www.founderslive.com Alan’s Founder’s Live pitch and Q&A ...

2: Nuggets of Wonder

August 02, 2021 06:22 - 40 minutes - 74.6 MB

In this episode, Alan talks about showing (and hiding!) primary keys in URLs, Mario shares all the new feature updates that he's made to fusioncast. We discuss our options for billing services and the difficulties of deciding pricing for our applications. We also ponder the length of an ideal podcast episode.

Nuggets of Wonder

August 02, 2021 06:22 - 40 minutes - 74.6 MB

In this episode, Alan talks about showing (and hiding!) primary keys in URLs, Mario shares all the new feature updates that he's made to fusioncast. We discuss our options for billing services and the difficulties of deciding pricing for our applications. We also ponder the length of an ideal podcast episode.

It Worked!

June 29, 2021 04:05 - 1 hour - 127 MB

In this episode Mario shares about some technical issues developing Fusioncast's recording feature, some UI/UX design mistakes, and more. Alan shares about building his business in Japan, and the challenge of reaching different types of audience. We also talk about the difficulty we have of finding a good stopping point to end a coding session, creating content and owning it, adding in-product help features with video, and more.

1: It Worked!

June 29, 2021 04:05 - 1 hour - 127 MB

In this episode Mario shares about some technical issues developing Fusioncast's recording feature, some UI/UX design mistakes, and more. Alan shares about building his business in Japan, and the challenge of reaching different types of audience. We also talk about the difficulty we have of finding a good stopping point to end a coding session, creating content and owning it, adding in-product help features with video, and more.

Trailer

June 13, 2021 06:30 - 1 minute - 1.47 MB

We introduce ourselves and the projects we're working on. Welcome to Indie Maker Journey!