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Sub Club by RevenueCat
The Advantages of Working On an App You Care About — Christian Selig, Apollo
01:02:22
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- [00:01]
David Barnard
Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by RevenueCat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust RevenueCat to power in app purchases, manage customers, and grow revenue across iOS and Android and the web. You can learn more@revenuecat.com let's get into the show. Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard, and with me today, revenuecat CEO Jacob Eiding. Our guest today is Christian Selig, the indie developer behind the late, great Apollo app for Reddit, currently working on Pixel Pals and Juno. On the podcast, we talk with Christian about the benefits of building something you personally care about, how to balance user feedback with product intuition, and why process frameworks and outside advice are often worth ignoring. Hey, Christian, thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
- [01:10]
Christian Selig
I'm really excited to be here.
- [01:12]
David Barnard
Yeah, it's been a long time coming.
- [01:14]
Christian Selig
Yeah, I think so. I think we've all talked in some capacity over the years, so it's nice to formalize it.
- [01:19]
Jacob Eiding
I learned from the notes that I was the one that suggested or I talked to you about getting Apollo on subscriptions, and I'm like, vaguely remembering that conversation. There might have been a Twitter DM or something.
- [01:29]
Christian Selig
I think it was like an email back when emails were a big thing. Yeah, I think you were like, there's the subscription thing that's coming out. I don't know if you've heard of it. And I think back then I was still kind of like chicken shit, where everyone was kind of getting roasted for it. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what this guy's talking about. But you were ahead of your time.
- [01:44]
Jacob Eiding
Vaguely remember. Vaguely remember. It's pretty cool.
- [01:46]
David Barnard
Well, we can get more into that in a bit. I did just want to kick things off, talking about how you got into indie development. Like, you. Actually, I went to your LinkedIn page before this podcast to be like, looking for. To write your bio and stuff. No. And it's like the perfect kind of like, LinkedIn page. It was like you read Apple for a little bit and then like, you just didn't update it ever again. Like, the perfect indie LinkedIn. Like, I don't even care.
- [02:10]
Christian Selig
I don't know if I've ever logged in since then. Yeah, I get a DM once in a while that they're like, I sent you a message on LinkedIn, and I'm like, oh, well.
- [02:18]
Jacob Eiding
Well, our one mutual Christian, I think, is the same Apple recruiter that must have recruited us.
- [02:24]
Christian Selig
Oh, was it Mike?
- [02:25]
Jacob Eiding
No, this guy, Joshua.
- [02:27]
Christian Selig
Oh, maybe that sounds familiar. Okay, okay, fair enough.
- [02:29]
Jacob Eiding
I wasn't that far off that I was there. I was there a few years before you, but.
- [02:32]
David Barnard
So you were at Apple and what happened after that? Because the trail goes dark.
- [02:38]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah, I like to be mysterious. I was there for a summer internship during university, and pretty much after that, I kind of got that fire in your belly that you often do when you work somewhere really cool. And I was like, okay, I want to build something. And Reddit was really big at the time, still is, obviously, but it was, like, really, really big. Especially, like, where I was in university and there was alien blue, but there wasn't really any, like, really iOS first app that really I loved. So I was like, you know, screw it. This is. This could be a fun project to kind of get my beak wet with. So I started playing with that and it came along really nicely. And I ended up posting it in, like, the Apple subreddit, I think, and it really took off in a big way and people were really interested in beta testing it. So it kind of got to that point where I was like, oh, like, this might have some legs. I'm graduating in a few months. Like, should I go get the big boy job, go back to Apple or something, or kind of see if this has legs and try it out for a bit? And I ended up trying it out for a bit, burning through all the savings I got at Apple, and ended up working out pretty well. So it kind of accidental in a way, but also just kind of happened organically, I suppose.
- [03:39]
Jacob Eiding
Had you built apps or anything else before Apollo?
- [03:42]
Christian Selig
Yeah, I had, like, an app called Syllable that was like kind of like a speed reading app. It helped you, like, one of those ones that, like, flashed a word at a time and try to help you learn to read a little faster. And it was great because it made like a few hundred bucks over the course of, like, a year during university, which, like, you know, as a university student is incredible. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's amazing. And I think that really, like, that was back when there was like, oh, there's an app for that. Commercials were everywhere. So there was this big. Apps were such a, like, novel new concept. So, like, I was still, like, it was so hyped to be working on something like that, so.
- [04:12]
Jacob Eiding
And you could. There were a few enough apps at the time still. You could like push an app and like get a reasonable amount of traffic just from being on the App store.
- [04:18]
Christian Selig
Oh yeah. TechCrunch would be like, there's a new app out today. Check this thing out. Which you don't see a lot of anymore.
- [04:24]
David Barnard
What year was that?
- [04:25]
Christian Selig
Probably like 2012, 2013, I want to say something like that.
- [04:30]
David Barnard
And then when did you start work on Apollo?
- [04:32]
Christian Selig
So I finished apple in 2014, so I think it would have been. Yeah, like the fall of 2014 is when I started working on it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's. It's. Yeah. Wow. Coming up. 10 years.
- [04:41]
David Barnard
So what were the like, frameworks and process you used to build Apollo?
- [04:49]
Christian Selig
Yeah, that. Not so especially, like, it got a little better as time went on maybe. But like, especially at the beginning, like, it was like I was a kid at a university, so I like. I guess a lot of developers have like, you know, years in the trenches working at like a big startup or a formalized tech company where they develop these like, really great practices. And I really had none of that. Like, my school was very like computer science theory based. So like apps weren't even taught. So it was kind of a lot of feeling around in the dark. And yeah, Apollo I was just working on here and there, like all the time I had and just kind of putting it together. And I remember, like, it took like, I posted it, I want to say, like the January after that fall, and it was like maybe a year and a half or two years later that I actually like fully released it. So it took a long time of just kind of like funneling around and feeling in the dark to even get there. And there was a lot of like, from the beta testers, there was a lot of like, can you just frigging release this thing? Like it's, it's your. I think I fell into every like, developer trope where there was like feature creep and there was working on like too many feature instead of bugs. And yeah, by some luck, stroke of luck, it came together and released.
- [05:52]
Jacob Eiding
I mean, you kept building. You wrote something, you were writing code.
- [05:55]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah, I was. It just wasn't very structured. Like, it was like, I need to get to California from New York and I know, like, it's west. And that was, that was pretty much like as far organized as I was.
- [06:06]
Jacob Eiding
So your subreddit's always been very active. So is that where you would get most like customer feedback and stuff like that?
- [06:11]
Christian Selig
For sure, yeah. It kind of made it easy because you could like, the feedback loop was so close by, like, it was like, you know, you were in the app. You can just poke over here to kind of give some feedback. And that made it really nice because there was no friction. People always gave really good feedback, and especially during the beta process, like, that really helped shape the app for the better because I kind of had a core idea of what I wanted. But the feedback people gave over the years really shaped it into something that I think became more than just, like, my ideal of what a Reddit client was. It kind of got shaped into this, what the perfect thing for a community would be. And, like, a lot of voices kind of shaped it like a driftwood going through the ocean where it kind of gets worn down and in nice ways.
- [06:45]
Jacob Eiding
Oh, but I think that's how all, like, most great product. Well, there's very many different ways to make a product, but I think that is one way, right? You have, like, a lot of feedback and usage and people and a community that cares. And then I do think you have an auteur, like, you have an editor somewhere who's, like, making some decisions about, like, what gets put in and whatnot. That's a Jobs thing, right? Like, good products are made with. With friction. Right? He used to say that, like, wearing things down and like, working on it until it's. That's very Apple. Right? Like, they would just grind and grind on stuff.
- [07:12]
Christian Selig
No, I think this was uniquely me.
- [07:16]
Jacob Eiding
The key man theory of history.
- [07:17]
Christian Selig
Yeah, I think I was the first.
- [07:20]
Jacob Eiding
When did you, like, decide or realize or make, like, at some point it became a commercial thing. Was that always, like. I mean, not that it was, like, making money maybe wasn't the number one thing, but at some point you were like, well, I have to eat, and maybe this, like, Reddit client can be how I eat.
- [07:34]
Christian Selig
Yeah, that was kind of like, always, like, the goal on the horizon. Like, Apple paid pretty well, even as an intern, and I was living with, like, six other friends. So, like, life was pretty cheap and I was kind of just like, slowly chewing through that. But I knew, like, a micro cosmo of a startup. Like, I kind of had, like, this fund and I had almost like a burn rate. And I knew by a certain date I had to get this out, otherwise it would kind of be troublesome. So I kind of had that in the horizon. And I knew back then I had this novel idea of just like, you know, 299 one time. Fee economics were a lot simpler back then. And I figured, I'll just put that out and it'll hopefully take care of Itself that was like the extent of which I thought through the monetization. But it worked out pretty well by the end. Like the first day. Like, it got a ton of downloads because there was a lot of pent up demand from people who saw the beta but was full and weren't able to get in. So there are a lot of people who just jumped on the Pro version immediately. So pretty. It was like financially viable from day one of the actual release, but it was a lot of burning through funds in order to get there.
