Wazel Brothers Build

Adam has joined the team at LegendKeeper
Adam published his thought process on finding a team on his blog.
Summary of Adam's thought process of why he wanted to find a team. His story so far.
Why Adam did not join Codex
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
Recent IndieHackers podcast gives some insight into what YC is actually like.
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.
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.
Considering the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering 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
Adam writing a couple guest posts to promote the guide.
Breakdown of the launch of the Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering.
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 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 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 * 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. * Successfully launched Here Be Taverns 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 for helping Adam set a higher launch price * Trying to understand the value of Here Be Taverns. * The business model for D&D Beyond. * 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 * Quickstart Guide to Game Mastering Launched!!

Wazel Brothers Build: Recent Episodes

Brandon Waselnuk, Adam Waselnuk