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[00:00:00.240 --> 00:01:48.680] This podcast is hosted by transistor.fm let's see how i don't know how long we want to do this but let's aim for 30 minutes and we'll end up talking for an hour hey everyone welcome to build your sass this is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2023 i'm john buddha a software engineer and i'm justin jackson i do product and marketing follow along as we build transistor.fm and keep up to date on all the crazy latest happenings in the world all your all the crazy sales tax and banking related it's just the financial system is melting before our eyes but uh you went on vacation so you you were you were maybe oblivious to some of this how many times did you think about the banking sector and sales tax while you were on vacation not at all oh glorious in fact it was the i it was the first time i haven't opened my laptop well i was gone for like nine days didn't open my laptop once and that's the first time that's happened wow i don't know eight years probably like it dude it's pretty nice that's a success do you think you didn't open your laptop because the internet was bad or do you think it was it you were just fully in vacation mode i just wanted to do both just wanted to be in vacation mode i mean i i kept up to date on my phone and stuff and talked to you guys and uh but it's you know you can do that from the beach while drinking a margarita pretty easily, and yeah, the internet was not great.
[00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:54.200] It was, you know, it worked okay, but it wasn't like it was not great.
[00:01:54.200 --> 00:02:02.440] Yeah, I mean, that's a long time to uh have not kind of had a real chance to unplug.
[00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:06.040] What was there any other kind of how was it?
[00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.680] Like, what was the other parts of that?
[00:02:08.680 --> 00:02:12.280] Did it feel like you really got something back?
[00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:13.720] Did it feel renewing?
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:15.960] Yeah, I felt, yeah, it was very restful and renewing.
[00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:17.960] And yeah, it's nice to unplug.
[00:02:17.960 --> 00:02:20.280] I mean, you know, I like I said, I still kept in touch.
[00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:22.520] I wasn't like totally out of what was going on.
[00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:24.760] Yeah, you were still in Slack.
[00:02:24.760 --> 00:02:29.800] Which, you know, next time I could maybe just disappear from that too, delete it from my phone.
[00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:32.440] But I don't know.
[00:02:32.440 --> 00:02:33.960] I still like to keep up to date.
[00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:36.200] I mean, it is, you know, our company.
[00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:36.600] Yeah.
[00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:38.280] I like to know what's going on.
[00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:41.800] But yeah, it was quite relaxing.
[00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:42.760] It's very nice.
[00:02:42.760 --> 00:02:49.000] I mean, this was kind of your test run for the six-month sabbatical we keep talking about having.
[00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:52.600] Where Helen and Jason run the team.
[00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:54.760] Yeah, Helen and Jason just run the company.
[00:02:54.760 --> 00:03:04.040] And I mean, I think one thing that is obviously you and I bring a lot to the team and to the product and to the company.
[00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:08.120] But it is incredible to see how much Jason and Helen bring.
[00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:21.960] And sometimes they're just scheming away in their own Slack channels, just deciding, hey, we should, you know, Jason just did a big, well, Helen and Jason kind of schemed on this together and then Jason went and did it.
[00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:28.360] Where we had basically folks that have been on the platform who haven't paid in ages.
[00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:32.280] Like the card would fail, but we wouldn't kick them off.
[00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:34.200] It would just be kind of in limbo.
[00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:34.600] Right.
[00:03:34.600 --> 00:03:40.200] Yeah, like their feed still worked, and maybe they couldn't use the platform, but everything still worked.
[00:03:40.520 --> 00:03:43.160] So they're essentially getting free hosting.
[00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:46.720] Obviously, not great, but um, yeah.
[00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:53.040] So, Jason went ahead and figured out and wrote a whole system to like notify people multiple times and then automatically cancel accounts.
[00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:54.400] And yeah, it worked well.
[00:03:55.360 --> 00:04:09.120] I mean, there's there's obviously dunning systems, like we've always had a basic kind of dunning and system, but this is like next level for giving people warnings at different stages depending on their status.
[00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:25.680] Yeah, and uh, it's amazing how many people obviously, if you're not paying, then actually, here in this co-working place, for years, we just never got an internet bill like for cable internet, and it was just like fine.
[00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:32.240] And then all of a sudden, one day, our internet got turned off, and we're like, oh, yeah, somebody found something in the system, yeah.
[00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:35.840] It's a good things to put in place, yeah, dude.
[00:04:35.840 --> 00:04:36.960] A lot's happened though.
[00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:51.200] Uh, let's talk briefly about the modern-day run on a bank because it was Silicon Valley Bank, and uh, that we were actually briefly an SVB customer.
[00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:52.320] Yeah, I don't know how long we use them.
[00:04:52.320 --> 00:05:00.960] I mean, they were what Stripe Atlas used when we signed up and incorporated, and they just like automatically opened an account for you.
[00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:02.880] They were the only option for a long time.
[00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:13.760] Now, uh, Stripe Atlas offers you have a few different options, but yeah, yeah, I mean, we use them, and it was like it was a bank, it was fine, I guess, but it was really hard.
[00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:16.480] I think it felt really hard to do stuff.
[00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:19.200] It's pretty inflexible.
[00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:21.040] I don't know, we used them for maybe a year.
[00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:21.520] I don't know.
[00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:23.600] I mean, we didn't make money for a while.
[00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:33.320] I think you actually used it thought we should switch right away because we signed our partnership docs, and I don't think I ever logged into Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:39.160] And then fairly soon after that, I think you were like, let's get off this Silicon Valley and we switched to Capital One.
[00:05:39.160 --> 00:05:46.360] We did Capital One and then they Capital One, I think they like closed that type of account down or something.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:48.840] Oh, yeah, we had like a small business account or something.
[00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:52.440] You could log into the dashboard or something.
[00:05:52.440 --> 00:05:53.240] Yeah.
[00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:57.000] And so we found Mercury pretty early on.
[00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:57.560] Yeah.
[00:05:57.880 --> 00:05:59.640] They were pretty new, I think, still.
[00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:00.200] Yeah.
[00:06:00.520 --> 00:06:01.560] Yeah, that would have been.
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:04.520] Yeah, it feels like we've been with them forever now.
[00:06:04.520 --> 00:06:16.120] I mean, the UX of Mercury is incredible, but I think this whole banking crisis has made us rethink about what is a bank.
[00:06:16.120 --> 00:06:18.760] Yeah, because Mercury is technically not a bank.
[00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:20.680] So tell me, what is Mercury?
[00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:21.480] What is it?
[00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:25.480] Well, I saw this something online, and I think it was the guy that runs it said something.
[00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:26.680] He's like, we're not actually a bank.
[00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:32.360] We're a software platform for your money, but we work with banks.
[00:06:32.520 --> 00:06:33.960] They have partner banks.
[00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:34.600] Okay.
[00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:36.040] And that's where your money goes, right?
[00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:39.160] And I think they split it across multiple accounts or something.
[00:06:39.160 --> 00:06:46.840] I mean, it looks like one account to you, but it's not, yeah, it's not technically a bank.
[00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:47.480] Yes.
[00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:49.320] It's all very seamless.
[00:06:49.320 --> 00:06:51.240] I mean, it's like has worked great.
[00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:55.880] They have free international wires and like the user experience is amazing.
[00:06:55.880 --> 00:06:59.720] And it doesn't feel like something that's been taped together.
[00:07:00.040 --> 00:07:04.120] It just, like, we've sent tons of wires.
[00:07:04.120 --> 00:07:09.000] We've, you know, it hooks up to our accounting platform well.
[00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:12.520] It, it feels like it just always works.
[00:07:12.520 --> 00:07:14.680] It's been very dependable.
[00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:28.160] And granted, we don't have millions of venture capital funding sitting in an account, which I think, you know, I don't know if like SVB was better for that type of company, but.
[00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:29.360] Well, apparently not.
[00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:34.240] They only had $250,000 of insurance shared deposits.
[00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:35.040] Right, right, right.
[00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:42.080] I think this is this whole episode, and honestly, it is awful.
[00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:54.160] I don't want to make light of, you know, a lot of these companies who've received funding are still small businesses who are run by people like you and I.
[00:07:54.400 --> 00:08:03.760] They have employees like Transistor and, you know, not making payroll and all of that stuff is awful.
[00:08:03.760 --> 00:08:18.800] And I also want to recognize that not every company can be structured like Transistor, but it did reveal how different it is to be running a business that is just profitable.
[00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:26.720] And we don't keep a giant cash balance with Transistor.
[00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:27.360] No, we don't.
[00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:38.720] Generally, it's just like every month our revenue is really consistent and it's basically always gone up, even if it's only gone up by a little bit.
[00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:48.800] And that has that model is calmer, at least at this stage of history.
[00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:50.160] That could change.
[00:08:50.160 --> 00:09:00.600] But it has, it just revealed, like, wow, like this whole new financial era we're in with high interest rates.
[00:09:00.920 --> 00:09:12.200] And now, you know, all the think pieces on Medium and other places are like, how now Silicon Valley's got to get back to the basics, get back to profitability.
[00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:15.400] You know, startups have to act like small businesses.
[00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:23.720] And, you know, for us, it's just been like, well, that's, that's, that was the style that always appealed to us.
[00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:35.240] And it, I think, in most cases, especially if the business you've started has a good financial engine, and that's a huge caveat.
[00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:36.200] Caveat?
[00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:37.160] Yeah.
[00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:37.800] Okay.
[00:09:39.080 --> 00:09:41.000] I think that's the same in Canada.
[00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.480] Sometimes I read that word and I'm like, Cavite?
[00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:44.920] No, it's not Cavite.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:46.600] It's caveat.
[00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:53.880] You know, the caveat is that it's hard finding a business.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:10:03.400] You and I have tried other businesses in our past, and Transistor by far has the best financial engine of anything we've tried.
[00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:10.920] So obviously that really helps and to make it feel calm.
[00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:25.160] But yeah, it just did feel like, and our friends that have businesses like that, you know, the Ian Landsmans of the world, the Michelle Hansons of the world, they're running small software companies like us.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:39.000] And I think all of us were kind of standing on the outside of this going, wow, like, yeah, if you had a bunch of investment and then all of a sudden you lost, you, you, I mean, it wasn't just that they lost.
[00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:43.080] This would have also affected us if all of a sudden our bank account got frozen.
[00:10:43.080 --> 00:10:45.120] Like, that would have been not fun.
[00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:45.360] Right.
