ANTHOLOGY – Self-hosted, self-confident & self-employed (Friends)
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
1hr 27min Nov 8, 2024
We take you one last time back to the All Things Open 2024 hallway track to talk with some friends, new & old. We speak with Alex Kretzchmar about self-hosting. We speak with Israa Taha about self-confidence. We speak with Avindra Fernando & Adhithi Ravichandran about self-employment.
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Featuring:
- Alex Kretzschmar – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
- Israa Taha – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Avindra Fernando – Website, LinkedIn, X
- Adhithi Ravichandran – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Self-hosted media server goodness (Changelog & Friends #44)
- Self-Hosted Show
- Nix & NixOS
- Self-Hosted 133: No Google October
- Perplexica is an AI-powered search engine
- Foo Camp - Wikipedia
- BarCamp - Wikipedia
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Adam Stacoviak
Well, have you met Jerod before?
Alex Kretzschmar
No.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, this is Jerod.
Alex Kretzschmar
I've heard you many times, but...
Jerod Santo
Yes. And I've heard you many times.
Alex Kretzschmar
Oh. Awesome.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Happy to meet you. Mutual fans.
Adam Stacoviak
Alex runs -- is it selfhosted.fm?
Alex Kretzschmar
.show.
Adam Stacoviak
.show. What happened to the .fm?
Jerod Santo
Too expensive.
Alex Kretzschmar
No.
Jerod Santo
You wanted the show.
Alex Kretzschmar
I don't know. I just figured that .show was -- it's Self-Hosted Show, so selfhosted.show seemed to be the...
Jerod Santo
It works.
Adam Stacoviak
Okay. I'm not a hater.
Jerod Santo
We have shipit.show...
Adam Stacoviak
We do.
Jerod Santo
...but that's because we could not get shipit.fm.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Somebody owns that. Whoever you are, give it up.
Jerod Santo
Give it up!
Adam Stacoviak
It's ours.
Alex Kretzschmar
Somebody owns selfhosted.com, and I'd love to know who that is.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. That's probably expensive. That's a nice domain.
Adam Stacoviak
The question for you is this. Could you do, like, similar to a commercial open source company forms a company around open source, could you form a company around the podcast? Like a services business?
Jerod Santo
Around Self-Hosted?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Could you do that?
Alex Kretzschmar
It's an interesting one, because I think...
Adam Stacoviak
Because you've got the media -- what is it called again?
Alex Kretzschmar
Collection. The media collection apps.
Adam Stacoviak
No, that guide you have. What was the name of it?
Alex Kretzschmar
Oh, Perfectmediaserver.com.
Adam Stacoviak
Perfectmediaserver.com. Okay. Thank you.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah, it's an interesting one, because you look at the routes people come into self-hosting through, and it's typically things like Plex, and collecting media through nefarious means...
Adam Stacoviak
Nefarious...
Alex Kretzschmar
But I think these days there are a whole new subset of people coming in through home assistant and home automation.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
This mythical new Linux user that we talk about in the Linux world for years and years... It's happening through those platforms, because they enable things to run on like Raspberry Pi's, that you couldn't do full fat Windows; you just couldn't do it that way.
Jerod Santo
Right. It's like a gateway drug.
Alex Kretzschmar
But one of the big appeals of self-hosting is - yes, data sovereignty is important, but it's free as in cost for a lot of people, too. So they can ditch subscriptions with a lot of these apps... So in terms of like a services company, I've thought about it quite a bit, but you'd have to charge more than most commercial services, standalone services for just one thing, which is like a... Well, I could go and do it for free on Unraid. I can go and do it for free on Linux, or Docker, or like whatever. It's tricky.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Have you thought about writing a book, or a guide to like capitalize on your... Because you're putting a lot of information out there, and the consolidation of information enables what? Value exchange. So what happens when value exchange is? Money. A little education for you, Jerod, in case you didn't know.
Jerod Santo
Thank you. Thank you.
Alex Kretzschmar
I do put a lot of stuff out on YouTube these days. On the Tailscale channel, also KTZ Systems, Self-Hosted podcast, perfectmediaserver.com... It's all over. But maybe I should write a book.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm just curious. Did you know that Alex started Linux Server IO?
Jerod Santo
Yes, because I listened to your guys' episode.
Adam Stacoviak
Right. Did you know that before that?
Jerod Santo
I didn't know that before that.
Alex Kretzschmar
It was proof you were listening then.
Adam Stacoviak
And neither did I. Did I? I mean, I prepped for that show, but...
Jerod Santo
What, you've found out on the show?
Adam Stacoviak
I discovered it on the show.
Alex Kretzschmar
I think you thought I was making it up.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
I was like -- I had to check this guy.
Jerod Santo
He's like "No, you don't...!"
Adam Stacoviak
I paginated back to like page one of the blog... Sure enough.
Alex Kretzschmar
Boom. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Sure enough. Right there.
Alex Kretzschmar
So for me, a lot of this stuff started just by -- I was trying to compile a kernel to put PCI pass-through in it... Because I was cheap. I couldn't afford a second computer... I could afford a GPU though, so I threw that in my server, in my Unraid server, did the pass-through in there, and I'm like "Everyone else needs to know how to do this, because this is awesome." So I started writing blogs about it, and sharing information. And that's how it's...
Jerod Santo
How many times have we heard something like that? Like, that story, in a different space, is the beginning for so many people. It's really rinse and repeat in your little niche, and there's not guaranteed success, but if you do it long enough... I mean, you're going to bring so much value to so many people.
Alex Kretzschmar
\[00:08:06.22\] I hope so. I mean, sometimes I wonder who's actually listening after a while...
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Alex Kretzschmar
Because I feel like -- I mean, for me, the message has been the same for like eight years now. But there's always new people coming in and want to hear new stuff. So...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Well, you might become jaded, but your audience might not, even.
Alex Kretzschmar
It's not so much jaded, because I mean, I still get a lot of utility out of it myself. I run Home Assistant at home, I run Jellyfin, I have Proxmox... Everything that I can self-host pretty much is self-hosted. And Tailscale obviously helps with that, because I don't need to open ports in my firewall, and all that kind of stuff. But from my perspective, it's weird to see my episode.
Jerod Santo
Your episode's right there.
Alex Kretzschmar
Did you plan that?
Jerod Santo
No.
Adam Stacoviak
We sure did.
Jerod Santo
That's random.
Adam Stacoviak
We have a TV to Alex's left, my right, and we have clips playing there for the audience. And there's Alex and me talking about Jellyfish...
Jerod Santo
Great lighting, too. Very nice.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, you were actually shooting a log, right? And then you changed...
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. I actually figured out after our episode, how to get my Ninja V to output the log profile straight out of HDMI in through OBS, so... Now it's fixed. But for that episode, that was the log.
Adam Stacoviak
It was good lighting. Good lighting, for sure.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
What's got your interest these days? Whether it's Tailscale, or personal... What's got your attention?
Alex Kretzschmar
NixOS.
Adam Stacoviak
Linux?
Alex Kretzschmar
NixOS.
Adam Stacoviak
NixOS.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Like the package manager, or the actual operating system?
Alex Kretzschmar
Yes.
Adam Stacoviak
Yes.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah, because it's really -- so Nix is talking about the language and the package manager and the OS, as you say.
Adam Stacoviak
Right. Yeah, it completes.
Alex Kretzschmar
But I started managing all my MacBooks using Nix Darwin, and then trying to build a single flake that can configure all my different Mac systems using Home Manager. And then I've started trying to get involved in NeoVim as well, and mechanical keyboard... Like, I'm going down the rabbit hole pretty hard, of being like --
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 00:09:56.10\]
Alex Kretzschmar
No... \[laughs\] Factorio also. That came out this week and that's been a big time sink.
Adam Stacoviak
Okay...
Jerod Santo
Victoria Metrics?
Alex Kretzschmar
Factorio.
Jerod Santo
Oh, Factorio. Oh, that's the game, right?
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Like some sort of a builder game...
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
I haven't played it, so I'm literally ignorant right here. I'm like telling you how much I know about it. You play it...
Alex Kretzschmar
I've got like a thousand hours in this game, and I don't play video games. But that one... What's different about that one?
It's basically software development, but in game form. Like inputs, outputs, API interfaces, all that kind of stuff...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. So Chris Hiller on JS Party is big into that game, and he was trying to tell me about it... And I was like I don't want to try playing that, because I'll probably never stop.
Alex Kretzschmar
It kind of feels like work sometimes. I'm not going to lie.
Jerod Santo
Like a grind? Are you grinding?
Alex Kretzschmar
No. In just so much as the fact it's exactly like software development.
Jerod Santo
Wow.
Alex Kretzschmar
Like, I am building this entity, and it's got to interface with these other entities... And before you realize it, you've built basically a modular piece of code that you can reuse different -- and then you spend most of your time refactoring the base, to make it more efficient... And the analogies to writing code are very strong.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Alex Kretzschmar
Very strong.
Jerod Santo
And the joy, I guess, would be similar... Joys.
Alex Kretzschmar
The joy is there's no boss.
Jerod Santo
Ah...
Alex Kretzschmar
But there is this kind of guilty pleasure in it of "I must be productive." I don't know if you guys feel that too, but I feel like I'm wasting my time playing video games, and yet sometimes I just need to...
Jerod Santo
Right.
Alex Kretzschmar
Whereas the rest of the time I'm busy making content, probably like you guys, thinking on it in the shower, and just... The grind never stops in that regard.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, for sure.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. I use video games now as like a decompression from work, 45 minutes to an hour after I'm done working...
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Put everything else away and just play for an hour, and then I can be done and move on.
Adam Stacoviak
Have you played Geometry Dash yet?
Jerod Santo
\[00:11:48.27\] Oh, yeah. I played Geometry Dash way back in the day. I mean, I've moved on from it, because I was kind of addicted to it.
Alex Kretzschmar
Do you ever move on from it, really?
