Going Slow

Team Roc8 is expanding. Swapnil shares his playbook of going all-in on writing and that we should keep things clear instead of clever. We discuss the end of an era with Heroku sunsetting its free tier. Mukul talks about the activities he joined in Phuket. 

Swapnil is internalizing that putting others ahead of yourself is not a sustainable strategy. Mukul released the mobile app of Appointo and currently exploring different types of dives. We have a discussion on knowledge workers.

We discuss our travel routines and things we consider while traveling. We also discuss SaaS acquisitions and share our thoughts from the buyer’s as well as seller’s point of view.

Mukul is iterating by applying learnings from his last trip and staying in one place in Phuket for 2 months. We touch on the socializing aspect of traveling solo as introverts. We then go into a rant on our passport strength and brain drain and late independence. One good thing that we now have is the luxury of retries. We end with a thought experiment and try to reach the core of what we really like doing. If you had more hours in a day, what will you do? Say you hit your goals. What next? What will you do the next day?

We start with patting ourselves on our back for getting back on track. Staying consistent is hard and satisfying like a dopamine hit. We touch on how our college friends are at different paths with different priorities. We then discuss a website howisfelix.today where a software developer has been documenting all key life metrics for over 3 years now. We are amazed by his commitment to drawing insights from it. We then discuss consistency in the creative domain and that anything long-term competes with Netflix time. One thing that has worked for Swapnil is to do it in a group and set a deadline. Towards the end, we talk about art and how it needs a considerable time investment to start enjoying the process of creation.

It's placement season at Roc8. We talk about how people are not well-equipped to deal with rejection and ways to solve this at scale. Mukul is looking forward to trying out more new things in business and in life. We discuss ideas around hosting retreats in Udaipur.

Roc8 team had their first offsite which was pending for a long time and hosted a fun public meetup on a 90s nostalgia theme with games like pen fight. Mukul is going to a 3-day F1 racing event. He also met people who have been traveling for more than 5 years now and for whom it doesn't hold the charm much. We discuss cities where we can settle in and whether buying a house upfront makes sense for us. Being a nomad also means having to make new friends at our age. One way to do that is renting out a co-living space where you get like-minded people around you. Another way is to find interest groups around you where you meet up regularly. We also touch on what would we do if money was out of the equation. We end with avoiding treadmills while setting goals.

We discuss the traditional notion while traveling that you have to do something every day, but do you really need to? How about if you rent out a place for a month or so? You can relax the way you want to. If you can't get to your normal lifestyle on a vacation (say Bangalore life on wheels), are you really location-independent? Running behind a checklist of to-do items on a vacation can also feel like work. We then talk about creating wealth vs multiplying wealth and our conditioning that makes us feel guilty while spending money on experiences. We also touch on innovation being driven by new players and that going slow is a feature for big companies. We end with a rant that everyone is selling on Twitter and you shouldn't idolize anyone. Nobody is perfect in all areas of life.

Mukul talks about his Airbnb experiences which is a good way to get a local authentic taste of the city. Placement season has started at Roc8, wherein companies are coming to talk about their culture. Retention is a big problem in the tech industry, especially after remote work as switching costs have reduced. We also talk about both of our copycats and how our brand is the eventual moat whereas features become a commodity over time. We're engineered to feel guilty when having too much fun. We connect it back to solo trips as the life stories you hear while meeting new people really broadens your perspective. There are no wrong choices, only experiences through which you find your deal-breakers and move away from them.

Mukul moved to Lisbon and is figuring out a balance between work and travel. We talk about how being a solo traveler is analogous to life without a job. Then we move to challenges while working in different time zones. We end with a rant on bad incentives in companies.

We talk about the four pillars of sloth philosophy, challenges in writing fiction vs non-fiction, our music tastes, and end with a section on what's the rush, anyway?

We talk about Mukul's plans to try out a digital nomad lifestyle over the next 2 months, a user journey for a Shopify subscription analytics app, the importance of taking a step back from time to time and seeing the bigger picture, influencer marketing, and end with a movie and a podcast recommendation.

We discuss how Roc8 is entirely run on no-code tools and Appointo didn't have a landing page for the first 6 months. Tech is not our USP; our USP is iterating fast on the solution and not going after shiny things. We also touch upon Audiobooks, talk about Stephen Fry's narration of Harry Potter, and end with a few recommendations on time travel shows.

We talk about remote work hacks, optimizing learnings vs earnings, our relationship with money, treating this podcast as therapy, and end with a nice newsletter recommendation and a review of Attack on Titan.

We nerd out on board games, covering the different versions of Catan, Dungeon Mayhem card game, Blitz where everyone plays at once instead of the regular turn-based method, Clans of Caledonia, Dungeons & Dragons, etc. We end with talking about a kindle version for board games ‘The Last Gameboard’.

We discuss the work of a manager in the context of a new hire at Roc8, see a demo of Mukul's new mic to induce FOMO in Swapnil to get one too, and celebrate SidePanda hitting the $200k ARR milestone! 

In our 10th episode, we got a surprise guest for you. Yatharth worked as a frontend engineer for over 5 years before going indie in 2020. He is currently exploring systems and is now in love with the Rust language. He talks about we should be original and not just imitate others. We then discuss how Twitter influences us, especially seeing those quick successes and people crushing their goals. We also touch on some of his other interests like comics and piano and end with a rapid-fire round of questions.

We start with the Shopify review process, their webhook architecture, and the GDPR compliant endpoints. Then we discuss the pros and cons of doubling down on existing products vs exploring new ones. We also reminisce about "the talk" with our families and the importance of a partner on your journey. We end with a CTA for our listeners to write their value systems and tag us at @goingslowpod to see if we can set them up with a potential cofounder.

We discuss how Goa has so much untapped potential and the issues preventing us to work from there over a longer duration, second-order effects of movies and TV shows, and our new year resolutions.

We discuss the new experiments at Roc8, challenges in the non-tech hiring space, hedging bets as a time investor, the addiction of the 0-to-1 journey, our college hackathon experiences, and some SaaS ideas you can start with.