Justin's brain

Years ago, I wrote an essay called The Calm Company. It came out of watching startups burn people out with 80-hour weeks while quietly running out of money. That essay ended up shaping a lot of how we built Transistor.Transistor has given me a foundation for calm. We don’t track hours, we pay well, and if your kid’s home sick, you go take care of them. But getting Transistor off the ground was incredibly hard, and staying competitive is still hard. So lately, I’ve been wondering if the essay needs a revision.I reached out to my friend Jesse Hanley (Bento, PostShiba) and he sent back a voice memo that reframed the whole thing for me:"A calm company isn’t a destination. It’s a side effect of running a company whose revenue isn’t under threat."In this episode I play Jesse’s memo, then think out loud about competition, the pace of work in the AI era, and why I still feel grateful to work in software.This is also the first video I’m publishing to Spotify using Transistor’s new video publishing feature, so you should be able to leave a comment right there on Spotify. I’d love to hear what you think.Timestamps 00:00 Why I’m revisiting The Calm Company 00:50 Calm vs. working on the hardest thing 01:10 What I asked Jesse Hanley 02:15 Transistor is still hard to compete with 02:55 Jesse’s take: calm is a side effect, not a destination 03:45 When your market gets squeezed (Bento + launching PostShiba) 05:00 Calm as a “passive buff” 05:50 Don’t forget, you’re running a business 06:30 Some perspective: plumbing, retail, and digging ditches 07:40 Rereading the original Calm Company essay 08:45 The pace of work in the AI era 09:35 First video published to Spotify with TransistorLinks The Calm Company essay Jesse Hanley on X Bento PostShiba Transistor video podcastingLeave a comment on:📺 YouTube🟢 Spotify This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

I've been listening to David Senra's podcast lately. He keeps quoting Joshua Kushner: "If you have to pick between the person who's the smartest, the person with the most experience, or the person who wants it more, you always pick the person who wants it more."That idea really resonates with me. If you're going after a big goal, like building a product or starting a business, you can't afford to build something average. Why? Because customers don't look for mediocre products; they look for "the best."So you need to be honest with yourself: can you be in the top 5% in your category? Are you going to be the person who wants it the most?And then the follow-up question: if you make it, is it going to be worth it? You could be the top restaurant in your town and find out the prize for winning is a business that puts you deeply in debt.In this episode, I talk about power laws, figuring out what you truly want, why AI is making some rare skills average overnight, and what my friend Ruben Gamez says most marketers are getting wrong about AI. Plus a note from future me: wanting it the most doesn't mean killing yourself working too hard. It means focusing on the stuff that actually moves the needle.Chapters:(00:00) - The Power of Wanting It Most (00:59) - Aiming for the Top 5 Percent (02:56) - Defining What You Truly Want (04:28) - Adapting to Changing Skills and AI (06:01) - Focusing on What Actually Matters Mentioned in this episode:David Senra episode of FoundersRuben Gamez's marketing advice tweet This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

I've been scrolling Twitter again. A lot of it is driven by this desire (fear?) to stay current on what's happening with AI. A lot of people feel the need to capture as much information as possible to get some sort of edge in this new economy that's brewing. Our fear is that if we don't, we're gonna get just bulldozed over. A lot of folks are worried about losing their careers to AI. I think that feeling is justified. Like, if ChatGPT can edit your videos, you don't need Adobe Premiere or a video editor. In this example, AI eliminates the services side (which many of us depend on) and the tool side (software). It's concerning. And unfortunately, it feels like the answer (in this new economy) is that you can't be average.Chapters:(00:00) - Fear of Missing Out on AI (00:25) - AI Threat to Economy and Jobs (01:00) - The End of Average Product Videos (01:39) - Marketing Must Rise Above Average (02:26) - The K Shaped Economy Future This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

There's a great quote from a 2020 Hacker News thread:Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible, or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales orgs for almost twenty years, and my advice is to walk up and hit the ball.I keep coming back to this quote.In software, it's so easy to over-engineer things, to ask "what if?", to try to prepare for every eventuality.But more and more, I'm realizing, for most things, you just need to walk up and hit the ball.Chapters:Links:2020 Hacker News threadTransistor: podcast hosting and distribution platformSavvyCal: scheduling service for booking meetings This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

Last episode I recorded a voice memo on my walk home, dropped the file into Claude Code on my laptop, and said "publish this episode." It normalized the audio, made a transcript, wrote the show notes, uploaded it to Transistor, and published it. Easiest podcast publishing I've ever done. So now I want to know if I can do the whole thing without the laptop. Just the phone. This one is attempt two: recorded in the Dolby On app, which normalizes right on the iPhone, then handed off to Claude on my phone. [00:00] One command on my laptop did the entire publishing workflow [00:53] Attempt two: can I do all of this from my phone? [01:56] Why Caleb records several episodes back to back. Once you take away the friction, you can feel the inspiration happen. You have a thought, you get it out, you move on. An hour later you have another one. [02:33] Steven Robles has some magical iPhone shortcut that does a lot of this. I want to try it. [03:10] Auphonic stripped out the trucks and airplanes behind me, which is impressive because it was loud. What it couldn't strip out is me wheezing up a steep hill in wildfire smoke. Next time I'm recording in the car. This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

