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That's My JAMstack

Denis Kostrzewa on JAMstack-first agencies, finding your stack, talking with clients and more

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Transcript

Bryan Robinson 0:02

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of that's my JAMstack the podcast where we ask that most important of questions, what's your jam in the JAMstack? On this week's episode, we're hearing insights from the world of JAMstack agencies with Denis Kostrzewa, the CEO and co founder of the JAMstack-first agency Bejamas. Before we dive into those insights, I want to welcome back our sponsor take shape. If you're interested in their content platform, be sure to stick around after the interview to hear more, or head on over to take shape.io slash that's my JAMstack for more information. Alright guys, well, thanks for being on the show today and taking the time to chat with us.

Denis Kostrzewa 0:39

Yeah, thanks, Bryan. Thanks for having me.

Bryan Robinson 0:41

Cool. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do for work? What do you do for fun and all that good stuff?

Denis Kostrzewa 0:46

Yep. So I'm Denis. I'm the co founder and CEO of Bejamas, the first agency and for professionally, I'm not coding any websites anymore. But what I do right now is scoping projects for companies. Not approaching us, proposing solutions to them managing internal accounting processes as well as hiring new developers. For fun, to be totally honest, grumpy john was is this is enough fun for me. But about from from from the business, I really like to read books on psychology, decision making philosophy and evolution.

Bryan Robinson 1:20

What are you reading right now?

Denis Kostrzewa 1:23

Right now I'm reading

Denis Kostrzewa 1:25

the book. Right now I'm actually not reading any of those pipes. I started reading mirta echo for Colt and boom. So it's a it's a fiction book. Very

Bryan Robinson 1:37

nice. So so you get a little bit of a little bit of fiction, a little bit of pleasure in your life too.

Denis Kostrzewa 1:42

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan Robinson 1:45

Alright, so So obviously, you are a co founder of a JAMstack first agency, but what was your entry point into into the JAMstack or static sites or whatever it was at the time?

Denis Kostrzewa 1:54

Yeah, so it's a bigger story. I think it will be great to kind of give you guys To everyone listening, a bit of a background, how we how we get started and why we get started in the first place. So we were starting a local business three years ago, aiming to solve a very specific problem on the pitch was basically ship simple websites to local local businesses. And we will be later managing those sites. So we've been looking after a set of tools that will allow us to build sites which are pretty easy to maintain. If we thought about having, for example, 10 websites in maintenance mode for our customers, WordPress or Drupal on any other monolithic solution was a no go for us. Because, for example, the news updates one has to do if if you have a Drupal, WordPress website.

Denis Kostrzewa 2:47

But another important thing for us was the security. Again, if we had 10 or more websites, and we have to take responsibility for what's happening on those websites, we wanted to make sure that we are picking the rights posted for the job. And based on those two requirements on the model, repeat myself, all the obvious, monolithic choices didn't make any sense. So we started to dig deeper into what's available out there. And content the idea of static site generation. So yeah, we decided to take it for right and both our first site with Google, after a couple of months, we are the next day or some Gadsby to the mix. And after approximately a year of playing with these tools we found nullify, which was basically a game changer for us.

Denis Kostrzewa 3:37

Not not only because it was a great tool to build our sports sites with, but it was very beneficial as well. But most importantly, because we found that the thing we are doing is called the jumpstart. And there are other maniacs like us who build build sites this way basically. And you know, it was it was one of these models where you're doing something and you feel You're going against the tide and you're doing basically something that is quite unpopular in the in the industry or in the space you are in. And you still do it because you think the reasons are right. But you are quite unconfident. Where were the catches or if there is any catch, right?

Denis Kostrzewa 4:17

So like for example if you're started doing cold baths or cold showers because you want to build up your immune system and fight with fatigue or something, most buddies you know, probably think you freaked out or something and will tell you that Yeah. But if you if you find a group of people that is doing kobus as well understands what problems you you've been faced with and what you want to solve with that the whole idea gets a totally new meaning to so this was basically early 2018. For us, we found the john stack definition join the new dynamic community and southern pyjamas with the idea to be the drumstick first with the An agency and operates globally. And I'm also joking that we are jumps at first but also first JAMstack agency as well. I think like that's a big claim. But I think, yeah, we started with the first jumpstart focused agency out there

Bryan Robinson 5:17

That's a big claim but there if nothing else, there aren't a lot out there. At least not from what I've seen.