- [08:24]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, I mean, it's financially viable when it's one young person living with six other five other people. Right. Which is fine. That's how you should start.
- [08:34]
Christian Selig
Yeah, it definitely helped a lot.
- [08:36]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, it's like the. You can do a lot of things your costs do directly kind of affect what you can try and the risk you can take and stuff like that. And then you can compound later on. Right. You can build more revenue or figure it out later. But yeah, Sam Altman used to talk about this more when he wasn't the richest, most famous AI person in the world. But like, to just say, like, your personal burn rate is probably like your number one, can be your number one hindrance to risk taking. Like, as you increase your personal burn rate, it just like lowers the opportunities that you can take because you have, you know, there's lots of reasons that somebody's burn rate might not be intentionally chosen that way, but like, it is a huge input to the amount of risk and things you can try and, and stuff like this. And I think we take, I mean, not to say you were lucky, but I think we're all lucky in some ways. Like, you're young, had the skills, had the time, had the financial Runway and then you know, of course, like had the vision to build something for a community. But like, I think lowering the denominator on this makes a big difference.
- [09:32]
Christian Selig
Oh, it's brutal because I'll get like Twitter DMs where people will be like, oh, like, how should I get into the. How did you get into this? Like, would you recommend a similar path? And it's like, no, like the kind of like you said, the stairs aligned people with like, you know, three kids and a family and like, you know, 10 hours a week of spare time. Like, that's not a formula. I would have really been able to like create what I created within. So I was very fortunate, I guess, to have the circumstances.
- [09:53]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. It makes the vice not super transferable. Right. It's not like going indie is impossible. At that stage it's just like your baseline is going to be a lot higher. Right. And it's going to be harder, it's going to be more challenging maybe to get off the ground.
- [10:03]
David Barnard
But that is what's great about the indie hacker scene and the ability in software to have side projects and have a full time job and you can build something cool in just 10 hours a week. Like you can't follow the Apollo playbook to do that.
- [10:18]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. How much, how much were you probably working on that Christian like in that.
- [10:21]
Christian Selig
Time and on Godly. Because it's like a trans. It's that like hobby slash work barrier that's like gets really dangerous where you're like, oh, like I'm working on this feature and it's a ton of fun and it's like 10pm and you were like.
- [10:32]
Jacob Eiding
I think they call that your life's work, I think is what that's called, I guess.
- [10:35]
Christian Selig
But like you slowly like don't have like work hours anymore I guess, which is awesome in some ways. But in others, like those few hours a night, someone might recharge in some capacity. You're like still just plugging away.
- [10:45]
Jacob Eiding
I think there is this like, I won't necessarily accuse the indie community of having this myth be bigger in their world, but I think there is sort of generally a myth that you can attain like outsized rewards. I think David DHH and 37 six guys have made this worse. But like to think that you're going to be able to achieve, maybe you can. But like most like great outcomes came through at least some period of like intense investment. Right. And it might not have been that bad. Right. Like it might have been something you were perfectly happy to do, but you know, you had again, it was like the time of your life where you didn't have commitments that you had to do. Like it was fun, right? And you have this intensity where you build and build and build and build. I feel like there's a movement where that's like shun. That's like bad, you know, like, oh. Like you're not being balanced and like all this stuff and you're like yeah. But like I don't know. I was, I wanted to.
- [11:33]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no one was holding a gun to my head and it was like a lot of fun, but it was just one of the, like you look back at it and you're like, yeah, there was inherently like balance wasn't a word I would use for that. But it was like just in terms of like trying to replicate that for someone else. Like, it's. It's hard to say, like, oh, just work on it for, you know, 80 hours a week. Like, that's all you got to do.
- [11:51]
Jacob Eiding
And they're like, okay, I mean, it might be. I will posit that that might be. You know, maybe it's not the only thing that matters. And again, like, I haven't worked 80 hours a week on revenue cap probably since the first year. You know, maybe there were spits and spurts of it here and there. But I definitely think when you're in that, like when you're in that nucleation phase, like when you're going from zero to one, I think. I think it's hard to think. It wouldn't be part of the equation. Right. Or at least if it's not necessary. It's certainly correlated. Right. I think folks that get things off.
- [12:19]
David Barnard
The ground, that was the whole setup and joke of me kicking this off with, like, the framework side of it. Like, Christian, what frameworks did you use? What process? But I think the truth is, and Jacob said this earlier, it's like different products are built in different ways and different people have different temperaments in different time availability. And your path is a path. If you only have 10 hours a week and you've got three kids, you probably, probably do need to, like, think more and plan more and kind of have more of a process and do some market research and those kind of things. But I think a lot of great things come out of it, exactly what you did. Even if it is 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week, or you get carried away and do spend 40 hours a week on it for a few weeks when you're still working 40 hours a week in your day job, you're just passionate about it and you just have to build that thing versus, like, I do think it can get overly formulaic, where you're just building this thing because you think it's going to make you money, but you don't even care. And that. That's a grind.
- [13:16]
Christian Selig
Yeah, that's. I don't think I would have made it to the end anywhere close if that was the case, because I was using the shit out of it. So it was like this was something.
- [13:23]
Jacob Eiding
I mean, that's. That's super underrated. Right? Being a consumer of your own product.
- [13:28]
Christian Selig
Right.
- [13:28]
Jacob Eiding
But that. That process of having people using it, interacting with them, and then being the tip of the spear, the person who can actually build and deploy, that's going to outperform any sort of like framework or process or like, whatever. In my. In my experience. I think that's interesting.
- [13:43]
Christian Selig
I didn't ever. I didn't never thought about it like that. Yeah, that's. That's a.
- [13:46]
Jacob Eiding
Just how the. You were to the consumer, the user, and then you could actually just fix their thing like instantly if you wanted to.
- [13:52]
Christian Selig
It's almost a framework in and of itself.
- [13:54]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. I mean, in absence of framework, it's just gasoline and oxygen or whatever. It's like just put the two and it will kind of. Which is kind of like. I don't know. I think as I've. We were talking about Founder Mode. It's Founder Mode week, where we're recording this for people who are terminally online. But Christian was asking me about it, and I think that's kind of one of my learnings. The first. Sorry.
- [14:17]
Christian Selig
Sorry. No, no, please.
- [14:20]
David Barnard
It's a lot of synergy in this conversation, David.
- [14:22]
Jacob Eiding
I know it's ruined me, but I think one of my. One of my realizations over the last few years has been that I do think that, like, the core ingredients being there sort of trumps all process or whatever, and that those core ingredients being like, people who can build stuff, people who have a need and then just energy. Right. Just like talking to them, seeing what their problems are and using very basic reasoning to be like, okay, what's next? Now, I say that with however many years of software building experience behind me and all this stuff that I can like, synthesize and like, understand what's possible and what's not and all of that. So it's maybe an oversimplification, but I do think that, like. Yeah, I think there's like a. A desire to over systematize a lot of these things, which should just be like, organic and. And sort of like, artistic.
- [15:14]
Christian Selig
Such a good word for it. Like. Like, it's like you always see those, like, old guy billionaires writing the books and like, here's how you do what I did when it's like, I don't know if those steps are inherently repeatable or it was just kind of you struck while the iron was hot.
- [15:26]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. Or there's even any causation at all. Like.
- [15:29]
Christian Selig
Right, right.
- [15:29]
Jacob Eiding
I was doing this, and this is what I was doing when I, like, found a gold mine.
- [15:35]
David Barnard
Right.
- [15:37]
Christian Selig
They say it with such conviction. Like, you read the book and you're like, dang, I can do this too. And it's like, it scares me so much when someone asks for advice to kind of accidentally go down that path where you're like, this worked for me in this hyper specific case that, like, I'll prescribe this to you as something that'll work in your case too. Whereas, like, I think like you said, kind of having the more organic approach of like having the right ingredients, you know, in the cauldron, I think is a lot more helpful than some inherent formula or framework.
- [16:03]
Jacob Eiding
The tragic part of it is you could have all the ingredients, it's still not work. Right. Like that's that. And it probably most likely won't. If you have enough at bats and if you can keep in the game long enough and you can keep trying, like, eventually you'll have something, I think, that will work, which is also, I think, something that people are challenged with people a lot of time cutting their losses, you know, on a project that's not going anywhere and deciding when's enough. Christian, did you ever have something where you worked on and you were just like, like, I think I need to drop this because, like, it's just not worth the squeeze anymore.
- [16:30]
Christian Selig
Not like, I don't know, like about.
