Great to see two people I’ve hung out with IRL sharing each other’s work! @d6y.bsky.social
Product at Urlbox Advisor & Supporter of B2B SaaS in Sussex, UK. Coworking at The Skiff Newsletter: Brighton Dynamic Building my next SaaS on Rails.
1,266 followers 470 following 186 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Great to see two people I’ve hung out with IRL sharing each other’s work! @d6y.bsky.social
Thank you! I needed to hear this today.
Fucking hell I just learned a thing (from @hankgreen.bsky.social): youtube.com/shorts/CEOdm...
The launch sale for the Updated & Expanded edition of Deploy Empathy ends on SUNDAY 🔜 If you want to get it for $£€ 2.99 Kindle / $£€ 9.99 paperback, grab it now! www.amazon.com/dp/B0FMFX9C54
This is one of the best resources on REAL customer interviews that I know. $2.99 is a steal. Don't sleep on this and help Michele get her reviws back up on the new release!
The updated edition of Deploy Empathy is now out! 🎉 Slight problem, though: none of the nearly 100 reviews can be transferred over 😭 I *really* need people to buy the new version and write reviews. So I'm making it as cheap as I'm allowed to — $£€ 2.99 on Kindle www.amazon.com/Deploy-Empat...
Shame there's no official #Rails presence on Bluesky and Mastodon. I feel like it would be painless to do with @buffer.com (or whatever) and it would absolutely increase reach and engagement for the brand. Isn't that the whole point of the foundation? Lots of fans are not on X or LinkedIn 🤷♂️
Sad to hear tech pioneer Dame Stephanie Shirley has passed away. If you've never heard her story it's remarkable: open.spotify.com/episode/37sZ...
The day something I made makes it to #5 on Hacker News is a day I’m camping and should be offline.
Day 3 of why you should join @friendlyrb.com, let's discuss the venue: The event is taking place in Romania at the Apollo111 Theatre. Located in the city center, it's a genuine theater experience.
Oh hey, today is the 5 year anniversary of when I originally launched my book tiny.mba. If you don't have a copy, or want to grab a copy as a gift, I set up the discount code 5YEARS to take 25% off the purchase price of both the print bundle and ebook options.
there are more engineering geniuses than business/marketing geniuses bc engineering deals in hard facts and creating a world-wide successful product is 100% squishy humans if you’re not selling sex, wealth, health, or fear, creating a mass product is actually really difficult
Ask me the worst sound I’ve ever heard and I can now tell you. It’s my daughter screaming as she was swept out to sea... open.substack.com/pub/document...
I've been battling the same tired misconceptions for years: • 7% cancellation is fine • I’ll build a real business with just $300/mo new MRR • I’ll scale past millions doing what I've always done Nope… but here’s the way to calculate things for yourself:
Final lineup update on FriendlyRB! September 10-12 in Bucharest 🇷🇴 Why you should come: ✨ Network with your Ruby community IRL 📚 Learn beyond just Ruby - SaaS, product, marketing 🏰 Enjoy beautiful Bucharest (aka "Little Paris") Thread and video below 👇
this from @jono.id is a position I've been suggesting for a while now–that modern APIs and CSS like View Transition obviated the need for the SPA architecture. www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/i...
This is big news for anyone who wants to use Tailwind UI components but are turned by the complexity and weight of using React or Vue. i.e. Me! Getting the fine details right of JS implementation of a UI control is painstaking work. tailwindcss.com/blog/vanilla...
If you are still thinking about joining FriendlyRB this year here is what other people said about last year's conference. Here is @tomrossi7 sharing about the participants last year:
Over 4 million registered users now. Thank you, Aurelie! ☺️
Absolutely hilarious comms strategy from Heroku about the rollout of their new app router. For us this amounted to two emails: “we’ve automatically migrated with no warning”, and “be warned we will soon migrate ”
I suspect Adrian might have the most Ruby Friends of all. I may have a handful here: rubyfriends.app/profiles/MAUF
Lessons in SaaS customer service from responding to 21,623 support tickets over the last 8+ years. www.outseta.com/posts/lesson...
Thank you - yes so many times it almost didn’t make it.
Congratulations! Left Logic played (and continues to play) a big part in helping The Skiff get to 19. Thank you! That was quite a game too. :)
Maybe next year for the 20th!
My eldest business, The Skiff Ltd, turns 19 today. To mark the occasion, I did something that makes me uncomfortable: I recorded and shared two short video messages with our members.
A reminder of why I try as hard as I can to help the companies I work with avoid depending on VC track startups. 30 days notice and they’re gone: www.june.so/blog/a-new-c...
One of my favourite talks from @friendlyrb.com 2024. So much value packed into 30 mins - regardless of your choice of programming language. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaZ-...
Will do. I’ve suggested an obvious one. :) Wish they were all so easy to support.
Now wondering what other open source projects and communities Urlbox should be sponsoring.