Jerod Santo
Well, maybe not. I mean, it changes you.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
But yeah, I love Geometry Dash. I just don't play it anymore.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, my son got me into it because he's got into it...
Jerod Santo
Great music, too.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. And he loves -- he wants to be a DJ.
Jerod Santo
We should give BMC some Geometry Dash. Just a side note...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
I remember the first time I got heavily into Transport Tycoon, and I was about 14 or 15. It was OpenTTD when that started. We took a holiday... \[unintelligible 00:12:20.25\] lived in England at the time, in case you couldn't guess... We took a holiday in Florida, Orlando. You've got all those interchanges flying around, and I'm like looking at designs, thinking "I could implement this in the game..."
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Yeah, I got big into Roller Coaster Tycoon and SimCity...
Alex Kretzschmar
Oh, yeah.
Jerod Santo
After that, I kind of moved away from builders myself.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
But now it's Rocket League. My kids like Rocket League, and now I like it... And so we play it together, which is a great co-op...
Alex Kretzschmar
Can relate. I'm somewhat of a Bluey fanboy these days myself. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] There you go. So you're talking about things, you try to self-host everything you can... What services do you not self-host and why?
Alex Kretzschmar
Great question. My password manager. I pay Bitwarden $10 a year to host that, because if I get locked out of my vault, I can't get back into anything to unlock the vaults... And it's like this catch 22.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
And so I'd much rather pay Bitwarden. Because it's only $10 a year, or $12 or something for them to do it. And it's like, that trade-off is worth it for me. I still pay for Google Photos as well, for right now, at least... But Image is coming up real good, which is like a self-hosted Google Photos clone... It's got things like machine learning, face detection and duplicate detection, and all that kind of stuff in it, too. It needs a good GPU to do that, so it's properly doing CUDA library stuff...
Jerod Santo
Oh, wow.
Alex Kretzschmar
But yeah, I think really password managers is the only one where I'm like...
Adam Stacoviak
"Nah..."
Alex Kretzschmar
...cloud, please.
Adam Stacoviak
Even though you could. Bitwarden, you could totally self-host. Easily.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah, you could. Absolutely.
Adam Stacoviak
Right. Well, can't you just like literally host Bitwarden itself? Because it's open source...
Jerod Santo
Well, they're changing things...
Alex Kretzschmar
Are they?
Adam Stacoviak
Bitwarden?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, Bitwarden re-licensed an SDK...
Alex Kretzschmar
I thought I saw they reversed that though, because of --
Jerod Santo
They might have since. This was like last week though. So there's news since then?
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah --
Jerod Santo
Because they pushed -- there was pushback.
Alex Kretzschmar
They got to the top of Hacker News a couple of times, and... Nobody wants that.
Jerod Santo
Right. So they reversed course? That's cool. I'm glad to hear that.
Adam Stacoviak
I recall, years ago, probably like at least two years ago, I was standing up my own Bitwarden, just to play. I'm with you, I don't know I want to host my own password manager, because it's just... It's too much of a -- I suppose if the tech is already secure, I don't have to worry about it. And like whoever gets access to it, you have to authenticate. So if that's good to go, whatever. But it's like if it's down, and then I have that access from everywhere... I wasn't that good at poking holes in my firewall at the time, you know? So I was like "Nah, I don't know if I want to do that."
What else would you not host? You obviously host your data, right? Like, you host a ton of data, and you're cool with that.
Alex Kretzschmar
Next Cloud is what I use to host -- that's like a Google Drive replacement, Dropbox replacement...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Are you happy with that?
Alex Kretzschmar
Mostly.
Jerod Santo
Okay...
Alex Kretzschmar
It's a big fat PHP app. It's kind of slow, it's kind of clunky. It breaks a lot. But I have it now as a Nix module, and I just don't touch it. Now it's stable. I just leave it alone, and it just does its thing in the corner. But it's trying to be a platform for small to medium businesses, I think. You can install Office suites on it, you can install calendars, contacts, email, file syncing... There's a million different add-ons you can get for it. Once you start getting beyond the core product, it starts to get pretty crufty pretty quickly, really.
Jerod Santo
Gotcha.
Alex Kretzschmar
Brittle, I think would be the word.
Jerod Santo
Brittle, yeah. Photos is interesting, because we've debated photos recently...
Adam Stacoviak
We did.
Jerod Santo
...as kind of a hard line of like the one thing you don't want to mess up.
Adam Stacoviak
Mainly, my point is know what you're getting into. If you're going to self-host your own photos, and you're the arbiter of the final copy, know what you're getting into.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Have a backup plan.
Alex Kretzschmar
The only reason I trust myself to self-host photos is because I have an offsite server back in England that I replicate everything to.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Alex Kretzschmar
With ZFS \[unintelligible 00:16:24.15\]
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 00:16:25.00\]
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Does it snapshot, too?
Alex Kretzschmar
\[00:16:31.05\] Yeah. ZFS is cool like that. So like copy on write, all that kind of stuff. It will only sync the blocks that have changed, or the delta. So...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Send Receive is pretty cool...
Alex Kretzschmar
I recently got Fiber as well. So I've got like a five-gig upload now, which is...
Jerod Santo
Wow.
Alex Kretzschmar
I've gone from 30 meg to 5,000 meg, and it's like... I upload stuff to YouTube every day nearly, and it's amazing.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. That's awesome.
Adam Stacoviak
What's with Tailscale these days? What's new and fresh there? What's the latest?
Alex Kretzschmar
Still developing relations with developers, I guess...
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. It's pretty good. We just had our company offsite in Mexico... Whole company gets together once a year, because we're fully remote. So everybody looks at Tailscale being like head-officed in Toronto, and they're like "Oh, they're a Canadian company." In reality, there's four people in a WeWork in Toronto.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
And everyone else is just geographically spread. Like, I'm here in Raleigh, there's people in San Francisco... All over the place.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
So there's a lot of excitement at the moment in the company about where things are going over the next year or so... We've made a bunch of new hires, and new blood, and stuff like that. And just changing the structure, and growing into our next phase.
Adam Stacoviak
It sounds fun.
Alex Kretzschmar
I think it will be. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I like Tailscale still yet. I'm not a hater. I'm a lover. My use case is pretty simple though... You know, that's it.
Alex Kretzschmar
How do you connect to your stuff at home from here?
Adam Stacoviak
Just put up Tailscale...
Alex Kretzschmar
Exactly.
Adam Stacoviak
That's it. This is so easy.
Alex Kretzschmar
And that's fine. And it's free...
Adam Stacoviak
"Is it on? Is it connected? Okay, cool."
Alex Kretzschmar
And it's free for you, because you're just one person, right?
Adam Stacoviak
That's right. And I love that. And I do run an exit node at home, on a dedicated VM. I guess, could you say a VM is dedicated? It's not an Apple TV, let's just say. It's a VM that's dedicated to being -- that Ubuntu server is a VM, and it's meant to be the exit node. That's it. Tailscale makes my life simple. It's kind of boring, because it's so easy... And that's kind of good, right?
Alex Kretzschmar
I often say it's WireGuard on Easy mode, and it sounds super-cheeseball, but it's true, right?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. I mean once you're -- there's not really a lot of setup. You do all the heavylifting, and it just blends in. I don't have to think about it and worry about whether or not it is working or not working.
Alex Kretzschmar
I remember the first time that I went to set Tailscale up... This is like probably three years ago before I worked there. I set aside the whole weekend to retool my WireGuard around Tailscale... And I was done in like 10 minutes, and I'm like "Well, what am I going to do with my weekend?" I was expecting that to be really difficult, and...
Adam Stacoviak
It was not hard at all.
Alex Kretzschmar
...Tailscale was just really easy.
Adam Stacoviak
Tailscale is really easy. Dig it, man. Jerod doesn't Tailscale though, do you? You don't need to, right? You have no need for Tailscale.
Alex Kretzschmar
What about if you need to control a mixer back in Texas from here?
Adam Stacoviak
Don't do it. Jerod lives a simple life.
Jerod Santo
I do. Very simple.
Adam Stacoviak
And it's not that he tries to not be complex... He tries to be simple.
Jerod Santo
I do.
Adam Stacoviak
Which is a different thing, really.
Alex Kretzschmar
That's a feature though, not a bug.
Jerod Santo
It is a feature, yeah. I've designed my life around it. I mean, we are homebodies, we are homeschoolers, I work from home... I have one laptop, I take it with me when I go somewhere... I've got nothing to connect to back home...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
I mean, the Mac Mini has some old movies on it, but I'm not going to watch those if I'm on the road. I'm going to watch whatever's on Netflix...
Alex Kretzschmar
You're going to watch the world go by the window, right?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly. So young Jerod would be all about Tailscale, but old Jerod, I'm just like... I'm not a self-hoster.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
\[00:20:00.16\] I still think it's cool tech. I remember the bad old days of Hamachi VPN, I think it was called... Which was, I think, open source, but it was definitely free. It was my closest analog to Tailscale, before Tailscale. And it was cool, because you could do a lot of the same stuff... And that's pre-WireGuard even. I'm not sure how it worked. I know it was a VPN, but... You know, we had NAS'es in different people's houses... And we were sharing backups with each other. Like, I backup your stuff, you backup mine. I did all that stuff the hard way, probably 15 years ago. And so now...
Alex Kretzschmar
You're just not interested now.
Jerod Santo
No. I just have different interests. I like to talk about the stuff. I like to hear what people are up to... But I just don't have that hacker mindset with that kind of stuff. I just don't.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. I think for me it's when companies like Disney just jack the price up, to be double in the space of a year, or... You're beholden to business models. And it's a trade-off that you're making of convenience versus time versus sovereignty of that data and information, and stuff like that. Your choice is time and money. My choice is "Invest a lot of time, and a lot of money in hardware", and then I also get the sovereignty of the data as well.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. I 100% understand that. And I understand it would be cool to have a Plex library with like all the movies, and all that kind of stuff, that I own... But my choice when Disney does that - I just canceled Disney Plus. I'm like "Peace out, guys. I don't need you" you know? I'll live the simpler life...