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:50.240] Or, you know, the some of the providers we use are run out of money and then they can't actually run their business.
[00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:56.400] And yeah, it did make me think about transfer-wise/slash wise, which is similar to Mercury.
[00:10:56.400 --> 00:11:07.040] I think it's just some amorphous tech chrome on top of something on the back end, you know.
[00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:32.240] But breaking news from Mercury, they're obviously, I think, all the banks, all the smaller banks or bank-like things are trying desperately to retain customers because the unfortunate side effect of all this is that a lot of businesses, including small businesses, but large depositors especially, are moving their funds from smaller banks to the big banks.
[00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:53.040] And you're going to, you know, there's, especially in the States, you're going to have a situation where all the big money is at chase, and then it's going to make it even harder to regulate the big banks because they're going to always, all of them, they will be much too large to fail.
[00:11:53.040 --> 00:11:54.720] Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe.
[00:11:54.720 --> 00:12:03.760] I think the government did the right thing, though, and kind of how they reacted and kind of prevented a bunch of different bank runs.
[00:12:03.760 --> 00:12:08.240] But I think Mercury actually got a lot of new customers from what I've seen.
[00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:09.920] Yeah, well, that's, yeah, that's true.
[00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:14.960] It would be interesting to know how this actually shook out for them because I see two trends.
[00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:18.960] One, people moving their money out of smaller banks like Mercury.
[00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:23.600] And two, I've heard that a lot of people were switching to Mercury.
[00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:32.280] But yeah, they just announced we've worked with our partner banks to offer additional FDIC insurance.
[00:12:32.280 --> 00:12:34.520] First to $1 million, then to $3 million.
[00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:35.640] Now we've gone a step further.
[00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:42.120] By Monday, you will have access to up to $5 million in FDIC insurance, 20 times the per banking limit.
[00:12:42.120 --> 00:12:45.720] Yeah, I think that's something to do with how they split your money across accounts.
[00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:45.960] Yeah.
[00:12:46.280 --> 00:12:47.160] Behind the scenes.
[00:12:47.640 --> 00:12:51.480] And there's also, it's not clear if every depositor gets that.
[00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:55.160] The other thing is that every time I've had to deal with insurance, it really sucks.
[00:12:55.160 --> 00:13:05.240] So it's like, sure, you might get your money bank back, but if accounts get frozen or whatever, it still sucks because then you've got even a week without access to your bank account.
[00:13:06.040 --> 00:13:10.360] But I think once the FDIC steps in, they're pretty efficient.
[00:13:10.360 --> 00:13:11.720] They're pretty good at what they do.
[00:13:11.720 --> 00:13:15.560] I don't think it's going to be, it's not like working with some crappy insurance company.
[00:13:15.560 --> 00:13:16.120] Yeah.
[00:13:16.120 --> 00:13:16.440] Yep.
[00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:16.840] Yep.
[00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:17.800] Yep.
[00:13:17.800 --> 00:13:18.200] Yeah.
[00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:19.000] So interesting.
[00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:22.120] It'll be interesting to watch that.
[00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:26.040] I think we should talk about this next item that I'm highlighting.
[00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:27.560] Are you okay if we talk about that?
[00:13:27.560 --> 00:13:28.200] Yeah.
[00:13:28.200 --> 00:13:28.760] Okay.
[00:13:29.800 --> 00:13:34.920] We've had some folks that have said maybe we shouldn't talk about it, but I think it's better to talk about it than not.
[00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:38.600] Section 174.
[00:13:38.600 --> 00:13:46.760] Folks, if you have a software company in the United States, you need to be aware of Section 174.
[00:13:46.760 --> 00:13:59.560] Basically, it is treating software development costs, and there's some confusion about this, but the more I've read into the U.S.
[00:13:59.560 --> 00:14:07.800] tax code, the more it seems like, and now we actually have people who are trying, who have been assessed by the IRS.
[00:14:07.800 --> 00:14:11.400] So we know that these assessments are actually even happening.
[00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:28.400] This will dramatically increase the amount of tax that you pay because instead of saying a development salary is an expense, you have to categorize it as research and development?
[00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:32.320] Yes, and then you have to amortize that over numerous years.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:34.080] Yes, thanks.
[00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:37.600] Yeah, which makes your taxable income way higher.
[00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:49.840] The example, I'll link to it in the show notes from Ian Landsman: is let's say on a million dollars revenue, normally you have dev salaries that equal 500,000 and your tax rate would be 30%.
[00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:52.960] So your tax bill would be 75,000.
[00:14:53.280 --> 00:14:58.800] Under this new system, your tax bill would be 225,000.
[00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:01.760] It dramatically increases.
[00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:08.080] Basically, this legislation makes no sense for small software companies.
[00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:12.640] It is actively harmful for small software companies.
[00:15:12.640 --> 00:15:27.440] And sometimes software companies and small software companies, we kind of live in this world of magical thinking, you know, where, I mean, you and I are also predisposed to this.
[00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:30.240] You know, well, sales tax, we don't need to worry about that right now.
[00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:32.880] Or, well, you know, we're a small company.
[00:15:32.880 --> 00:15:34.640] We don't need to worry about that.
[00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:40.080] This actually could have a meaningful effect on people's businesses.
[00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:47.040] Yeah, I mean, especially like, you know, if you don't last for five years, because every year, you're going to amortize more and more, right?
[00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:54.640] So it piles up and it gets, you'd be paying less and less over the years, but like the first year or two is going to be like it's a massive hit.
[00:15:54.640 --> 00:15:59.760] So Michelle Hansen, friend of the show, she's the co-founder of GeoCode.
[00:15:59.960 --> 00:16:07.800] She has started the Small Software Business Alliance, SSB Alliance.org.
[00:16:07.800 --> 00:16:10.120] I'll put the link in the show notes.
[00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:13.640] If you, oh, she's actually expanded this now.
[00:16:13.640 --> 00:16:16.440] She's got a great TLDR here too.
[00:16:16.760 --> 00:16:24.680] If you have a small software business that is incorporated in the United States, you need to go there, put your name and email in there.
[00:16:24.680 --> 00:16:28.760] She is going to be kind of the central communication hub for all this stuff.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:35.960] She's in contact with people in Washington, D.C., and she's working on some stuff behind the scenes she can't talk about yet.
[00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:42.280] But we really do need to make our voices heard on this.
[00:16:42.280 --> 00:16:44.520] And if you are a U.S.
[00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:50.280] citizen, you also have an opportunity to contact your representative.
[00:16:50.760 --> 00:17:00.440] I can sign up for this here as a co-founder of Transistor, but only John can contact his state representative and say, this is going to affect me.
[00:17:00.760 --> 00:17:03.240] And Michelle even recommends calling them.
[00:17:04.120 --> 00:17:06.520] They have to record every phone call.
[00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:11.640] And there's actually a big chance this goes through.
[00:17:11.640 --> 00:17:21.240] And a smaller chance, even if we make noise, that even if we make noise, there's no guarantee, but at least there's a possibility.
[00:17:21.240 --> 00:17:27.320] So I mean, from reading about it, it's like nobody really wanted it anyway, and yet they voted on it, but they didn't, maybe didn't read it.
[00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:29.720] It's like they don't read this stuff anyway.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:30.840] And they just vote it.
[00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:31.720] They just vote it in.
[00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:33.560] And then they're like, oh, wait, no, that was a bad idea.
[00:17:33.560 --> 00:17:41.080] This is a classic case of just fucked up politics.
[00:17:41.080 --> 00:17:43.080] And it sucks.
[00:17:43.080 --> 00:17:44.200] It really does suck.
[00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:52.560] I actually, I was thinking about this the other day because are you familiar with Peter Lovell's Nomad List?
[00:17:52.560 --> 00:18:03.360] It's like a site where you can put in like, hey, I want sunshine, but, you know, I want it to be safe and I want it to be, you know, you can put in all these criteria.
[00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:20.560] It's almost like we need a SAS list, which is like a way of filtering what is the best place to incorporate your company because there's all these, like if this comes into law, that would be a substantial reason to incorporate your company somewhere else.
[00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:30.000] But on the flip side, if we incorporated it anywhere but the U.S., your Stripe fees go up substantially.
[00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.880] So if you're a Stripe, if you're incorporating Canada using Stripe, all of your U.S.
[00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:38.960] credit cards, I believe, are treated as foreign, right?
[00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:40.240] They're not domestic.
[00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:44.240] And so you pay an additional 1% or 1.5%.
[00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:47.680] There's all of these factors that make it like, ah, maybe we should incorporate here.
[00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:48.720] Maybe we should incorporate here.
[00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:49.520] Maybe we should.
[00:18:49.840 --> 00:18:50.960] Yeah, I wonder.
[00:18:50.960 --> 00:19:01.680] It'd be nice if there's a central place to like if the best place to incorporate your company is in Saskatchewan, Canada, let's do it.
[00:19:02.320 --> 00:19:04.560] You're always ragging on Saskatchewan.
[00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:07.920] That felt like a nice thing to say about Saskatchewan.
[00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:09.920] I'm like, Mel, maybe we should look it there.
[00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:13.360] Hey, how come your team doesn't have their own podcast?
[00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:18.320] Head over to Transistor and use my coupon, transistor.fm/slash justin.
[00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:22.400] You'll get 15% off your first year of podcast hosting.
[00:19:23.600 --> 00:19:25.520] Let's, how long have we gone now?
[00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:26.640] Oh, wow, already 20 minutes.
[00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:32.840] Okay, well, let's do a little sales tax compliance update because I think that's what people are here for.
[00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:33.960] The exciting part of this.
[00:19:34.280 --> 00:19:37.640] Yeah, Chris, we need a little sales tax jingle here, you know?
[00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:43.960] Sales tax compliance.
[00:19:47.800 --> 00:19:48.600] That's the first line.
[00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:50.120] I'll keep working on it.
[00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:55.880] So I think the most relevant news here is that Revan has just shut down.
[00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:57.320] What is Revan, Justin?
[00:19:57.320 --> 00:20:12.520] So Revan was one of these merchants of record that was recommended to us by folks saying, and I'm going to, I'll use my voice, but you know, like, they were like, ah, you just got a merchant of records.
[00:20:12.520 --> 00:20:14.200] Revan, they'll solve your problems.
[00:20:14.200 --> 00:20:15.240] Quit complaining.
[00:20:15.240 --> 00:20:17.880] You know, we had concerns back then.
