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As part of his new business journey, Derrick requested that customers schedule time to talk with him about Level, a team communication and management tool he is developing. Luckily, about 40 people signed up, and he has completed 14 of these calls. What are his customers saying? They confirm main pains they feel with current tools and are very willing to share their frustrations with existing tools. Derrick has not been surprised yet about their answers.

In Ben\u2019s world, he is spending time on slinging and reading about Haskell. He is full of questions. Both Ben and Derrick are learning a lot every day, which is fulfilling and exciting.

Today\u2019s Topics Include:

Level will not be a project management tool, but may have some project management capabilities
\nDerrick\u2019s list of initial questions for customers: What is their company and role within it; the size of their team; what tools they use and when they adopted them; and the balance between chat, email, and project management in their organization
\nDerrick also asks customers: Why are they interested in Level? What problems do they want it to solve? What\u2019s working well for them with Slack, and what\u2019s not? What aspects of Slack do they use and don\u2019t use?
\nIdeas for improvement have come from Derrick\u2019s customers
\nContinuous integration is the clear winner for usefulness
\nGauging willingness to switch to another tool, such as Level
\nCustomers expressed using Level on a pilot basis for specific teams or projects and in coordination with at least one other tool
\nBeing unable to post asynchronous, long-form discussions is a pain point for some customers
\nPaying for a tool would not be a big deal
\nDerrick plans to kick off his building Level series and build mock-ups for customers to view
\nPositive use of minimalist user interfaces
\nDebating whether to offer a pre-payment option for Level
\nBen uses Ansible for the deployment of Haskell code
\nBen is seeking a Dev Ops person to hire - must have strong opinions and can fix stuff
\nSaaS Renaissance? More developers are starting SaaS companies - a trend already on the way out?
\nLevel will be SaaS but with an open source core
\nTools SaaS companies will want to have and buy
\nNot Built Here Syndrome: Engineers who outsource non-essential parts to someone else
\nPricing Pages as a Service: Shopify\u2019s checkout page feels natural but still represents the company
\nAvoid rebuilding stuff

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Links and resources:

Ben Orenstein Website; Twitter
\nDerrick Reimer Website
\nBasecamp and Getting Real
\nHaskell
\nProgramming in Haskell book
\nC Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (K&R for C)
\nRuby on Rails
\nAnsible
\nDrip
\nSalesforce
\nProduct Hunt
\nGitLab and Discourse
\nStripe Atlas
\nAndrew Culver\u2019s Bullet Train
\nAdam Savage: One Day Builds
\nMicroConf 2018