Alex Kretzschmar
Until the kids are like "Where's Bluey?"
Jerod Santo
And then I tell them. "Bluey's no longer with us." \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
Bluey's no longer with us.
Jerod Santo
You know? So yeah, I mean, that's another trade-off, right? It's like, okay, now I've got to deal with that situation.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
You can't do that to everything in your life, so you make choices.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
But then you end up spending thousands on hardware, and... For me it's also an educational piece, too. The skills that I've learned through building my home lab have gotten me the jobs that I've had over the last decade. And by staying true to my passions, and just doing what I find interesting, and talking about it, that comes across in all the content that I make, and things like that. And I think ultimately it makes for better content, that people can relate to better, and all that kind of stuff. As opposed to scratching around for ideas for content the whole time... It's like, no, this is what I'm doing anyway. If I find it interesting, probably at least a couple of other people will.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. I had the chance to -- and I still might, actually. Do you know Techno Tim, by any chance? Tim Stewart?
Alex Kretzschmar
Of course, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
So when he was on the pod a couple of times, I was like "Dude, you really need to spin off and do a podcast that's adjacent from your YouTube channel, because you're sort of like diving deep into certain things... I think there's a room there for it." And he and I were skunkworking the idea. But then I felt like... I was like "Tim, I don't know if I could be your co-host, man. I like the idea... One, I don't know if I have the time for it, and then two, I kind of feel like even though I'm a home labber, I kind of think I'm an imposter in a way, because I'm not like every day, every weekend, every possible moment am I thinking about like tinkering in my home lab."
Alex Kretzschmar
It's a problem.
Adam Stacoviak
And whereas Tim is. That's Tim's MO. That's his style. I kind of even felt like imposter there... I was like "Tim, I think -- I don't know if I could be your co-host, man, for this thing. I like the idea of you doing it." And I think he's spun up a couple other channels now, that's like gone from his single channel to like giving him more freedom... And I think he's kind of doing that now. But I even feel like there's times I'm like "I'm not even sure I'm home lab enough for home lab." And so like for you and your job and what you do with Tailscale and other things, like...
Alex Kretzschmar
YouTube's a whole beast, though... And it's turned somewhat in -- I'm going to get on my soapbox for a second.
Adam Stacoviak
Please do, get on it.
Alex Kretzschmar
It's turned somewhat into a bit of a shopping channel, where there are these guys like... I mean, no disrespect to Tim, to Jeff Geerling, to Craft Computing, to Raid Owl, to all these guys.
Adam Stacoviak
Those are four great channels.
Alex Kretzschmar
They do a lot of really good stuff, but they've got to pay the bills. And so they take a lot of sponsored videos, and a lot of hardware... And woodworking YouTube suffers from the exact same problem...
Jerod Santo
Totally.
Alex Kretzschmar
\[00:24:14.01\] Where you think "I need this massive garage."
Adam Stacoviak
What's the latest planer?
Alex Kretzschmar
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 00:24:16.28\]
Alex Kretzschmar
Full of a bandsaw, and a jointer, and like...
Jerod Santo
Right.
Alex Kretzschmar
The reality is a track saw and a table saw and a couple of sanders and you can get most things done with that. And the same is true in home lab. You don't need to be home lab enough to be home lab. Like...
Adam Stacoviak
Well, I feel like it's even gone beyond home lab. It's like, well, now it's literally a data center in your home lab.
Alex Kretzschmar
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
And it's almost -- and I'm not hating either. I love Tim, and Jeff, and all those guys.
Alex Kretzschmar
Same. And I don't mean to be negative. It's just...
Adam Stacoviak
Precisely. I think it's the nature of the content beast in a way, where there's not good enough. You almost have to like almost give it your soul, or feel compelled to. And I'm not going to do that.
Alex Kretzschmar
Like, a 30,000 view video gets you a hundred dollars. I can't pay my bills with that. "Just get more views" is the answer, but there are only so many home lab views around. And you see these big guys, and they're getting one, two, three hundred thousand maybe. So let's just take the 30k and extrapolate to it... Well, it's a thousand dollars for one video that does really well. I'm doing four of those a month... That's still pretty tight if you've got a mortgage and a kid to pay for. So you have to take these third party deals and sponsorships... And I know you're not immune to that in the podcasting world as well. And it's trying to strike that balance between finding sponsors people find interesting, versus... And we have this on Self-Hosted, too. At what point does a hobby become a business?
Adam Stacoviak
Precisely.
Alex Kretzschmar
It's easy to turn a hobby into a business, and then learn to hate it because you're doing it all day, every day. I was a classically-trained musician. I hate music now, because it's just too... I love listening to it, but I don't play anymore, because it was too competitive. Too real. Too much.
Adam Stacoviak
It demands something from you, and I think that's what separates those who go beyond all that, and "make it", and those who don't. It's not the ability, it's the desire to go through the slog of what's required to get to greatness. Perceived greatness, not literally greatness. Because it takes a lot out of you to produce a podcast for 15 years, or to do all the things you've done. It takes a lot.
Alex Kretzschmar
And I don't think people realize the content grind of -- I mentioned the shower earlier. I'm thinking about how I'm making a Tailscale YouTube video today... I'm in the shower thinking about how I present that idea, how I make it interesting. Who's watching? What do they find interesting? Trying to second-guess every little detail that you can. It's a lifestyle. It's not a job. To be good at it, I think, it's a lifestyle.
Adam Stacoviak
Precisely.
Alex Kretzschmar
I hadn't appreciated that before taking this DevRel job at Tailscale and going full-time.
Jerod Santo
Is it a lifestyle that is worth living?
Alex Kretzschmar
I think so.
Jerod Santo
Is it sustainably so?
Alex Kretzschmar
If you tell 15-year-old Alex he would get paid a salary to make tech videos, I think he'd be pretty happy.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I dig it, man. So I was wrong, it's not a .fm. It's selfhosted.show. And I think one of the things you talked about recently was No Google November... Is that right? Or No Google October?
Alex Kretzschmar
No Googtober.
Jerod Santo
No Googtober?
Adam Stacoviak
No Googtober? Okay.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. So we've been looking at a bunch of stuff. Self-hosted search... There's an app called Searxng. It's spelled Sear, like you sear a steak, and then xng.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Alex Kretzschmar
It creates an anonymous Google search profile for every query you make. So there's no tracking cookies. I mean, they know your IP address that it's originating from, but beyond that it's a brand new empty search profile every single time. There's no ads, there's no tracking, there's no spyware... All of that stuff. And it presents the results -- do you remember how Google used to look 10 years ago?
Jerod Santo
\[00:28:02.04\] Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
And now it's got this AI nonsense at the top, and pictures, and... I've trained myself to scroll to about a third of the way down the page before anything interesting actually happens. With Searxng, it's right there at the top. Every time.
And it can self-host it, and I connect to my instance, through Tailscale, of course, running in my basement. What I didn't expect though was to start looking at other things, like AI search, like Perplexity. Have you come across Perplexity yet?
Jerod Santo
A little bit, yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
Amazing. Google must be quaking in their boots, because you can self-host Perplexity with something called Perplexica. And then you can use searching to -- Perplexity goes out to the internet and does those searches on real content, because ChatGPT is based on two years ago, right? The data they scraped two years ago.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Alex Kretzschmar
It'll say, "Sorry, I have no record before October 2022" or whatever. Whereas perplexity is searching YouTube videos right now.
Jerod Santo
Constantly. Yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
And it's summarizing videos from like right now.
Adam Stacoviak
In real time. That's dope.
Alex Kretzschmar
So you're like "Is the AMD 9950X the best CPU right now?" And it will go out and it will transcribe a bunch of videos, figure out the answer, and then you can ask it questions. Google's done, in my opinion. Until a proper chat style comes out... Perplexity is so good.
Adam Stacoviak
And so you're self-hosting Perplexi-ta? Is that right?
Alex Kretzschmar
Perplexi-ca, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Perplexi-ca.
Alex Kretzschmar
Perplexi-ca isn't quite ready for prime time. It crashes quite a bit at the minute. And you need a GPU to do the machine learning, like the AI... Because it plugs into Olama.
Adam Stacoviak
But the idea is there.
Alex Kretzschmar
It plugs into Olama underneath to do the --
Adam Stacoviak
Could you run it on like an M4 Mac, or something like that?
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. Anywhere Olama will run.
Adam Stacoviak
So maybe you can throw like a Mac mini on your network and just let that be the workhorse.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah. A couple of Docker containers, Olama, and you're good to go.
Adam Stacoviak
Dope. That's a couple down in your most recent episodes, so... Selfhosted.show. Full length, go deep, I'm sure, right? Chris is your co-host?
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
So you guys go deep on that. What else you got, Jerod? Anything else?
Jerod Santo
I'm just now realizing that I've been without Google for a long time, but I've just been suffering with DuckDuckGo. And it's like, I should just replace that with Perplexity and I won't be suffering. I've just lived without. And I've learned how to use DuckDuckGo to the best of its abilities...
Alex Kretzschmar
Example... I was doing some messing about for my talk here, and I wanted to know the file path that the Nginx Docker uses for its default volume mapping. And I literally said, "Perplexity, what is the default Docker Nginx mapping for the HTML directory?" It came back with the slash user, slash share, whatever. Boom, right there. I didn't have to go to look at the actual Docker hub page, nothing. It was like right there, and it was...
Jerod Santo
So non-self-hosted, what's their model? What's their business?
Alex Kretzschmar
Perplexity - you get a certain amount of searches for free, and then you can pay $20 a month for Pro searches, whatever that means. I haven't looked at that.
Jerod Santo
Cool.