- [16:31]
Jacob Eiding
100, this guy, or batting a thousand.
- [16:33]
Christian Selig
It's less that and it's more. So, like, I don't think I start working on something unless I'm like, I'm really confident in it being something I.
- [16:40]
Jacob Eiding
Care about, which is interesting. It's not something you're really confident about working, it's something you're really confident that you care about. Right?
- [16:46]
Christian Selig
Yeah, exactly. And to the extent that, like, if I release this and I'm the only one who likes it, like, in some cases that's good enough for me. Whereas, like, I almost envy. Some people are kind of just like. Like they just got a random idea using the bathroom and they're like, I'm going to build that this week. And like, that sounds like a lot of fun, but like, to me, I kind of. I sit on it a little while and I'm like, where would I take this? Like, kind of what are, what are the. What kind of legs would it have? And that's kind of when I invest the time in it. And then at that point I feel like I'm confident enough and I've put enough time into it that like, not releasing it is kind of feels wasteful to me. Like, I get to a certain extent, like, cutting your losses, but to me, at a certain extent it's like, I thought this had legs at some point. I kind of wanted to see this through, to see if that had any basis in reality. And I haven't had so many at bats that, like, I'm sure eventually it's going to be a terrible formula. But, like, I've only had, like three apps or something and it's worked out pretty well so far.
- [17:34]
David Barnard
It's funny you use the word care, because that's exactly what I was going to say is that even if it's not a financial success, if it's something you care about, it can be incredibly rewarding. And if you're building it only to be a financial success, maybe you need to. And if it has to be a financial success, like you're burning your life savings to build it, then maybe you do. But, like, I mean, even for me, my Weather up app, it's not been super successful. I mean, it's made a couple hundred grand over the last, like, five years and it's done all right this year. But, like, it's super fulfilling to me, even though, like, it's probably never going to pay the bills or.
- [18:14]
Jacob Eiding
David's the most into weather apps of anybody I've ever met. Like, I have one and it came with the phone. And I think it offends him a little bit that I'm like, that's fine. Actually, that's not true. I have some specialty weather apps, but.
- [18:24]
David Barnard
And that's the thing is that I really don't care because, like, we had a storm come through a couple of weeks ago and we had gotten the beta into this weird state with a data corruption thing where I could not use my own app. And then so I went to the app Store and I downloaded 20 different weather apps and I did not like them. And it was so incredibly personally fulfilling to be like, I just want my weather app. And so, like, is it ever going to, like, make a million bucks? I don't know. Maybe I'm going to keep plugging away at it. But, like, I get an incredible amount of personal fulfillment in building this thing. And I get to build it with my cousin, which is a lot of fun. Like, it's so. So in my case, you know, I work full time at Revenue Cat. It's a side project. I don't even put 10 hours a week into it most weeks. Like, you know, with big updates, I do put more time into it, but, like, it's pretty cool that I can tinker on this thing that I really care about and get that fulfillment, even if it's not making millions of dollars.
- [19:19]
Christian Selig
Yeah. And I almost think, like, if the financial aspect is the only thing motivating you, like, I don't know how Sustainable long term, that is. Like I feel like you'd burn out.
- [19:25]
Jacob Eiding
Pretty quickly being in yc. Like just name drop that. Just make sure.
- [19:30]
Christian Selig
But like, like why Combinator?
- [19:32]
Jacob Eiding
Well, you had a lot of people in your bash that you saw. You see a lot of folks come through and I guess I just run into a lot of people who are like early. It's probably like similar you Christian, like you have indie hackers. Like when you get into it, I get a lot of people reaching out like early stage venture funded path, like trying looking for advice and stuff. And I can definitely tell the psychological difference in somebody who's doing it because it's something that's like burning inside of them versus somebody who like wants to do a startup for like the checkbox and maybe the money and stuff like that. Like those are good too.
- [20:02]
Christian Selig
You sniff that out immediately.
- [20:04]
Jacob Eiding
There's a few tells. Like if somebody talks about selling the company someday, like talk about flipping it. I'm like, man, you've already checked out. Like I know you're gonna try a lot less hard, right? There's certain tells that are minor. But yeah, I honestly think that if you could know in somebody's heart and I think most people don't actually know themselves, right. At some level. But if you can know that, like I think if you'd be the world's most successful angel investor, like if you had a perfect sense of that, I think you would. Because it's the, it's the people who like are doing it for the care of the craft. Like the, the personal reasons, right. The spiritual reasons, like whatever those are. I think the folks that will try harder, they'll push harder. They'll. They have a little bit of a burning, burning the boats mentality, right? Where they go like there's no, there's no path back. Like I'm not turning around. Right.
- [20:47]
Christian Selig
So do you think you have a good enough batting average that you'd ever get into that angel investing area?
- [20:54]
Jacob Eiding
No, I have done a little bit. I think I'm pretty underperforming.
- [20:59]
Christian Selig
Oh, fair enough.
- [21:00]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. I don't know, we could talk about venture. It's super interesting because I think in indie, in indie world, the only difference, the only difference between. Well, not the only, there's a lot of like second order differences that come when you're doing a venture backed company versus like an indie. But really it's just like it's funding and, and a financial thing. Like you know, we have all the same problems, right? You have users, you need to get product Market fit. You need to have like a good culture, like within your, you know, if it's a company of one, it's easier to maintain that culture. Right, but like. But yeah, but I mean, your culture just becomes your personal mental state. Right. And your personal behaviors. Right. Which matter. And so I think, I think it's a lot more similar than people think. I just think the difference. And maybe, you know, we've been talking about. We talked a little bit before the call about Founder Mode, which is like this thing, that essay Paul Graham wrote.
- [21:48]
Christian Selig
Yeah, you're a big proponent.
- [21:51]
Jacob Eiding
I mean, I don't know.
- [21:52]
Christian Selig
I've never heard someone so gassed up about it.
- [21:55]
Jacob Eiding
I think everybody, everybody should just, you know, I don't believe in isms, as my friend Ferris Bueller once said, but I think everyone should believe in themselves. And so, like, if it resonates with you, I still, I mean, I still learn from movie, but, like, I think if it resonates with you, you should do it. But I think the process of trusting yourself, believing in what you're building, I think all of these things sort of trump, like how you're funded or if you're not funded, like, having a purpose to what you're doing, doing stuff that makes sense to you, like, as the builder of the thing. And I think this actually applies to people, not even necessarily founders of things or like owners of things, like, even in your own work. I think if we constantly try to, like, cargo cult, which I don't know if that does that land on anybody. Cargo culting?
- [22:38]
Christian Selig
Yeah.
- [22:39]
Jacob Eiding
Oh, yeah, Yeah. I think we constantly try to cargo cult these, like, processes from, like, other successful companies and places. And it goes back to your point, Christian, about, like the book from the billionaire and their retirement years. It's like there's really, like, you can copy that, but it's probably not the thing that made that magical. I think this is too, for a lot of us in Indy Land, we copy Steve. And I think there's some things he said and felt and did that that were core to their success. But if you copied Steve Harvey. Yeah, Steve Harvey. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Family Feud. But if you copied everything Apple does, I think you might end up with a really broken company. Right?
- [23:15]
David Barnard
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Christian Selig
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.
- [23:16]
Jacob Eiding
There's a lot of stuff in there that's not actually related to their success. But yeah, I'm big on. Big on Founder Mode. I'm Founder Mode number one. Founder number one, that's me.
- [23:24]
Christian Selig
Yeah. You even changed your shirt, said the.
- [23:26]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, yeah, I have it on Right here.
- [23:28]
Christian Selig
No, it's interesting. Like, humans seem to love, like, I don't know if it's a shortcut or. We just seem to love trying to find our process to do something better. And I don't know if that's like an evolutionary technique or something, but, like, it's wild how there's almost. We love prescribing. Like, if you do X result, Y will occur.
- [23:44]
Jacob Eiding
I think we have this, like, desire to map a system of a predictable system onto, like, essentially chaotic data. Like, we're always trying to, like, find the underlying physics and properties. And sometimes it works, right? And we learn how to swim and jump and, like, all these, like, really complicated physical properties and things. And we've either learned that, like, evolutionarily or not. Like, why can humans drive? How did we figure that out? Right? Like, it's just like we can map to these insane systems. But then there are some systems which I just are inherently chaotic. And I think most systems in the world, and I think products and how they interact with people and whether or not businesses make money or not, I think are pretty chaotic systems. And so we're, like, constantly trying to, like, oh, if you just do okrs and you just do this and you just do that, that's the underlying physics of the system. And you'll be able to manipulate and control that system. And I think essentially they're just. They're always going to be very chaotic. And I almost think that, like, just adapting to that chaos, kind of organic. Going back to organic, whatever that means. Like, yeah, that word of just being, like, just focus on very basic things. Right? And you can adapt to the chaos and not try to, like, tame it. Necessarily, necessarily maybe is better. But yeah, we love. We love to try to put complex things into boxes that don't really map. And then we go, like, why does nothing make sense?
