Podcast
Product Fridays
Hosted by The Andrews · EN
Andrew McGill and Andrew Phelps talk creativity, emerging tech, and the art of building great products. Subscribe for weekly inspiration and insights.
productfridays.substack.com
productfridays.substack.com
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Introducing Sous Chef, our newest app
Mar 1300:25:19Tap to summarizeBig news! Sous Chef, our AI-powered app for creative cooking, is officially in open beta 🎉Now, we’re not saying we’re the next coming of Bobby Flay and Alton Brown, but we both know our way around the kitchen. And we’ve always been frustrated by the dearth of purpose-built products that match how we like to cook.So, we’re designing our own. Sous Chef makes cooking amazing meals easier, more spontaneous, and more fun. Take a look!In this episode, we break down what Sous Chef does, how McGill came up with the idea while reading recipe newsletters, and why nailing down the perfect set of features is so dang hard.Also, should we rename the app “Cooking Idiot”? That’s what Phelps wants. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions We’d love to hear your feedback on the beta. Give it a try and drop us a note at hello@productfridays.com with your thoughts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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Revealed: The Product We'll Vibecode Out of Existence
Feb 2700:22:08Tap to summarizeLast week, we threw down the gauntlet: We’re joining the SaaSpocalypse and picking one of our software subscriptions to replace with a vibecoded substitute.The people spoke: It’s QuickBooks.We suspect QB has very few fans. Much like other big platforms (e.g. Jira, and increasingly Zoom), it’s tried to become everything to everyone over years — and ended up completely incomprehensible to anyone. It’s the opposite of an “opinionated product.”In this new era of frictionless personalized software, its breadth feels like bloat. We simply don’t need all of it! (And we’re not the only people thinking this. Intuit’s stock has dropped by a third since the beginning of the year.)In this episode, we dig into what actually would be the perfect bookkeeping software for two guys named Andrew (and maybe you, too). We don’t want to spoil anything, but “Partiful for expense categorization” DID come up.Next week: We unveil our creation. Stay tuned. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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Help us pick which SaaS platform to vibecode out of existence
Feb 600:23:39Tap to summarizeEarlier this week, the NASDAQ’s most powerful software stocks took a massive nosedive because an AI provider published a plugin.It sounds kind of silly, like the (probably apocryphal) thing where elephants are deathly afraid of mice. But the numbers don’t lie. Some of the biggest software platforms around — Intuit, Adobe, LegalZoom — did indeed lose hundreds of billions in market capitalization after Anthropic added a legal research plugin to their new Cowork product.What are they worried about? It’s not just about Anthropic competing with legal software. The real fear is that Claude and other AI tools can help anyone spin up passable alternatives to expensive SaaS products — an era of personal software. Who needs to pay QuickBooks $500 a year to balance their books when an AI can build you a custom replacement in an afternoon?Is this fear justified? We’re going to find out by stress-testing our own software stack. We went through every recurring subscription we pay for and asked: Could we build a decent substitute using Claude? These are our top picks. Vote below to help us choose which one to tackle first. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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Introducing The Andrew Company
Jan 1600:24:40Tap to summarizeFolks, we did the dang thing. After six years of friendship, three years of consulting together, and 10 beautiful months of Friday podcasting — The Andrews are officially joining forces to create The Andrew Company.(Here’s our official launch video — shot in Phelps's daughter’s playroom.)We have two goals:* Create delightful (and opinionated) products together. We love tools that solve specific problems extremely well — apps like Flighty and YNAB. So we’re doubling down. The Andrew Company’s primary output is joyful products (and podcast episodes). We’re already at work on Re:verb, Bandwagon, and Sous Chef.