[00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:22.040] Now they've shut down, and I have even more concerns about all merchants of record.
[00:20:22.040 --> 00:20:24.520] So here's the email that they sent customers.
[00:20:24.520 --> 00:20:26.280] No public announcement, by the way.
[00:20:26.280 --> 00:20:26.920] Very weird.
[00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:29.720] They just all of a sudden changed their homepage.
[00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:30.760] Now apparently they do.
[00:20:30.760 --> 00:20:36.600] If you go to getrevan.com, I think it goes to Revan.consulting now.
[00:20:36.600 --> 00:20:38.200] So now they're a consulting company.
[00:20:38.760 --> 00:20:49.640] Here's a quote from the email: The most relevant reason that we're shutting down is that the merchant of record model is too risky for both sellers and the merchant of record operator.
[00:20:49.640 --> 00:20:50.920] What are they talking about here?
[00:20:50.920 --> 00:20:51.320] Okay.
[00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:52.840] Back to the email.
[00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:57.880] Sellers bear the risk of platform shutdown, as seen in the example of Flurly and Stripe.
[00:20:57.880 --> 00:20:59.480] Now, I hadn't heard of this.
[00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:11.560] What they're talking about here, what happened to Flurly was that some folks who were using Flurly as a merchant of record became engaged in illegal activity.
[00:21:11.560 --> 00:21:28.960] At which point, Stripe sent them an email saying, there's folks using your Stripe account who are in violation of regulations and will be substantially could be subject to substantial fines.
[00:21:29.280 --> 00:21:36.080] Examples of violations, including selling copyrighted products, selling pharmaceuticals.
[00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:47.600] And because of that, Stripe had to shut Flurly's Stripe account down, which included all of the merchants that they were being the merchants of record for.
[00:21:47.600 --> 00:21:48.640] Yikes.
[00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:50.640] And that's what Revan would do too, right?
[00:21:51.040 --> 00:21:53.760] We would have been part of that account, right?
[00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:57.360] Yeah, this is what would happen with any.
[00:21:57.840 --> 00:22:01.120] Yeah, I mean, that would just kill our business immediately.
[00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:04.800] So I'm going to put that link in the show notes.
[00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:14.000] So back to their email, the merchant of record operator could potentially become involved in illicit or illegal activities quickly, which could lead to all sorts of problems.
[00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:33.200] The problems are that the people processing your credit card is going to say, ah, no, this whole account we're just going to shut down, or this whole account we're just going to put on pause, or this whole account we're going to just think of all the times you've seen on Twitter where for some reason, this is always a risk.
[00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:37.920] For some reason, someone's PayPal account gets flagged.
[00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:40.800] And they're like, they send out an emergency tweet.
[00:22:40.800 --> 00:22:42.160] PayPal, please help me.
[00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:47.760] Someone's, my account's been shut down, or my account's been flagged, and I can't get it out of here.
[00:22:47.760 --> 00:22:48.720] I need to get the money.
[00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:49.360] I can't.
[00:22:49.680 --> 00:22:52.160] It's a nightmare for the individual.
[00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:55.760] But now, imagine assuming all of that risk.
[00:22:55.760 --> 00:22:57.200] You're just going to go into a pool.
[00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:04.840] It's like going into an email deliverability pool or a web hosting pool where you're all on the same IP.
[00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:09.640] It's the same risk.
[00:23:09.960 --> 00:23:15.080] And this is something I hadn't even considered before with merchants of record.
[00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:19.160] Yeah, that makes it much, much less appealing or not appealing at all.
[00:23:19.480 --> 00:23:22.680] Especially after these bank runs.
[00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.800] It's like, I mean, this is a risk.
[00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:33.560] Of course, this is a risk with any credit card processing you do.
[00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:35.640] Again, PayPal, Stripe, et cetera.
[00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:39.640] The difference is this is like a party line.
[00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:42.840] Everybody's sharing the same Stripe account.
[00:23:42.840 --> 00:24:00.520] And so that exposes you to a risk in the same way that if you sign up with a merchant of record, you start paying, you have to start submitting taxes and collecting taxes for basically every tax region in the world because you've already hit all the thresholds.
[00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:00.920] Why?
[00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:06.200] Because it's the merchant of record is being treated as the business there.
[00:24:06.520 --> 00:24:11.720] Well, now you're also exposing yourself to all of that merchant of record's customers.
[00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.160] Anybody else they are being a merchant of record for.
[00:24:15.160 --> 00:24:18.280] And that, and you have no idea who they are.
[00:24:18.280 --> 00:24:22.360] So at any point, and this could happen to Paddle.
[00:24:22.360 --> 00:24:29.320] I don't know who Paddle and Lemon Squeezy and these other folks use as their credit card processing.
[00:24:29.640 --> 00:24:33.400] I'm guessing that a lot of these services do just use Stripe.
[00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:37.720] Stripe has their own risk assessment people.
[00:24:38.040 --> 00:24:48.000] And if somebody on that account fucks up or does something illegal, it affects everybody in the merchant of record pool.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:48.720] Yeah, that's wild.
[00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:55.680] Or, like, you know, if Flurley or Revan was a bad actor, they'd just be like, oh, we're just taking your money, closing the account, and going to Jamaica.
[00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:18.400] Back to the email, because this even, this is, I don't, again, this is just one company's perspective from Revan, but furthermore, it became increasingly clear that the merchant of record model primarily appeals to small-scale sellers or businesses with questionable and high-risk business models.
[00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:22.880] This presents a significant challenge as we strive to move up the market.
[00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:30.560] The recent change in Stripe's risk behavior has caused us to experience issues with keeping Stripe accounts live.
[00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:33.360] End of email quotes.
[00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:37.680] This is a big deal.
[00:25:37.760 --> 00:25:48.160] Now, I'm sure, especially some of the more mature merchants of record, like Paddle, I'm sure they have ways of mitigating some of these risks, which I'd love to hear from them.
[00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:56.000] But it shows, first of all, that trusting, I mean, even Revan, they describe themselves as an MVP.
[00:25:56.320 --> 00:26:00.800] They built an MVP to test out the market.
[00:26:01.120 --> 00:26:06.320] That I don't want to hand my business over to an MVP.
[00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:14.320] Any company that's brand new, there's just something about it that is stressful.
[00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:20.240] It feels too risky to hand your business over to something that's new and unproven.
[00:26:20.240 --> 00:26:22.600] Yeah, I mean, hand your bank account over to somebody like that.
[00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:22.760] Yeah.
[00:26:23.040 --> 00:26:23.680] Yeah.
[00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:26.080] So, yeah, we've talked, we've kept talking about solutions.
[00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:29.760] One solution was maybe we should get your brother to help us out.
[00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:45.080] Yeah, I mean, he had listened to our episodes and I talked to him for a bit and he was like, you know, when I was in Texas working at the Capitol, like he actually worked on some legislation when they were working on sales tax legislation for Amazon at the time.
[00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:50.920] I mean, it was a long time ago, but so he, I mean, he read all the legislation and probably helped write some stuff.
[00:26:50.920 --> 00:27:03.080] And he knows people who still work there at certain parts of the government or like these tax accounting firms who know the ins and outs of not just Texas, but basically they have to keep up to date with like what every state's doing.
[00:27:03.080 --> 00:27:03.560] Yeah.
[00:27:03.560 --> 00:27:13.960] Whatever we decide, it might be turning on Stripe Tax and using TaxJar for some stuff, but then having someone like my brother actually manage some of that stuff behind the scenes and do the payments and registrations.
[00:27:14.520 --> 00:27:15.720] I'm for it.
[00:27:16.040 --> 00:27:16.760] Yeah, we'll see.
[00:27:16.760 --> 00:27:22.600] I mean, you know, I am still interested in us publishing as much of this stuff publicly.
[00:27:22.600 --> 00:27:34.840] We've got it on the podcast, but I think it'd be nice to have a, you know, maybe something like Michelle's Small Software Business Alliance, and maybe that's the platform.
[00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:42.760] But to be able to publish more of this publicly to share our experience and to share some of these things that just aren't being talked about.
[00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:58.920] Again, I think what's challenging about this is if you're brand new, if you're a small company, a lot of this probably feels like superfluous or, you know, maybe you and I are overreacting or complaining too much.
[00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:09.280] But once you're actually in it and actually having to figure all this stuff out, it just becomes clear so quickly that there's no way.
[00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:23.200] It's not humanly possible, even for these merchants of record, to be 100% completely compliant with every tax region in the world at any given moment.
[00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:26.080] The legislation is changing all the time.
[00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:28.400] The rules are changing all the time.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:44.160] And even, like I said, I've noticed errors on multiple platforms, multiple merchants of record platforms where they're making the calculations wrong or they're showing the wrong information on the receipt.
[00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:46.800] It's very, very difficult to do this.
[00:28:46.800 --> 00:29:00.400] And as has been mentioned before, tomorrow, Moose Jaw Saskatchewan could say, well, now anybody who buys SaaS products in Moose Jaw is subject to a 35% tax.
[00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:04.640] Could send emails to all the companies in the world.
[00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:09.440] Hey, you know, hey, DigitalOcean, hey, Amazon, hey, Microsoft.
[00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:16.640] You are now in violation of the Moose Jaw tax code, Section 102, Section B.
[00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:20.800] And, you know, like then, and they can.
[00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:24.560] It's going to take a week out of your life to make it work right.
[00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:32.240] And, you know, payments to the Moose Jaw tax office must be done in person between the business hours of 10 and 3 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday.
[00:29:32.560 --> 00:29:35.120] Please fax this form to this number.
[00:29:37.040 --> 00:29:45.600] Please call this number and do the mail moose meeting call, and then you will be greeted with a five-digit code.
[00:29:47.520 --> 00:29:48.480] It's ridiculous.
[00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:49.120] Yeah, it's a lot.
[00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:53.200] I mean, it just consumes you after a while, and you're like, I don't want to think about this, so I'm just going to ignore it.
[00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:55.120] And then, I mean, you know, it's just a lot of fun.
[00:29:55.360 --> 00:29:56.000] All this shit.
[00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:56.560] You know what?
[00:29:57.280 --> 00:30:02.920] Going through this, software is a pretty nice business to be in.
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:05.480] Some of this stuff just feels oppressive.
[00:30:06.120 --> 00:30:28.840] It just feels like I know some people are going to say that's an over-exaggeration, but like the things that you have to, until you've actually done it, until you've owned a business, some of the stuff is just feels like, why are cities, states, and provinces, countries, and then platforms like Stripe?