- [25:05]
David Barnard
Sounds like chaos is kind of how you built Apollo. It's like you just followed the users. You followed your own Christian.
- [25:13]
Jacob Eiding
Trying to decide if that's an insult or a compliment.
- [25:15]
Christian Selig
No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying that's a very romantic way to put what didn't feel. So. It felt like a compliment, and I'm unsure it's deserved, but I appreciate it.
- [25:23]
David Barnard
So I did want to get back to kind of, like, building this business that started as this kind of crazy passion project that you hope would make some money. And then you launch it. You launch it, and It's. You said 299 up front.
- [25:36]
Christian Selig
It might even been 199 for like, the first week, it was one of those things where, yeah, it was, in hindsight, not great because I don't know, like, the difference between 199 and 299 or even maybe 399. Like, it's. If you're.
- [25:46]
Jacob Eiding
You probably debated that a lot or not. Actually, I'm curious because some people sit and wring their hands over, like, a price choice forever, and it's. I'm always just like, just pick a price and then you could change it later. It's fine.
- [25:57]
Christian Selig
I don't think I put that much. I think, like, Alien Blue was like 299 or something. And I was like, that kind of seems like maybe at the time that was like, what seemed reasonable to charge for a Reddit app. But in hindsight, it's one of those things where I think I did the same thing with, like, lifetime pricing once I finally followed Jacob's advice and had subscriptions where it was like, 1999 for, like, the first year, which was like, bonkers price when I think it was like $10 a year for the actual subscription. So it's like, it pays for it. And it was like, I ended up increasing it to, like, 30 or $40. And, like, the take rate didn't change. And it's like one of those things. You're like, shit.
- [26:27]
Jacob Eiding
So you had surplus, uncaptured, like, demand right there.
- [26:30]
Christian Selig
100%.
- [26:31]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah.
- [26:31]
Christian Selig
Yeah. It's a lot of chaos. But, yeah, it was just a lot of chaos over the years. I think where it was, it was good chaos. And, like, the subreddit served almost as like, a continual North Star. Like, you got too off base. It was like you work on the wrong feature for too long and you start to hear from people kind of thing.
- [26:45]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. They start yelling at you. This is me and Twitter. Anytime where I'm not building what I need to be building, I'll know.
- [26:50]
Christian Selig
Oh, 100%. Well, yeah. Yeah. And it's great because it serves as like, that North Star. So there was kind of like a. Like a shepherd of the chaos in that capacity. So it wasn't, I guess, as chaotic as working completely alone. Like, you kind of had, like. I liken it to a team almost in some. In some ways, but.
- [27:05]
Jacob Eiding
Oh, like your community.
- [27:07]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah. Because they managed you in some ways. They always giving feedback. If they didn't like something, they'd be very vocal about it. So it kind of helped in that way. But over the years, yeah, it was a lot of just kind of hearing, you know, the squeakiest Wheel gets the grease or whatever the saying is, like, whatever they're yelling about that month is probably something I'll put on the roadmap work on that. And it was kind of like rinse, repeat for years and years and years. And it worked out pretty well.
- [27:28]
Jacob Eiding
We maintain roadmaps here, but, like, I think if it were up to me, it would only be. The roadmap would be what we're working on. And then maybe the next thing, like, that's it. Because, like.
- [27:37]
Christian Selig
So is that David's thing then?
- [27:40]
Jacob Eiding
Whatever he wants? Yeah, basically.
- [27:42]
David Barnard
Oh, I fight really hard internally for things. We finally got our subscription auto renew chart back in revenue cat after like two years, years of me bitching and moaning about it.
- [27:52]
Jacob Eiding
And it was popular.
- [27:53]
Christian Selig
So, you know, maybe you should listen to it more.
- [27:56]
Jacob Eiding
Actually. That might be a good example of like, something where, like, you know, we have our, like, customer interview process and we kind of trialed some things and whatever, and it was. It didn't seem it was that hot. And it kind of got back prioritizing, blah, blah, blah, when a tremendous amount of work. But, like, if somebody's yelling at us about it, like, we should probably just try to build something pretty quickly because, like, that'll be the best way that we learn if it's really worth it. Versus, like, you can put a lot of pre work into, like, oh, is this going to. People going to use. You should put a little pre work in. But like, I've just seen we maintained like a longer, more complex roadmap in the past. And I don't know, it just always felt demoralizing and always felt very like it would.
- [28:32]
Christian Selig
Do you feel shackled?
- [28:33]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, exactly. Like we would just feel like. Well, I did, like, want to say this thing. I'm just like, at some point you're just like, just don't maintain it. If it's important enough, it will keep coming up. Like, customers will keep complaining about it. Like, we'll keep hearing it. And I think it's been better. I think it's been better. It's like we're not fully, fully reactive, but, like, we kind of been trying to push, like, more reactive.
- [28:52]
Christian Selig
Yeah, there's a sweet spot there.
- [28:54]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. I mean, you can't just like, not have any sort of, like, sense. And you need that, like, that, like, editorial. Right. Like you have some sort of idea of like, what a finished Apollo looks like. Right. Or like what the product as a total looks like.
- [29:07]
Christian Selig
Well, it's pretty finished now.
- [29:08]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, pretty good. But whatever you're working on you have, like, some idea of, like, where it might go, and you can decide even if you're getting yelled at by. I say yelled at in a loving.
- [29:25]
Christian Selig
Way, but, like, oh, yeah, it's an.
- [29:27]
Jacob Eiding
Affectionate feedback from customers. You can. Some things, you'll be like, yeah, I hear that. But, like, that's just not the way we're going to go. And you get to make that decision. That's still important.
- [29:35]
Christian Selig
Oh, yeah. And I think depending on how you articulate that, like, there's like. I remember if a customer had, like. Or customers even had a relatively popular idea, and it wasn't something I kind of jived with. Like, I was always afraid of being like, no. But, like, it came to the point where, like, the first time I did it, I think I just kind of explained my reasons why. Like, I didn't think this was a great idea because maybe they don't have the full picture. And, like, the responses were like, oh, shit. Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. And I was like, oh, shit. Okay. I'm not getting yelled at. Yeah.
- [30:00]
Jacob Eiding
My move would be to, like, let me add it to the roadmap. That doesn't exist. Don't. Don't. It's on our radar. That's what I tell people. That's what I tell people on Twitter when they suggest some wacky thing. It's almost. And I'd be curious if you felt the same way. Like, they always. There's a real problem. Like, they always have a real issue. And then they would suggest something. I'd be like, that's maybe the dumbest solution I've ever heard. Or, not that, you know, I'm being facetious, but, like, that's, like, not going to work for, like, a number of reasons.
- [30:27]
Christian Selig
And sometimes I find they just don't have that whole picture. Like, Like, a common one for Apollo was like, there'd be these services that, like, continually scraped Reddit, which is a whole different story. But as a result, they kind of have, like, a cache of every comment. So if someone deleted a really juicy comment, you could theoretically go back and restore it. And that was like, a common request. Like, add that to Apollo. I want to see what they deleted. And it was like, I see on the surface why you think that would be something you'd want, but, like, you get into all these, like, safety issues there. Like, maybe they dox themselves, and people should probably have the right to delete a comment that they want to rescind, and you're kind of getting into this jelly area of like, that's kind of sketchy and like, as soon as you explain that, they'll be like, oh, shit. Like, yeah, I didn't think about that aspect of it. Yeah, that could kind of get dicey. And I think sometimes, like, as the founder of the creator, you have a lot more, you know, marbles than everyone else does.
- [31:09]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, there you go. Christian's endorsing founder mode right there.
- [31:11]
Christian Selig
Yeah, I know. I've been, I've been trying to get you guys on board.
- [31:15]
Jacob Eiding
It's fun, it's. I mean, I'm not gonna bring it back to founder mode again, but like, I do feel like there's this tension with like, VC backed companies and I don't think anybody. But I don't know, I think there's. Well, I don't know. Part of it I think is like, grass is greenerism both ways. I think I look sometimes at indie folks and go like, God damn, you're just by yourself. You don't have like all this debt, like, debt, I. E. Like capital you have to return, you know, you kind of get just to do what you want.
- [31:42]
Christian Selig
So you have to return that.
- [31:43]
Jacob Eiding
The capital.
- [31:44]
Christian Selig
Yeah. It's not just.
- [31:45]
Jacob Eiding
I mean, we should do a venture capital one on one. One on one, maybe episode. David. But like, well, I mean, they own part of the company, right?
- [31:52]
Christian Selig
So like, it's not just like free money.