Adam Stacoviak
So you said Perplexi-ca is not ready for usage, necessarily...
Alex Kretzschmar
Mine's been unstable. I mean, I don't know if that's just an Alex problem or what, but...
Adam Stacoviak
Right. What are you running that on?
Alex Kretzschmar
An Epic 48-core thing with like an NVIDIA --
Adam Stacoviak
So it should be humming.
Alex Kretzschmar
It's not a hardware problem. It could just be --
Jerod Santo
A software problem, yeah.
Alex Kretzschmar
It could just be that revision has a -- I don't know.
Adam Stacoviak
That'd be dope. That's cool. I mean, especially if you're on the LAN... I suppose you can always expose that via a Tailscale URL.
Alex Kretzschmar
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Thank you very much, Tailscale. To be able to match your own search that's self-hosted. I can get down with that. I mean, we've given so much to Google... So much.
Jerod Santo
It's time to take it back... Take it all back.
Adam Stacoviak
It's time to like just stop giving it to them. You're not gonna get it back, but you can stop giving it to them at least.
Alex Kretzschmar
I can hear Tom Morello warming up somewhere over there, you know...
Jerod Santo
There you go. Good reference. I was trying to go for a Goonies reference, but it's probably too deep of a cut...
Adam Stacoviak
Do it. I want to hear it.
Jerod Santo
He's like "Those dreams up there... Those are other people's dreams." He's like "Down here, these are our dreams. And I'm taking them back. I'm taking them all back."
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I remember that. Yes.
\[00:32:09.02\]
*"But you know what? This one. This one right here. This was my dream. My wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back.*
Jerod Santo
That was my big cut.
Adam Stacoviak
That was good. Sean Astin. We love you, man.
Jerod Santo
Yup.
Adam Stacoviak
Alright. Well, thanks, Alex.
Jerod Santo
Yup. Thanks, man.
Alex Kretzschmar
Thank you.
Adam Stacoviak
Isra. Isra, Isra...
Israa Taha
Yes.
Jerod Santo
Yes!
Adam Stacoviak
Here we go.
Israa Taha
How close do I have to be? Is that good?
Jerod Santo
It depends on how loud you're going to be.
Adam Stacoviak
You're golden.
Jerod Santo
You're golden.
Israa Taha
Sweet.
Jerod Santo
So we asked you to come on the show yesterday morning, now it's today afternoon... But you made it.
Israa Taha
I did. I almost didn't make it.
Jerod Santo
You're stepping outside your comfort zone.
Israa Taha
I am.
Jerod Santo
Do you find that hard to do?
Israa Taha
It is, but I gave my first conference talk this year, and it was because somebody pushed me to do it... And so if I don't start to take more of those chances myself, I'll never step out of my comfort zone... And I can't rely on other people pushing me to do something until I do it myself.
Jerod Santo
Right. We kind of pushed you into this one, didn't we?
Israa Taha
Yeah. Well, a gentle nudge is what I like to call it...
Jerod Santo
We gave her a nudge... We didn't require it of her, but we...
Adam Stacoviak
Constant gentle pressure.
Jerod Santo
...we just wanted her to come on the show. We're happy to have you. First time at All Things Open.
Israa Taha
It is.
Jerod Santo
Impressions.
Israa Taha
It's great. Every day I walk through and I find more booths and more floors.
Jerod Santo
Lots of booths, yeah.
Israa Taha
Yeah. It's a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm used to more smaller conferences, capped at a thousand people... So it can be a little bit intimidating, but I think going to more conferences made me a little bit more comfortable speaking to people, whether at the booths or at the hallway track, just kind of finding people that you have things in common with, whether you went to the same sessions, or just at lunch... Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. We're hallway trackers ourselves, aren't we, Adam?
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Jerod Santo
It's where all the fun is.
Adam Stacoviak
It's where we belong, you know?
Israa Taha
It is.
Adam Stacoviak
It's our home.
Jerod Santo
It's where the people are.
Israa Taha
Yeah. I've had more conversations with people than I have been to sessions, and I think I like that a lot better. Because you can find a lot of the content online, whether it's on YouTube, or a blog, or things like that. But the thing that I miss most is that interaction with people, because I do work remote. And so I go to conferences for those connections, for those interactions, and not really for the sessions.
Adam Stacoviak
What if we just had a conference that was only the hallway track?
Israa Taha
That would be incredible.
Jerod Santo
Hallway Conf.
Israa Taha
I would go to that.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Jerod Santo
Coming to a...
Adam Stacoviak
Hallway near you.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. "Don't go in there! There's no talks!"
The nice thing about that is you don't really even need a place to gather. You just need a hallway.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
We don't need an auditorium.
Adam Stacoviak
Would you have vendors and stuff, too? Would it be like this?
Jerod Santo
Everything would be in the hallway.
Israa Taha
But it would get pretty crowded though.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. You would need a pretty big hallway.
Adam Stacoviak
Would there be a revolt attempting to organize?
Jerod Santo
What would be cool would be to put it in like an arena, but just in the hallway of the arena, in the circular... And so you would just walk in circles.
Adam Stacoviak
The whole time.
Jerod Santo
We'd call it Circles.
Adam Stacoviak
A figure eight.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Well, that's not how they're designed... Oh, you want to cut through the middle?
Adam Stacoviak
Just thinking out loud, you know... \[unintelligible 00:40:24.24\]
Jerod Santo
This is what we do. Welcome to the podcast. We think out loud...
Adam Stacoviak
What do you think? Would you go to that conference?
Israa Taha
I would.
Adam Stacoviak
If we just made you walk in a square circle, or a figure eight circle, or a continuous --
Israa Taha
Kind of like a speed networking kind of thing...
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
What would attract you to that conference? The hallway? Because you come here for the people that come here, to hang out in the hallway.
Israa Taha
Yeah. I think it's a hard sell. Especially if you have like the company paying for it. It's hard to sell your employer on "I'm just going to go talk to a bunch of people." Like, where's the business value? And that is what a lot of them would probably have a little apprehension with.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Israa Taha
But it's kind of like a meetup, just on a larger scale.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Or like an unconf, Basecamp style. Basecamp? Barcamp.
Adam Stacoviak
Foocamp.
Jerod Santo
No, not Foocamp. Barcamp.
Adam Stacoviak
Barcamp.
Jerod Santo
Barcamp was a response to Foocamp. Do you know Foocamp?
Israa Taha
I don't.
Jerod Santo
Do you know Barcamp?
Israa Taha
No.
Jerod Santo
Okay. So Foocamp stood for Friends of O'Reilly.
Israa Taha
Okay.
Jerod Santo
And that's Tim O'Reilly.
Adam Stacoviak
Tim O'Reilly.
Jerod Santo
The creator of the O'Reilly Empire. Media empire.
Adam Stacoviak
OSCON...
Jerod Santo
And he had an event that was, I think, on his property, or somewhere near where he lives... It was very exclusive, invite-only. You had to be a friend of O'Reilly to go. And it was a camp. Foocamp. I think they camped out.
Israa Taha
Okay.
Jerod Santo
That part might be gray area, but the rest is true, at least. And cool for everybody who gets invited, but not cool for anybody who doesn't get invited. Right? So Barcamp was a response to Foocamp, because Foobar...
Israa Taha
Oh, okay...
Jerod Santo
\[00:42:07.19\] And so Barcamp became an un-conference, where anybody can come. You don't have to be a friend of O'Reilly. You can be anybody. And because it was an un-conference, there was no pre-planned schedule. So you show up on a Saturday morning, for instance, everybody gets together, and there's whiteboards, or even just construction paper, and there's a schedule, like "Here's slots." And you just show up -- a lot like lightning talks. You just show up and sign up for a slot. And then you're putting together the conference as it's going.
Israa Taha
Yup.
Jerod Santo
Pretty fun.
Israa Taha
They actually did that on Sunday at All Things Open.
Jerod Santo
Oh, yeah.
Israa Taha
That first day there were two tracks. There was the community track and then there was a diversity track. And the community track was essentially a bunch of people writing down talk ideas or session ideas. And they just get around in a room, in a circle, and kind of talk about that one topic.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Israa Taha
That conference also does a similar concept.
Jerod Santo
That's right.
Israa Taha
Open Spaces.
Jerod Santo
Open Spaces. So we went to that conference in Austin, in January.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Were you at that one?
Israa Taha
Not in Austin, but I went to the Wisconsin one.
Jerod Santo
We wanted to go to Wisconsin. We didn't quite make it. But you did...
Adam Stacoviak
I did.
Jerod Santo
...a Spaces. What was that called? Birds of a Feather? Was it called Spaces? I don't know, like there was tables...
Adam Stacoviak
It was called "Come to my table and hang out."
Jerod Santo
And you would sign up... The tables were lettered or numbered, and you would sign up "What we're going to be talking about at this table." And Adam, you did home lab, or something?
Adam Stacoviak
I did. I did home lab and I did podcasting.
Jerod Santo
Was that cool?
Adam Stacoviak
That was cool.
Israa Taha
Did you get a lot of people come to it?
Adam Stacoviak
Describe a lot.
Jerod Santo
More than one?
Israa Taha
Four or more.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh. Yes. A lot. Yeah, it was good. We had some good conversations about both. Home lab and podcasting.
Israa Taha
I think a lot of people are probably interested in podcasting, in some way, shape or form.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I did a really good job with my placard, though, because you could put it up on the board... And I decorated it.
Israa Taha
Oh, nice.
Adam Stacoviak
I made it look flashy, you know?
Jerod Santo
Do you think that's how you got such big numbers, like more than four?
Adam Stacoviak
I think it was a great topic, but it was also "Oh, look at me." I was peacocking, you know?
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] I guess you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
Adam Stacoviak
Get your attention, bro, you know? Get your attention.
Jerod Santo
So that's cool. I like the idea of -- I like improvisation, I like spontaneous things... And so I really have -- I've gone to a lot of Barcamps over the years. There used to be a Barcamp Omaha every year for a long time. And they were just fun, because you never know what you're going to get.