[00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:34.440] Why are they making it so difficult to be a small business?
[00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:41.560] It feels like it actively makes business more difficult.
[00:30:41.560 --> 00:30:42.440] And this is everything.
[00:30:42.440 --> 00:30:43.400] It's insurance.
[00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:47.000] I was talking to my friend who runs a little Main Street business here.
[00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:49.560] Guess how much he pays in insurance every month?
[00:30:49.560 --> 00:30:50.440] Five grand.
[00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:51.480] No, not quite five grand.
[00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:56.360] What's the business?
[00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:56.680] I don't know.
[00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:06.600] Okay, it's a little shop, little record shop, tiny store, like under a thousand square feet, probably 500 square feet.
[00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:08.040] Just insurance.
[00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:08.840] 500 bucks.
[00:31:09.080 --> 00:31:11.320] Fire insurance or inventory insurance or what?
[00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:16.760] It's liability and some inventory insurance, but 500 bucks a month.
[00:31:17.080 --> 00:31:18.920] And I was thinking about it.
[00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:25.800] I'm like, I don't even, I should look at our insurance bill, but I would be surprised if we're paying that much.
[00:31:25.800 --> 00:31:26.280] Right.
[00:31:26.280 --> 00:31:34.120] And his, like, that's more than that's like a significant portion of his expenses is just insurance.
[00:31:34.120 --> 00:31:37.640] These kinds of things, I think entrepreneurship is amazing.
[00:31:37.640 --> 00:31:42.920] I think that small businesses are kind of like the lifeblood of any economy.
[00:31:42.920 --> 00:31:48.560] And I don't think enough people are talking about it, maybe because they don't want to seem like complainers.
[00:31:48.560 --> 00:31:49.040] Right.
[00:31:49.360 --> 00:31:50.640] But it's hard.
[00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:51.280] It's hard.
[00:31:51.280 --> 00:31:52.240] Yeah, I mean, yeah.
[00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:53.600] I mean, the U.S.
[00:31:53.760 --> 00:31:54.880] certainly doesn't make it easy.
[00:31:54.880 --> 00:32:02.240] I mean, Canada, probably not either, but city planning departments and Chicago SaaS sales tax.
[00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:08.800] It's like, I could tell you one thing that they should all do right away: increase your exemption limit.
[00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:13.040] Don't make it one transaction and then you've crossed the threshold.
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:18.080] Just increase the exemption limit and give small businesses some breathing room.
[00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:26.240] Anyway, that ends our sales tax compliance section.
[00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:28.800] Sales tax compliance.
[00:32:32.560 --> 00:32:36.320] On a positive note, you just released the new software.
[00:32:36.320 --> 00:32:36.640] I did.
[00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:40.000] Yeah, we've been kind of working on this for a while.
[00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:45.040] It's an integration with Patreon, which has been interesting.
[00:32:45.360 --> 00:32:46.000] Yeah.
[00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:50.960] We'll probably have some, I'm sure we'll have more and more updates as people use it and time goes on.
[00:32:50.960 --> 00:33:03.040] But essentially, you can hook up, you can connect your Patreon account to your podcast and it'll pull in all your supporters and display them on your website and show notes as well.
[00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:12.880] Show notes and have a nice little section where people can join the Patreon campaign and shows you if you have progress towards a goal and how that's going.
[00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:15.200] And shout out new supporters in your show notes.
[00:33:15.600 --> 00:33:16.240] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:24.800] There's even a little, we have these liquid tags that you can specifically highlight new supporters since the last episode.
[00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:26.320] Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
[00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:33.240] And then a little widget on the bottom of the website that says this podcast has 16 supporters or whatever.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:37.000] So, yeah, that was really cool to roll that out.
[00:33:37.160 --> 00:33:40.280] Lots of folks have already implemented it.
[00:33:40.280 --> 00:33:49.400] It's one of those things where, like, we announced it and it even before we announced it, people were discovering it and adding it, you know, adding it to their show.
[00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:53.320] So it felt cool to be able to do something with monetization.
[00:33:54.120 --> 00:33:59.000] We think that, you know, even earning a little bit of money from your podcast can go a long way.
[00:33:59.320 --> 00:34:01.640] So, yeah, it was fun.
[00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:11.240] Yeah, I think, yeah, there's, you know, there's other features we're thinking about related to this or on top of this or other platforms that we can integrate with that do something similar to Patreon.
[00:34:11.880 --> 00:34:12.840] Yeah, we'll see.
[00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:13.960] See how this one goes.
[00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:15.880] But so far, people are using it.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:17.240] Yeah, yeah, it's exciting.
[00:34:18.040 --> 00:34:24.520] I think monetization is one of those things that we want to be thinking more about.
[00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:26.760] And it is a little bit more complicated.
[00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:39.080] One of the reasons we chose Patreon was because the complications of like using Stripe or PayPal, it's just a bit of a harder lift.
[00:34:39.400 --> 00:34:43.960] And this was like, okay, a lot of our customers already use Patreon.
[00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:47.800] Let's just do this as the initial thing to get us going.
[00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:48.440] Yeah.
[00:34:48.840 --> 00:34:54.600] I've been hiring Josh Anderton to help me work on a bunch of marketing site stuff, and we've been rolling that out.
[00:34:54.600 --> 00:34:58.920] It's been really fun to have a big refresh.
[00:35:00.120 --> 00:35:03.960] And yeah, it just feels like every day we've got something new to look at.
[00:35:03.960 --> 00:35:10.040] He's also worked on a new podcast website theme that is getting pretty close.
[00:35:10.040 --> 00:35:11.960] Yeah, it's been pretty close to being done.
[00:35:12.280 --> 00:35:13.640] So that's been exciting.
[00:35:13.960 --> 00:35:19.280] It's a much different theme than we've had so far, which will be cool.
[00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:26.000] And I released a little side project, mypodstudios.com, that I'd like folks to go check out.
[00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:29.040] I'm thinking more about my studio.
[00:35:29.040 --> 00:35:31.600] My studio is embarrassing.
[00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:34.560] And your AstroTurf?
[00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:49.200] Yeah, I got some AstroTurf on the ground, but it's just, it's not for the amount of time I'm on camera for Transistor and for the amount of time I have to show up on interviews and, you know, like I did that descript live stream.
[00:35:49.200 --> 00:35:51.440] You need a bookshelf back there that makes you look smart.
[00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:51.920] I know.
[00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:52.880] All the things you're reading.
[00:35:53.440 --> 00:35:55.040] Tax compliance law.
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:00.320] Tax compliance law.
[00:36:00.640 --> 00:36:01.600] I would love that.
[00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:04.000] I should just frame some tax compliance law.
[00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:05.920] And then people are like, hey, what's that in the background?
[00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:09.440] Oh, that's section 32b from Moose Jaw Saskatchewan.
[00:36:10.800 --> 00:36:12.080] Just read that during lunch.
[00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:12.960] I love it.
[00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:14.400] I'm a big fan.
[00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:17.040] So I've been thinking about how to improve my studio.
[00:36:17.040 --> 00:36:21.760] And I thought, okay, one way to get inspired is to look at studios I like.
[00:36:21.760 --> 00:36:22.240] Yeah.
[00:36:22.560 --> 00:36:29.840] And so I started this little site using Indie Hacker and longtime supporter of the show, Val Soapy.
[00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:44.400] He's got a little product called Blogstatic and just made a little site and featured Steven Robles, who's got a really bunch of cool podcasts on Transistor, Apple Insider, HomeKit Insider, movies on the side.
[00:36:44.720 --> 00:36:51.760] Anyway, if you want to see some pretty studio photos, head over to mypodstudios.com.
[00:36:51.760 --> 00:36:52.560] Cool.
[00:36:52.560 --> 00:36:53.280] All right.
[00:36:53.280 --> 00:37:00.120] Well, John, now's the time to use our feature and thank our Patreon supporters.
[00:37:00.120 --> 00:37:01.400] Yeah, thanks, everyone.
[00:37:01.400 --> 00:37:04.280] As always, we have rewardful.com.
[00:36:59.680 --> 00:37:05.560] Those guys are great.
[00:37:06.120 --> 00:37:36.280] Greg Park, Mitchell Davis from recruitkit.com.au, Marcel Falet from WeAreBold.af, Ethan Gunderson, Anton Zorin from ProudCamp.com, Bill Kondo, Alex Payne, Ward from memberspace.com, Russell Brown from Fotivo.com, Evendra Sassy, Austin Lovelace, Michael Sitber, our friends at Fathom Analytics, my brother Dan Buddha, sales tax compliance expert.
[00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:37.800] Yeah, soon to be.
[00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:44.520] Colin Gray, Darby Frey, and Dave Junta.
[00:37:44.520 --> 00:37:46.680] Junta.
[00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:48.040] Junta.
[00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:50.840] We need a new podcast just called Junta.
[00:37:51.160 --> 00:37:53.320] G-I-U-N-T-A.
[00:37:53.640 --> 00:37:54.040] Yeah.
[00:37:54.280 --> 00:37:55.320] Junta.
[00:37:55.320 --> 00:37:56.680] It's just Dave.
[00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:57.960] It's just Dave.
[00:37:57.960 --> 00:37:59.080] Just talking about it.
[00:37:59.240 --> 00:38:00.600] Chats with Dave.
[00:38:00.600 --> 00:38:01.080] Yeah.
[00:38:01.320 --> 00:38:05.560] Dave, if you want to start the Junta podcast, let us know.
[00:38:07.560 --> 00:38:09.480] We'll show up for that.
[00:38:09.480 --> 00:38:10.520] Actually, that would be fun.
[00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:13.800] It's like whoever wants to show up shows up.
[00:38:13.800 --> 00:38:16.120] Dave just announces the time, shows up.
[00:38:16.760 --> 00:38:17.480] Whoever shows up.
[00:38:18.200 --> 00:38:19.480] That's the show.
[00:38:19.480 --> 00:38:20.280] Yeah.
[00:38:20.920 --> 00:38:21.960] Sounds good.
[00:38:22.280 --> 00:38:22.920] All right, everyone.
[00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:24.120] Thanks for listening.
[00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.880] Please reach out if you've got comments or thoughts.
[00:38:27.880 --> 00:38:29.640] We'd love to hear from you.
[00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:32.280] And we'll see you next week.
[00:38:49.600 --> 00:38:53.440] Podcast hosting is provided by transistor.fm.