Pleasantly surprised by this bonus: Urlbox.com is getting twice as much traffic from tailwindcss.com as it gets from a similar level of Google Ad spend.
I know it’s not for everyone but after years of struggling with my CSS skill issues, Tailwind CSS & Plus make a huge difference to my work every day. So good that the Urlbox decided to became a sponsor to give back a little of the value the team has got from it. bsky.app/profile/adam...
Booked my flights and accommodation today. You’re coming too right? bsky.app/profile/adri...
I’ve been aware of you running this course for a long time. (Maybe over a year?) I think this video is the first time I really understood why I should be making time for it… beyond the already compelling fact that it’s you doing it! :)
Missing out on @ffconf.org is annoying... but can be avoided. Get your ticket as soon as you can!
Yesterday’s huge tech news that the tech media totally ignored: www.linkedin.com/pulse/huge-t...
I feel like you two should know each other. You’re both brilliant at building communities both online and offline. bsky.app/profile/alex...
Who else do I know that’s coming to Philly for Railsconf in early July? @thomascannon.me and @indyhall.org are hosting a low key gathering on Monday night before the conf. Drop me a DM if you’re interested in joining!
So for every blog/link etc like this piccalil.li/blog/javascr... We have an “OG” route too piccalil.li/og/javascrip... Then urlbox.com does the rest
Might be nice to have one for Skiffmates one day :)
Check out reflect.app. Doesn’t do all those things but it does enough of them for me.
+1 +1 ❤️
Your Friendly June update is here 🎠 Here's a quick update on what we've been cooking behind the scenes for this year's Friendly edition. 👱♂️🧔♂️👩🦱 Three new speakers ☕️ Brew you own coffee corner 📄 CFPs closing on July 1st 🌋 The Mountain Trip tickets are almost sold out.
Last year I changed Feature Upvote’s positioning to be a feedback platform for video games. 100%, boldly, clearly. And yet I still get new customers from startups, governments, corporates, etc. This (excellent) @asmartbear.com video helped me understand why. youtu.be/dVSXNkWUq88?...
Two founders A and B start a company with 50/50 ownership. Two years later they raise $1M at $5M post from investor C who now owns 25%, and they create an ESOP (employee stock option pool) with another 20%, so (fully-diluted) the ownership levels are A=B=27.5%, C=25%, ESOP=20%. (1/16)
There will still be Milkshake and Poison Cake at our Eurovision party.
I’m switching to @userlist.com who recently added transactional email support.
Just saying Friendly.rb is happening the week after Rails World, and we still have a few tickets available https://friendlyrb.com @friendlyrb.com
It was a pleasure getting to put together a brand new talk for Balkan Ruby. I'm thankful for the opportunity! This one is about the incremental process of making complex changes to software systems in use. 📺 Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=weIb... 🖥️ Slides: speakerdeck.com/jeremysmithc...
New awesome feature at @userlist.com 🎉 You can now trigger a workflow for users or companies who are celebrating a monthly or annual anniversary. This is great for: ✴️ Birthday notes ✴️ Account milestones and anniversaries ✴️ Any other recurring reminders (e.g. review security settings)
Three people active here: @steveofmcleod.com @rosa.codes @michaelkoper.com
I know which one I'd rather won ;)
Sent first newsletter in too long. Reports of The Skiff's death are greatly exaggerated! brightondynamic.com/posts/they-t...
Might be possible with forwardemail.net and some configuration. It’s been the missing piece on a few occasions for things I’ve wanted to do with email. Well built and probably under priced.
Sorry to hear that. I feel I get enough here but it could certainly be better. It would be great if more of the people at Business Of Software and MicroConf were here. Quite a few are more active on LinkedIn. I'm conscious that I'm not contributing much online anywhere these days.
As announced at RubyKaigi today, I've been working on a new HTML-Aware ERB Parser that I just released today. Introducing Herb — a fast, modern, and HTML-aware ERB parser, designed from the ground up for smarter developer tooling. #rubykaigi #rubykaigi2025
Would def recommend Rubyists consider attending @friendlyrb.com. The people, the vibe, the content, the city 👌 #ruby #rails
I agree!
If there's one thing I'd like to see in the Rails ecosystem is a UI kit made by a designer. Or have a designer on the team. I know us developers like to dabble in design but my perspective was always that we won't sweat that much on the small details as a designer will.
Have you seen instrumental.dev by @briancasel.com I’ve ended up converting loads of Tailwind UI into Rails components for my own use. Wish there were a way to pay for that at a similar level to Tailwind UI’s cost.
Granada > Seville
Perfectly executed lightning talk by @steveofmcleod.com One I’m looking forward to sharing when videos are ready. More here: killthehippo.com
After many marketing conversations it was fun teaming up with @mileswoodroffe.com to do some sales… Think we convinced some smart-PhDs & super-successful founders that Rails is not dead and does scale. Hope to see a few of them at @friendlyrb.com and @brightonruby.com
In awe of the people I met solving hard problems in healthcare, hardware, financial services and defence.
