How to understand your customers | Ep. 10

• Adam has joined the team at LegendKeeper
• Adam published his thought process on finding a team on his blog.
• Summary of Adam's thought process of why he wanted to find a team. His story so far.
• Why Adam did not join Codex
• Worldbuilding software is highly competitive within the TTRPG software niche.
• The big jumps in business maturity Adam has to go through now. Feelings of overwhelm.
• The importance of taking a step back to look at the big picture. The shift to LegendKeeper was not driven by daily pain.
• The effect on Brandon of moving to Vancouver.
• Brandon has joined Y Combinator to accelerate Codex
• Recent IndieHackers podcast gives some insight into what YC is actually like.
• The importance of peer pressure.
• Brandon's take on YC so far.
• The magic of deadlines when you have a great team.
• Adam's first ever Angel Investment. The joy of placing asymmetric bets.
• Stats on how likely you are to succeed as an angel investor.
• The scary truth of B2C odds when focusing on profit.
• SaaS has benchmarks which are useful.
• Quantitative VS Qualitative definitions of Product-Market Fit.
• Differences in milestones for VC-track VS boostrap companies.
• Subtleties of retention.
• The LK business impressions so far.
• Brandon's Request: Make the recipes of the worldbuilders in LegendKeeper and film it on YouTube.

• Certain laws restrict what you can say about fundraising.
• Fundraising is going really well. Brandon gives it a score of 13/10.
• Line tracking in VSCode gets tricky when the file is in an 'edited' state.
• Waiting list of 20 teams for Codex.
• Comparing the fintech whitepaper that Dignified created with the one that Accenture created.
• The rationale for creating an in-depth whitepaper on fintech.
• How to leverage a whitepaper when Dignified has moved past its original goal.
• The "reverse pyramid" content strategy.
• Considering the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering as a content pillar.
• Trust signals matter. "Badges are unreasonably effective" in marketplaces.
• "Dignified" the agency is a brand that Brandon has built up but now they are shifting all their energy to Codex. How do you make a decision to let go of that kind of asset?
• The compounding effect of focusing in one market as a solo founder. This makes it hard to consider projects in other markets - even when they are promising.
• The difficulty of starting at 0 with no audience or distribution.
• The power of building relationships in a market. How it helped launch the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering.
• Why so many technical founders make dev tools.
• The big vision of Codex.
• Adam is heads down on building a Town generator for Here Be Taverns
• Adam writing a couple guest posts to promote the guide.
• Breakdown of the launch of the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering.
• When all was said and done, the guide was not as well received as Here Be Taverns.
• Considering who the addressable market is for the Guide vs HBT.
• What the data suggests about reader behaviour on the guide.
• Starting to think about marketing strategy for Sword & Source products. Sales for HBT have slowed down significantly.
• The same old problem: lots of good ideas and not enough time to do them all.
• A "66 days of marketing" build in public stunt.
• How fun it would be to hire for Sword & Source.
• A breakdown of the Traction framework for creating a marketing strategy.
• Detailed deep dive and Brandon's take on what Adam should do for his marketing strategy.

Show notes

• Closing out agency work was surprisingly hard because of the demand for talent.
• Pushing to ship a VS Code extension for Codex to gain early traction from a waitlist
• Basic Job to be Done for Codex
• Fitting into customers current tooling seems important for Codex
• The expectation for real time communication when sharing context at work
• VS Code's liveshare mode
• Fundraising went above expectations but Brandon needs to show at least 1 big customer using Codex in production
• VCs are worried about being able to sell to developer market because devs are skeptical about products
• Adam concerned Brandon will get lots of usage data within his 1 month of runway. Optimistic about getting installs.
• What happens if Brandon runs out of runway? He will still push forward on Codex
• Adam officially made his first sale and now has revenue in his business.
• Successfully launched Here Be Taverns Premium with only 1 generator. 2 remain to be built.
• Review of launch email, pricing, and discount
• Sales tip: give people a chance to make the purchase decision before launch day
• Time spent on clarifying the early-access nature of the premium sale
• Ask for the sale
• Review of sales numbers so far
• The joy of decoupling time from income
• Adam is extremely optimistic because sales keep trickling in even though he has not done a full launch or started real marketing
• Next steps for Here Be Taverns
• Always test in production!! Adam's rule for when to rollback.
• The power of chat ops
• User count on Here Be Taverns far exceeds sales count (97 vs 15). Tons of potential for next group of customers.
• Brandon breaks down Adam's email where he described possible future features for Here Be Taverns
• Brandon says "I told you so" again
• Brandon seems impressed with Adam's numbers
• Comparing Here Be Taverns to other consumer products like videogames
• Shoutout to Ben Barbersmith for helping Adam set a higher launch price
• Trying to understand the value of Here Be Taverns.
• The business model for D&D Beyond.
• Adam's theory about price anchors for Here Be Taverns and how it helps him charge more. Comparison to price anchors for iphone games.
• Leader in generators is donjon
• Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering Launched!!