[00:38:53.440 --> 00:39:04.720] They host our mp3 files, generate our RSS feed, provide us with analytics, and help us distribute the show to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.
[00:39:04.720 --> 00:39:15.920] If you want to start your own podcast or you want to switch to Transistor, go to transistor.fm slash Justin and get 15% off your first year.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.240 --> 00:01:48.680] This podcast is hosted by transistor.fm let's see how i don't know how long we want to do this but let's aim for 30 minutes and we'll end up talking for an hour hey everyone welcome to build your sass this is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2023 i'm john buddha a software engineer and i'm justin jackson i do product and marketing follow along as we build transistor.fm and keep up to date on all the crazy latest happenings in the world all your all the crazy sales tax and banking related it's just the financial system is melting before our eyes but uh you went on vacation so you you were you were maybe oblivious to some of this how many times did you think about the banking sector and sales tax while you were on vacation not at all oh glorious in fact it was the i it was the first time i haven't opened my laptop well i was gone for like nine days didn't open my laptop once and that's the first time that's happened wow i don't know eight years probably like it dude it's pretty nice that's a success do you think you didn't open your laptop because the internet was bad or do you think it was it you were just fully in vacation mode i just wanted to do both just wanted to be in vacation mode i mean i i kept up to date on my phone and stuff and talked to you guys and uh but it's you know you can do that from the beach while drinking a margarita pretty easily, and yeah, the internet was not great.
[00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:54.200] It was, you know, it worked okay, but it wasn't like it was not great.
[00:01:54.200 --> 00:02:02.440] Yeah, I mean, that's a long time to uh have not kind of had a real chance to unplug.
[00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:06.040] What was there any other kind of how was it?
[00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.680] Like, what was the other parts of that?
[00:02:08.680 --> 00:02:12.280] Did it feel like you really got something back?
[00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:13.720] Did it feel renewing?
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:15.960] Yeah, I felt, yeah, it was very restful and renewing.
[00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:17.960] And yeah, it's nice to unplug.
[00:02:17.960 --> 00:02:20.280] I mean, you know, I like I said, I still kept in touch.
[00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:22.520] I wasn't like totally out of what was going on.
[00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:24.760] Yeah, you were still in Slack.
[00:02:24.760 --> 00:02:29.800] Which, you know, next time I could maybe just disappear from that too, delete it from my phone.
[00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:32.440] But I don't know.
[00:02:32.440 --> 00:02:33.960] I still like to keep up to date.
[00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:36.200] I mean, it is, you know, our company.
[00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:36.600] Yeah.
[00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:38.280] I like to know what's going on.
[00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:41.800] But yeah, it was quite relaxing.
[00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:42.760] It's very nice.
[00:02:42.760 --> 00:02:49.000] I mean, this was kind of your test run for the six-month sabbatical we keep talking about having.
[00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:52.600] Where Helen and Jason run the team.
[00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:54.760] Yeah, Helen and Jason just run the company.
[00:02:54.760 --> 00:03:04.040] And I mean, I think one thing that is obviously you and I bring a lot to the team and to the product and to the company.
[00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:08.120] But it is incredible to see how much Jason and Helen bring.
[00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:21.960] And sometimes they're just scheming away in their own Slack channels, just deciding, hey, we should, you know, Jason just did a big, well, Helen and Jason kind of schemed on this together and then Jason went and did it.
[00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:28.360] Where we had basically folks that have been on the platform who haven't paid in ages.
[00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:32.280] Like the card would fail, but we wouldn't kick them off.
[00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:34.200] It would just be kind of in limbo.
[00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:34.600] Right.
[00:03:34.600 --> 00:03:40.200] Yeah, like their feed still worked, and maybe they couldn't use the platform, but everything still worked.
[00:03:40.520 --> 00:03:43.160] So they're essentially getting free hosting.
[00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:46.720] Obviously, not great, but um, yeah.
[00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:53.040] So, Jason went ahead and figured out and wrote a whole system to like notify people multiple times and then automatically cancel accounts.
[00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:54.400] And yeah, it worked well.
[00:03:55.360 --> 00:04:09.120] I mean, there's there's obviously dunning systems, like we've always had a basic kind of dunning and system, but this is like next level for giving people warnings at different stages depending on their status.
[00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:25.680] Yeah, and uh, it's amazing how many people obviously, if you're not paying, then actually, here in this co-working place, for years, we just never got an internet bill like for cable internet, and it was just like fine.
[00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:32.240] And then all of a sudden, one day, our internet got turned off, and we're like, oh, yeah, somebody found something in the system, yeah.
[00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:35.840] It's a good things to put in place, yeah, dude.
[00:04:35.840 --> 00:04:36.960] A lot's happened though.
[00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:51.200] Uh, let's talk briefly about the modern-day run on a bank because it was Silicon Valley Bank, and uh, that we were actually briefly an SVB customer.
[00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:52.320] Yeah, I don't know how long we use them.
[00:04:52.320 --> 00:05:00.960] I mean, they were what Stripe Atlas used when we signed up and incorporated, and they just like automatically opened an account for you.
[00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:02.880] They were the only option for a long time.
[00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:13.760] Now, uh, Stripe Atlas offers you have a few different options, but yeah, yeah, I mean, we use them, and it was like it was a bank, it was fine, I guess, but it was really hard.
[00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:16.480] I think it felt really hard to do stuff.
[00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:19.200] It's pretty inflexible.
[00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:21.040] I don't know, we used them for maybe a year.
[00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:21.520] I don't know.
[00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:23.600] I mean, we didn't make money for a while.
[00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:33.320] I think you actually used it thought we should switch right away because we signed our partnership docs, and I don't think I ever logged into Silicon Valley Bank.
[00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:39.160] And then fairly soon after that, I think you were like, let's get off this Silicon Valley and we switched to Capital One.
[00:05:39.160 --> 00:05:46.360] We did Capital One and then they Capital One, I think they like closed that type of account down or something.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:48.840] Oh, yeah, we had like a small business account or something.
[00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:52.440] You could log into the dashboard or something.
[00:05:52.440 --> 00:05:53.240] Yeah.
[00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:57.000] And so we found Mercury pretty early on.
[00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:57.560] Yeah.
[00:05:57.880 --> 00:05:59.640] They were pretty new, I think, still.
[00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:00.200] Yeah.
[00:06:00.520 --> 00:06:01.560] Yeah, that would have been.
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:04.520] Yeah, it feels like we've been with them forever now.
[00:06:04.520 --> 00:06:16.120] I mean, the UX of Mercury is incredible, but I think this whole banking crisis has made us rethink about what is a bank.
[00:06:16.120 --> 00:06:18.760] Yeah, because Mercury is technically not a bank.
[00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:20.680] So tell me, what is Mercury?
[00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:21.480] What is it?
[00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:25.480] Well, I saw this something online, and I think it was the guy that runs it said something.
[00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:26.680] He's like, we're not actually a bank.
[00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:32.360] We're a software platform for your money, but we work with banks.
[00:06:32.520 --> 00:06:33.960] They have partner banks.
[00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:34.600] Okay.
[00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:36.040] And that's where your money goes, right?
[00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:39.160] And I think they split it across multiple accounts or something.
[00:06:39.160 --> 00:06:46.840] I mean, it looks like one account to you, but it's not, yeah, it's not technically a bank.
[00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:47.480] Yes.
[00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:49.320] It's all very seamless.
[00:06:49.320 --> 00:06:51.240] I mean, it's like has worked great.
[00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:55.880] They have free international wires and like the user experience is amazing.
[00:06:55.880 --> 00:06:59.720] And it doesn't feel like something that's been taped together.
[00:07:00.040 --> 00:07:04.120] It just, like, we've sent tons of wires.
[00:07:04.120 --> 00:07:09.000] We've, you know, it hooks up to our accounting platform well.
[00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:12.520] It, it feels like it just always works.
[00:07:12.520 --> 00:07:14.680] It's been very dependable.
[00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:28.160] And granted, we don't have millions of venture capital funding sitting in an account, which I think, you know, I don't know if like SVB was better for that type of company, but.
[00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:29.360] Well, apparently not.
[00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:34.240] They only had $250,000 of insurance shared deposits.
[00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:35.040] Right, right, right.
[00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:42.080] I think this is this whole episode, and honestly, it is awful.
[00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:54.160] I don't want to make light of, you know, a lot of these companies who've received funding are still small businesses who are run by people like you and I.
[00:07:54.400 --> 00:08:03.760] They have employees like Transistor and, you know, not making payroll and all of that stuff is awful.
[00:08:03.760 --> 00:08:18.800] And I also want to recognize that not every company can be structured like Transistor, but it did reveal how different it is to be running a business that is just profitable.
[00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:26.720] And we don't keep a giant cash balance with Transistor.
[00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:27.360] No, we don't.
[00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:38.720] Generally, it's just like every month our revenue is really consistent and it's basically always gone up, even if it's only gone up by a little bit.
[00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:48.800] And that has that model is calmer, at least at this stage of history.
[00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:50.160] That could change.
[00:08:50.160 --> 00:09:00.600] But it has, it just revealed, like, wow, like this whole new financial era we're in with high interest rates.
[00:09:00.920 --> 00:09:12.200] And now, you know, all the think pieces on Medium and other places are like, how now Silicon Valley's got to get back to the basics, get back to profitability.
[00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:15.400] You know, startups have to act like small businesses.
[00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:23.720] And, you know, for us, it's just been like, well, that's, that's, that was the style that always appealed to us.
[00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:35.240] And it, I think, in most cases, especially if the business you've started has a good financial engine, and that's a huge caveat.
[00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:36.200] Caveat?
[00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:37.160] Yeah.
[00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:37.800] Okay.
[00:09:39.080 --> 00:09:41.000] I think that's the same in Canada.
[00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.480] Sometimes I read that word and I'm like, Cavite?
[00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:44.920] No, it's not Cavite.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:46.600] It's caveat.
[00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:53.880] You know, the caveat is that it's hard finding a business.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:10:03.400] You and I have tried other businesses in our past, and Transistor by far has the best financial engine of anything we've tried.
[00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:10.920] So obviously that really helps and to make it feel calm.
[00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:25.160] But yeah, it just did feel like, and our friends that have businesses like that, you know, the Ian Landsmans of the world, the Michelle Hansons of the world, they're running small software companies like us.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:39.000] And I think all of us were kind of standing on the outside of this going, wow, like, yeah, if you had a bunch of investment and then all of a sudden you lost, you, you, I mean, it wasn't just that they lost.