* Help companies, big and small, take ideas from a blank whiteboard to v1.0. Starting is hard! We make it easy. We help teams turn early ideas into first versions of real products or new lines of business — from places like CNN and The Washington Post to startups like Till Financial.In this episode, we walk through why we decided to join forces and how we worked through our differences as co-founders. This is a big step for us. And we have to say — we’re very grateful to all of you. Product Fridays, in some ways, is the beta version of The Andrew Company. This community, and your feedback, has been invaluable in helping us decide what matters most for our business and working lives.Thanks for being part of it. And here’s to many more Fridays to come. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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Getting Real About 2025 (And Our Bets For 2026)
Dec 1500:29:46Tap to summarizeHappy almost New Year! This is a year-in-review episode, but we’ll save you the usual LinkedIn end-of-year pablum. Some things about 2025 were hard. Andrew Phelps shares how he dealt with unexpected business pressure; McGill talks about his “duck months” — calm on the surface, paddling like hell underneath. Some of you might have felt the same way?But 2025 also gave us some incredible gifts. Clarity! Some really important work! And of course, this podcast and community. You are one of the best things that happened this year. Thank you for being with us.On to 2026. We’ve got predictions for the year, and we’re doing our best Polymarket impression and applying confidence intervals to each. For instance, we’re 90% sure that if you listen and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, we’ll write you a personalized limerick. But we’re only 10% sure our poetry will be any good.Mentioned in this episode:Honestly, so many things, but here are some of the more unusual suspects:* MS NOW (née MSNBC)* Parent company Versant* The Walt Disney Company* Nano Banana Pro* And ofc Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude et al* Perplexity* That time Phelps’ flight almost crashed This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Product Friday
Nov 2400:32:27Tap to summarizePhelps has been building something for the past month. It’s inspired him — maybe more than any side project in recent memory. And it just suffered a setback that has him wondering if he should keep going on at all.McGill has been building something for the past year. It started out promising. Then it got hard. Somewhere along the way, he set it down. Now he’s looking for the inspiration to see it through.Sometimes you just gotta wear all black and turn all the lights off and record your podcast in the dark. Because as much as we’d like everything to follow the Golden Roadmap™️, building products isn’t linear. Today, the Andrews break down what to do when things feel stuck – or just suck. And spoiler alert: BOTH of those projects are getting built, folks.Mentioned in this episode:* Bandwagon. Group chats with AI. Sign up for the private beta!* Sous Chef. Win Thanksgiving this year.And the too-expensive-to-actually-buy items topping The Andrews’ holiday wishlist this year:* reMarkable Paper Pro * Sony ZV-E10 II camera* Switch 2 (actually this feels attainable)* And will this be the year McGill buys one of the Meta VR headsets?Today’s limerick recipient: Nonita Juanita. Thanks NJ! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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A Topic So Big, We Needed Two More Andrews
Nov 1000:26:38Tap to summarizeOur last PF conversation left us hungry for more. Sure, it’s great to hear how two chaotic coders — er, talented thought leaders — are using AI to build products. But what about genuinely top-tier engineers? Are their lives any different?So we asked two elite developers — both named Andrew, of course — to weigh in. Please welcome:* Andrew Briz, editorial director of newsroom engineering at POLITICO* Andrew Milligan, full-stack engineer at Earth GenomeBriz and Milligan are the fellas that other engineers call when they can’t figure out why their code is crashing. (McGill definitely did when they all worked at POLITICO together). In this episode, we discuss:* The tools they’re using (and what they think is overhyped)* How AI is changing how they collaborate with other engineers* The “Google Maps” effect, or how relying on technology always comes with a costPlus, we read TWO original limericks honoring listeners who left reviews on Apple Podcasts. (If you want your own, write a review!)Mentioned in this episode:* Zed – open-source code editor* Cursor* Cursor bug bot* Codex This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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The Best Way to Vibecode Is Hands-On. Here's How We Do It.
