Free Refills: Recent Episodes
Bottle
Andy and Will talk about building Bottle, mostly the struggles but also the philosophical meandering.
Dave's last day:
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How Dave came to work at Bottle.
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Drumming.
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What did Dave learn at Bottle?
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Where is Dave off to next?
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What is Cialdini's book Influence; "I like you"?
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Are changes in Facebook ads devastating to small businesses?
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Biggest challenge inside Bottle?
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Life updates?
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How was NYC?
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What have been past messaging challenges?
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"What is Bottle?"
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What is the show this summer?
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Life updates since last recording?
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We raised money! What changed?
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Most exciting thing about Bottle right now?
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Goals for August?
On this episode of Free Refills we talk about what it's like to work remotely, the tools we use to manage our work, the challenges and joys of remote work.
00:30:00: Introductions - Will, Me and Chelsea.
00:03:01: Would remote workers want a videoconference version of Lunchclub? Basically you'd get a virtual coffee with relevant people professionally.
00:09:47: What are some of the biggest challenges of being remote?
00:11:31: Chelsea's challenges. She was in Germany and the time change was a challenge. Living in a different country and not having a team with you can hinder building a community. Now that she's in San Antonio, adjusted to a new schedule.
00:20:14: The difference between an introvert and extrovert.
00:23:01: Chelsea tried Bumble BFF. Discussion of how you build a community when you're a remote worker.
00:30:44: Why are some of your closest friends from college?
00:33:42: Andy's challenges while working remotely.
00:37:42: What drive friendships at work? Are the close bonds formed at work a function of age? i.e. the younger you are, the more likely you are to make close friends at work.
00:42:11: The benefits of working remotely. One of the best things is the freedom of thought and time (Andy).
00:43:42: Being able to travel and have seen 22 different countries. This is not possible without working remotely. Flexibility of working at home can be nice. (Chelsea)
00:46:11: Challenge can be to switch off when there are no boundaries. Flexibility of doing work with meaning vs. an optics and FaceTime culture.
00:49:03: It can be very challenging to live the Digital Nomad culture. Connectivity and finding place to work. Will's Not Pictured blog post
00:51:37: Some of the tools and practices we use to manage working at a remote culture:
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Basecamp to help us stay organized and run our business.
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BottleCooler - a channel in Bottle for team chats since we don't use Slack.
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Bottle Hangouts: our team call where we just chat and talk about whatever is on our mind. We don't chat about work on the Bottle Hangouts.
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Daily automated questions on basecamp "New location on earth? When are you working today?" The answers are fun and give some context about our plan for the day.
00:57:47: Instagram for remote teams to help with team bonding.
We've been talking a lot lately about the future of Bottle. One topic that has come up consistently is the debate about raising money to help fund our growth and product development.
On this episode, Will and I sit down to discuss the pros and cons of raising money.
Show notes: 00:01:59: Discussion of Will’s blog post, “I Exist”.
00:05:30: Debate about the nature of reality? Are we in a simulation?
00:06:31: VC Twitter. Is there self delusion amongst VCs on Twitter regarding their importance?
00:10:07: We discuss the pros and cons for looking for outside investment. Do we need venture capital to achieve our goals? Have we become too dogmatic about being a bootstrapped company?
00:12:03: How Venture could help our business.
00:14:00: Being bootstrapped has created positive constraints.
00:15:38: Had we been successful raising money our product would be very different than its current state.
00:17:13: Do we have the right idea, but the execution isn’t there? Perhaps having money would help us run faster at the right ideas.
00:18:04: Keith Rabois’s concept of Path Dependency. Will believes that we’ve had Path Dependency from the initial conception.
00:21:49: Andy’s thoughts on our advantages. We’re still very early in our business and we’re in a big market.
00:23:58: Will points out that while we have Path Dependency, executing on that path is very challenging. It’s hard to do well and the surface area of the product is very large.
00:24:11: The ideal use case without any constrictions. Each company can set up a store hosted by Bottle, which they can subdomain if they want. The customer can see the items that are available and add them to their cart on one page. The customer then clicks next, they are then asked for their phone number. The customer can either text in or input their phone number. Then the customer completes the transaction on the payment page. The magic is that at a set interval the business can reach out and ask the customer to reorder. They aren’t asking the customer to commit to anything up front, but rather creating a soft subscription with consistent reminders.
00:26:35: Which end market should we target as we improve the flow?
00:29:51: We netted out that we are going to try to build and presell a MVP that allows a customer to launch a new use case. We will then revisit a raise.
00:31:15: Ultimately Bottle is trying to fix mobile ordering and subscription fatigue.
00:33:20: How going after a broader market is more challenging than the initial sales into the meal prep market.
00:38:12: Ultimately, we want to be able to deliver on the notion that if you’re selling a consumable, local or shipping, this is the best way to capture recurring orders.
00:39:03: How pre selling and selling products could help the business.
00:41:34: Debate about what is holding us back.
00:45:03: Discussion about contracted developers, which is to be continued…
On our second episode of Free Refills we talk about wide ranging topics. We name the podcast, talk about Sam Harris on Having No Head, Paul Buchheit's writing, I Am Nothing, and review our marketing progress.
Show notes:
00:00:05 - Quick discussion of geolocation software for blogging. Would it be possible to have a map and locations while filming a podcast on Zoom?
00:01:36: Naming the podcast, Free Refills!
00:01:36: RageChill - Will's app that blew up on StumbleUpon and Reddit. We discuss Will's idea for creating a StumbleUpon for blog posts that you might like to discover. From Will: I wish there was a way to discover meaningful blog posts like this one. Like StumbleUpon. (Which is how RageChill first blew up back in 2012). I'm thinking about making a mini tool to randomly discover interesting posts.
00:07:43: We talk about a blog post Andy found interesting, https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-internet/ 00:10:59: We discuss Paul Graham's recent essay, Being a Noob: http://www.paulgraham.com/noob.html
00:14:03: We discuss Paul Buchheit's blog post, I am nothing: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-am-nothing.html
00:16:30: Andy talks about the concept of having no head: https://www.amazon.com/Having-No-Head-Douglas-Harding-ebook/dp/B0087EHHWK/
00:24:00: The Joe Rogan and Bernie Sanders debacle. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-rogan-endorsement/index.html
00:26:41: Meredith's favorite social media site is Instagram. When Andy asked her why not Twitter, she said "because that is where everyone goes to complain". Instagram, on the other hand, is where everyone goes to brag...
00:27:15: The irony of Boris Johnson.
00:29:55: We talk about the progress we made during our first week of focused content creation. Launched our blog! We have done a good job of committing to create content. Held to our promise to chat quickly each morning to tackle one marketing item for the day. Leaning in to starting to tell our story.
00:31:14: The flywheel effect of writing and getting content out.
00:35:00: Andy's starting the day with journaling and enjoying 750words.com.
00:38:22: We discuss Andy's blog post about bread. https://www.dothingsthattakealongtime.com/we-dont-sell-whole-wheat-sourdough-anymore/
Want to watch the Zoom recording for this episode? We got you!
This is our first episode!
Andy and I are trying to be more vulnerable as we build Bottle. We're incredibly proud of the progress we've made with Bottle.
We've built a 6-figure ARR business with no outside funding. We're working with mealprep and local delivery businesses across the country. And we've figured out a compelling product for this new era of commerce.
As we near the end of our fourth year in business, we've started talking about the next phase of growth for Bottle. How do we think about acquisition? What does "marketing" even mean? What strategy is the best given our size and target market?
Let us know what you think!