Fantastic few days in Cambridge for businessofsoftware.org I’d forgotten just how serious and smart a community @marklittlewood.bsky.social and @jolittlewood.bsky.social pull together. I won’t be leaving it so long before returning again.
It's that time of year again...I try to play (a bit of) all this year’s Eurovision Song Contest entries on the piano. All 37 of them. @eurovision.tv #Eurovision2025
Significant milestones are easily missed. Here's one we passed in the last 12 months at a SaaS I work with. Worth celebrating?
@andycroll.bsky.social does things other conferences say is impossible
It will be great to see you there and to see your talk!
Let's discuss "vibe coding," the latest social media trend, and ask some questions about it. This is the initial post from Andrej Karpathy that introduced the term. It looks like this 👇
Fun: - Vibe coding games - Vibe coding music - Vibe coding art Dicey: - Vibe coding marketing - Vibe coding education - Vibe coding news Risky: - Vibe coding compliance - Vibe coding accounting - Vibe coding finance Dangerous: - Vibe coding engineering - Vibe coding healthcare - Vibe coding security
Um yeah… sure… I have been asked to bring a little of that “boring marketing gibberish” to the conference. Sorry! 😬
So good to hear you both have tickets. Will be good to see you again and hopefully chat more this time!
One of my greatest fears with is that we can't keep coming up with such a great lineup every year, but somehow incredible people want to be a part of the Friendly experience. Thank you @mjwhansen.com, @andrewculver.net, @jot.is, and @inazarova.bsky.social 🫶 Looking forward to hosting everyone 🙌
If you’re horrified after watching the Zelensky/Trump interview, a reminder that you can donate through Ukraine’s official platform at u24.gov.ua
Both of @aprildunford.bsky.social’s books are $0.99 on Amazon this weekend, and both are well worth your time. Obviously Awesome is a must-read for founders IMO www.amazon.com/Obviously-Aw...
It makes sense and seems like the right thing to do. The challenge is forming an organisation with sufficient funding to manage and enforce it. Organisations that have previously formed to solve similar problems had large publishers backing them e.g. www.prsformusic.com www.nlamediaaccess.com
One of my most popular blog posts is three years old. Time for an updated? blog.theskiff.org/what-it-cost...
Absolutely! Same here :)
Great idea! Maybe we should automatically include some previous positive feedback on all our churn notifications :)
Feedback from a customer: "We've had a wonderful, problem-free time using urlbox and will return in the future if we need it." Now considering new landing page copy: "Problem-free website screenshots"
If you run a small SaaS business in the UK with ~5 people businessofsoftware.org is the one conference you'll want to bring your whole team back to every year. I'll be at BoS Europe in Cambridge at the end of March, will you?
We went for Urlbox’s Christmas meal. Very much lived up to expectations. Highly recommended!
Exactly. If I had more time on my hands I might be curious enough to go and put the domain into my browser to figure out what it does… but that is rare these days.
If you send an email to people who signed up to your product or newsletter ages ago… Don’t forget to remind them what you do and why they should care. The fact you have a new website, UI and feature with a funky name is meaningless to me without that context.
I should! Have a few more case studies lined up too :)
And now today (also unsolicited): "Works great, the best of all tested." Wonder what our 700+ customers would say if we asked for testimonials
Yesterday in Urlbox's customer support inbox: "I've used probably half a dozen screenshot APIs - seriously, yours is head-n-shoulders above the rest." So good to be working on a product developers love.
Great minds. I was going to suggest the same. :) There's a bunch of other things Hubspot does (like CMS) that I can see myself doing with Avo too.
Thank you. They look good, similar feel to Attio. Might be sold on Twenty if it were built on Rails.
I'm coming around to the conclusion that Avo might be the better way to go for this. All the SaaS CRMs (including Notion) feel like generic no-code tools. Quick to get started but I soon get frustrated that I can't just write Ruby to do the things I want to do.
Good point! I'm finding it fascinating that available integrations are among the easier ways to decide on one over the other. :)
Thank you I've taken that for a spin too.
Just set up a code for 40% off the book while I'm re-running the original thread. Anniversary sale! Use code 4YEARS at checkout on tiny.mba.
Good morning!
Considering using a CRM for the first time. Two I've heard most good things about are Pipedrive and Close. This is primarily to manage and qualify ~400/month inbound leads for a B2B SaaS. I'll likely be the only user for the time being. Which would you choose? What should I be considering?
Very cool! So are we. They’re also one of our customers at Urlbox 🙌
Makes sense. Might have to see if I can convince some to switch back.
I always felt they were built for different people but with a very similar set of users and customers. Most users and customers are business owners and FreeAgent builds primarily for them. The other clearly puts accountants and bookkeepers first, I imagine NPS focused on them would be different.