Oct 2700:21:07Tap to summarizeA note from The Andrews: Hey! It would help us a lot if you would review Product Fridays on Apple Podcasts (even if you don’t like us). It’s basically like giving us money. If you do, we’ll immortalize you in a limerick on the next show.AI is changing software development — duh! But while no-code platforms like Replit and Lovable have gotten a lot of attention, most of the magic is happening when developers partner with AI instead.That means instead of ditching the IDE altogether, they’re using tools like Claude Code and Cursor to make engineering plans, debug code, and bang through all the boring scaffolding no one wants to do. This week on Product Fridays, we pull back the curtain on our own coding workflows, explaining how a project goes from idea to production. And we argue this style of hands-on vibecoding is more productive than using no-code platforms — even if you don’t know much code at all.We’ll cover:* How we use ChatGPT and Claude to think through architecture* How we use Cursor and Visual Studio Code (with Claude) to write the code* How AI makes it hard to resist laziness…* … and how it’s an awesome tutor, tooDiscussed in this episode:* Replit* Lovable* Cursor* Claude Code and Visual Studio Code* Paradise on Hulu* Snickers candy bars This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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How Can News Publishers Compete with AI Digests? We See Two Ways.
Oct 1300:21:45Tap to summarizeA programming note: We’re now releasing Product Fridays on Mondays. We know, we know, Friday is right there in the name. But Friday is the vibe, you see. And Monday turns out to be a better day to release podcasts.OpenAI’s latest product, ChatGPT Pulse, automatically compiles a personal news digest from your email, calendar, and across the web. It’s convenient, addictive — and a little terrifying if you work in media. Because in this world, the reporter still digs up the facts, but the reader never actually reads their words. The AI does the writing instead.This week on Product Fridays, we ask: What happens when the machines become the primary consumers of journalism?We draw a distinction between “bespoke” media — the creators and publications you seek out for their voices (The Atlantic, Substack, the McElroys) — and “commodity” news, where the value lies in facts, not style. The former might survive as personality-driven brands. The latter risks becoming raw material for AI.Or is there a third way? Consider a new model that lets publishers feed high-quality reporting directly to LLMs and get paid for it. Enter MCP, a universal protocol that allows language models to securely talk to other systems. Imagine paying a few dollars to add CNBC, The Economist, or the AP directly to your personalized feed.It’s a hopeful idea: reconnecting readers, machines, and journalists in a way that rewards everyone. But unless news organizations adapt fast, ChatGPT could do to media what Apple News, Google, and Facebook already did, only faster.And hey, we’ve got a request. We’re asking our readers/viewers/listeners to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. As thanks, we will write a personalized limerick for every review — and read it on the next episode. Win-win-win-win-win-win-win!Mentioned in this episode:* Introducing ChatGPT Pulse* Model Context Protocol (MCP)* The McElroy Family This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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ChatGPT Can Do Everything. That’s the Problem.
Sep 2600:18:54Tap to summarizeAndrew McGill shares a new demo he’s been working on — an AI-powered interior design assistant called Zhuzh — and wonders aloud: if this is just ChatGPT with a prettier interface, what’s the point? But maybe that is the point.We go deep on:* Why good UI still matters in the age of LLMs* How purpose-built tools outshine general-purpose chat for many use cases* Where wrapper apps land on the spectrum of AI product value* The difference between novelty and utility* What makes an AI idea ChatGPT-proofPlus, honorable mentions: personalized podcast feeds, offline LLMs, and the dream of an air-gapped house AI.We also commit to launching a small wrapper app of our own before the next episode. What should we make? Tell us in the comments.Mentioned in the episodeHere are the products and articles we talked about (links TBD):* Zhuzh, Andrew McGill’s AI-powered interior design demo* OpenAI usage study (700M weekly active users)* Flighty (flight tracking app)* Renovate AI (home design tool)* Post AI (Washington Post’s chatbot experiment)* Notebook LM by Google* Huxe (new personalized podcast app from former Notebook LM team)* Ollama (run local LLMs)* Reins (GUI app for local model management) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit productfridays.substack.com
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