[00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:43.080] This would have also affected us if all of a sudden our bank account got frozen.
[00:10:43.080 --> 00:10:45.120] Like, that would have been not fun.
[00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:45.360] Right.
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:50.240] Or, you know, the some of the providers we use are run out of money and then they can't actually run their business.
[00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:56.400] And yeah, it did make me think about transfer-wise/slash wise, which is similar to Mercury.
[00:10:56.400 --> 00:11:07.040] I think it's just some amorphous tech chrome on top of something on the back end, you know.
[00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:32.240] But breaking news from Mercury, they're obviously, I think, all the banks, all the smaller banks or bank-like things are trying desperately to retain customers because the unfortunate side effect of all this is that a lot of businesses, including small businesses, but large depositors especially, are moving their funds from smaller banks to the big banks.
[00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:53.040] And you're going to, you know, there's, especially in the States, you're going to have a situation where all the big money is at chase, and then it's going to make it even harder to regulate the big banks because they're going to always, all of them, they will be much too large to fail.
[00:11:53.040 --> 00:11:54.720] Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe.
[00:11:54.720 --> 00:12:03.760] I think the government did the right thing, though, and kind of how they reacted and kind of prevented a bunch of different bank runs.
[00:12:03.760 --> 00:12:08.240] But I think Mercury actually got a lot of new customers from what I've seen.
[00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:09.920] Yeah, well, that's, yeah, that's true.
[00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:14.960] It would be interesting to know how this actually shook out for them because I see two trends.
[00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:18.960] One, people moving their money out of smaller banks like Mercury.
[00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:23.600] And two, I've heard that a lot of people were switching to Mercury.
[00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:32.280] But yeah, they just announced we've worked with our partner banks to offer additional FDIC insurance.
[00:12:32.280 --> 00:12:34.520] First to $1 million, then to $3 million.
[00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:35.640] Now we've gone a step further.
[00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:42.120] By Monday, you will have access to up to $5 million in FDIC insurance, 20 times the per banking limit.
[00:12:42.120 --> 00:12:45.720] Yeah, I think that's something to do with how they split your money across accounts.
[00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:45.960] Yeah.
[00:12:46.280 --> 00:12:47.160] Behind the scenes.
[00:12:47.640 --> 00:12:51.480] And there's also, it's not clear if every depositor gets that.
[00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:55.160] The other thing is that every time I've had to deal with insurance, it really sucks.
[00:12:55.160 --> 00:13:05.240] So it's like, sure, you might get your money bank back, but if accounts get frozen or whatever, it still sucks because then you've got even a week without access to your bank account.
[00:13:06.040 --> 00:13:10.360] But I think once the FDIC steps in, they're pretty efficient.
[00:13:10.360 --> 00:13:11.720] They're pretty good at what they do.
[00:13:11.720 --> 00:13:15.560] I don't think it's going to be, it's not like working with some crappy insurance company.
[00:13:15.560 --> 00:13:16.120] Yeah.
[00:13:16.120 --> 00:13:16.440] Yep.
[00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:16.840] Yep.
[00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:17.800] Yep.
[00:13:17.800 --> 00:13:18.200] Yeah.
[00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:19.000] So interesting.
[00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:22.120] It'll be interesting to watch that.
[00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:26.040] I think we should talk about this next item that I'm highlighting.
[00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:27.560] Are you okay if we talk about that?
[00:13:27.560 --> 00:13:28.200] Yeah.
[00:13:28.200 --> 00:13:28.760] Okay.
[00:13:29.800 --> 00:13:34.920] We've had some folks that have said maybe we shouldn't talk about it, but I think it's better to talk about it than not.
[00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:38.600] Section 174.
[00:13:38.600 --> 00:13:46.760] Folks, if you have a software company in the United States, you need to be aware of Section 174.
[00:13:46.760 --> 00:13:59.560] Basically, it is treating software development costs, and there's some confusion about this, but the more I've read into the U.S.
[00:13:59.560 --> 00:14:07.800] tax code, the more it seems like, and now we actually have people who are trying, who have been assessed by the IRS.
[00:14:07.800 --> 00:14:11.400] So we know that these assessments are actually even happening.
[00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:28.400] This will dramatically increase the amount of tax that you pay because instead of saying a development salary is an expense, you have to categorize it as research and development?
[00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:32.320] Yes, and then you have to amortize that over numerous years.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:34.080] Yes, thanks.
[00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:37.600] Yeah, which makes your taxable income way higher.
[00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:49.840] The example, I'll link to it in the show notes from Ian Landsman: is let's say on a million dollars revenue, normally you have dev salaries that equal 500,000 and your tax rate would be 30%.
[00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:52.960] So your tax bill would be 75,000.
[00:14:53.280 --> 00:14:58.800] Under this new system, your tax bill would be 225,000.
[00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:01.760] It dramatically increases.
[00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:08.080] Basically, this legislation makes no sense for small software companies.
[00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:12.640] It is actively harmful for small software companies.
[00:15:12.640 --> 00:15:27.440] And sometimes software companies and small software companies, we kind of live in this world of magical thinking, you know, where, I mean, you and I are also predisposed to this.
[00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:30.240] You know, well, sales tax, we don't need to worry about that right now.
[00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:32.880] Or, well, you know, we're a small company.
[00:15:32.880 --> 00:15:34.640] We don't need to worry about that.
[00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:40.080] This actually could have a meaningful effect on people's businesses.
[00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:47.040] Yeah, I mean, especially like, you know, if you don't last for five years, because every year, you're going to amortize more and more, right?
[00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:54.640] So it piles up and it gets, you'd be paying less and less over the years, but like the first year or two is going to be like it's a massive hit.
[00:15:54.640 --> 00:15:59.760] So Michelle Hansen, friend of the show, she's the co-founder of GeoCode.
[00:15:59.960 --> 00:16:07.800] She has started the Small Software Business Alliance, SSB Alliance.org.
[00:16:07.800 --> 00:16:10.120] I'll put the link in the show notes.
[00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:13.640] If you, oh, she's actually expanded this now.
[00:16:13.640 --> 00:16:16.440] She's got a great TLDR here too.
[00:16:16.760 --> 00:16:24.680] If you have a small software business that is incorporated in the United States, you need to go there, put your name and email in there.
[00:16:24.680 --> 00:16:28.760] She is going to be kind of the central communication hub for all this stuff.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:35.960] She's in contact with people in Washington, D.C., and she's working on some stuff behind the scenes she can't talk about yet.
[00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:42.280] But we really do need to make our voices heard on this.
[00:16:42.280 --> 00:16:44.520] And if you are a U.S.
[00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:50.280] citizen, you also have an opportunity to contact your representative.
[00:16:50.760 --> 00:17:00.440] I can sign up for this here as a co-founder of Transistor, but only John can contact his state representative and say, this is going to affect me.
[00:17:00.760 --> 00:17:03.240] And Michelle even recommends calling them.
[00:17:04.120 --> 00:17:06.520] They have to record every phone call.
[00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:11.640] And there's actually a big chance this goes through.
[00:17:11.640 --> 00:17:21.240] And a smaller chance, even if we make noise, that even if we make noise, there's no guarantee, but at least there's a possibility.
[00:17:21.240 --> 00:17:27.320] So I mean, from reading about it, it's like nobody really wanted it anyway, and yet they voted on it, but they didn't, maybe didn't read it.
[00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:29.720] It's like they don't read this stuff anyway.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:30.840] And they just vote it.
[00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:31.720] They just vote it in.
[00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:33.560] And then they're like, oh, wait, no, that was a bad idea.
[00:17:33.560 --> 00:17:41.080] This is a classic case of just fucked up politics.
[00:17:41.080 --> 00:17:43.080] And it sucks.
[00:17:43.080 --> 00:17:44.200] It really does suck.
[00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:52.560] I actually, I was thinking about this the other day because are you familiar with Peter Lovell's Nomad List?
[00:17:52.560 --> 00:18:03.360] It's like a site where you can put in like, hey, I want sunshine, but, you know, I want it to be safe and I want it to be, you know, you can put in all these criteria.
[00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:20.560] It's almost like we need a SAS list, which is like a way of filtering what is the best place to incorporate your company because there's all these, like if this comes into law, that would be a substantial reason to incorporate your company somewhere else.
[00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:30.000] But on the flip side, if we incorporated it anywhere but the U.S., your Stripe fees go up substantially.
[00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.880] So if you're a Stripe, if you're incorporating Canada using Stripe, all of your U.S.
[00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:38.960] credit cards, I believe, are treated as foreign, right?
[00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:40.240] They're not domestic.
[00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:44.240] And so you pay an additional 1% or 1.5%.
[00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:47.680] There's all of these factors that make it like, ah, maybe we should incorporate here.
[00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:48.720] Maybe we should incorporate here.
[00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:49.520] Maybe we should.
[00:18:49.840 --> 00:18:50.960] Yeah, I wonder.
[00:18:50.960 --> 00:19:01.680] It'd be nice if there's a central place to like if the best place to incorporate your company is in Saskatchewan, Canada, let's do it.
[00:19:02.320 --> 00:19:04.560] You're always ragging on Saskatchewan.
[00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:07.920] That felt like a nice thing to say about Saskatchewan.
[00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:09.920] I'm like, Mel, maybe we should look it there.
[00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:13.360] Hey, how come your team doesn't have their own podcast?
[00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:18.320] Head over to Transistor and use my coupon, transistor.fm/slash justin.
[00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:22.400] You'll get 15% off your first year of podcast hosting.
[00:19:23.600 --> 00:19:25.520] Let's, how long have we gone now?
[00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:26.640] Oh, wow, already 20 minutes.
[00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:32.840] Okay, well, let's do a little sales tax compliance update because I think that's what people are here for.
[00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:33.960] The exciting part of this.
[00:19:34.280 --> 00:19:37.640] Yeah, Chris, we need a little sales tax jingle here, you know?
[00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:43.960] Sales tax compliance.
[00:19:47.800 --> 00:19:48.600] That's the first line.
[00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:50.120] I'll keep working on it.
[00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:55.880] So I think the most relevant news here is that Revan has just shut down.
[00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:57.320] What is Revan, Justin?
[00:19:57.320 --> 00:20:12.520] So Revan was one of these merchants of record that was recommended to us by folks saying, and I'm going to, I'll use my voice, but you know, like, they were like, ah, you just got a merchant of records.