Denis Kostrzewa 5:22

Yeah. I haven't seen right now that there are putting other agencies without focus, but time, early 2018 I don't think there are other guys that were doing this thing, only this thing because that's, that's what we do.

Bryan Robinson 5:36

So obviously WordPress was was kind of, as always a big player and agency land, but like, what were some of the other solutions that you kind of looked at and said these monoliths just don't make sense for agencies.

Denis Kostrzewa 5:48

We surprisingly we haven't been looking at others other solutions when we found Who will it was, like Tom Tom, the co founder of Bejamas, he's he's more technical than I am for sure. And, and he was He wanted to try the static site generation idea. And he was into WordPress, he was developing WordPress websites for, I think, more than 66 years or something. He was pretty, pretty experienced with that, but just didn't want to stick to WordPress because for the thing that we've been trying to do for our customers, meaning simple static websites where just a simple CMS would be enough, it was definitely too much. So we didn't try really anything else. We just settled on Google. Then we liked it and kind of followed followed with this paradigm, this approach.

Bryan Robinson 6:38

Very nice. So obviously, professionally, you're using the gym second every single day, or at least your team is, and you're using Hugo and Gatsby and next.

Denis Kostrzewa 6:51

Yes, but Hugo was was our starting point. And right now to be honest, we are not using Hugo too much. It's like 90% of our projects are Got to be in exchange. And then there are some projects that are pure react. Yeah, I wouldn't say I don't think they are like an 100% JAMstack

Bryan Robinson 7:09

Sure. So how have clients responded to all that because we haven't had too many too many people doing agency work on the podcast yet.

Denis Kostrzewa 7:16

So I think we are we are a specific case because like I said, we started a local business here which which wasn't be dominant. Our customers didn't know what we are building that they just seen the the the final product and that's what they cared about. They didn't care if it's what price that they don't even know what what what rises to be honest. What would be JAMstack was in this and it was a little bit different because once we started to build the brand awareness out there and I think, yeah, once we started to build the brand owners after we are only getting clients that are just like conscious, they know what john stock is they they kind of know how it works and they know what they are buying. So it's we are in a good position that we don't have to explain Too much to them. We don't have to convince them because they are already convinced to keep it short. But there are some there are some customers that don't get it fully. So we are making workshops at the end of each project to kind of educate them and give them more guidance, so that they can understand it as well. Once we are getting to them. Yeah,

Bryan Robinson 8:21

That's really interesting that that you kind of positioned yourself in a way that most of your leads coming in our JAMstack where I didn't even know, you know, that was going to be a possibility in terms of like non technical people.

Denis Kostrzewa 8:33

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was also it's gonna sound strange, but I was surprised as well that there are so many there's so such a big audience, especially in 2018 because right now, it seems that the tide has changed that there are more people opting in into this, this paradigm and trying to try and do things but back in 2018, it was like a, you know, it was like a bet. And we just, we just set up a website, and we'll see what happens and This will happen. And we are here today talking about. Yeah, talking about jobs taking on none, I think in a different a different way. Because the the adoption rate I also wrote wrote wrote about in my last article, the adoption rate is just just growing up here. So it's very exciting to me to see it.

Bryan Robinson 9:23

And an interesting thing to me and I've gotta say, I love the love of design work that y'all do. A lot of the stuff that I've seen you put out has been amazing looking. Do you feel like the JAMstack gives us extra power in terms of doing beautiful websites? Where's that something that y'all would have been able to do in a WordPress world as well?

Denis Kostrzewa 9:42

I think I think it definitely gives you more flexibility when you want to change something. Especially Yes, this is this is more I think I'm referring more to react here, rather than JAMstack you're able to make iterations faster. With the whole component, component concept component paradigm, you can change those things quicker. So I think it definitely empowers developers front end developers, more than non WordPress. And I'm not sure how WordPress Gutenberg the current version works. sure what I'm referring to the to the older, older versions, which which I tried in the past.

Bryan Robinson 10:28

Yeah, of course those those versions still power huge chunks of the web. So that's something I always keep in mind for that. So let's talk about kind of other things. Are you able to do any jams tech kind of things personally, or is this all like you said, your fun is kind of building up this, this business?