- [31:54]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. Okay. So. So this is actually, this is like a common misconception. I think it goes. I think people misconceived this in both directions. One direction people go like, oh my God, the investors don't expect anything. Whatever. You get the money and you just build and then whatever. And there are, I think some founders who kind of have that mindset of like, whatever, it's stupid money. I'll take their check and then, you know, I'll just build whatever I want. And like, can't do that. You gotta have to have some. And then I think that people have the opposite perception of like, once you've taken their money, like, you're owned and like, you can't do anything anymore. That's also not very far from the truth. Right. But there is an expectation that they're going to give you a dollar and they would very much like something slightly more than a dollar back. Right. And like, eventually they expect a lot of their dollars to go to zero. Right. And they make their money when not a dollar goes to a dollar twenty. They make money when a dollar goes to dollar ten.
- [32:45]
Christian Selig
Oh, interesting.
- [32:46]
Jacob Eiding
And that's the misalignment is like, you know, they invest in 10 companies, five of them go to zero, four of them return $2, and then one of them returns 10. That's how they make money.
- [32:56]
Christian Selig
They're not like bunting. They're swinging for the fences and they.
- [32:58]
Jacob Eiding
No, exactly.
- [32:59]
Christian Selig
Oh, interesting.
- [33:00]
Jacob Eiding
Okay, exactly. And there comes the mismatch. Because as a founder, often a bunt is a pretty good deal for you as personally, right? Like, you get to build what you want to build. You know, you can make a lot of money on that if that's your motivation and stuff like that. And I'll admit, like, I don't think I fully appreciated it when I walked into it, but that's the thing that, like, before, people like totally cast the venture route versus the indie route. You have to just have to understand what, what their business is. If you understand their business and you're okay with that, like, it can be really a good fit. Right. And this is me justifying now that I'm like permanently committed to this, knowing.
- [33:34]
Christian Selig
What, you know now. Would you have done anything different, you know, years and years ago?
- [33:38]
Jacob Eiding
Oh, I mean, I'm sure there's like branch points where I said like, oh, no, you know, of course it's like, oh, I could have waited to raise that round. Like, if I were starting from scratch, would I do revenue cat, like indie hacker mode versus not. I think the reality is, and this is different depending what you're building. I think if you're building an app, this is not 100% true, but generally my advice is like, do not raise money if you're building an app, like a subscription app, or at least like bootstrap it to a point where, like, it's working and like, it's really working. Or be ready to shut it down, raise very little money and be ready to shut it down, expect that it's going to be a hit or not a hit. I think apps getting venture returns this very, very difficult.
- [34:16]
Christian Selig
I would imagine they're hired to get the money in the first place too.
- [34:19]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, well, that's why. Right. Because the people have looked at historicals and there have been winners out there, but they're very rare. It's not like in B2B SaaS. It's like as long as you have product market fit, the way that the pricing works and all of that stuff, you can kind of stumble your way, which has been basically my path. It's just been stumbling my way up the revenue scale. To answer your question, like, going back, I think for a product like revenue cat like it's so broad and there's so much we can build and I think there's a real advantage to reaching some level of complexity very quickly so that we can like service this industry and kind of become a leader and all of that stuff. That doing it bootstrapped would have been very challenging. Right. Because you're like, you're constantly hand to mouth, you're like, oh, I want to build a thing, but like I just, all my money's going to pay my people and like, maybe there's a little bit time I want to build the next thing, but like I gotta wait or whatever. And as it stands for us, the only real bandwidth, the only real constraint is like, can we hire, can we find people that will work well with us and can we scale our team and processes and stuff? And like, do we have enough mental bandwidth to like take that on? Those are our constraints. Cash is not a constraint.
- [35:24]
Christian Selig
You haven't felt that pressure to 10x?
- [35:26]
Jacob Eiding
Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean you probably have.
- [35:29]
Christian Selig
From the, from 2017 or whatever.
- [35:31]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, I mean I've plenty of my investors have hit. They're in the money, as it were. Right. And I think that's also. You talk about like decisions like what I do differently. There's some micro choices there where it's like, okay, I probably took on too much money at too high a number that I wasn't confident enough at the time. And I think that put me under pressure and I felt sort of like, oh God, am I not gonna be able to make this? And so I think there's points there where I would have like, and this is one of those like non intuitive things where it's like actually saying your company's worth less is very good for you.
- [36:00]
Christian Selig
Right.
- [36:01]
Jacob Eiding
Set your expectations. There's a big mismatch. Like people's egos want the numbers to be as big as possible, but like really them being smaller. Your future self will thank you under promise over deliver. Right. And so there's some, some decisions, decisions there I will say. Like, I think you can maybe say this is a benefit or a, or a downside. It depends on sort of how you look at it. But I think it kind of forced me into being like, yeah, I've got to build something massive, which I think I could say I'm happy about because I think it's working. And knock on wood, like, it's like we're on that path and that's really cool. Like I'll be able to look back and be like, geez, I built something. There's no way I could have built this, like, without taking that path, I don't think. Right.
- [36:39]
Christian Selig
And so that's a pretty definitive answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:42]
Jacob Eiding
In hindsight, it's like, yeah, I think, like, if I hadn't, there might have been a world where I would have been like, oh, this is really hard. Maybe I should, like, take off the gas a little bit, maybe go a little bit slower. And then I don't know where we would be. Right. Like, maybe we wouldn't be in the position we are, so.
- [36:56]
Christian Selig
And that's a hard game to play.
- [36:57]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, yeah. It's hard to, like, go back and there's really almost no point there, I'll say. There was this one conversation with a family member a few years in when we had, like, first started seeing some success and raise some money and stuff, where he was like, oh, just expecting me to be like, enthusiastically, yes. He's like, oh, would you do it all again? And I'm just like, I don't know. I don't think that's a simple answer. Right. There was a lot. There was a lot of sacrifice. I'll ask you that question, like, with Apollo, like, especially now, seeing, like, how it all wound up and everything, like, like, would you, knowing what you know about the journey, like, would you have done it? Would you do it again?
- [37:29]
Christian Selig
Oh, my gosh, in a heartbeat. Like, yeah. Yeah.
- [37:31]
Jacob Eiding
Okay. See, I made the wrong choice in life because I go like, oh, man, I don't know. It was pretty tough there for a few years.
- [37:38]
David Barnard
Well, let's give a little context real quick. I don't know that everybody listening will know the full context. So Christian built out Apollo. It became very successful. I don't know if you ever kind of did the indie hacker, like, share numbers thing, but, you know, seems like it was very successful.
- [37:53]
Jacob Eiding
I think it was the most liked and incredibly loved.
- [37:56]
David Barnard
A lot of very passionate users. And then Reddit basically shut it down. Like, was going to charge a ridiculous fee for API access, which was untenable. And yeah, we don't need to get into all of that, but you had to, like, completely pull the plug. So, yeah, would you do it again?
- [38:14]
Christian Selig
It's. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, it's easy to look at it and be like. Like that last June, like, there was a lot of strife. Like, that was probably like, Apollo was. You mentioned a lot of sacrifices and a lot of, like, you know, probably mental hardships over the years. But, like, for Apollo. It was pretty smooth. Like, I was. How fortunate I was not lost on me. It was very smooth for, like, the whole time. And I think I kind of got the, like, the black hole dying star of Strife all at once, and that was rough. But it's one of those things where it's like. I don't know. I kind of think of it like a TV show where if you have a TV show you really like, and it gets, like, nine seasons, like, holy shit.
- [38:44]
Jacob Eiding
Like, and it actually has, like, kind of an exciting ending.
- [38:47]
Christian Selig
Right, Right, exactly. And so it's hard to be like, oh, man, we only got nine seasons. Like. Like, no, that. That's frigging awesome. Like, it was. It was a great run. I had a ton of time, ton of fun doing it. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I just feel really fortunate that it was. Lasted as long as it did, and I. And I got to build something so cool that influenced so many people, and I got to meet so many different people like you folks in doing it that it's. It's hard to be grumpy about. It would feel almost like insincere or lacking gratitude for, you know, kind of the cards I was given.
- [39:14]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. Was there a part of you I. Sometimes. I mean, this is very joke. I think anybody who works on something for a long time, you're just like, God damn, I wish this. Like, I wish I could go do something else some days. Right. Was there a part of you that was kind of relieved? Like, okay, I got, like, a good clean out on this thing. I don't do Reddit clients my whole life, honestly.
- [39:33]
Christian Selig
Like, it's. It's a complex answer because I think. Think when I was in the trenches with Apollo, like, maybe through the chaos, I had, like, zero burnout, just because, like, if I didn't want to work on it for a few days and just wanted to screw off, like, I had no employees, like, I could just do that. And as a result of that freedom, Apollo still felt fresh to me. Like, nine years in, and I was still having a fun. A ton of fun doing it. So, like, I guess if you would ask me when I was still maintaining it, I would have been like, no, like, I could do this forever, like, keep it coming. But it was kind of one of those things where after it ended, I was suddenly able to do some, like, freed up some time. I was able to work on some different projects that I had kind of had in the back of my head that I was like, oh, this kind of is nice in Some ways like I wasn't like hoping it would end, but like when it did it definitely had some, some positives and, and freed some stuff up in a fun way.