[00:20:12.520 --> 00:20:14.200] Revan, they'll solve your problems.
[00:20:14.200 --> 00:20:15.240] Quit complaining.
[00:20:15.240 --> 00:20:17.880] You know, we had concerns back then.
[00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:22.040] Now they've shut down, and I have even more concerns about all merchants of record.
[00:20:22.040 --> 00:20:24.520] So here's the email that they sent customers.
[00:20:24.520 --> 00:20:26.280] No public announcement, by the way.
[00:20:26.280 --> 00:20:26.920] Very weird.
[00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:29.720] They just all of a sudden changed their homepage.
[00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:30.760] Now apparently they do.
[00:20:30.760 --> 00:20:36.600] If you go to getrevan.com, I think it goes to Revan.consulting now.
[00:20:36.600 --> 00:20:38.200] So now they're a consulting company.
[00:20:38.760 --> 00:20:49.640] Here's a quote from the email: The most relevant reason that we're shutting down is that the merchant of record model is too risky for both sellers and the merchant of record operator.
[00:20:49.640 --> 00:20:50.920] What are they talking about here?
[00:20:50.920 --> 00:20:51.320] Okay.
[00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:52.840] Back to the email.
[00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:57.880] Sellers bear the risk of platform shutdown, as seen in the example of Flurly and Stripe.
[00:20:57.880 --> 00:20:59.480] Now, I hadn't heard of this.
[00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:11.560] What they're talking about here, what happened to Flurly was that some folks who were using Flurly as a merchant of record became engaged in illegal activity.
[00:21:11.560 --> 00:21:28.960] At which point, Stripe sent them an email saying, there's folks using your Stripe account who are in violation of regulations and will be substantially could be subject to substantial fines.
[00:21:29.280 --> 00:21:36.080] Examples of violations, including selling copyrighted products, selling pharmaceuticals.
[00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:47.600] And because of that, Stripe had to shut Flurly's Stripe account down, which included all of the merchants that they were being the merchants of record for.
[00:21:47.600 --> 00:21:48.640] Yikes.
[00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:50.640] And that's what Revan would do too, right?
[00:21:51.040 --> 00:21:53.760] We would have been part of that account, right?
[00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:57.360] Yeah, this is what would happen with any.
[00:21:57.840 --> 00:22:01.120] Yeah, I mean, that would just kill our business immediately.
[00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:04.800] So I'm going to put that link in the show notes.
[00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:14.000] So back to their email, the merchant of record operator could potentially become involved in illicit or illegal activities quickly, which could lead to all sorts of problems.
[00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:33.200] The problems are that the people processing your credit card is going to say, ah, no, this whole account we're just going to shut down, or this whole account we're just going to put on pause, or this whole account we're going to just think of all the times you've seen on Twitter where for some reason, this is always a risk.
[00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:37.920] For some reason, someone's PayPal account gets flagged.
[00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:40.800] And they're like, they send out an emergency tweet.
[00:22:40.800 --> 00:22:42.160] PayPal, please help me.
[00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:47.760] Someone's, my account's been shut down, or my account's been flagged, and I can't get it out of here.
[00:22:47.760 --> 00:22:48.720] I need to get the money.
[00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:49.360] I can't.
[00:22:49.680 --> 00:22:52.160] It's a nightmare for the individual.
[00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:55.760] But now, imagine assuming all of that risk.
[00:22:55.760 --> 00:22:57.200] You're just going to go into a pool.
[00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:04.840] It's like going into an email deliverability pool or a web hosting pool where you're all on the same IP.
[00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:09.640] It's the same risk.
[00:23:09.960 --> 00:23:15.080] And this is something I hadn't even considered before with merchants of record.
[00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:19.160] Yeah, that makes it much, much less appealing or not appealing at all.
[00:23:19.480 --> 00:23:22.680] Especially after these bank runs.
[00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.800] It's like, I mean, this is a risk.
[00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:33.560] Of course, this is a risk with any credit card processing you do.
[00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:35.640] Again, PayPal, Stripe, et cetera.
[00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:39.640] The difference is this is like a party line.
[00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:42.840] Everybody's sharing the same Stripe account.
[00:23:42.840 --> 00:24:00.520] And so that exposes you to a risk in the same way that if you sign up with a merchant of record, you start paying, you have to start submitting taxes and collecting taxes for basically every tax region in the world because you've already hit all the thresholds.
[00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:00.920] Why?
[00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:06.200] Because it's the merchant of record is being treated as the business there.
[00:24:06.520 --> 00:24:11.720] Well, now you're also exposing yourself to all of that merchant of record's customers.
[00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.160] Anybody else they are being a merchant of record for.
[00:24:15.160 --> 00:24:18.280] And that, and you have no idea who they are.
[00:24:18.280 --> 00:24:22.360] So at any point, and this could happen to Paddle.
[00:24:22.360 --> 00:24:29.320] I don't know who Paddle and Lemon Squeezy and these other folks use as their credit card processing.
[00:24:29.640 --> 00:24:33.400] I'm guessing that a lot of these services do just use Stripe.
[00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:37.720] Stripe has their own risk assessment people.
[00:24:38.040 --> 00:24:48.000] And if somebody on that account fucks up or does something illegal, it affects everybody in the merchant of record pool.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:48.720] Yeah, that's wild.
[00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:55.680] Or, like, you know, if Flurley or Revan was a bad actor, they'd just be like, oh, we're just taking your money, closing the account, and going to Jamaica.
[00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:18.400] Back to the email, because this even, this is, I don't, again, this is just one company's perspective from Revan, but furthermore, it became increasingly clear that the merchant of record model primarily appeals to small-scale sellers or businesses with questionable and high-risk business models.
[00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:22.880] This presents a significant challenge as we strive to move up the market.
[00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:30.560] The recent change in Stripe's risk behavior has caused us to experience issues with keeping Stripe accounts live.
[00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:33.360] End of email quotes.
[00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:37.680] This is a big deal.
[00:25:37.760 --> 00:25:48.160] Now, I'm sure, especially some of the more mature merchants of record, like Paddle, I'm sure they have ways of mitigating some of these risks, which I'd love to hear from them.
[00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:56.000] But it shows, first of all, that trusting, I mean, even Revan, they describe themselves as an MVP.
[00:25:56.320 --> 00:26:00.800] They built an MVP to test out the market.
[00:26:01.120 --> 00:26:06.320] That I don't want to hand my business over to an MVP.
[00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:14.320] Any company that's brand new, there's just something about it that is stressful.
[00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:20.240] It feels too risky to hand your business over to something that's new and unproven.
[00:26:20.240 --> 00:26:22.600] Yeah, I mean, hand your bank account over to somebody like that.
[00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:22.760] Yeah.
[00:26:23.040 --> 00:26:23.680] Yeah.
[00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:26.080] So, yeah, we've talked, we've kept talking about solutions.
[00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:29.760] One solution was maybe we should get your brother to help us out.
[00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:45.080] Yeah, I mean, he had listened to our episodes and I talked to him for a bit and he was like, you know, when I was in Texas working at the Capitol, like he actually worked on some legislation when they were working on sales tax legislation for Amazon at the time.
[00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:50.920] I mean, it was a long time ago, but so he, I mean, he read all the legislation and probably helped write some stuff.
[00:26:50.920 --> 00:27:03.080] And he knows people who still work there at certain parts of the government or like these tax accounting firms who know the ins and outs of not just Texas, but basically they have to keep up to date with like what every state's doing.
[00:27:03.080 --> 00:27:03.560] Yeah.
[00:27:03.560 --> 00:27:13.960] Whatever we decide, it might be turning on Stripe Tax and using TaxJar for some stuff, but then having someone like my brother actually manage some of that stuff behind the scenes and do the payments and registrations.
[00:27:14.520 --> 00:27:15.720] I'm for it.
[00:27:16.040 --> 00:27:16.760] Yeah, we'll see.
[00:27:16.760 --> 00:27:22.600] I mean, you know, I am still interested in us publishing as much of this stuff publicly.
[00:27:22.600 --> 00:27:34.840] We've got it on the podcast, but I think it'd be nice to have a, you know, maybe something like Michelle's Small Software Business Alliance, and maybe that's the platform.
[00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:42.760] But to be able to publish more of this publicly to share our experience and to share some of these things that just aren't being talked about.
[00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:58.920] Again, I think what's challenging about this is if you're brand new, if you're a small company, a lot of this probably feels like superfluous or, you know, maybe you and I are overreacting or complaining too much.
[00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:09.280] But once you're actually in it and actually having to figure all this stuff out, it just becomes clear so quickly that there's no way.
[00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:23.200] It's not humanly possible, even for these merchants of record, to be 100% completely compliant with every tax region in the world at any given moment.
[00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:26.080] The legislation is changing all the time.
[00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:28.400] The rules are changing all the time.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:44.160] And even, like I said, I've noticed errors on multiple platforms, multiple merchants of record platforms where they're making the calculations wrong or they're showing the wrong information on the receipt.
[00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:46.800] It's very, very difficult to do this.
[00:28:46.800 --> 00:29:00.400] And as has been mentioned before, tomorrow, Moose Jaw Saskatchewan could say, well, now anybody who buys SaaS products in Moose Jaw is subject to a 35% tax.
[00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:04.640] Could send emails to all the companies in the world.
[00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:09.440] Hey, you know, hey, DigitalOcean, hey, Amazon, hey, Microsoft.
[00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:16.640] You are now in violation of the Moose Jaw tax code, Section 102, Section B.
[00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:20.800] And, you know, like then, and they can.
[00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:24.560] It's going to take a week out of your life to make it work right.
[00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:32.240] And, you know, payments to the Moose Jaw tax office must be done in person between the business hours of 10 and 3 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday.
[00:29:32.560 --> 00:29:35.120] Please fax this form to this number.
[00:29:37.040 --> 00:29:45.600] Please call this number and do the mail moose meeting call, and then you will be greeted with a five-digit code.
[00:29:47.520 --> 00:29:48.480] It's ridiculous.
[00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:49.120] Yeah, it's a lot.
[00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:53.200] I mean, it just consumes you after a while, and you're like, I don't want to think about this, so I'm just going to ignore it.
[00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:55.120] And then, I mean, you know, it's just a lot of fun.
[00:29:55.360 --> 00:29:56.000] All this shit.