Denis Kostrzewa 10:46

I was making jokes, but actually this is another joke and it like it makes it even more dramatic. I was I was telling my buddies, I think it was in June that till the end of the year. I for the Christmas, I want to have my own blog, my own personal website, powered by the jumpstart but I didn't manage to do that. But yeah, I like to write code. I can write code, but I wouldn't call myself a developer just out of respect to other developers, because I know, I know my technical skills aren't that high. But I can I can write things that work, basically, I know that this is not the essence of being a developer. So I'm not I'm not I'm not using jumps like on a daily basis. I'm more like, I understand the technical concepts, and I propose it to our customers. And I'm sure if this is this answers, all sorts of questions. Question in.

Bryan Robinson 11:44

That's good. So So what would be kind of yours and the companies like specific jam in the JAMstack? So obviously, you listed out some things when you're talking about choosing, you know, the static site methodology, you know, security and expandability And all that but like, what what kind of your jam for that for the JAMstack.

Denis Kostrzewa 12:06

That's all I get like we mentioned Gatsby and NextJ, this is like 90% of of our projects are built with either all that with with one to one of these tools or the other. Then when it comes to a couple of CMS options, we don't have any specific preference we are not biased in any way towards one option or the other. But if you if you read our blog, we we write about our choices. So we tested nine or 10 options right now. And you know that there are more than 10 like I don't know 20-25 but we just don't have time to test all of them. So after testing nine or 10, we are sticking to about motsi seven. So from the from the ones we tested. It's definitely contentful. Definitely Sanity NetlifyCMS is used in many of our projects on the Dato CMS, story blog, prismic, forestry is definitely a good one as well. So yeah, from the top of my head, those are the ones that we are reusing in our projects when we are making decision with our customers

Bryan Robinson 13:13

Out of curiosity since that since you got, you know, a decent customers like working on these kind of newer CMS says, when you talk about headless caucuses, there's headless. And then there's like the gift based, Which do you think is a little bit easier for clients to understand because get based can sometimes take a little extra time? I feel like?

Denis Kostrzewa 13:32

That's a good question. I think with with with the API based API based CMS options are usually used with the bigger customers. So there is a there is a bigger customer on the guy on the customer side understands the whole thing so we don't have to do much explaining because like I said, and we are getting conscious, conscious conscious buyers. One of the best CMS options is you Usually, from what I recall, is usually the smaller customer. And we don't do we didn't do much explaining here either. Because they don't understand. They don't have to understand how it works. We are just making workshops on how to use it. And the website basically is on on our maintenance because we work with with customers in the long term. And we are maintaining the website and fixing give if something breaks. So, yeah, we didn't do really much explaining, like, technical wise,

Bryan Robinson 14:36

that's that's good to know that people people can pick it up, even if it's not something as long standing as a WordPress admin.

Denis Kostrzewa 14:43

Yeah, I think I think it's really pretty important with bigger customers to to explain them exactly code works, because they care about the decisions that those decisions impact their their businesses a lot and they are they are a bigger organism as well. So the current But when it comes to the to the small company, they just from what we experienced, I'm not sure if someone has any different experiences but from what we experienced, they just care about. If this is a sustainable solution, it is will work two years from now two years from now. And it's pretty easy to do and present on on on forestry and notify CMS examples. We found that the CMS UI is easier for those guys to adjust to when they are for example switching from WordPress, they found it basically more comfortable than WordPress UI, which is pretty amazing to hear.

Bryan Robinson 15:42

Well, I'm in fairness, WordPress, the WordPress UI can sometimes be more than what a customer needs and the forestry or even even like content flow and stuff like that. You build it exactly as the client needs.

Denis Kostrzewa 15:55

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But even even a contentful if it Fair on. If you compare the UI from forestry to the UI from contentful, I use both CMS, CMS constructible. I'll do two protocols exactly like many CMS, CMS options I've used so far. But if we compare those two contentful is far more extensive in its setup. I know it depends how you will set it up. But if you have a big project, it can take, you know, three minutes to update a simple site. Whereas with forestry, you just login on your editing, editing, editing, editing those things in like one time saving it, polishing it and that said, so that there are many differences between even those those headless CMS options and I'm not comparing here WordPress or the other like Drupal, which which can also be used as a headless, headless fashion. We're just gonna break those headless CMS CMS options that I mentioned and Yeah, there are so different. And that's good actually, because there is no one solution that fits the bill for everyone. So it's good to have variability, because we can then choose from those and listen to our customers and see which one fits the best. And their case, basically.