- [40:15]
Jacob Eiding
I mean not to constantly be bringing back to venture world but like because your basis was like your time and years and whatever and you generally felt like those were well spent and you enjoyed it. You were clearly in the money. Right. Like the year and one investor had returned, had gotten a great return on the investment and like so everybody, you know, it's, it sucks for people who use app and maybe whatever but you know, everybody made money as they say.
- [40:36]
Christian Selig
Oh no. And it sucked for me too. Like it was like in, in financial ways and like it's not how you.
- [40:41]
Jacob Eiding
Want to set, spend your time. Right. Dealing with.
- [40:44]
Christian Selig
No, no, no. And I was having like, I'm trying to be appreciative. Like it objectively sucked but like it's one of those things where it's like you had such a good run that it's hard to only look at the suck. Like you, you had such.
- [40:55]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. And then there's there is a question, I mean like what's the long term ownership? I think every business founder, indie person has to think about this. I think you know, if your inputs are low and whatever and it's just you, it's like, well, you can just shut it down, it's fine. You know, or maybe you can sell it to somebody. That's fine in some businesses. So that gets more complicated. Right. Like as it gets bigger. I think the, that's maybe the revenue cat thing and the venture back thing, I think probably more generally is like your outcomes become like just shutting it down because like oh, we lost our main thing and whatever. Like, like probably not an option.
- [41:27]
Christian Selig
Yeah, there's probably a few more.
- [41:28]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, probably like, okay, we gotta figure this out. Like you gotta do something different that maybe, you know, maybe when the better option for the people would be just to like, you know, take your chips and go home. And I don't think people always make the rational decision there. It's. Or maybe rational for the investors but not rational for the people involved. So there's some amount of blessing and a clean ending and yeah, like the final season finale was really intense.
- [41:48]
Christian Selig
It was. Yeah. Yeah.
- [41:49]
Jacob Eiding
On Rotten Tomatoes, it's like strong all the way through.
- [41:51]
Christian Selig
So like that's true. Yeah, no, I'll take that, I'll take that.
- [41:55]
David Barnard
One of the things I've always been curious about since last year and you and I have haven't talked about this, maybe you've talked about this on another podcast or something, but with the subscription model, you could have potentially raised the price to a point and lowered your API call. Like, been more stingy with the API calls to maybe find the right balance. Like, did you go through that process in that whatever. It was like two months of kind of back and forth with Reddit of like, can I actually make this thing work under this new paradigm?
- [42:27]
Christian Selig
Yeah, for sure. Like, and I talked to like so many people in the community, like giving numbers and kind of being like, how do we do you see a path forward here? And it was kind of one of those things where like the biggest thing that I think kind of put everything in the shitter was that they basically gave 30 days from the day they announced the pricing to when you would start incurring fees. And in Apollo's case, it was in the realm of like $20 million a year, which was like far beyond anything Apollo was making. It was very much like, these costs are going to hit a brick very, very soon. So what do I do about that? And there was the aspect of I have a certain amount of existing subscribers that have a locked in fee that I can't increase because inherently how subscriptions work, there was a lot of calculus around that. And it ultimately came down to maybe if there was more time, something I could have maybe like steered the ship in a different direction and made something work, work, but just the speed at which they forced everything to happen. Like, I think about like how when Apple bought Dark Sky, I think they gave like 18 months before the API got turned off and I think they extended like six months beyond that. So it was like having 30 days. And it wasn't only switching out like your weather API source, it was like switching out like the API source. It was very aggressive, but like, it's one of those things where even if I was like hibernated Apollo for like a few months, kind of sorted out all the things and then like resurrected it with like a new pricing model. It's one of those things where like even playing that back, like the math just didn't make sense.
- [43:47]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, I mean, you get this $20, $20 million a year base expense, right? Like, so like you get, okay, great, you get everybody to cover that. What's left for Christian, like, what's left to like invest?
- [43:57]
Christian Selig
It was like I would have these astronomical costs that, by the way, like one of the discussions I was having with Reddit was like, are you able to like, could we sign a contract where like these Costs would be fixed at least for a year or two period. Just so like, say I make this work and six months down the road you don't go, oh shit, like, our clandestine attempt to kill these apps didn't work. Let's double the prices again, like, so that wouldn't happen. They couldn't guarantee anything like that. So there was this, like, the financials just didn't really make sense where I'd be like, having to charge far beyond what I felt a Reddit app was worth, only to get like pennies back on the dollar for my work there. And at the same time building on this like incredibly scraggly foundation of it really seems like they don't want developers on their platform anymore. You're kind of in there in like, like a renter squatting, where you're like, you're legally maybe entitled to it, but nobody wants you there. And like, that feels like a very shaky foundation to build like a long term product on.
- [44:49]
Jacob Eiding
Were you convinced, like that was the, the goal was just to shake off all the clients, like the third party clients?
- [44:54]
Christian Selig
Yeah, 100%.
- [44:55]
Jacob Eiding
I don't know anything, but I'm just curious why they didn't just say like, hey, we're just shutting down all third party clients because it like, is required for our business. Do you think they would just had a bigger uprising from the greater Reddit?
- [45:05]
Christian Selig
It first, like, I want to say it was like this big. They thought it through a lot, but it genuinely did not seem like that because like one of the things that was the weirdest about it was like this all happened in like May and like the January. I had like an annual call with Reddit and they were like, no, everything's great with the API. We're hoping to make some changes to like, maybe what's available, but we're have like, no really big changes to the API this year that we have like planned in any capacity. And it was like three months later and they're like, actually it's going to be $20 million year. And I was like, whoa, that's like a big change from January.
- [45:33]
Jacob Eiding
Sounds like somebody's running founder mode inside that company.
- [45:35]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. In my head they were like, we can't just say we're shutting down all the apps because pandemonium will break out. So we're going to have this kind of like, maybe if we just wrap it up, like we're just choking them to death, maybe that will go over better.
- [45:48]
Jacob Eiding
I hope not. If I had to do that for a business reason, and maybe I would. Maybe this will probably. I'll be tested on this at some point. I'd hope I would just be like, yo, this is what we're doing. We're going to IPO this year. We don't want anybody viewing Reddit. Not on Reddit. So we're gonna be. We're gonna be. This is why we're doing this. So.
- [46:03]
Christian Selig
And I genuinely think myself and everyone else would have kind of appreciated that a little bit more because it would have been more genuine.
- [46:09]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah, I just, like, if you're gonna screw somebody, just tell them why. You just tell them. Well, one. Okay. So I can tell them why. Just tell me. You're Screwed. Him. Yeah. Yes. I'm doing this to screw you.
- [46:16]
Christian Selig
Okay, cool. You're at least being straightforward.
- [46:20]
Jacob Eiding
We could save a lot of phone calls.
- [46:21]
Christian Selig
Right, Right. Exactly. And it was even like the. The stringing alarm throughout the phone calls kind of being like, oh, no, no, no. We got. We have your best interests in mind. Like, this is all as well.
- [46:30]
Jacob Eiding
Sorry to keep bringing it back to founder mode stuff, but I do feel like employees at a company just don't necessarily feel empowered to say that. Right. Like, they might know maybe there wasn't a directive. They might know that that's the strategy and whatever. But, like, it's just hard to say stuff like that when you're not, you know, the bug doesn't stop with you. You know, and then when you. And then when there's an asymmetry where it's like, you're the whole guy. You're the whole thing, you can say and do. You can act as Apollo with unanimity, but they can't. Right. So there's, like, this real, like, age asymmetry when you're dealing with folks.
- [46:58]
Christian Selig
I don't know if it was that removed, though, because, like. Like, in normal cases. Sure. But the guy I was talking to was, like, right below CEO level and was, like. The CEO was, like, cc'd in a lot of the emails and was, like, very privy to the conversation. So it wasn't like. I don't think there was really any disconnect there. Like, if I had to guess again, this is just guessing. But, like, from. It seemed like there was, like, they're ipoing and there was like, kind of like a quick rush out the door to kind of wrap up these loose ends.
- [47:23]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. There's a lot going on at a company when you're. You're getting ready to ipo. It's crazy.
- [47:27]
Christian Selig
Yeah. And they were like, okay, We've got this loose end, we need to tie it up. Like who has an idea? And maybe the idea wasn't.
- [47:35]
Jacob Eiding
They can't all be hits.
- [47:36]
Christian Selig
No, no, no. And you can't fault them for that.
