For years I’ve wanted a product podcast that feels like friends talking about interesting things. Like all my favorite non-SaaS ones...
Back in April, during a team offsite in Bogotá, we had an idea. As we were single filing through the turnstile, onto the TransMilenio bus platform taking us to our next tinto ☕️ - it clicked 💡
What if we hit record on the conversations we're having each week? Decisions, moments, challenges. No fluff, just the unfiltered reality of Building Jam!
Our hypothesis was simple: our community will enjoy listening & get value from what we learn along the way.
Since we were together in-person, we decided to go for it right away! We recorded our first episode and launched the Building Jam podcast the next day.
For those of you interested in podcasting, I've included the easy (mostly free) stack we've been using at the bottom of this post.
It was a 12 week experiment, by the end we were supposed to make a "go-no-go" decision. We decided to keep going, even though our numbers weren't very high. We actually published our real podcast retro as an episode.
The TL;DR: we think the effort is worth it for those already tuning in, and we love doing it.
So we kicked off Season 2 and today marks week 24 of the podcast 🤯.
Part of the joy of growing a startup is getting to learn from the experts who've done it before - SO many unblocks happen thanks to these convos. For Season 2, we invited leaders from our favorite products (like Cloudflare, WorkOS, Warp, Campsite) to join us on the pod and get their advice on the challenges we're facing.
Here's what I learned!
About building a product devs love:
- Design matters - a lot. Dev tools should work, duh! But, it's not just about building something useful anymore, devs want tools that are easy to use, with beautiful UI, and attention to detail.
- Product-led engineering is the way. Most of the eng leaders we've gotten to talk to (and from my own experience at Jam) - it's clear that developers are taking a more creative and strategic role in product development. And it starts as early as hiring, with top startups conducting PM style interviews for eng roles.
- Developers are not a monolith. Each dev community is its own thing. The vibes are super different depending on programming languages, stack, front-end/back-end, etc.
- The best dev advocates make friends. You gotta be yourself, not just your “work self”. Building for builders is my dream job. It’s amazing to talk to people every day who are creating incredible products. But, we all have marketing teams and we all launch new features and we know the game. There are no shortcuts, just a lot of effort into trying to deliver a good experience that matches what your community wants.
About podcasting:
- It's harder than it looks because you want to be real and relevant for other people.
- You gotta be in it for the long haul.
- It's totally worth it.
Jam's Podcasting Stack
- Riverside - recording
- Transistor - publishing
- Descript - editing/transcription
- Figma - design
You can subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes drop every Friday at 10AM ET. See you there!
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