• Focus on building new generators for Here Be Taverns Premium
• Adam's process is design and build at the same time
• Adam's approach to interlinking products together and how his projects drive traffic to each other
• Emotion driven development
• Heraldry generator
• The potential for GPT-3 for Here Be Taverns
• Can AI do visual design?
• Decisions that needs to be made: When should I launch the premium pass?
• Adam's rationale for his prices
• Launching sooner so that you don't sit on value you've created
• Using the D&D core books as a price anchor
• Launch discount strategies
• Think of your business goals and how your prices reflect them
• Adam's wish to make Sword & Source a premiumish brand that differentiates on quality
• Buying power in RPG industry
• The Sandi Metz approach to giving away products
• Software products can still learn a lot from retailers
• The lameness of the gaming industry business models built around microtransactions
• Brandon's advice to buy a trophy when you make your first sale
• Quick update on Codex fundraise
• Focusing on the most important type of risk when pitching
• The chicken and egg problem of fundraising

• Finding the ideal customer for Codex
• Tier 1 funds are interested in Codex which surprises Brandon. He assumed he needed to play a long game but got invited to pitch.
• Founders used to need investors. Now investors need founders.
• What's the one thing Brandon can't screw up in the pitch meeting.
• Brandon discusses mistakes he made in a pitch recently.
• Adam grills Brandon on the question: What's your mission? What connects the big vision to his current tactics.
• Adam is focused on premium offering for Here Be Taverns
• Adam's main pricing decision is focused around "what is simplest?".
• Adam's new shortened workday schedule: Fast to desk, focus on one thing, end at 1pm. Surprisingly, shortening his hours has increased his output.
• Brandon shares his typical work rhythm.
• Adam asks Brandon to workshop the actual roll-out plan for Here Be Taverns Premium. He is not certain when he should ship and how that might affect price point.
• Potential customers are already telling Adam they are interested in premium. Putting an email signup on a coming soon page was very effective for validation and new subscribers

• Fundraising update on Codex
• 🎉 Brandon is structuring an LOI (Letter of Intent) for Codex.
• Adam is back in his groove. Discusses a slump he has been in recently.
• Alpha readers have delivered their feedback on The Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering
• Adam reviews the launch phases for the guide and his rationale.
• Adam walks through his current build of the Guide.
• Plan for scaling the guide to other game systems IF the project has traction.
• Brandon advertises the Holloway guides again.
• The surprising quality of the alpha readers and what they taught Adam.
• Musing on a spin-off project for Game Master "Case Studies".
• Adam shares how his reflection on the need to ship fast lead him to his next idea for revenue. Realizes the potential for Here Be Taverns
• Walks through his idea to add a premium offering to Here Be Taverns.
• The complexity of user login and payments. Lot's of people selling products around just that problem. Adam was approached by tons of people in Twitter DMs.
• Adam sidesteps all the work and complexity by deciding to just ship a password to access the site.