- [47:38]
Jacob Eiding
And I guess it worked. Are there any extant like Reddit third party clients?
- [47:42]
Christian Selig
I think there's like a few, but from. I don't hear a lot about them and I don't think they're necessarily doing well. It's one of those things where. And it's tricky because even if you look at like the revenue numbers of a company, it's incredible. Think when 90% of your revenue is going toward paying the bills.
- [47:55]
Jacob Eiding
It's like, yeah, it's like it's not a great business. Right. Were you like a substantial number of their daus that they would. That it even made a difference?
- [48:01]
Christian Selig
Apollo was the biggest third party app. I knew that much.
- [48:06]
Jacob Eiding
But I imagine their first party was still bigger.
- [48:08]
Christian Selig
Oh, 100% like probably like order of magic. That was one of the funniest things. On one of the phone call they were like, do you know what percentage of our users you are? And I was like no, like I wouldn't know that. And I was like, yeah. And I was like, no, like what percentage? And they were like, oh no, we're not sure.
- [48:24]
Jacob Eiding
He was like, I have the numerator, I do not have the denominator.
- [48:27]
Christian Selig
Right, right, right. And I was like, what a weird question to ask. Where, like obviously I don't know, but seemingly you don't have.
- [48:32]
Jacob Eiding
For all the venture backed companies out there that are worried that you'll never get to ipo. Reddit got there. They did it through all of it. They figured it out. You can do it too, you know, just a lot of chaos.
- [48:42]
David Barnard
20 years or whatever it was, you.
- [48:44]
Jacob Eiding
Know, it might take you a few, might take you a few, but you'll get there. There's hope for all of us.
- [48:48]
David Barnard
Well, I did want to talk about some of your projects post Apollo starting a farm moving.
- [48:55]
Christian Selig
I've heard some mixed reports about that. A lot of wasps.
- [48:58]
David Barnard
Because I'm an avid user of one of your current projects, which is Juno on the Apple Vision Pro. How has that gone? I think a lot of people, I'm curious, I think I'm especially curious why you didn't make it a subscription after. Because like I don't know what I paid what the five bucks up front like in January and it's pretty much the only app I use on Vision Pro and I use it like, you know, on at least a weekly basis.
- [49:25]
Christian Selig
I would say most of my ideas don't come from a place of logic inherently. I think it was one of those things where it was like, it was very much like, I think like the week before the Vision Pro came out, YouTube was like, eh, we're not going to do it. And I was like, oh, I have all this like code from Apollo for handling like YouTube embeds that I could probably like spin off into an app really quickly. Like, like, and again, same thing where I'm like, if only like I want to watch YouTube on the vision Pro. I'm the only person that uses this app. Fine. So I was like, oh, I'll build it. And I was like, oh, like. And again, it was a very short period of time. So I was kind of like, I'll just throw like five bucks on it. That seems like if you paid three grand for a headset, like you can afford five bucks. It wasn't like a grand plan.
- [50:02]
Jacob Eiding
You're underappreciating your grand strategy there. But you saw that YouTube wasn't going to take their property. Like they weren't going to claim their right. Right. And you were like, ah, great, there's a Christian shape hole right here.
- [50:12]
Christian Selig
Exactly. Because it was like they have this excellent like full documentation like this YouTube embedding capability. Because like it's so common that you want to do it in like apps, for instance, like Twitter or something where like someone posts a YouTube video and you're like, how do I play that without kicking them out to Safari or YouTube? Like, so they have this like, it's basically just like an iframe where you can just play the YouTube video there. And I'm like, great. I use that in Apollo for years. Like I'll just play the video there. And since it's just an iframe and they give you some level of controls, I can, I can manipulate it a little bit to make it look a little bit more Vision osque. And it's been a lot of fun. Like it was, it was such a fun rush again to be like, oh shit, I've got a week to build this. Or like two weeks or whatever it was. And just like, what features are important? Like, what can I build? And I really went back into that like early Apollo mode of just like scrambling it out the door. And I remember like, we didn't get the Vision Pro in Canada, so I ended up like driving down to New Hampshire to get it. And I remember like charging at a supercharger and like seeing on my phone like, oh, it's been approved. I'm like, oh, sick. Okay, good. The whole triple wasn't like worth worthless. So it was like, it was like that last minute that it was like launching the following morning and I like finally got that approval. It was a lot of fun and it was one of those things where it's like, yeah, even if like the journey was so fun that like I didn't. Especially with it being such an expensive headset. I didn't have like, oh my God, this is going to be my next Apollo. Like, this is going to make a ton of money. It was kind of just like, I'm going to enjoy this and hopefully it'll be beneficial to other people who wanted to watch YouTube.
- [51:28]
Jacob Eiding
I think the positioning of the good media app, you know, experience like, and it might not only always be only YouTube, right? Like you could, you could imagine a world and like we're getting that foothold was definitely worth your two weeks and then you'll see. It probably depends on mostly how the AVP plays out. Right.
- [51:44]
David Barnard
I'm curious about that. Like, have sales trickled to like almost nothing?
- [51:48]
Christian Selig
No, weirdly like they've. It's obviously like, it's very much like Vision Pro came out high point. Like launched in other countries high point, but it didn't go to zero. It still makes like, you know, like 100 bucks a day some days. Like it's decent for like, yeah, it's.
- [52:00]
Jacob Eiding
As a core utility really. I mean it should be built in.
- [52:03]
Christian Selig
Exactly. And that's the thing. And I'm kind of like, I'm looking forward almost the day where like YouTube does come out with something because they can do so many things that I can't as, like through the facilities I'm using. It would be cool to see like a full fledged app that you can get really down to the nit and gritty with.
- [52:17]
David Barnard
Do you have any user analytics or I guess maybe even just app Store to like understand what the usage of the Vision Pro is? It kind of is like this weird platform for Apple that's kind of like on the shelf a little bit. Like, is it going to like totally flop? Is it going to kind of. I mean, like I said in my very limited time I have to use the Vision Pro. It's pretty much all I use in the Vision Pro. It's like I kick back to the Vision Pro on watch a little YouTube. It's like my wind down time.
- [52:43]
Christian Selig
It's honestly like the Vision Pro, like not even my app specifically but the Vision Pro is a great way to watch video. Like, it really does excel at that. So it's like, I hear you. Numbers wise, I don't have any, like analytics. I probably could check, like App Store Connect. I don't.
- [52:56]
Jacob Eiding
It's really hard because you don't have. You don't know the opt in rate really. So it's like, like getting absolute numbers is really tricky.
- [53:02]
Christian Selig
Exactly. And it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, it's done well enough when people seem to be downloading it that it's never. It hasn't really mattered too much to me. Like, if I had to guess, like, personally I haven't, like, my Vision Pro usage has declined over the months and like, I don't use it as much as I used to. And it wouldn't surprise me if that's reflected in the numbers where people try it, enjoy it, maybe put it in the closet and don't. But it's cool that for a lot of people it seems like when they get the Vision Pro, like it's an app they want to check. Yeah.
- [53:28]
Jacob Eiding
See we have two big projects now, right, that you're working on.
- [53:30]
Christian Selig
Yeah, that and Pixel Pals. Yeah.
- [53:32]
Jacob Eiding
I guess most of your time is spent on Pixel Pals. Well. Or most of your time spent paddle boarding. What?
- [53:38]
Christian Selig
Oh, man, I'm terrible at paddle boarding. That's something I need to work on.
- [53:41]
Jacob Eiding
I'm just trying to pick a stereotypical, like Nova Scotia activity.
- [53:44]
Christian Selig
I feel like, yeah, ice skating, I think. But no, no, no, I can't do that very well either. I, I need a good example. But no, like, it comes back to me not being the best at like Lost Logic in business is like Pixel Pals does very well and it makes like an order of magnitude more than juno does the YouTube Vision Pro app. But it's like, I was so entranced by like the Vision Pro for like three or four months of like, I just worked on that a ton.
- [54:06]
Jacob Eiding
You got nerd sniped is what they call basically.
- [54:08]
Christian Selig
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was just so entranced by like, even though the numbers were like, made zero sense to focus on that versus the other thing, it was, it was just a lot of fun to work on. So I ended up doing that for months and months and months. And I'm working on Pixel Pals a lot more in the summer. But yeah, I kind of got lost in the sauce a little there for a few months on what would be the most beneficial to work on. But it was a lot of Fun.
- [54:27]
Jacob Eiding
At least Pixel Pals is. I think it's really interesting as a project because I think most indie devs, they usually stay in utilities or, like, whatever. And it's kind of at a intersection of games and utilities, maybe. Right. Like, and games are freaking lucrative. Like, look, the App Store games are still dominating, actually. Is it maybe it's apps now or maybe 50%? It's maybe equal, but yeah, no point.