Bryan Robinson 17:17

Nice. And so one question I got kind of got in like an agency setting is how easy or maybe more difficult I don't know, does it doesn't make onboarding new developers or dealing with turnover like obviously, y'all are a growing a growing agency. So hopefully you haven't had to deal with turnover. But one of the things that like WordPress, always kind of shoehorn an agency into you have to find a WordPress developer if you want to replace a developer, what kind of onboarding does the JAMstack give you or make easier or harder.

Denis Kostrzewa 17:54

So when we are hiring, we are always screening for we acknowledge because like I mentioned, we are Kind of outside of us and react focus right now. We've got to be with us next sometimes pure react. So we are always always screening for react experience. We haven't experienced to normal yet, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, we just finished relationships with three people. So far. We are two years in operation. I know that turnover will happen. Eventually. I'm not. I'm not saying everyone will walk in business for the end of their lives. But it's just not it was another problem we face so far. So I can really relate to that, at this point. Sure. Maybe maybe in the next year, we can we can.

Bryan Robinson 18:42

Although so. So in terms of people coming in, they're coming in with react knowledge, and then they can just hit the ground running because these are all react based technologies.

Denis Kostrzewa 18:49

Yeah, there are there are of course some some caveats that that are experienced developers have experienced galleries and more present experience next year. The workers are giving those guys And then kind of onboarding them into the process. Usually if a new developer joins the team, he's called this directly supervised about something or someone more experienced. And just just to give you some, some background and to the listeners as well, we've built more than 40 trumpster projects and some of the developers we have they themselves build like, or have been in charge of. I think there is wonderful product developed like nine websites, Gatsby plus next year, so then you guys are basically paired with Windows. Let's say senior Gods be developers. I'll be john wasn't there growing with them?

Bryan Robinson 19:44

Alright, so I obviously don't wanna take up too much more of your time. And we'll deal with our episode time constraint here, but what's your what's your actual like musical jam right now? Where are you listening to favorite song or favorite musician?

Denis Kostrzewa 19:56

Yeah, so I'm listening to pretty much every every type of Music but most of the time, I I'm a big geek of electronic music so I don't have any, like, favorite artist but for example I like very much miss your Plex I'm not sure if this is ringing a bell to to anyone from the podcast or for example mine against if I want to have something more on the ground. And then yeah, something more casual than I would probably listen to upper upper up for example or gas gas.

Bryan Robinson 20:31

And we'll we'll get some links and put those in the in the show notes so that anyone can check them out. And then finally, is there anything that you want to promote some something that you're doing that you want get out to the JAMstack community?

Denis Kostrzewa 20:42

I think yes, if you're really into the JAMstack, I'm probably biased. But you certainly subscribe to to our to our blog. We are we are putting out really more interesting and more interesting case studies right now. The upcoming months we'll have some interesting as well. And then we was also trying to start some research programs on the JAMstack and on the web development in general. So if you're curious about that, just yeah, just go to us log in and subscribe. And you'll get some, some nice pieces in the next couple of months.

Bryan Robinson 21:20

Awesome. That's exciting. I love your blog. I read most of the articles that come through my feed. So I appreciate you doing that and for taking the time to talk with us today.

Denis Kostrzewa 21:29

Yeah, thanks, Bryan. And keep it up. I really appreciate what you're doing for the community. And yeah, we need more people like, like you.

Bryan Robinson 21:37

I appreciate that.

Denis Kostrzewa 21:39

Yeah. Thanks, Bryan. And hope to talk to you again soon.

Bryan Robinson 21:45

Thanks again to Denis and thanks to all the listeners out there in the JAMstack development world. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to star heart favorite thumbs up or whatever you can think of on your podcast app of choice. And now it's sponsored time back again this week is take shape. take shape is a content platform tailor made for the JAMstack. They've got a super intuitive CMS, a clean graph qL API with an awesome API Explorer, a simple static site generator and a new mesh product that allows you to combine multiple API's and merge them all into a single graph qL API with that awesome Explorer, is definitely worth checking out by heading over to take shape.io slash that's my JAMstack. Until next week, keep doing amazing things on the web and keep things gym.

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