Slow & Steady

Benedikt prepares for his upcoming Rails SaaS Conference talk. Benedicte visits her old university town. Rails SaaS Conference Four Thousand Weeks — a book by Oliver Burkeman Recording from Trondheim this week, Benedicte is back in town to serve as an external reviewer of the university’s IT Master Program. Her exploration of the university town felt like she was transported back to the early 2000s during her uni days.With the upcoming Rails SaaS Conference, Benedikt is currently focused on preparing for his talk. They were also able to fix some memory issues at Userlist last week by introducing a request limit.Benedikt and Benedicte talk about their upcoming meet up in Athens, why you should let things take time, and more.

Benedicte thinks about how to move forward with Prune Your Follows. Benedikt starts working on their conversion goals feature. Prune Your Follows @levelsio’s tweet that gave Prune Your Follows more following The new Twitter API has changed the rules of the game, which makes Benedicte think about options on how to move forward with Prune Your Follows. Despite this, she’s been enjoying life beyond work: signing up for window restoration classes, a sauna membership, and doing renovations.With the reporting feature wrapped up and shipped, Benedikt and the Userlist team are now working on their conversion goals feature. And while he ran into some complications with their trigger implementation last week, he was able to simplify the process and even ran an experiment with the Ruby gem, Scientist.

Benedikt ponders on adding a now page for Userlist. Benedicte gets excited about an upcoming upgrade to their property.Check out Lillian’s mmm.pageAfter getting feedback from churned users, Benedikt thinks about having a changelog or now page so that users could check for Userlist product developments. They’ve also just shipped their latest feature and is now available for all users.Benedicte is excited about a few things in the past week: they just got a great offer for a staircase and she’s taking on her first devrel project for Outseta. She also guided Lillian in creating her first website using mmm.page.

Anthony Eden chats with Benedicte and Benedikt about DNSimple, marketing, how they delegate decision making in their team, and more. DNSimple Follow DNSimple on Mastodon Follow Anthony on Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn When Anthony and his brother created the product in 2010, they had developers in mind from day one. And unlike other domain registrars and DNS providers in the market, DNSimple lets you unlock what you can do with your domain so you can automate whatever you want.Anthony, Benedicte, and Benedikt talk about marketing tactics, delegating decision making, what’s next for DNSimple, and more!

Benedicte takes it easy this week as she nurses a cold. Benedikt thinks about how to market their latest feature. Search three ways with Xata: Partial Match, Fuzzy Full-text, and Semantic (AI) Let Benedicte know if you would you like a “Clean code makes Benedikt happy” sticker or shirt Now sick for a third time in recent weeks, Benedicte talks about how the Norwegian government could provide assistance during these situations. She also shares a memory from five years ago which influenced the naming of her role at Outseta.With the upcoming roll out of their reporting feature, Benedikt and the Userlist team are brainstorming about how to market it. He also plans on writing a technical blog post about the new feature and presenting it to a conference this June.

Benedikt and Benedicte talk about her new role and the dangers of Section 174.  Episode 157: Outseta with Geoff Roberts Read Michele Hansen’s thread about Section 174 Sign the Small Software Business Coalition Letter to the U.S. Congress With all her little side quests across the years, things are culminating for Benedicte as she recently became Outseta’s new developer relations person. Now that she’s handling four jobs, she’s trying to figure out a way on how to juggle everything sustainably.Benedikt and the Userlist team have deployed the backend side of their reporting implementation. And with a couple of customers now using the new feature, they now have an idea of what to tweak.Benedikt and Benedicte also discuss how Section 174 affects small software businesses and what you can do to convince congress to roll it back.

With things now clicking, Benedikt makes great progress with their reporting feature. Benedicte pitches an old idea to some hip hop celebrities at the library.  Lillylabs’ Tram Ride Audio on GitHub Check out Oslo Stories (in Norwegian) Lillylab’s Oslohistorier on GitHub See what Brian's up to on LinkedIn A total turnaround from last week, Benedikt feels pretty happy with the refactoring he did on the reporting implementation. He found that breaking down the problem into smaller chunks really helped. Benedikt also looks forward to attending the in-person Frankfurt Ruby meetup.While accompanying Lillian to a lecture at the library, Benedicte was able to pitch her location specific radio to some hip hop celebrities. She also reached out to her old VA for leads on people who could be part of her small content team.

