Talking Businessly

We have quietly launched our client management app. It has invoices, agreements, schedules, time sheets, reports, and more. We'll be doing a full marketing blitz soon. Daniel has been cooking up an extremely cool AI feature.

John went on a Claude frenzy, and Kapow is nearly here. We reach out to bankers and learn a little bit about how their world works. John believes in benevolent dictatorships more than "flat organizations."

It feels like there's a dark cloud over web development right now. So where does Thunk fit into the future, and how do we win? We lay it all out here.

We had a very bad week. In related news, we are looking for a new client.

Our goal for 2026 is to do a good job. John wants to start doing some serious, long term business development. 

We gave ourselves raises. John is weary of AI. Daniel is using Claude skills. 

We hired someone. We set up standardized pay bands. We discuss how we use AI, and what makes a bad AI-driven pull request. We like Three Body Problem. John sang in choir. 

Marketing works. Late fees don't. John is speaking at Laracon EU! We review our OKRs and cash situation. John has more mic issues.

Our dear friend Caleb Porzio drops by for some laughs, and a retrospective on Wire:live. We discuss what went well, what could improve, and what we'll do differently next time.

Matt runs Tighten, and is a kind of big brother to us. We ask him about running agencies, building teams, hiring senior developers, and a lot more. Watch his new Laracast series "How to Build a Dev Team" now. 

Our biggest client had a problem. We tried to get out in front of it, with mixed success. Here's what we learned. Join the new social game here. Listen to John's clickbait episode about it here. 

We are busy as heck, with more work coming in. Forge launches this week. Wire:live is filling up fast. Listen to John's new game podcast. We brainstorm the next conference talks we want to give.

We're at an exciting but scary inflection point as a company. Wire:live is filling up fast! John is sad about the internet, but excited about real life. Daniel likes Billy Joel.

We landed a big client, and things are heating up. We learned once again that telling the truth and being candid is the best path. 

We finally talk about our OKRs for the remainder of the year.

Wire:live in Buffalo October 28. Get your tickets today! We had some technical difficulties, and weren't even sure if it was recording, so this one is all over the place. Spicy takes, jack booted thugs, A24, Weapons, video games, and restaurants. 

We are streamers now. Kapow now has a client portal. John has a new podcast. We had another accounting / tax crisis that has driven us to the edge of sanity.

If you're looking for that incisive, smart business insight, go ahead and skip this one. We talk dogs, Laracon, John's talk, Laravel Forge, the upcoming Livewire conference, game design, The Social Game, a video John's obsessed with, and Rust (the video game).

We discuss the Beatles. Daniel reviewed John's code on the Social Game. Finally, we lost a proposal for a big contract. We wonder if the entire RFP process is antithetical to what we do.

Daniel and Chris are nearly done with Verbs 1.0. We settle into our new roles. John prepares another talk directed at non-tech companies. Finally, we think through what we want the business to look like at the end of the year. And we recap where we are with Kapow.

We played the Social Game a lot, and it's so cool. Daniel is not going to do project management at Thunk anymore, and we brainstorm how we backfill for him. Finally, we review our OKRs for the first half of the year.

Erin is an outstanding product manager who is fairly new to the agency world. She shares her feedback on our process. We brainstorm how to position and sell our product management services. 

Daniel got a 3D printer. John got a new iPhone that he feels meh about. We are feeling out how to consult when there are issues way outside of our control. Getting uncomfortably explicit is awkward in the moment, but makes everyone happy later. John has a wild story about Emily Belz's article. 

We hung out in Philly and had a little role reversal. Chill clients abound. The sales funnel is decent. We talk about who Kapow is really for, and brainstorm what features are next. 

Spring is here, and the boys are out frolicking. We sent our first invoices from the client app. The Laracon game is going to be its own company. Clothing sizes are a lie. 

We watched a lot of movies, and gambled a little. We are deep into silly season, and talk about our relationship with anxiety. Finally, we talk about politics and urbanism again. 

We are now a professional podcast. Ian Landsman gives us some feedback on our goals, and our new client app. He is smart. And we don't talk about poker even once! 

John got star struck on Easter. Daniel got a new couch. We got a big new client. John is working nights and weekends on the Laracon game, and it's awesome. Daniel is working on the client app. We review OKRs.

John is locked in, and made a playlist so you can lock in too. We are in silly season, but we have an excellent new PM who will get us through. We lost a client, but for good reasons. We recap what we learned. John is grinding on the new game, and Daniel gives technical guidance. We try to diagnose what's wrong with tv writing. The Iranian film maker John couldn't remember is Kiarostami. Here's a funny scene from Hail Caesar. 

John's Macbook air is having problems. We made a bonus episode. We have a new trick for finding the decision maker at a prospective client. Always negotiate. We LOVE Adolescence. Finally, we talk politics :(

At a PHP x NYC event, we realized we had a critical mass of Laravel podcasters. Apologies for the audio problems. 

Spring is here. John was on the Over Engineered podcast to discuss running product processes on small teams. We are sunsetting Papercuts. We do a quick retro about why, and what we learned. John did a heroic refactor on the new client app. Daniel is making home improvements

John got married. We got paid by a delinquent client. John spoke at PHP x Philly. The client management app is getting really good, which can now invoice clients. Finally, John thinks tv is maybe bad.

You need to build vertically, not horizontally.

Also: Point Break is a good movie (Broey Deschanel's analysis). We helped a client dismiss a scammy wordpress agency. Squarespace is good. Daniel bought a suit. John is making a DJ set, and thanks Daniel for being the reason he learned to do that.

Why do old special effects look good? Pennsylvania needs better websites. John wants to speak a lot more. We are building our PM business, but don't have an obvious blueprint to follow. 

We empanel Bossman Chris. Daniel and Chris survived Philly's Super Bowl celebration. We recap Laracon EU, and give high praise to Amsterdam. Chris counsels us on how to be a great place to work.

We talk retro video games. Daniel is wiring up his whole home. John preps for his Laracon talk. We recap what we learned from an uncomfortable client moment. We finalize our OKRs. John was on Joe Tannenbaum's podcast talking about games. John talks about doing jiu jitsu against the Dutch. 

John built the MVP client app! Daniel watched Survivor. We brainstorm what we want out of our 2025 OKRs. 

We talk about how it will work to have another PM around, the paradox of project scoping, good interview questions, and the power of learning from retros. On a less businessly note, we also talk Survivor, Pecking Order, gas leaks, soothing YouTube videos, cable management, and trying to feed our notes into ChatGPT.

We do a little vision casting for what a great year would look like. We have some disagreements about sales, plan to remove ourselves as individual contributors from many clients, and to get better at scheduling / planning.