Israa Taha
Right. You don't know who you're going to meet, and what you're going to talk about.
Jerod Santo
Exactly.
Israa Taha
Oh, that's pretty neat.
Jerod Santo
Adam is showing her a picture of what he put on, the That Conference...
Adam Stacoviak
It was the main thing, and I put a little subtopic.
Jerod Santo
Let me see it. I'll describe it.
Adam Stacoviak
Go ahead, Jerod.
Jerod Santo
It says, all caps, in blue, across the top, "Homelab!" Exclamation mark. That's it. Oh, no. I thought those are names.
I thought people signed up. It also says now, in kind of a cloudy, kind of a \[unintelligible 00:45:05.24\] "Unifi. ProxMox."
Adam Stacoviak
Tag cloud.
Jerod Santo
Oh yeah. It's a tag cloud. VLANs. Ultimate. Ultimate? Ubuntu. \[laughs\] Texas. Docker. Oh no, TrueNAS.
Adam Stacoviak
Texas... Can you read?
Jerod Santo
Your handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. Wi-Fi 6. Pi-hole. Now, did you talk about all these?
Adam Stacoviak
Yes.
Jerod Santo
So that's not even false advertising. Now, the other one says PODCAST in all caps, and then ing in lower caps, because I think you probably forgot to put that in there... Exclamation mark. Mics. Software. Sales. Editing. Questions.
Community. Clips. Gear. That's good. That's good advertising.
Israa Taha
I like that, because a lot of times you have a topic, but you don't really know like what they're going to be talking about...
Jerod Santo
Almost too open-ended.
Israa Taha
It's too generic.
Adam Stacoviak
"Oh, I don't Unifi." Or "I know about", you know, something or other...
Jerod Santo
Or you want to.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Switching ports, and stuff... Come on now. Wi-Fi 6?
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
And they get you.
Israa Taha
I don't know what that is.
Adam Stacoviak
See? But you would want to...
Jerod Santo
\[00:46:11.10\] You might show up and find out.
Adam Stacoviak
...because you know about Wi-Fi's generally, right?
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
What is Wi-Fi?
Israa Taha
Wireless... Something?
Jerod Santo
Yeah. I think it stands for fidelity, but I could be wrong.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Jerod Santo
But yeah, wireless networks.
Adam Stacoviak
And 6 is a good number.
Jerod Santo
And 6 is just better than 5, you know? It's the next version.
Israa Taha
Yeah. Better than 4, too.
Jerod Santo
It's here though, right?
Adam Stacoviak
Wi-Fi 6. It's here.
Jerod Santo
Many devices are Wi-Fi 6 enabled, but not all of them.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. It's not faster. It can do more concurrent bandwidth.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
Than Wi-Fi 5.
Jerod Santo
It's a wider pipe, but not a faster pipe.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Jerod Santo
Cool.
Israa Taha
Interesting. I learned something today.
Jerod Santo
So if you were to command a space and advertise it - did you do that at that conference? Did you start one?
Israa Taha
I did not, but I attended my first open space this year, which is surprising, because we've done open spaces at that conference for 11, 12 years, but I was always interested in the sessions, and I didn't realize that the interesting conversations usually happen in those open spaces or in the hallway. But I went to my first one this year, and it was on meetups and how to get people to show up to meetups, how to organize meetups... Because a lot of them have died down since COVID. A lot of them are pretty much gone. So how do we bring those communities back? How do we, in a sense, resurrect those meetups, and get people more involved in those things?
Jerod Santo
Yeah. That's cool. So if you're going to start a space though, you're going to step outside your comfort zone, and next year at That Conference, I'm going to run a space.
Israa Taha
I would probably do it on React Native.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Israa Taha
I've been a React Native developer for two years now, but I'm a solo dev, for the most part, and I don't know a lot of others in the community, at least immediate community, that do React Native development. So it would just kind of be interesting to see if there are people doing mobile development, what are they using... If they're interested in React Native, I could maybe talk about that a little bit.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. How do you keep up in the React Native world?
Israa Taha
I listen to the React Native Radio Podcast. That's hosted by Infinite Red, who is one of the leading consultancies, actually one of the biggest consultancies in the US for React Native development. I also read their newsletter. They have a newsletter that they publish with some of the latest news. I keep up with the React Native releases. They've just released 0.76 recently... And then just kind of keeping up on Twitter, just reading up on new libraries and frameworks with Expo.
Jerod Santo
Brand new architecture, right?
Israa Taha
Yeah. New architecture by default.
Jerod Santo
Yup. Do you have a take on that?
Israa Taha
I haven't used it yet, but it's supposed to be faster, and then obviously the old architecture...
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Israa Taha
So there's a lot of push for React Native packages to switch to the new architecture, because there are ones that are still not compatible with it. So if you do switch your project to new architecture, there might be some packages that kind of have issues with that. I know there's a big movement to get those packages compatible... So yeah.
Jerod Santo
What else, man? Anything else?
Adam Stacoviak
Is it GPT-able, React Native? Like, how do you level up and learn? Where do you get your new skills?
Israa Taha
By doing. It is GPT-able, but some of the stuff is a little bit older, or outdated.
Adam Stacoviak
Right.
Israa Taha
So you kind of have to keep up with documentation, you kind of have to try it out for yourself and play around with it... But yeah, that's kind of been one of my biggest struggles, is where do I find those resources when I have questions on "How do I do this?" or "This isn't quite working the way that I expect it to. Where do I go?" And so Twitter... Infinite Red also has a Slack community of a lot of React Native developers... So if you have questions, a lot of times you can go into their Slack, ask a question, and somebody will be able to either answer, or point you in the right direction to figure out where to go from there.
Jerod Santo
\[00:50:18.17\] Nice.
Adam Stacoviak
What are you doing? You said learn by doing. So what are you doing?
Israa Taha
I'm building a React Native template. So I am using React Native CLI to build a template with React Native Hook Form and Zod for forms and validation, and integrating authentication, with the idea that if I wanted to build a mobile app with React Native, these are the things that just kind of come with it... So I don't have to rebuild it from scratch.
So these are things that I like to use, or would make development easier... And just kind of learning by doing. So how does validation work with Zod and React Hook Form? How does authentication work with Auth0? How do you implement state management with all of these technologies, and what's the best way to do it? So it kind of helps me learn about the technologies that I'm using, but also how to integrate them with other technologies, and have something that I can then take and use to build a real world app.
Jerod Santo
Awesome.
Adam Stacoviak
If you had a magic wand to change React Native, an angst, or just something you haven't learned quite as well as you'd like to yet, what would it be? How would you change it?
Israa Taha
Debugging.
Adam Stacoviak
Debugging?
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
What's the problem there?
Israa Taha
So I think the tools that we have today aren't like the tools that we're used to in web development. There is -- I know there's a debugger that's coming out with React Native 0.76. I've heard about it in React Native Universe, or React Universe... I can't remember the name of that conference, but it was held in Poland earlier this year.
Most of my logging and debugging in React Native is console logs, and I'm sure a lot of people kind of do that... It's just not a lot of good tooling around debugging in React Native. There is Reactatron; it was also built by the folks at Infinite Red. I haven't had a chance to try that out yet, but it's one of those things where if I could know more about debugging in React Native, I'd probably try Reactatron, try out the new debugger in 0.76, and kind of figure out how best to do that.
Jerod Santo
Awesome.
Adam Stacoviak
Dope. Good job.
Israa Taha
Thank you.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, thanks for sharing with us.
Adam Stacoviak
Now you're a podcaster.
Israa Taha
Awesome.
Jerod Santo
Damn. You did it. We did it. We all did it.
Adam Stacoviak
It's done.
Israa Taha
It's not as scary as I thought it was going to be.
Jerod Santo
I told you.
Israa Taha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
It's fun. You just talk to each other.
**Break**: \[00:52:49.04\]
Well, we're here with Avi Fernando.
Avindra Fernando
Fernando.
Jerod Santo
Fernando.
We're here with -- I was about to call you Avi. I just changed the A sound.
Adam Stacoviak
Avi. "I'm Avi now, y'all."
Jerod Santo
Avi Fernando.
Avindra Fernando
That's right.
Jerod Santo
From Kansas.
Avindra Fernando
Kansas City.
Jerod Santo
Kansas City. Born and raised?
Avindra Fernando
Not born and raised. Born in Sri Lanka.
Jerod Santo
Okay, Sri Lanka. How did you get to Kansas? Are you in the Missouri side or the Kansas side?
Avindra Fernando
I live in the Kansas side.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. So I got here when I was 19. I wanted to pursue a degree, so that's why I'm here.
Jerod Santo
KU?
Avindra Fernando
KU.
Jerod Santo
Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
Avindra Fernando
Oh, Rock Chalk. Yeah, absolutely.
Jerod Santo
Sorry. We speak a different language here in the Midwest.
Adam Stacoviak
What did you say? Say it louder.
Jerod Santo
I said Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Rock Chalk?
Jerod Santo
That's their saying.
Adam Stacoviak
Rock Chalk Jayhawk?
Avindra Fernando
That's our chant.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. The KU Jayhawks.
Avindra Fernando
Chalk's the motto. The mascot.
Jerod Santo
They're the Jayhawks.
Adam Stacoviak
Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
Jerod Santo
That's right.
Avindra Fernando
Yes. You're saying it right.
Jerod Santo
That's what they all say to each other. It's kind of like saying --
Avindra Fernando
Keep going, and you'll be chanting it.
Jerod Santo
It's a chant.
Adam Stacoviak
Give me a demonstration. Give me a demonstration.
Avindra Fernando
Rock Chalk... Jayhawk... KU...
Jerod Santo
I did not go to KU.
Adam Stacoviak
Alright...
Jerod Santo
But I've been there many a times, and I know the chants, because I lived nearby. Alright, so you're 19, moved from Sri Lanka to Kansas, of all places.
Avindra Fernando
That's right.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] And then you never go back.
Avindra Fernando
No. Yeah. I stuck around in Lawrence, finished my bachelor's in computer science...
Jerod Santo
Nice.
Avindra Fernando
And then decided right after, "Let me do a master's as well." So I pursued my master's right afterwards, and then stuck around in Kansas City since.
Jerod Santo
Got married, started a family, started a business.
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
In that order?
Avindra Fernando
Eventually. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Eventually. Sure. Probably skipping over a lot of life there, but...
Avindra Fernando
So my wife and I, we met at KU. We were both teaching assistants, so we started dating right around the time of graduation. So we both started at Cerner, which is a large healthcare IT company in the Kansas City area, on the same day.
Jerod Santo
Wow.
Avindra Fernando
So we've had a great journey from the very beginning.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, you have.
Adam Stacoviak
In lockstep. That's good stuff.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
And you are a React guy?
Avindra Fernando
Oh, one of my specialties. Yes.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Adam Stacoviak
What's your list of specialties?
Avindra Fernando
Mostly front-end. Yeah. I would say React, Next.js, I do a lot of Playwright tests, Cypress for my clients...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. And you are running your own business.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. Since 2021.
Jerod Santo
How'd you get there?
Avindra Fernando
Great story. So back when I was working at Cerner, I got to meet a lot of architects and senior engineers, which I had learned a lot of knowledge from. And then this journey goes along... At one point I decided to join another big company. At that point, I started to feel like I was attending a lot of meetups locally, because I wanted to spread the knowledge that I was gaining from the other people. And I spoke to a couple of directors at RSA, at the time, and then they were like "Yeah, you bring the meetup in-house and we'll let you host it, we'll let you have people in it..." So it was awesome. So I was really motivated by all of that. But then I realized what I'm missing is I'm seeing how big companies run, how they operate, but let me see how the small companies run. So I took the risk and I said "Okay, let me just go join a startup." A product startup. So that was my journey into seeing how a product works. And from a startup level, there was only like five people at the startup, and everyone was wearing different hats.
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Avindra Fernando
\[01:00:25.09\] Getting started with it. Learned a ton there. Constant innovation, constantly grinding... Great, great, great time there. What I was thinking to myself at that time was "Okay, now I've got the product startup perspective. How does services or consulting work? Let me go experiment that." So I joined a services startup, which their motto was consulting. A couple of guys, amazing, amazing dudes. Got to work with them, see how they negotiate contracts, bring in different contracts...
One of the contracts was so interesting to me. I was working on an app for someone; that was his hobby. He wanted this idea of a virtual bar. So he was mapping out all the bars in the cities that they go to, and would give the ability for someone to purchase a seat in the virtual world, which was a fascinating idea. I was like "People pay for this stuff?" It's like, yeah, this is cool stuff. So I got really motivated by that.
And then I eventually decided, "Okay, I'm just going to start this journey on my own and see how things go." So that's fast forward to 2021.
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Avindra Fernando
I worked with a client, and at that point I decided, "Okay, the project's going really well, and I think I can pull the plug on my full-time job", and took that leap and never looked back.
Jerod Santo
Gotcha. So you were kind of a weekend warrior at that point.
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
You had a job at your nights and weekends...
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
I was wondering, because for a lot of people going into their own business, especially a services business, a consultancy, the question is "How do I get that flywheel going? Do I just quit my job and take the leap, or do I weekend warrior it for a while?" So did you have a plan from the start, or was it just kind of like opportunistic?
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, I think I jumped into the opportunity. Maybe in hindsight I probably jumped in too early... But again, I have no regrets.
Adam Stacoviak
It's never a good time, man.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, absolutely.
Adam Stacoviak
There really isn't. You can't time that stuff. It's like the market. You can't time the entrance into a stock.
Avindra Fernando
Oh yeah, for sure.
Adam Stacoviak
I mean, you can, but it's hard... It's basically impossible. So just get in.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, absolutely.
Adam Stacoviak
The best time is now.
Avindra Fernando
Oh, yeah.
Jerod Santo
And so you've been doing that for three years?
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
What's the hardest part?
Avindra Fernando
Hardest part is managing the different clients, and keep the pipeline full all the time. So now, wearing different hats, not only consulting, not only coding, not only mentoring...
Adam Stacoviak
Selling.
Avindra Fernando
Selling. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Closing.
Jerod Santo
Invoicing.
Avindra Fernando
Invoicing, collecting money...
Adam Stacoviak
Contracts are tough too, because you want to scrutinize those contracts. Those contracts are obviously like words of bond... So it's got to be clear. And you don't want your client relationship to go haywire because you did not word your contract well enough. There's always little details between each contract that changes. And there's a lot of details in that process.
Avindra Fernando
And finding the right people who actually write the check. Some companies it's the CTO who does that, some companies it's not. The CTO still has to talk to the CFO, or the senior engineer will have to go talk to someone else... So getting everyone on board.
Adam Stacoviak
So do you have to spend a lot of time hunting down a check? Once you've delivered your invoice, is there sometimes like "Hey, you know, y'all owe us the money \[unintelligible 01:03:44.10\] to pay us", you know?
Avindra Fernando
I've been fortunate so far. So... Knock on wood.
Jerod Santo
You'll hit it, eventually. Especially larger -- the larger the org, the less they care.
Adam Stacoviak
What's your TTP?
Jerod Santo
What's that mean?
Adam Stacoviak
I'm making this up right now. \[laughter\] Time to payment.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Do you have like a net 30, or...?
Adam Stacoviak
MTTP, sorry. Meantime to payment.
Avindra Fernando
Mostly net 30. That's my standard. But a couple of months, too.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:04:10.05\] It's good.
Avindra Fernando
But I learned a new word today.
Adam Stacoviak
MTTP. I just made that up just now. Meantime to payment.
Jerod Santo
Here's a pro tip on your terms. Take that net 30 and turn it into "Due upon receipt." Because if they're big enough, they're not going to care anyways. They're going to pay you when they want to. And if they're small, they'll take that net 30 very seriously, and they'll pay on the 30th day. So if you just change that to "Due upon receipt" and they're serious, they'll just pay you as fast as they can. But the other ones will ignore you anyways. They're not going to pay attention to your net 30. It won't really matter that much, but you might as well try to get paid as fast as possible.
Avindra Fernando
Gotcha. That's what I do with one of my clients, and they're really good about it.
Jerod Santo
But yeah, the larger ones... It's like, you're a vendor in the system, and there's some...
Adam Stacoviak
They don't even care what your net anything is. It's like "Net whatever I want to pay you. If you're lucky, I'll pay you."
Jerod Santo
The nice thing is though on larger ones, once you get that deal set up and you're in the system and you're on those terms, they will actually pay you reliably.
Avindra Fernando
That's right.
Jerod Santo
Whereas the smaller customers, they might run out of money in the meantime, or something, and just not have the money to pay you. I certainly hit that as well in my time.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. It's interesting, I worked with a foreign client too, and sometimes you have tax concerns too. You've got to get the right documents before they can pay you. So I had to go obtain a tax certificate saying that I pay taxes in the United States, so that I don't get double-taxed in the other country. So yeah, there's a lot of hoops you've got to jump through when your actual customers are from outside of the US.
Jerod Santo
So when I first started, I thought to myself "If I want to work 40 hours a week, and I can bill X dollars per hour", I think it was like 75 when I started... "And I can get that 80% of the time, then I'll make this much money." Does that dog hunt? And then you look at that number and you're like "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can live off of that."
What I didn't realize is that working 40 hours a week - if that's what you want to do, which is what I wanted to do - and billing anywhere close to 40 hours a week, those two things don't happen, right?
Avindra Fernando
No. Very rarely.
Jerod Santo
It's a dream. So what percentage of your working hours are you billing? Is it 50%, 80%? Because you're a solo consultant, right? So you don't have any help on anything; maybe some software doing some stuff...
Avindra Fernando
That's right, yeah.
Jerod Santo
But like everything that has to happen in your business, you're doing it or software is doing it. How much of your time are you billing on a weekly? Percentage-wise, don't need hours.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, I would say about 80%.
Jerod Santo
80%.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, that's a good estimate.
Jerod Santo
And you have a large customer, which helps...
Avindra Fernando
Yes, absolutely.
Adam Stacoviak
How many hours a week do you work?
Avindra Fernando
About 35 to 40 right now.
Jerod Santo
Nice.
Adam Stacoviak
Self-employed? Working 35, maybe 40?
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. Which is pretty good.
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 01:06:54.16\]
Jerod Santo
What are you looking at me for?
Adam Stacoviak
Well, because I just -- I want a response.
Jerod Santo
From me?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Avindra Fernando
Well, I was telling Jerod earlier that I do have a capacity. I'm always constantly looking to keep a couple of clients at the same time. So I can agree to some more contracts, and get those hours in.
Jerod Santo
But you've got an 80/20 rule on your customers. Like, currently you have an 80% customer, and everything else.
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
Yes. So that helps you get to that 80% billable...
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
If you had three smaller customers at the same time and no larger one, you'd spend more of your time trying to fill that pipeline.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, yeah.
Jerod Santo
And if that 80 turns into zero, now you've like flip-flopped. So there's risks on either side.
Avindra Fernando
Going like on a big hunt.
Jerod Santo
There's no perfect way to set it up.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. And it depends on the year, it depends on the month. All of these formulas would change, and you've got to constantly keep adapting to the new role.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm just surprised.
Jerod Santo
What are you surprised about?
Adam Stacoviak
That you only work 40 hours. Not a lot of people do that.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. Well, there's a primary reason for that. So we have a little one at home, and I deliberately want to spend as much as time with --
Adam Stacoviak
Good for you. That's the way to do it.
Jerod Santo
Heck yeah.
Avindra Fernando
With the kids.
Adam Stacoviak
Just because you have that principle doesn't mean you get to always do it. And that's good for you that you do.
Avindra Fernando
That's right. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:08:11.21\] I'm surprised, not because I think you should, but because you don't.
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Adam Stacoviak
Which is a good thing. And you're talking to two people who prioritize their family deeply. Is there a better way to say that? Deeply? Hugely? Massively? Bigly?
Avindra Fernando
Bigly is the right word.
Jerod Santo
Bigly is the word.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. I thought about it. It's like, those years of my son and my daughter...
Jerod Santo
They're not coming back.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. The time, once it's gone, it's gone. It's the most valuable thing.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. And I have a bunch of them, so the way I look at it is -- I've got six kids. And I look at it like every year I lose six years. Because all six of them get one year older. So that's six years they've actually gained on a single year, and so how precious is each one of those?
Avindra Fernando
Oh, absolutely.
Jerod Santo
Once they're all adults, those years won't matter quite as much. But right now, they aren't coming back.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm about to start crying, man...
Jerod Santo
Look at the three of us here.
Adam Stacoviak
It's hitting me hard...
Jerod Santo
Although Avi's got \[unintelligible 01:09:08.27\] because his kids are literally with him... Last year I had a son with me, and the year before, but...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. I considered bringing my son, and I really wanted to bring him. I was just thinking... I'm just not sure.
Jerod Santo
How old is he?
Adam Stacoviak
Eight.
Jerod Santo
He's a little young.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. I think he needs like one more year before he can... I would not be able to concentrate, I think. And it's not his fault, it's that -- I would actually probably want to experience it with him, so I would be distracted as a dad, you know? Whereas otherwise, I can totally focus.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. So we pick and choose. So this is the second conference. My wife - she's speaking here too, and she gave a keynote earlier. So that's why everyone's here.
Adam Stacoviak
Are you flexing on us right now? Is he flexing?
Jerod Santo
He did. He literally flexed his body when he said that. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
He's flexing. Alright, we get it. You're cool. Continue.
Jerod Santo
No, your wife is cool.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, you're both cool.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
You're both cool.
Jerod Santo
That is nice though.
Adam Stacoviak
He's cool by proxy. That's what I'm trying to say.
Avindra Fernando
Well, the truth is we couldn't find a babysitter.
Jerod Santo
They're still in lockstep.
Avindra Fernando
That's true. \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
They're still in lockstep. Yeah, look at that. After all these years. So you're doing the consultancy. What does she do then?
Avindra Fernando
She does very similar, consultancy as well. She does mobile, so... Yeah, that's her specialty as well.
Jerod Santo
Alright. So you're both kind of doing everything the same.
Avindra Fernando
Yes.
Jerod Santo
Now, is one of you better than the other?
Avindra Fernando
There are talks about merging the companies, because we don't want to pay the same accountant two times.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly. You might as well minimize your costs.
Avindra Fernando
We started at different times and different specialties. Going forward - let's merge.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, totally.
Adam Stacoviak
Brand new company name. Maybe even like -- I don't know, what's the company's names?
Avindra Fernando
So my company is \[unintelligible 01:10:49.13\] So we can hyphen it, maybe.
Jerod Santo
The old hyphen...
Adam Stacoviak
We'll have to sit down and talk about that one. \[laughter\]
Avindra Fernando
Well, she's not here to speak for herself...
Jerod Santo
That's right. So we need to decide right now, before she gets here.
Avindra Fernando
That's right, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
See if she agrees. And if she does...
Avindra Fernando
You're both eyewitnesses, right?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly.
Avindra Fernando
We signed it in the document. We're good.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, that's good, man. I mean --
Jerod Santo
That's very cool.
Adam Stacoviak
Power couple. It's a power couple right there, man. So much potential and possibility.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
That's cool, man. Good for you.
Avindra Fernando
Thank you.
Adam Stacoviak
And you get to have your kids with you, too. I mean, what a blessing.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
That's where it's at, man.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. I'm hoping my daughter - she came to my wife's talk. She's inspired. So hopefully, she wants to be a speaker one day.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
That's where dreams begin right there, man.
Avindra Fernando
That's right. But Jerod - I mean, I've got to tell you. Six kids... You're a power dad. For sure.
Jerod Santo
Well... My wife's pretty amazing, too.
Adam Stacoviak
He's either foolish, or very smart.
Avindra Fernando
I think he's pretty smart.
Adam Stacoviak
A little bit of both. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
There's a fine line between a crazy person and a wise person, isn't there?
Avindra Fernando
Any twins in there?
Jerod Santo
Nope.
Avindra Fernando
Okay.
Jerod Santo
All organic.
Avindra Fernando
Power dad.
Adam Stacoviak
All organic. \[laughter\] As if twins are non-organic. That's what it is.
Jerod Santo
Well, thanks for chatting with us, Avi. It was fun.
Avindra Fernando
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me.
Adam Stacoviak
It was a blast. It was the best.
**Break**: \[01:12:21.24\]
Adhithi Ravichandran
So who are these people?
Jerod Santo
These are people that have been on the show.
Adam Stacoviak
Those are not you.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Oh, okay. I'm like "Who are they?"
Adam Stacoviak
Future yous.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Oh, God. Oh, this is video. Oh, okay.
Jerod Santo
We're not doing video here.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Oh, okay, good.
Adam Stacoviak
Do you have a drone? I'm just kidding.
Jerod Santo
So this will be audio only, but...
Adam Stacoviak
What did you have for breakfast?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Is it started?
Adam Stacoviak
We're just sound-checking, yeah.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Gotcha. Yeah, I had scrambled eggs and coffee.
Adam Stacoviak
You ate scrambled eggs?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Mm-hm...
Jerod Santo
And coffee?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Lots of coffee?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Lots of coffee.
Adam Stacoviak
That's a very common breakfast.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, very standard. Yup.
Adam Stacoviak
What did you have for breakfast?
Jerod Santo
I had two eggs, over easy...
Adam Stacoviak
No toast...
Jerod Santo
No toast... I had some hash browns.
Adam Stacoviak
Light fruit.
Jerod Santo
And one strawberry. And one slice of orange.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Wow.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Very detailed.
Jerod Santo
The breakfast of champions. I remember it like it was just this morning.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Usually, my breakfast is just leftovers from my kids.
Yeah, I know how that goes, too.
Adam Stacoviak
Leftovers, huh? So you're a leaders eat last kind of person?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Sort of, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Tell me more.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, I have a couple kids, and just look at them waste all their food, and then I know they're not going to finish it, and then I just eat off their plate.
Adam Stacoviak
"Give me that muffin you didn't eat... There's the half a bagel I wanted..." Right?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, my daughter is good at loading up the plate, but she's not going to eat any of that, so yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, for sure.
Jerod Santo
My mom used to do that constantly. We'd call her like the garbage disposal, because she would not let anything get thrown away... And whatever was left over, she's like "Just give it to me." She was never happy about it. She's like "Yeah, I'll eat that..."
Adhithi Ravichandran
My mom did the same.
Adam Stacoviak
"You didn't eat this?! I'm going to eat it now!"
Jerod Santo
Yeah, just "We're not throwing anything away."
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Which I appreciate that sentiment, but it's like "Well, you're just taking in empty calories on our behalf, mom."
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. It's got pros and cons. You don't want to overeat, for sure.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, totally. So we spoke with Avi yesterday, and so we got his side of the story.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Okay.
Jerod Santo
Let's hear the real story. \[laughter\] He told us that you guys met at KU.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
And you're still together...
Adhithi Ravichandran
It seems like he's telling the truth.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Two kids. Two businesses. And so you're doing very similar things.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
How did you get into it?
Adhithi Ravichandran
So I grew up in India, and my dad had a small business. He was buying and selling cleaning products to hospitals, and local companies... And he's a very ambitious person. But of course, he didn't scale up to a large company, or anything. It was just two people, my mom and dad. And he would always go meet these customers, and basically, it was more for the flexibility, and he loved being an entrepreneur... So I just kind of grew up watching that, and I knew that was a possibility, and I knew that he didn't have a boss, but he had many bosses... He was always after all these customers, and all of that. So I guess that's where I draw my inspiration from.
Jerod Santo
Okay. And so when you graduated from KU, you had an engineering degree?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yes. I did computer science undergrad in India, actually... And then I came for my master's to KU. And right after that -- it was a good economy, it was 2012, so I got a job right out of college. I moved to Kansas City, went to a big corporation... So yeah, that's kind of how my journey began.
Jerod Santo
Just one step in front of the other, huh?
Adhithi Ravichandran
A-ha.
Jerod Santo
And now you're doing mobile apps, or something?
Adhithi Ravichandran
I did do that for a while, but now I'm more into like the web apps as well. So I was doing React Native for a long time. Once in a while I do get customers who do React Native. So I do both.
Jerod Santo
Gotcha.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, React and React Native.
Jerod Santo
And between you and your husband, who's the better software engineer? \[laughter\]
Adhithi Ravichandran
You'll have to go scan our code and find out.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
So she's not going to answer that one.
Adhithi Ravichandran
We try not to work together, honestly, on projects.
Jerod Santo
Really?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, it kind of --
Adam Stacoviak
Why is that?
Adhithi Ravichandran
\[01:16:12.15\] We have similar personalities, and we kind of take lead a lot...
Jerod Santo
Right, two leaders.
Adhithi Ravichandran
It could be conflicting, so we try to have our own customers, have our own clients. Once in a while, we would like maybe review our code or something like that. We talk about problems in our day-to-day work, but I don't think I've ever worked with him. Yeah. I work with him on like conference talks and stuff. We would sometimes give a workshop together. But like actual coding and architecture work, we don't work together.
Jerod Santo
Because you've tried and it didn't work, or you never tried it?
Adhithi Ravichandran
I just think there's too much -- we see each other too much. That's too much.
Jerod Santo
Too much overlap.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. We need that space.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. I think that sounds healthy. What do you think, Adam?
Adam Stacoviak
It's not bad. I don't disagree. But I enjoy working with my wife, so... I can't.
Jerod Santo
You might be missing out on something you didn't realize.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. I don't know.
Adam Stacoviak
I said to him, I said to Avi, "Power couple." And he's like "Yeah." But you're not unified in the powering of the couple.
Jerod Santo
Just on the business side, obviously.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, I agree with you. So what happened was I started out first, while he was having a full-time job... And I didn't have any ideas of scaling or anything like that. I just wanted out, and wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what that really meant. And at that time, my goal was mostly I want to spend more time with my baby, and I want to earn what I was earning in my full-time... And that was my goal. I didn't have like a large-scale goal. So I was like "I need flexibility, I want to spend time with the baby, and I want to make as much as I made in my full-time job." So I just needed a company. So that was the goal. That's how it started.
And then when Avi started, it was a year later, and he probably had a different mindset. So by then I was doing React Native apps. So we weren't sure if we needed different brands, or how we went, so he started his own. But technically, we're just two people, so we need to like merge together. Our future now -- I think we have more clarity now over the years, and we see our son growing up... Also we had a second baby. So maybe once he goes to daycare and has a more stable routine, I think we want to scale. And that's when we want to merge. We have no reason to have two different companies. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Economies of scale.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
And different baskets, too.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, for sure.
Adam Stacoviak
Two eggs, two baskets... Not two eggs, one basket.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, absolutely.
Adam Stacoviak
Basket dies. No good.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah, we don't even -- actually, now that you guys are talking about it, we haven't even talked about it or thought about it that way.
Jerod Santo
Oh, we're helping out then.
Adhithi Ravichandran
We just know we're doing basically the same thing, in different names. That's it.
Adam Stacoviak
That's okay.
Adhithi Ravichandran
And there are times when I might be fully booked, or he's fully booked... If customers come our way, we just kind of like send them to the other person. So it's not like --
Jerod Santo
Oh, that's nice.
Adhithi Ravichandran
We don't really view it as two different businesses.
Adam Stacoviak
Do you charge a referral fee?
Adhithi Ravichandran
No. Not at all. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
Dinner out, or anything? Dinner's on him?
Adhithi Ravichandran
You guys are giving me ideas.
Adam Stacoviak
You should do it in like marital favors.
Jerod Santo
We are idea men. That's what we do.
Adam Stacoviak
And there's lots of ways you could take that, obviously.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. I should.
Adam Stacoviak
But I would leverage it. The Joker said it best...
Jerod Santo
"Every time I send you a referral, I get a manicure and a pedicure", or something.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
If you're into that kind of thing.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Good idea.
Adam Stacoviak
The Joker said it best though. He said, "If you're good at something, don't do it for free."
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Adam Stacoviak
You're referring something to somebody, husband or not, don't do it for free.
Jerod Santo
But you have to be careful, because you know, the sword cuts both ways.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Plenty of times he sent people my way, too.
Jerod Santo
Right. So he gets his referral fee, I guess.
Adam Stacoviak
It could be like "Hey, you're doing dinner tonight. You're in charge of sides." That's how we are in my house. My wife is like "You're in charge of sides" or "I'm in charge of the main course." And we'll collaborate and come together.
Adhithi Ravichandran
You're giving me ideas, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:19:57.29\] Or "I need you to put away the dishes in the dishwasher."
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Adam Stacoviak
"Thank you very much", you know?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Whatever it takes, you know?
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. He's been super-supportive. A lot of the risks I was able to take was also because he was in a stable full-time job, with health insurance and everything. So I was like "Alright, I'm going part-time now that we have the baby." And then I was like "Now I'm going to go to a startup." Or -- I was able to do all of that stuff because I knew I had like a support system. And then once I got the stability in that business, he was able to take a risk too, and start.
Adam Stacoviak
What is it that drives you personally?
Adhithi Ravichandran
I think personally, ever since I got my kid, my first kid, I kind of found more purpose in life, and I wanted to do something out of the box, and kind of be a role model to her as well. So I just don't want to do a nine to five for 30 years, and then realize that I missed out on something. So I wanted to try out being an entrepreneur, and see how that journey goes. And I think the flexibility was my first motivator; with the time, as a new mom, that was my primary goal. But eventually, obviously, it's the money, the flexibility, the happiness, to be able to see success and failure quickly, and then iterate upon that and have control. I just don't want a boss controlling my career. I want to control my career on my own.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, for sure. It's been so long since I've had a boss that I can't imagine having a boss, I guess. I just can't imagine the -- not that it's a bad thing or a good thing, but it's definitely different than being your own controller of your schedule, and what happens, and what you're optimizing for, the things that matter to you, the way you schedule your day...
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I can't imagine the opposite of that.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. I'm sort of in that space right now, too. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Do you see yourself scaling beyond what your parents did with your business? Because right now you're kind of --
Adhithi Ravichandran
I do.
Jerod Santo
...emulating that.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Because I want to. I think right now we're kind of capped out at a certain extent, and we don't have to be that way. So the goal is, I think in a year or so, we're going to have to try to scale by bringing in people who -- right now the brand unfortunately is just me and him. So we need to build that trust with our customers, and be able to train people. So it might be a journey. So we don't know what that is or what it looks like. So we'd have to train people, and bring them to the level where like "Hey, these are these software engineers we trust", and slowly start scaling that way. So it might take some time and money to train these people who we trust and be like "Hey, they are part of our brand as well."
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. I definitely see myself scaling, for sure.
Jerod Santo
What about family?
Adhithi Ravichandran
What's that?
Jerod Santo
Scaling your family?
Adhithi Ravichandran
No.
Jerod Santo
No.
Adhithi Ravichandran
The family's done. \[laughter\] It's just two kids. It's a lot.
Jerod Santo
That was a quick one.
Adhithi Ravichandran
I know you have five. You mentioned.
Jerod Santo
Six, technically, but... You know, we don't count Ezra.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Six. Oh, my gosh.
Adam Stacoviak
My wife is the same. She's like "Nope, no more kids. It's over." And if for some reason there's even mention of the possibility, I can see her recoil, in like physical and mental. I can see it in her. Because she's like "Nah. No."
Adhithi Ravichandran
No, I think we're in a good -- two is a great number. I think the national average is probably two or 2.5. That's good.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I've got 2.5.
Adhithi Ravichandran
You've got 2.5. \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Well, that's exciting. Good luck to you. Thanks for stopping by and talking with us.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Yeah. I appreciate that.
Jerod Santo
Any other questions, Adam?
Adam Stacoviak
That's it.
Jerod Santo
Cool.
Adam Stacoviak
Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Adhithi Ravichandran
Thank you. I appreciate that. Me too.
Jerod Santo
Awesome.
**Outro**: \[01:23:46.12\]
Adam Stacoviak
Butter's the key to great eggs, right? The eggs is nice and crispy...
Avindra Fernando
Oh, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Like a small bit, or a big dollop?
Avindra Fernando
Just a little bit. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
You've gotta go dollop.
Jerod Santo
You were doing so well...
Avindra Fernando
Is that how you do it right?
Jerod Santo
You were doing so well.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
You've gotta go dollop.
Jerod Santo
Until the end there.
Adam Stacoviak
Dollop is the way.
Avindra Fernando
Awesome.
Adam Stacoviak
Are you a butter snob?
Avindra Fernando
No, I wouldn't say so.
Adam Stacoviak
No? Do you like grass fed butter? You're a butter snob then, okay? You're a butter snob then.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, you've gotta check the ingredients.
Jerod Santo
Grass fed butter?
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, I'm conscious about what I put in my body.
Adam Stacoviak
Those cows who eat grass only. Kerrygold is like a brand of choice for a lot of people.
Avindra Fernando
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
But it's cows -- I believe it's New Zealand. Not New Zealand. It's like...
Avindra Fernando
Irish.
Adam Stacoviak
Where's it at?
Avindra Fernando
Irish.
Adam Stacoviak
Irish, yeah.
Avindra Fernando
Kerrygold? Yes.
Adam Stacoviak
Kerrygold's Irish. Yeah. But I was thinking it was like Greenland, potentially. Like one of those... But literally it's Ireland?
Avindra Fernando
Yeah, yeah. It's Irish butter.
Adam Stacoviak
Really?
Avindra Fernando
Yeah. That's what they call it.
Adam Stacoviak
Okay. So it's cows that graze grass only, in the fields of Ireland... Then cows make butter.
Jerod Santo
What kind of butter is this?
Adam Stacoviak
Kerrygold.
Jerod Santo
Kerrygold?
Adam Stacoviak
Kerrygold. Yeah. With a K.
Avindra Fernando
It's a pretty cool brand. You've never had it?
Jerod Santo
Maybe I have. I'm just not a butter snob, so I don't know if I've had it or not. I think my wife buys most of the butter.
Adam Stacoviak
If you're achieving the perfect egg, easy, over medium, scrambled... You pick your style of eggs. Butter. Grass fed butter.
Avindra Fernando
That's right.
Adam Stacoviak
Sorry. When I make my hamburgers --
Jerod Santo
\[unintelligible 01:26:34.15\]
Adam Stacoviak
Butter.
Avindra Fernando
Butter it up. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Obviously, I toast my buns for my burgers... You guessed it, butter.
Jerod Santo
TMI, man.
Avindra Fernando
You can't go wrong with butter, right? It's the real deal.
Jerod Santo
I would tend to agree that butter is hard to go wrong with. It's just really good.
Adam Stacoviak
Butter's dope, man. Butter's the way.
Jerod Santo
Especially grass fed Irish cows.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right, man.
Avindra Fernando
What do you mean, you don't do butter tasting?
Jerod Santo
I butter taste all the time, man. Daily. Pretty much daily, I taste some butter.
Adam Stacoviak
Butter's good. Butter's good.