Benedicte dreams of having a small content team. Benedikt uncovers more complications with building the reporting feature.Data in the Wild Ep. 2 with Pierre de Wulf of Scraping BeeCurrently working on a couple of content projects, Benedicte’s dreams of having a small content team that can help with the editing and remixing. She also celebrates another milestone with Prune Your Follows which recently surpassed 1,000 users.Benedikt bounces back from feeling super tired last week and got back into working on the reporting feature. Making slow and steady progress also means uncovering new issues and complications (which is still good).Benedicte and Benedikt talk about content repurposing, if a team should only stick to one tool, and more.

Benedicte enjoys some forced relaxation. The Userlist team launches the type support for the condition builder. Data in the Wild Ep. 1 with Monica Lent of Affilimate See the type support in action   After falling at horse camp the other week, Benedicte enjoys some “forced relaxation” following her doctor’s orders. And now that the “no screen time” days are over, she and Ola are excited to record the first episode of “Data in the Wild''. Benedicte also shares her joy over helping people out through her emergency calls.The Userlist team recently launched the type support for the condition builder. With this latest milestone, Benedikt talks about how things have gotten better since working with a team.

Benedicte brainstorms titles for their upcoming podcast series with Xata. Benedikt runs into issues with deleting large amounts of data.Add your suggestion for a podcast title on this threadDespite not being able to push through with their vacation as planned, Benedicte found a great mood booster by dancing this week. She reached another milestone with Prune Your Follows which just facilitated 25,000 unfollows this week. Benedicte’s also brainstorming titles for their upcoming podcast with Xata.Benedikt and the Userlist team have been making slow and steady progress with their reporting feature: it’s now in a shippable state and placed behind a feature flag. He also ran into some issues with deleting large amounts of data.

Benedikt and the Userlist team make more progress on their reporting feature. And with everything that’s going on with Twitter and Gatsby, Benedicte waits for the dust to settle. Know someone who can be interviewed on the upcoming data modeling podcast? Reach out to Benedicte via Twitter Benedikt feels excited about going to his first live concert after three years. Despite getting distracted with so many little things last week, he and the Userlist team were able to create a working internal version of the reporting feature. With the never-ending Twitter API saga and Netlify’s acquisition of Gatsby, Benedicte is waiting for the dust to settle while everything is currently up in the air. Meanwhile, she’s making great progress on her project with DNB. She’s also looking for guest recommendations for their upcoming data modeling podcast with Xata.

Benedikt and Benedicte talk about owning their identities and more. Atomic Habits — a book by James Clear Read Benedicte’s first article on the Xata blog Benedicte feels a little frustrated that a cold has interrupted her fitness habit. Despite this, she’s looking forward to bouncing back and taking ownership of this new fitness identity. She also shares the excitement of getting her first post published on the Xata blog.Meanwhile, Benedikt and the Userlist team are making gradual progress on their upcoming reporting feature. He’s also trying to contribute more to the open source community by submitting pull requests on Rails.

Benedicte and Benedikt discuss platform risk and more. Read Michele Hansen’s thread on why you shouldn’t “build your house on someone else’s lawn” The Embedded Entrepreneur — a book by Arvid Kahl Check out Userlist’s new blog design The Rails SaaS Conference With Twitter announcing that they’re discontinuing free access to their API, Benedicte is yet to see what this means for Prune Your Follows. She also shares why she monetized this side project differently.Benedikt and the Userlist team have released their new blog design last week and are now shopping around for a new email provider. He’s also very excited about speaking and meeting up with his co-founder at the upcoming Rails SaaS Conference this June.Benedicte and Benedikt discuss how walking outside makes everything more joyful, why you shouldn’t rely solely on one platform when building a product, and more.

