May 03 2019 40 mins 4
The guys discuss gorilla conference marketing and how they promoted Honeybadger back when they could barely afford to attend the conference, let alone a sponsorship. Also discussed is turning Honeybadger's unprofessionalism into a marketing strength, dealing with swag logistics, and why you should never wear a blazer to a dev conference.
Full transcription:
Josh: 00:01 Tatum's favorite programming language right now is Haskell, but I suspect it's because there's a big blue elephant on the cover of the book and elephant is her favorite animal. Yeah. I'm guessing it's not the functional purity that she loves it for.
Announcer: 00:23 Hands off that dial. Business is about to get a whole lot nerdier. You're tuned into FounderQuest.
Starr: 00:31 Yeah. Ida's just been getting really into scientific visualization type stuff. She's doing R a lot lately. I don't really think it's a very good programming language just for general purpose stuff, but she does seem to like it.
Josh: 00:44 Nice.
Ben: 00:44 When the Honeybadger founders compete on their kid's language learning. My kid's just doing basic. They suck.
Josh: 00:52 Yeah.
Ben: 00:53 You should get Tatum a PHP book. She would love that.
Josh: 00:55 Or Postgres.
Ben: 00:56 That's true.
Josh: 00:58 Any elephant ... Why are there so many elephants in programming by the way?
Ben: 01:02 That's a good question.
Starr: 01:03 I don't know.
Starr: 01:05 Programming books-
Josh: 01:06 Is it because of the memory?
Ben: 01:08 For Postgres I think that's the case, yeah.
Josh: 01:10 They either have a long-
Starr: 01:11 Yeah. Like they're supposed to be smart or something.
Josh: 01:14 Yeah.
Starr: 01:15 I don't know I've never met an elephant that struck me as that smart.
Josh: 01:19 Like an elephant never forgets, right?
Starr: 01:21 Right.
Josh: 01:22 Maybe that means, I don't know.
Starr: 01:24 That doesn't mean they remember.
Ben: 01:25 As opposed to Mongo I guess their logo should be what?
Josh: 01:27 That's true.
Ben: 01:27 A fruit fly.
Starr: 01:28 Oh burn.
Ben: 01:29 Oh burn. Sick burn.
Starr: 01:30 Ouch. Yeah, because it dies after 12 hours.
Ben: 01:36 Exactly and forgets everything.
Josh: 01:39 Ben's on fire today.
Starr: 01:40 Oh man. Poor Mongo.
Ben: 01:41 I know.
Starr: 01:44 They've been around, it's been like a decade since-
Ben: 01:46 Wow.
Starr: 01:47 ... we've had bad experiences with Mongo.
Ben: 01:48 That's true.
Starr: 01:49 We still have to say bad things about them.
Josh: 01:54 Yeah.
Starr: 01:55 Okay. We should probably talk about marketing gentlemen.
Ben: 02:00 Sure.
Josh: 02:01 Yeah. That sounds good.
Ben: 02:02 Yeah. Love marketing.
Starr: 02:03 You love marketing?
Ben: 02:04 I do love marketing. How else-
Josh: 02:05 I do too.
Ben: 02:06 How else are you going to get people to know about who you are and give you money, right?
Josh: 02:11 I also hate marketing, but that's another podcast.
Starr: 02:14 You could commit a crime.
Ben: 02:17 Okay, but will that convince people to give you money?
Starr: 02:20 They give you money in the end.
Josh: 02:21 Yeah.
Ben: 02:...
