Aaron Francis - Refine, Sidecar, Laravel, and Serverless

Marie Poulin drops by to talk about notionmastery.com - a topic whose demand dragged her along to create a business around teaching Notion at a premium level! Marie and her husband are killing it - listen to hear how!Marie Poulin(Twitter)Notion MasterChris Fidao (Twitter)Chipper CI - Chris's thing

Chris is leaving UserScape after 8 years, and working as a "Laravel Specialist" at Fly (fly.io). Aaron offered to interview me to talk about it!Aaron Francis (Twitter)Refine - Aaron's thingHelpSpot (UserScape)Fly.ioChris Fidao (Twitter)Chipper CI - Chris's thingCloudCasts - Chris's one-thing-too-many (that may pivot to being specific to Laravel/PHP)

This week I talked to Adam Elmore about his career - from funded startups, to high-paying freelance gigs for startups using AWS. Adam has EVERY certification AWS offers and has done a ton of freelancing in the AWS (serverless) space. He knows stuff about things!Links!Adam Elmore (Twitter)Public.devAWS IQChris Fidao (Twitter)Chipper CI - Chris's thingCloudCasts - Chris's one-thing-too-many (that may pivot to being specific to Laravel/PHP)

Unofficial co-host Aaron Francis comes by again! We take turns talking about our stuff. I talk about Chipper & the final pricing decision I made (sorry Dan!), and Aaron talks about changes made in Hammerstone, and how they're pushing forward to start selling the things!Aaron Francis (Twitter)Colleen Schnettler (Twitter)Refine - Hammerstone's main thingTorchlight - Aaron's (amazing) syntax highlighter thingSidecar - Aaron's serverless wizardry for Laravel thingChris Fidao (Twitter)Chipper CI - Chris's thingCloudCasts - Chris's one-thing-too-many (that may pivot to being specific to Laravel/PHP)

Alex DeBrie stops by and we talk about his business - consulting, writing books, teaching, and so much more! We also talk a bit about Chipper CI, running a SaaS, and of course, personal finance!Alex DeBrie (twitter)DynamoDB Book (I highly recommend this!)DynamoDB GuideChipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)CloudCasts

Brian Casel comes by and we talk about his latest product zipmessage.com - how it's grown, what he's doing for marketing, becoming a backend developer himself, podcasting, and more!Links!CasJam (Twitter)ZipMessageOpen Threads (Brian's new podcast)Chipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

Jason McCreary joins the show to talk about how Laravel Shift works, and how Jason thinks about his business. Shift started as a side project to help developers update their Laravel applications, and has grown to provide his full time income. In particular, the pricing model and features available (Shifts, Bench, etc) are very interesting!At the end of the episode, we talk a little bit about personal finance and how we invest!Links!JMac (Twitter)Laravel ShiftChipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

We start talking about Mat's company Summit. Matt (and Summit) was part of the first batch of the TinySeed accelerator. Chris knows about Matt (and Peter, from the last episode) through the Out of Beta podcast (which you should check out)!Summit can help you model a process, giving you the abilities to simulate your business (or...anything) over time.Chris and Matt then dive into Chipper CI, talking freemium and pricing strategy. Matt's very politely schools Chris in some business metrics he should have available to him to help make decisions.Links!Matt Wensing (Twitter)SummitChipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

Peter talks about pricing plans and freemium for reform.app. The main idea is that people using the product for free are actually paying by spreading brand awareness of Reform (the forms are branded)! Chris talks about expanding Chipper CI usage by supporting open source, including giving unlimited builds to open source projects. We also discuss if it makes sense to have a lower pricing tier for Chipper.Links!Reform - Clean forms, on brandPeter Suhm (Twitter)Chipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

Chris talks about owning all of Chipper CI, and how he's moving forward with plans to grow that business.Aaron talks about Hammerstone, and the company's main product (Refine), along with his work in the Laravel community. This includes the popular projects Torchlight and Sidecar.Links!Aaron Francis (Twitter)Refine - Aaron's main thingTorchlight - Aaron's (amazing, in Chris's opinion) syntax highlighter thingSidecar - Aaron's serverless wizardry thing for LaravelChris Fidao (Twitter)Chipper CI - Chris's thingCloudCasts - Chris's one-thing-too-many