Benedicte tries out a new physical activity. Benedikt works on new features for Userlist. Prune Your Follows Check out Userlist’s message composer in action With the work on the message composer all wrapped up, the Userlist team is now focused on building new features. And despite having to take care of many small things last week, Benedikt was able to figure out the issue with the blog structure.Benedicte encounters problems caused by their flaky internet connection. She also shares details about their upcoming 10-episode podcast with Xata. And as part of her plan to try out new things this year, Benedicte is now attending a dance class called Funky Adults 30+.

Benedicte celebrates her big four-o with a spa day by the ocean. Benedikt and the Userlist team work on their blog redesign.It’s been a nice weekend for Benedicte: going to a local ski resort then celebrating her birthday at her favorite spa by the ocean. It’s also been a great week at work because of new and exciting things: upcoming content creation projects with Xata and the potential of working with The Norwegian Bank.As part of their annual company planning, Benedikt and the Userlist team have decided on the three major features that they’ll be working on this year. And to make navigation easier for their website visitors, they’re doing a blog redesign to include Categories.

Cheers to the new year! Benedicte and Benedikt look back at their 2022 journeys and set new goals for the coming year. YearCompass — reflect on the year and plan the next one Listen to our 2022 goal setting episode Benedicte was able to keep her 2022 slow and steady for the most part and was able to not get so distracted with shiny new things. For this coming year, she hopes to embrace her own content creation and take more mini breaks.And while Benedikt wasn’t able to exactly hit his recreational and financial goals last year, he’s still grateful for many things. This 2023, he wants to be more mindful about doing fun stuff outside work and hit their targets at Userlist.

Benedikt and Benedicte talk about their wonderful holiday breaks and upcoming plans for 2023. Prune Your Follows Read the TechCrunch feature about Prune Your Follows Send Benedicte a message to join the Yoga Pirates With things slowing down during the holidays, Benedikt and the Userlist team were able to successfully migrate their database to Crunchy Bridge. Despite experiencing issues a couple of days after the migration, all is very well with better monitoring and better performance (with less money thrown at the problem).The recent TechCrunch feature on Prune Your Follows has certainly attracted more attention, bringing over hundreds of visitors to the site. The app currently has over 700 users and facilitated over 10,000 unfollows. And to start off the new year right, Benedicte created a Discord bot for Yoga Pirates.

Benedicte and Benedikt talk about the recent launch of Prune Your Follows on ProductHunt, migrating from Heroku Postgres to Crunchy Bridge, and preparing for some time off for the holidays.  Prune Your Follows on Product Hunt! Prune Your Follows Crunchy Bridge Prune Your Follows made it to #13 on ProductHunt last week and also "broke" Twitter in the process. Benedicte is happy about the results and enjoyed the buzzing energy of the launch. She also shares some things that worked well during the launch. Benedikt spent some time fixing annoying issues and didn't get any of the work done he planned to do. Luckily, he managed to deal with a couple issues that kept showing up in the monitoring system so it should also make for a quieter Christmas break. He also had a test run for the upcoming database migration and talks about plans to minimize downtime for the actual migration. 

Benedicte launches Prune Your Follows on Product Hunt. Benedikt deals with small annoyances at work. Upvote Prune Your Follows on Product Hunt! Take a look at Benedicte’s cool new wood stove Recovering from a bad cold last week, Benedicte gets to work on launching Prune Your Follows on Product Hunt. And after finding out new information about Twitter’s unfollow rate limit, she’s currently thinking about a workaround.Unable to get any of his planned work done, Benedikt feels annoyed with having to put out little fires and a small screw up with merging branches. Despite this, they’re making great progress on the refactoring work. Benedicte and Benedikt talk about sprints, kanbans, Christmas rom coms, and more.

Benedikt and the Userlist team decide on their next big feature. Benedicte comes across new challenges with Prune Your Follows. Prune Your Follows Here’s ChatGPT’s advice for launching Prune Your Follows on Product Hunt  After doing a series of customer interviews, the Userlist team decided on the next big feature to work on: reporting. And with the holiday break coming up soon, they also kicked off the project to migrate their primary database from Heroku to Crunchy Data.As Prune Your Follows gains more users, Benedicte gets to work on new and exciting problems with the user feedback. With the upcoming Product Hunt Launch, she gets sensible advice from an unexpected source.Benedikt and Benedicte talk about managing your energy, chatbots, data modeling, and more.