What's the minimum viable podcast publishing experience? I decided to test this out by recording it in Voice Memos on a walk home (with plane and truck noise included). Feels like if you can record a show quickly on your phone and just hit "publish" on it, you're far more likely to actually hit publish.This episode is the experiment itself: after I was done recording this voice memo, I just handed it to Claude to clean up the audio, write the notes, and publish it using Transistor's MCP.A lot of my feelings on this are inspired by Caleb Porzio, who has a really minimal workflow for recording his show, Notes on Work. And then yesterday, my friend Chris Enns decided to try publishing a podcast episode every day.Chapters (00:00) The friction in publishing (01:26) Caleb Porzio and Chris Enns (02:56) Testing the easiest thingLinks:Transistor's MCP announcementCaleb's Notes on Work podcastChris' Daily(ish) podcast This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

A lot of people have been messaging me after seeing wildfire footage on the news — so here's an update. There are three fires burning west of us here in the Okanagan Valley, and the lakes are acting as a wall between them and the city. The fires aren't the problem. The smoke is.Smoke gives me headaches, burns my eyes, keeps me indoors, and wrecks my ability to think and work. So my son and I got in the car and drove out of it — through a mountain pass where the air quality index hit 1,000, over to Vancouver, and onto a ferry to Victoria.Along the way: a band in karate outfits that put a spell on an entire festival crowd, a full day working in person with my Transistor colleague Josh Anderton, and a walk-and-talk with Mike Vardy, one of Transistor's longest-running customers. Plus a growing suspicion that remote work, which I've championed for years, still has no answer for what happens when you sit beside someone.Chapters 00:00 Why everyone's been messaging me 00:21 Three fires, and a wall of lakes 00:43 Smoke doesn't respect borders 00:56 What the smoke does to my head 01:10 Hitting the road with my son 01:46 An air quality index of 1,000 02:10 Over the pass, the air clears 02:32 The ferry to Victoria 02:49 The Thoons put a spell on the crowd 04:05 A day in person with Josh Anderton 04:28 There's no equal to working beside somebody 04:59 Catching up with Mike Vardy 05:34 Don't take clean air for granted  This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

Hey friends, wanted to give you an update on what we're building over at Transistor.fm. The big thing I'm really excited about is video podcasting.Transistor customers will soon be able to publish video podcast episodes on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and any other apps that support HLS video.We have a waiting list here if you're interested -->We were one of only about five hosting platforms to get an HLS video show working inside Apple Podcasts, and uniquely, Transistor is the only one that also placed the HLS feed inside the <podcast:alternateEnclosure> RSS tag, meaning independent apps like Pocket Casts and Fountain can also pick up and play those HLS video feeds.We also just shipped a Ghost integration that connects Transistor to one of the most popular platforms for independent publishers. The integration was born out of a real overlap in customers (like 404 Media and The Lever), and the partnership was sparked by a lunch conversation with Ghost's John O'Nolan at Laracon.Links:Apple's launch of HLS video podcastsDoes Transistor.fm support video podcasts?Transistor's integration with GhostThis is a clip from The Panel podcast. Listen to the full episode here. This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

AI coding tools like Claude Code are blurring roles on software teams. As Marc Andreessen said on Lenny's podcast: " There's a Mexican standoff happening between those three roles: product manager, designer, and coder."Links referenced in this episode:→ Mark Andreessen on Lenny's Podcast→ "The Five Stages of Losing Our Craft"→ Kent Beck's tweet on 90% of skills becoming irrelevant→ Good vibes, bad vendors This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

I prototyped a full video podcasting app in a couple of days using Claude Code, and it's completely changed how I think about building new features for Transistor (the podcast hosting product I co-founded).🔥 Timestamps:0:00 – Why you should build fake products first0:27 – The podcast countdown timer experiment0:56 – Taking on video podcast hosting at Transistor1:08 – Just start building it1:47 – Demo: the video podcasting prototype2:32 – What people actually want vs. what I assumed (HLS vs. simple upload)3:53 – "Usage is oxygen for product realizations."4:54 – Live demo: one-click publish to YouTube + Transistor5:57 – Scheduling episodes and real user testing (the church sermon use case)6:39 – Handling 15GB video uploads7:25 – Why everyone should be building fake products7:49 – Private podcasts → unlisted YouTube playlists8:28 – The FreshBooks "compete with yourself" story9:44 – How does this change your product process?10:17 – Claude Code + Slack: anyone on the team can start a PR14:05 – YouTube analytics vs. audio downloads in one view14:51 – Freedom to use a fresh tech stack15:18 – Night and day: old codebases vs. new ones★ More about me: ★I'm Justin Jackson. I co-founded Transistor.fm (a podcast hosting and analytics platform).I write, podcast, and make videos about bootstrapping, startups, marketing, calm companies, and business ethics.My blog: https://justinjackson.caBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/justinjackson.ca This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm