Wazel Brothers Build

* Adam has joined the team at LegendKeeper [https://www.legendkeeper.com] * Adam published his thought process on finding a team on his blog. [https://www.adamwaselnuk.com/articles/joining-legendkeeper] * Summary of Adam's thought process of why he wanted to find a team. His story so far. * Why Adam did not join Codex [https://usecodex.com] * Worldbuilding software is highly competitive within the TTRPG software niche. * The big jumps in business maturity Adam has to go through now. Feelings of overwhelm. * The importance of taking a step back to look at the big picture. The shift to LegendKeeper was not driven by daily pain. * The effect on Brandon of moving to Vancouver. * Brandon has joined Y Combinator to accelerate Codex [https://usecodex.com] * Recent IndieHackers podcast gives some insight into what YC is actually like. [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/22-michael-seibel] * The importance of peer pressure. * Brandon's take on YC so far. * The magic of deadlines when you have a great team. * Adam's first ever Angel Investment. The joy of placing asymmetric bets. * Stats on how likely you are to succeed as an angel investor. * The scary truth of B2C odds when focusing on profit. * SaaS has benchmarks which are useful. * Quantitative VS Qualitative definitions of Product-Market Fit. * Differences in milestones for VC-track VS boostrap companies. * Subtleties of retention. * The LK business impressions so far. * Brandon's Request: Make the recipes of the worldbuilders in LegendKeeper and film it on YouTube.

* Certain laws restrict what you can say about fundraising. * Fundraising is going really well. Brandon gives it a score of 13/10. * Line tracking in VSCode gets tricky when the file is in an 'edited' state. * Waiting list of 20 teams for Codex. * Comparing the fintech whitepaper that Dignified created with the one that Accenture created [https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-149/Accenture-Fintech-report-2020.pdf]. * The rationale for creating an in-depth whitepaper on fintech. * How to leverage a whitepaper when Dignified has moved past its original goal. * The "reverse pyramid" content strategy. [https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-garyvee-content-strategy-how-to-grow-and-distribute-your-brands-social-media-content/] * Considering the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering [https://howtogm.guide] as a content pillar. * Trust signals matter. "Badges are unreasonably effective" in marketplaces. * "Dignified" the agency is a brand that Brandon has built up but now they are shifting all their energy to Codex. How do you make a decision to let go of that kind of asset? * The compounding effect of focusing in one market as a solo founder. This makes it hard to consider projects in other markets - even when they are promising. * The difficulty of starting at 0 with no audience or distribution. * The power of building relationships in a market. How it helped launch the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering. * Why so many technical founders make dev tools. * The big vision of Codex. * Adam is heads down on building a Town generator for Here Be Taverns [https://www.herebetaverns.com] * Adam writing a couple guest posts to promote the guide. * Breakdown of the launch of the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering [https://howtogm.guide]. * When all was said and done, the guide was not as well received as Here Be Taverns. * Considering who the addressable market is for the Guide vs HBT. * What the data suggests about reader behaviour on the guide. * Starting to think about marketing strategy for Sword & Source products. Sales for HBT have slowed down significantly. * The same old problem: lots of good ideas and not enough time to do them all. * A "66 days of marketing" build in public stunt. * How fun it would be to hire for Sword & Source. * A breakdown of the Traction [https://books.google.ca/books/about/Traction.html?id=A3_MBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y] framework for creating a marketing strategy. * Detailed deep dive and Brandon's take on what Adam should do for his marketing strategy.

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

* Focus on building new generators for Here Be Taverns Premium [https://www.herebetaverns.com/premium] * Adam's process is design and build at the same time * Adam's approach to interlinking products together and how his projects drive traffic to each other * Emotion driven development * Heraldry generator * The potential for GPT-3 for Here Be Taverns * Can AI do visual design? * Decisions that needs to be made: When should I launch the premium pass? * Adam's rationale for his prices * Launching sooner so that you don't sit on value you've created * Using the D&D core books as a price anchor * Launch discount strategies * Think of your business goals and how your prices reflect them * Adam's wish to make Sword & Source a premiumish brand that differentiates on quality * Buying power in RPG industry * The Sandi Metz approach to giving away products [https://sandimetz.com/99bottles-postcard] * Software products can still learn a lot from retailers * The lameness of the gaming industry business models built around microtransactions * Brandon's advice to buy a trophy when you make your first sale * Quick update on Codex [https://www.usecodex.com] fundraise * Focusing on the most important type of risk when pitching * The chicken and egg problem of fundraising

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