- [54:48]
Christian Selig
And it's a lot like. It's kind of like the Vision Pro, where it's like, yeah, we stay in the utilities lane so long that having something that's like, not at all in that area is kind of like you're stretching different muscles.
- [54:56]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. And when there's just like, more creative surface area, like, nothing. You don't have to do stuff because people ask for a purpose. Right. You can just, like, build cool things. These other cute, like, and it's fully for the art, you know, it's a lot of fun.
- [55:08]
Christian Selig
And you get to work, like, with Apollo, like, the extent I'd work with the designers normally is to get, like, custom appliances, icons done. But with Pixel palace, you can get a lot of pixel art done by some really talented people. And you can.
- [55:17]
Jacob Eiding
As I was going to ask the next is, are you doing the creative fully or no?
- [55:20]
Christian Selig
I'd love if I was able to do that because pixel art's like, I don't know, it's so nostalgic. That would be a really cool art form to get into.
- [55:26]
Jacob Eiding
It's one of those things where I think I would dunning Kruger myself and be like, oh, yeah, it's just squares, right? Like, I could just draw squares. And then you're like, no, I absolutely cannot do this.
- [55:35]
Christian Selig
No, no. It's like cross stitching and all that stuff where it's like, it seems simple on the surface, but, yeah, there's definitely art to it. And it frees up a lot of time where, like, I don't know, with, like, engineering work, you iterate until a point where you're like, it's fast enough, it works well enough. You know, ship it where it's like, the few times I've attempted pixel art, like, you shift a pixel right and then left and up and down, and you're like. Like, there's no definitive. Like, this is done. And you can kind of get lost in the weeds there. Just. It becomes easier to, like, let the professional stand on that.
- [56:02]
Jacob Eiding
That might be a. A hallmark of, like, good artists is, like, they can just know when it's done, you know, like, Just know like it's good enough, you know, like I can ship this, I've seen enough things I can ship and this is on the level. But even that, I think peer reviews and stuff like that is helpful. I worked on a iPhone game for a little while and definitely when you had a couple artists versus one, like it was a much better process because like the artists could then review and like cross check critique each other's work, which is true for programming too, I think in a lot of cases. Have you ever, I mean I mentioned Apple, but have you ever like worked with other programmers, like had your code critiqued and stuff? Stuff?
- [56:34]
Christian Selig
Not since like university, no, I don't think so.
- [56:38]
Jacob Eiding
You're like one of those untouched tribes. Like your code is probably just like, oh, it's mayhem.
- [56:43]
Christian Selig
There's. Oh yeah, there was some, there, there are some files in Apollo that were like, I'm sure broke like the Geneva Convention in terms of like what you were allowed to be doing.
- [56:52]
Jacob Eiding
There's a real freedom to it though. There's a real freedom to it and I understood it. So that's coding founder mode. We're going to keep bringing it back to founder mode. It's like just, just, just, just do what you gotta do. If you could probably move really fast and it's debt you took and you don't care and it might not even be debt, it's only debt if it prevents you from doing something in the future, right? Otherwise it's just free money. Right?
- [57:10]
Christian Selig
And a lot of the time it was like debt in terms of like, I think this is a good way to do it. And then like, you know, a year or two goes by and you become a better programmer.
- [57:17]
Jacob Eiding
That's the worst. Honestly, those are the worst debts that you take. When you don't even realize it's a debt. You're like, I'm just doing this because I think this is like the right architecture and you do a half decent job and then you realize later like there's so many things in revenue Cat that Miguel and I made decisions on in 2017, 18, where I'm like, why are we still having this bug? And it's like, well sir, because in 2017 you decided to make this all one SQL table. And I'm like, fair enough, yeah, get blame, yeah.
- [57:41]
Christian Selig
No, but it's like when you're not maybe at such a big company, in some ways it is kind of fun to like look back on those things with like new, better eyes and be like, oh my God, like that was such a Dumb way to tackle that. Like, I can do that in half a lines of code with half the bugs. Like, it's like going back to and playing. Playing soccer against like your elementary school team. It's like, yeah, this is easy. Like, these kids suck. Like, where there's a certain fun to that sometimes. But yeah, it becomes like anything where if there's too much of it, it kind of bogs down the whole project.
- [58:10]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. But, you know, but you don't necessarily need to address it. I think this was one thing Miguel and I, I think, debated. And then I think in the past I've worked in places where we were much more delicate with like our architecture and all this stuff. We never wanted to create debt. And I think one of the things we did while at revenuecat was being like, we are going to consciously create some debt and just know that like, some of it's going to get thrown away. Be judicious with where we do it. And that's been huge. We take that all the time.
- [58:34]
Christian Selig
Well, you're VC funded. Yeah.
- [58:38]
Jacob Eiding
Okay. Equity and debt, David, we need to do a one on one because, like, these are things like equity and debt, totally different vehicles and they have different consequences. And also people do take debt. It's called venture debt and it's super. That's actually the dangerous stuff in some cases. But we'll do a whole podcast on it.
- [58:52]
Christian Selig
I'd honestly enjoy that.
- [58:53]
Jacob Eiding
Next time I'm having a debate with people on Twitter about it. Everybody can be informed.
- [58:58]
Christian Selig
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sure that'll make Twitter debates enjoyable for you.
- [59:02]
David Barnard
Go listen to my podcast.
- [59:04]
Jacob Eiding
Aren't changing the world with our podcasts?
- [59:06]
Christian Selig
I'm saying your tweets change the world and your podcasts are kind of like a separate thing.
- [59:09]
Jacob Eiding
Yeah. You know, that's what I'm here for, so.
- [59:12]
David Barnard
Well, Christian, it's been so much fun chatting about all this and we did kind of wind around, but should we.
- [59:17]
Jacob Eiding
Talk about founder mode one more time? I think maybe a little light on that.
- [59:22]
David Barnard
I think for a lot of folks. Folks, hopefully this is going to be a freeing conversation of like, hey, I don't have to have all my shit together to go build something.
- [59:31]
Jacob Eiding
Just look at this mess.
- [59:32]
Christian Selig
Look how successful he's been. Thank you. Someone finally said it.
- [59:38]
David Barnard
But, like, ultimately, I think the takeaway from this conversation is like, users are what matter and like creating value for them. And what you did incredibly well without process because you were very passionate and found a community and what people need to do, even if. Even if they can't, you know, form a subreddit of passionate people who are going to kind of. I like what you said. Like, they kind of managed me. You know, your subreddit kind of managed you. Even if you don't. Can't build that kind of community around your app. You need to be talking to users. I mean, something we do a ton at revenuecat, which I deeply appreciate about kind of our culture, is that you can't let the users drive the ship. But if you're going to build a ship that people are going to get on, you got to make sure that, like, they're going to find something valuable. It's a trip they want to take. I think that's something you've done incredibly well without all the fluff and the process and the, like, bs. It's like you did it your way and you were successful at it. And like I said, you're what, you know, three for four. Like, three of your apps are incredibly loved. I mean, again, I'm a Juno user. Even though it was like this side project you just tossed out in a week, it, like, fulfilled the need and, like, is a genuinely great experience on the Apple Vision Pro that I wouldn't be having in the Safari YouTube experience.
- [60:51]
Christian Selig
I totally agree. I feel like our industry, like, one of the worst, like, not even like, gatekeepy, but accidentally gatekeepy things is I think we. We make it seem like we're like wizards over here or something. And it's like people are like, oh, my God, like, I could never do programming or I could never build an app. That's like, crazy stuff. But it's like, it's really not like, it's. You don't need a lot of processes. You just need a good idea and, like, kind of the conviction to want to see it come to fruition. But, like, you look at, like, freaking Colonel Sanders, like, you know, he just had a good recipe and he just wanted to. To make some chicken. And like, it works. Like, you. You just gotta have a good idea and you want to. Gotta, gotta want to see it happen. But yeah, yeah, I just mean it's. Yeah, there's a lot of processes that I think, like, from. For people from the outside looks very intimidating that I think you can break down a lot of those walls and it's. It's not as bad as it looks.
- [61:30]
David Barnard
All right, Anything you want to share as we wrap up? I guess people can follow you on Twitter. You've got a burgeoning YouTube career. I actually freaking loved your YouTube video on building your own keyboard was incredible. Watched the whole thing, sent it to myself on we're both like a little bit of keyboard nerds, so that was fantastic.
- [61:46]
Christian Selig
That's awesome. You're my people. Yeah, no, it's like anything. It's just you want to do something and you put it out in the world and hope people enjoy it, too. But yeah, I'm Christian everywhere, pretty much. I keep the consistent name, so it's easy to find me.
- [61:57]
David Barnard
All right, well, thanks so much for joining us. This was really fun conversation.
- [62:00]
Christian Selig
Oh, no, the pleasure's all mine. I hope there was something valuable in there.
- [62:05]
David Barnard
Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute it please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com to join our private community.