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 revisio...

I've been listening to David Senra's podcast lately. He keeps quoting Joshua Kushner: 

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: c...

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 ed...

There's a great quote from a 2020 Hacker News thread:

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...

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...

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...

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 Vanc...

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...

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 first
0:27 – The podcast countdown timer experiment
0:56 – Taking on video podcast hosting at Transistor
1:08 – Just start building it
1:47 – Demo: the video podcasting prototype
2:32 – 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 + Transistor
5:57 – Scheduling episodes a...

My friend Adam Wathan has a new podcast called Adam's Morning Walk, and in the last episode he talked about how he's thinking about building with AI:

I was listening to this episode last night and it brought up all sorts of thoughts for me. So I opened up telegram and sent him a series of (slightly inebriated) voice memos.

I'm publishing these here in case they spark some...

Successful startups don't create demand. They position themselves in the path of existing demand.

In a good market, customers provide their own motivation.

Your job isn't to create customer motivation; it's to find where it already exists and then build something that satisfies it.

Timestamps:

00:00 I was listening to the Offsite podcast.
00:20 What does it take for a customer to take out their credit card?
00:46 How high is the customer's desire for the product?
01:23 When will a customer buy even when there's friction?
01:59 The pitfalls of optimizing...

There's a strange relationship between the effort you put into something and the outcome you get out of it.

You could invest thousands of hours in a project, only to get a tepid response to what you've made.

Read the blog post: "The effort-outcome asymmetry" 

Have thoughts? Reply on Bluesky

This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

"I used to be more skeptical than I am now. Especially when everyone was talking about 'one-shotting' and 'vibe coding.' But then I forced myself to download Cursor and build an entire project without typing any code, making the computer type the code for me. I had to throw myself in the deep end."

All three of us (Adam, Brian, Justin) give our honest takes on AI and software development, and how it's going to affect our businesses.

"AI is like keyboard shortcuts on steroids for the things I am an expert in."

 My friend Jeremy Enns and I recently had this conversation about a quote by Thelonious Monk:

We explored this idea about what it means to find your zone of genius and why being authentically yourself might be the key to your greatest work.

I ended up writing a blog post about this too: Finding your zone of genius

This conversation was a part of a longer episode we did for PMT Explained.

This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

I think a lot of folks assume that people who create content (YouTube videos, podcasts, screencasts, public speaking) are mostly extroverted.

But this conversation I recently had with Aaron Francis, Marie Poulin, and Brian Casel on the Panel Podcast calls that into question.

🔗 Listen to the full episode here: https://panelpodcast.com/4

Timestamps:

In the pursuit of "making podcasts more discoverable," the podcast industry has welcomed YouTube with open arms. But is the industry misdiagnosing YouTube's role? YouTube isn't just "getting into podcasting" - it's a behemoth that's captured consumer attention at an unprecedented level.

Join the discussion:

I don't think YouTube actually cares about "podcasting" as an industry (it's just another content keyword for them). I also think responses like "Let's add video to podcasts" are missing the bigger picture.

This episode contains clips of...

The advent of AI coding assistance has introduced a wave of dread in the software development industry, exemplified by Chris Sacca's stark prediction that "we are super screwed" when it comes to traditional coding jobs. 

But I'm not convinced.

I wrote a blog post, that ended up Hacker News, called: "What's happening with founders over 40?" I got a lot of comments and reactions to the piece, so I thought I'd respond to those here.

Key moments:

I have an entrepreneurial drive to start many projects.

A formula from my therapist about stress management.

How I use Claude AI to evaluate my life choices.

Key moments:
0:00 - Introduction & One-Take Podcast Format
0:39 - The Stress Formula: Demands vs Resources
1:44 - Entrepreneurial Phase & Sustainability
1:59 - Using Claude AI for Life Planning
2:27 - My Current Responsibilities
3:31 - Desires for New Projects
4:04 - Claude's Analysis of My Responsibilities
5:17 - Resource Management Insights
6:31 - The Only Two Solutions
6:50 - Summer Camp Dream Example
8:13...

tl;dr – I've decided to delete all my Twitter posts, lock down my account, and leave the platform. And I'm going all-in on Bluesky, which (in the last month) has become 1,000x more fun than X.

Links:

Follow me on Bluesky!
https://bsky.app/profile/mijustin.bsky.social

This podcast is hosted and distribut

In 1999, I met Chad Muska at Slam City Jam in Vancouver. He was at the height of his popularity. His pro model was selling 10,000 units a month, and he was one of the first playable characters in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game.

But then, all the money and fame ran out.

"Right around the beginning of the pandemic," Chad says, "everything ended in skateboarding for me as far as finances go. My last check came in, and it was done."

So, what's Chad Muska doing now? He's building the Muska brand as an...

"It's good for people to have to slow down; for people to not be able to just knee-jerk a reaction every time someone says something they don't like. in this TikTok video. so I'm like, if you've read the comments on TikTok videos, it's not the pinnacle of human achievement. Right? It's like They're awful. And YouTube YouTube comments are terrible too."

Full episode on the Make Lemonade podcast, episode 49

This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

This is my 2022 year in review. I've been writing these every year since 2013. Traditionally, these have focused on my business highlights: what's happening with the podcasting SaaS I run with Jon Buda (Transistor.fm), thoughts on bootstrapping and startups, plus any other personal experiences I feel I can share publicly.

If you'd prefer to read the blog post version, you can find it here:
https://justinjackson.ca/2022-review

What happened in 2022 for Transistor.fm
With a team of four people, we were able to launch a lot more features than in previous years.<...

When looking at past mistakes, the positive action is to ask: "What did I learn?"

But when we're looking towards the future, we want to be mindful of the kinds of risks we're taking.

When you commit to the wrong thing, you risk burning out or getting crushed.

Watch the whole interview on Sharath Kuruganty's channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M-XsuHVxXM

Listen to the podcast:
https://undefeatedunderdogs.com/6

This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

There are some people that think they need to be Twitter famous in order to start a business.

But I think fame is a trap; you should avoid it if you can.

If you're a band, and you can fill a room with a hundred people and play to those fans in multiple cities around the globe, you've made it. That's perfect.

The same is true in startups. If you can build a small, profitable business without becoming well-known, you should do it. It will bring so much more calm to your life.<...

Listen to the full interview on the Indie Hackers podcast.

This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm