In this episode of the Leanpub Podcast, Len Epp, co-founder of Leanpub, interviews Isaak Tsalicoglou, author of Phoenix Product Codex. Isaak shares the story behind his book, which grew out of real-world problems faced in his family’s business. He explains how he built a REST API for managing product data using Elixir and the Phoenix web framework, with SQLite and Ecto for database modeling.

The discussion explores Isaak’s transition from product management and marketing into full-stack development, the advantages of using Elixir for reliability and performance, and how the Leanpub platform helped him iteratively write and publish his book. Len and Isaak also discuss broader issues like digitization for small businesses, and the role of developer-entrepreneurs building real tools for real problems.

Check out Isaak’s work at via his Leanpub author page.

This interview was recorded on May 5, 2025.

The full audio for the interview is here: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/leanpub_podcasts/FM312-Isaak-Tsalicoglou-2025-05-05.mp3. The Frontmatter podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub, in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/frontmatter/id517117137, and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.