{7} Culture, Code & Micro Apps

Knowledge from Danielle Leong, Daniel Cranney, Noam Sachartov, and Brandon Sorgdrager

Chat #1: Danielle Leong

VP of Eng, photographer, ex @github @twilio trust & safety @consentsoftware @feerlessapp. She/her.

Danielle Leong:
👀 I'm looking to hire mid-senior engineers to come join me at a stealth startup tackling SaaS pricing insights! We're a WOC-founded and led company out of NYC and remote-first. RTs welcomed!

Dane Lyons:
Interesting that you mention hiring mid-senior engineers for a stealth startup. That might be the sweet spot.

Hiring too junior risks not having the time and resources to help them succeed. Hiring too senior risks not being able to provide the stability and comp they deserve.

Danielle Leong:
I find mid-senior to be a great start for hiring in early stage. Ppl who are hungry to learn & grow, still love to code, but also have enough experience to know common pitfalls are. Still need guidance in career growth but impact in early stage will serve em well in the future!

Dane Lyons:
💯

Junior and senior engineers can also fit well into early stage companies. It's good to have a mix. But build a foundation of capable hungry generalists.

Danielle Leong:
Agree, a mix is important to keep a culture of learning. Early folks ask great questions that senior folks may take for granted. Being able to support both allows for a much more well-rounded team. Especially if you focus on company values of creating a learning, sharing culture.

Dane Lyons:
A culture of learning is a great goal. I might extend that a bit and call it a culture of discovery.

Personal growth is important. But it's also important to make the team feel like they are part of the messy process of experimenting and figuring things out.

Danielle Leong:
Oo I like that framing. “Discovery” implies there is no set path, which is true to startup form. “Ownership” is a key part of the culture we’re trying to build here as well, but I like that “discovery” implies a journey to the unknown together.

Conclusion:
Early hires set the foundation for your culture. An imbalance of too many junior or senior engineers might not be ideal. I like Danielle’s approach of targeting mid-senior candidates.

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Chat #2: Daniel Cranney

Developer, designer and teacher, building in public.

Daniel Cranney:
At least once a week, coding reminds me of one thing:

I really suck at coding.

Dane Lyons:
Coding is sort of like an extremely unforgiving spoken language. It doesn't matter what you intend, your words are taken literally. Sometimes that creates unpleasant surprises.

Have you tried Copilot?

Daniel Cranney:
Ahh I love this analogy, way of looking at it.

I haven’t actually, but have been using ChatGPT quite a bit to solve issues, it’s been a huge help!

Dane Lyons:
I'm surprised that ChatGPT responds with copyable code snippets. I'd prefer that over some of the interactions I've seen with other AI coding tools. It's there when you need it but non-invasive when you don't.

Daniel Cranney:
Yeah it’s incredible really, I’ve asked it to solve very complex issues (filtering nested arrays against values from other nested arrays and updating state with results) and it handles it no problem 😳 crazy.

Dane Lyons:
Great. Those are actually the real-life problems I wish they'd ask in coding interviews. The esoteric stuff is interesting but not ideal for most interviews.

Conclusion:
Writing code isn’t easy. Modern tools make it more approachable. But it is inherently an unforgiving task.

More importantly, It’s refreshing to see people like Daniel talk about the challenge. He isn’t self-deprecating or fishing for sympathy. He is just being open and honest.

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Chat #3: Noam Sachartov

Product Manager | Building micro SaaS | MBA | Engineer

Dane Lyons:
I'm a fan of single-function apps. It's so much easier to build and support an app that does 1 thing vs 10 things.

Is it challenging to get people to pay a subscription fee for something that only does 1 thing?

Noam Sachartov:
It can be challenging, however it's possible to make it more appealing to users by making the app extremely good at its one service.

Dane Lyons:
I often use micro apps to convert file types. An example would be to convert simple png files into svg.

I'm happy to buy credits when I need a quick conversion. But it's frustrating to be forced into a subscription if I'm not sure I'll need the tool next month.

Noam Sachartov:
I agree. If you only require a one-time service, subscribing may not be the best option for you. Instead, you should look for alternative tools, as there are many micro SaaS products that offer one-time usage.

Dane Lyons:
This isn't to say that subscriptions don't work for micro apps. I happily subscribe to Midjourney because I use the tool monthly. But it may be better to have credits and subscriptions for periodic use apps.

Brandon Sorgdrager:
For single function micro apps you could probably get a fair amount by making checkout not require credit card input and let users enter their amount like buy me a coffee or dinner or whatever. And then making payment required.

Dane Lyons:
I like that approach. It feels like a good balance to have a credit system paired with a subscription system to give power users a discount.

Conclusion:
I’m surprised that “micro apps” aren’t a bigger deal. Founders often aspire to raise money and build fully featured SaaS apps. Sure the upside is big, but it takes a lot of people to build and maintain complex apps.

Single-function apps can be built, launched, maintained, and promoted by a single person. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a pioneer going into the woods, building a cabin, and surviving off the land. 🤠

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