• Clearing the creativity faucet as a metaphor for writing from David Perell
• How to improve at writing
  • Writing prompts
  • Writing every day
• Creative writing VS Business writing
• Brandon's experience using a pre-written adventure module for our D&D game
• Adam is learning about "adventure writing" which is a unique format that combines game design, utility, and creative writing
• Adam started an "Adventure Reading Club" to learn more about the format
• Product Managers should take more notes to practice writing
• Writing skills matter a lot if you want to be effective within an organization. Especially if you have manager in your title.
• Product Managers are needed at scale, not at the beginning
• Telling people to "get better at writing" is bad advice because it is not actionable.
• How Adam actually became a better writer:
  • Writing every day
  • Running everything through a self-edit round in hemingwayapp.com
  • Separate the writing and editing phase. Don't do them at the same time.
  • Separate the writing and editing phase by at least one day if you are working on something substantial.
  • Business writing should be strong by being concise and clear. You want maximum impact for minimum word count.
• Brandon has 3 real teams using Codex
• Derek Sivers on present VS future focused people
• Sequence of moving across the country and launching Codex seemed off
• Future focused people have a hard time estimating the amount of mental energy things in the present will require
• You have to understand attention management in order to improve time management
• Adam underestimated how much attention his projects with freelancers would take
• Brandon believes he made the right choice to ship sooner even though he was moving
• Rough timeline of the next month for Codex
• The way raising money while building really works
• The raising process explains why so many founders flocked to silicon valley
• The Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering has completed Alpha phase
• Tightening up the intended audience will lead to a more effective guide
• Write useful books by Rob Fitzpatrick
• Applying product thinking to book writing
• Holloway makes awesome books
• Adam really wants you to just ship sooner. Big question: "How did he not internalize this even after a career at Shopify?"
• Code Quality Challenge by Ben Orenstein
• Cargo culting home feeds
• Dev anxiety around Pull Requests
• Our companies are too small for OKRs. Do or do not.

• Brandon's caffeine intake cycle and the dangers of caffeine intake.
• Opportunity for a business focused on decaf?
• "The brightest flame burns quickest"
• Adam's death-consciousness
• What is a life well lived?
• Putting in too many hours is a bad strategy when you do knowledge work
• Consider the review process when you need to launch on a platform like the Google App store
• 🎊 Codex is now available in the chrome store!
• Brandon's favourite Codex feature: "Request context"
• Capturing an engineer's reply to questions is a differentiator for Codex
• Using documentation to systemize and scale your time
• Adam still has concerned about the level of abstraction Codex is focused on
• Context in code should focus on the 'unexpected moments'
• Most important next step for Codex: have teams use it so they can hone in on ideal customer
• The Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering is going out to alpha readers
• Adam will use Google Docs for the alpha review so that he doesn't have to ask people to sign up for Notion
• After alpha review the guide will be an 'open beta'. It will be soft launched so that Adam can see more new GMs try it before pouring on marketing efforts.
• Adam discusses his biggest realization of entrepreneurship: Ship often
• Adam seriously doubts people's ability to understand and change complex systems
• Reflection on how waiting to ship the guide was a failure
• Example of shipping fast: Free Fantasy Stock Art built with airtable.
• Chess is a useful example for clarifying just how impossible it is for you to understand every variable in business.
• Adam is learning to trust himself more as a founder in the gaming space
• Adam keeps almost falling into the trap of going after something big and ambitious.
• Project HearthQuest
• "I can help people sooner by starting smaller" - Adam
• The pain of having a big vision but sharing a small, scrappy piece with the world and hearing the feedback.

• Learning SEO by trying Moz
• Marketing is hard when you don't have a product or service to focus energy towards. SEO as a focused practice can't start yet.
• Chris Gimmer on SEO
• RPG Twitter trends: giveaways, support each other threads, etc.
• Adam would rather have a smaller number of engaged fans then a huge follower count as a vanity metric
• Positive sum thinking in agencies
• Agencies are being acquired for talent acquisition
• War for talent in tech
• Debate on how hiring process should work
• How to negotiate: Whoever has more information wins
• Brandon stumps Adam with his favourite interview question: "In the last 24 hours what was the most interesting thing you did that isn't related to work?"
• The science of behaviour change. Motivation comes first, but how can you change it?
• It's easier to run away from pain, than run towards a goal

• Moving is very distracting
• Codex has a landing page. Adam critiques it on air.
• Brandon got slammed on his pitch deck. Walks through some of the highlights.
• Us Canadians should brag more.
• Brandon explains how to set up a fund raise. Adam understands about 60% of it.
• How much Brandon wants to raise for Codex. Secures a commitment for his "first cheque".
• Adam does not think working alone is his ideal scenario. Has been thinking a lot about how to work with others.
• Feelings of frustration at how slow things move when you are the only person building.
• Hack Day with Brandon and Adam on a new project idea for Sword & Source. Further proof that working with a partner makes Adam go faster.
• Warning: Avoid fundraising unless you are in a position of strength. Have a product with traction.
• When fundraising you need to do it before you have any revenue OR after you have solid revenue. Raising when you just started getting revenue won't work.
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld is the only book you'll ever need to buy for fund raising.