[00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:56.560] You know what?
[00:29:57.280 --> 00:30:02.920] Going through this, software is a pretty nice business to be in.
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:05.480] Some of this stuff just feels oppressive.
[00:30:06.120 --> 00:30:28.840] It just feels like I know some people are going to say that's an over-exaggeration, but like the things that you have to, until you've actually done it, until you've owned a business, some of the stuff is just feels like, why are cities, states, and provinces, countries, and then platforms like Stripe?
[00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:34.440] Why are they making it so difficult to be a small business?
[00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:41.560] It feels like it actively makes business more difficult.
[00:30:41.560 --> 00:30:42.440] And this is everything.
[00:30:42.440 --> 00:30:43.400] It's insurance.
[00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:47.000] I was talking to my friend who runs a little Main Street business here.
[00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:49.560] Guess how much he pays in insurance every month?
[00:30:49.560 --> 00:30:50.440] Five grand.
[00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:51.480] No, not quite five grand.
[00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:56.360] What's the business?
[00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:56.680] I don't know.
[00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:06.600] Okay, it's a little shop, little record shop, tiny store, like under a thousand square feet, probably 500 square feet.
[00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:08.040] Just insurance.
[00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:08.840] 500 bucks.
[00:31:09.080 --> 00:31:11.320] Fire insurance or inventory insurance or what?
[00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:16.760] It's liability and some inventory insurance, but 500 bucks a month.
[00:31:17.080 --> 00:31:18.920] And I was thinking about it.
[00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:25.800] I'm like, I don't even, I should look at our insurance bill, but I would be surprised if we're paying that much.
[00:31:25.800 --> 00:31:26.280] Right.
[00:31:26.280 --> 00:31:34.120] And his, like, that's more than that's like a significant portion of his expenses is just insurance.
[00:31:34.120 --> 00:31:37.640] These kinds of things, I think entrepreneurship is amazing.
[00:31:37.640 --> 00:31:42.920] I think that small businesses are kind of like the lifeblood of any economy.
[00:31:42.920 --> 00:31:48.560] And I don't think enough people are talking about it, maybe because they don't want to seem like complainers.
[00:31:48.560 --> 00:31:49.040] Right.
[00:31:49.360 --> 00:31:50.640] But it's hard.
[00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:51.280] It's hard.
[00:31:51.280 --> 00:31:52.240] Yeah, I mean, yeah.
[00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:53.600] I mean, the U.S.
[00:31:53.760 --> 00:31:54.880] certainly doesn't make it easy.
[00:31:54.880 --> 00:32:02.240] I mean, Canada, probably not either, but city planning departments and Chicago SaaS sales tax.
[00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:08.800] It's like, I could tell you one thing that they should all do right away: increase your exemption limit.
[00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:13.040] Don't make it one transaction and then you've crossed the threshold.
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:18.080] Just increase the exemption limit and give small businesses some breathing room.
[00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:26.240] Anyway, that ends our sales tax compliance section.
[00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:28.800] Sales tax compliance.
[00:32:32.560 --> 00:32:36.320] On a positive note, you just released the new software.
[00:32:36.320 --> 00:32:36.640] I did.
[00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:40.000] Yeah, we've been kind of working on this for a while.
[00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:45.040] It's an integration with Patreon, which has been interesting.
[00:32:45.360 --> 00:32:46.000] Yeah.
[00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:50.960] We'll probably have some, I'm sure we'll have more and more updates as people use it and time goes on.
[00:32:50.960 --> 00:33:03.040] But essentially, you can hook up, you can connect your Patreon account to your podcast and it'll pull in all your supporters and display them on your website and show notes as well.
[00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:12.880] Show notes and have a nice little section where people can join the Patreon campaign and shows you if you have progress towards a goal and how that's going.
[00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:15.200] And shout out new supporters in your show notes.
[00:33:15.600 --> 00:33:16.240] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:24.800] There's even a little, we have these liquid tags that you can specifically highlight new supporters since the last episode.
[00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:26.320] Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
[00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:33.240] And then a little widget on the bottom of the website that says this podcast has 16 supporters or whatever.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:37.000] So, yeah, that was really cool to roll that out.
[00:33:37.160 --> 00:33:40.280] Lots of folks have already implemented it.
[00:33:40.280 --> 00:33:49.400] It's one of those things where, like, we announced it and it even before we announced it, people were discovering it and adding it, you know, adding it to their show.
[00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:53.320] So it felt cool to be able to do something with monetization.
[00:33:54.120 --> 00:33:59.000] We think that, you know, even earning a little bit of money from your podcast can go a long way.
[00:33:59.320 --> 00:34:01.640] So, yeah, it was fun.
[00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:11.240] Yeah, I think, yeah, there's, you know, there's other features we're thinking about related to this or on top of this or other platforms that we can integrate with that do something similar to Patreon.
[00:34:11.880 --> 00:34:12.840] Yeah, we'll see.
[00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:13.960] See how this one goes.
[00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:15.880] But so far, people are using it.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:17.240] Yeah, yeah, it's exciting.
[00:34:18.040 --> 00:34:24.520] I think monetization is one of those things that we want to be thinking more about.
[00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:26.760] And it is a little bit more complicated.
[00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:39.080] One of the reasons we chose Patreon was because the complications of like using Stripe or PayPal, it's just a bit of a harder lift.
[00:34:39.400 --> 00:34:43.960] And this was like, okay, a lot of our customers already use Patreon.
[00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:47.800] Let's just do this as the initial thing to get us going.
[00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:48.440] Yeah.
[00:34:48.840 --> 00:34:54.600] I've been hiring Josh Anderton to help me work on a bunch of marketing site stuff, and we've been rolling that out.
[00:34:54.600 --> 00:34:58.920] It's been really fun to have a big refresh.
[00:35:00.120 --> 00:35:03.960] And yeah, it just feels like every day we've got something new to look at.
[00:35:03.960 --> 00:35:10.040] He's also worked on a new podcast website theme that is getting pretty close.
[00:35:10.040 --> 00:35:11.960] Yeah, it's been pretty close to being done.
[00:35:12.280 --> 00:35:13.640] So that's been exciting.
[00:35:13.960 --> 00:35:19.280] It's a much different theme than we've had so far, which will be cool.
[00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:26.000] And I released a little side project, mypodstudios.com, that I'd like folks to go check out.
[00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:29.040] I'm thinking more about my studio.
[00:35:29.040 --> 00:35:31.600] My studio is embarrassing.
[00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:34.560] And your AstroTurf?
[00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:49.200] Yeah, I got some AstroTurf on the ground, but it's just, it's not for the amount of time I'm on camera for Transistor and for the amount of time I have to show up on interviews and, you know, like I did that descript live stream.
[00:35:49.200 --> 00:35:51.440] You need a bookshelf back there that makes you look smart.
[00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:51.920] I know.
[00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:52.880] All the things you're reading.
[00:35:53.440 --> 00:35:55.040] Tax compliance law.
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:00.320] Tax compliance law.
[00:36:00.640 --> 00:36:01.600] I would love that.
[00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:04.000] I should just frame some tax compliance law.
[00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:05.920] And then people are like, hey, what's that in the background?
[00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:09.440] Oh, that's section 32b from Moose Jaw Saskatchewan.
[00:36:10.800 --> 00:36:12.080] Just read that during lunch.
[00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:12.960] I love it.
[00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:14.400] I'm a big fan.
[00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:17.040] So I've been thinking about how to improve my studio.
[00:36:17.040 --> 00:36:21.760] And I thought, okay, one way to get inspired is to look at studios I like.
[00:36:21.760 --> 00:36:22.240] Yeah.
[00:36:22.560 --> 00:36:29.840] And so I started this little site using Indie Hacker and longtime supporter of the show, Val Soapy.
[00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:44.400] He's got a little product called Blogstatic and just made a little site and featured Steven Robles, who's got a really bunch of cool podcasts on Transistor, Apple Insider, HomeKit Insider, movies on the side.
[00:36:44.720 --> 00:36:51.760] Anyway, if you want to see some pretty studio photos, head over to mypodstudios.com.
[00:36:51.760 --> 00:36:52.560] Cool.
[00:36:52.560 --> 00:36:53.280] All right.
[00:36:53.280 --> 00:37:00.120] Well, John, now's the time to use our feature and thank our Patreon supporters.
[00:37:00.120 --> 00:37:01.400] Yeah, thanks, everyone.
[00:37:01.400 --> 00:37:04.280] As always, we have rewardful.com.
[00:36:59.680 --> 00:37:05.560] Those guys are great.
[00:37:06.120 --> 00:37:36.280] Greg Park, Mitchell Davis from recruitkit.com.au, Marcel Falet from WeAreBold.af, Ethan Gunderson, Anton Zorin from ProudCamp.com, Bill Kondo, Alex Payne, Ward from memberspace.com, Russell Brown from Fotivo.com, Evendra Sassy, Austin Lovelace, Michael Sitber, our friends at Fathom Analytics, my brother Dan Buddha, sales tax compliance expert.
[00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:37.800] Yeah, soon to be.
[00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:44.520] Colin Gray, Darby Frey, and Dave Junta.
[00:37:44.520 --> 00:37:46.680] Junta.
[00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:48.040] Junta.
[00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:50.840] We need a new podcast just called Junta.
[00:37:51.160 --> 00:37:53.320] G-I-U-N-T-A.
[00:37:53.640 --> 00:37:54.040] Yeah.
[00:37:54.280 --> 00:37:55.320] Junta.
[00:37:55.320 --> 00:37:56.680] It's just Dave.
[00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:57.960] It's just Dave.
[00:37:57.960 --> 00:37:59.080] Just talking about it.
[00:37:59.240 --> 00:38:00.600] Chats with Dave.
[00:38:00.600 --> 00:38:01.080] Yeah.
[00:38:01.320 --> 00:38:05.560] Dave, if you want to start the Junta podcast, let us know.
[00:38:07.560 --> 00:38:09.480] We'll show up for that.
[00:38:09.480 --> 00:38:10.520] Actually, that would be fun.
[00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:13.800] It's like whoever wants to show up shows up.
[00:38:13.800 --> 00:38:16.120] Dave just announces the time, shows up.
[00:38:16.760 --> 00:38:17.480] Whoever shows up.
[00:38:18.200 --> 00:38:19.480] That's the show.
[00:38:19.480 --> 00:38:20.280] Yeah.
[00:38:20.920 --> 00:38:21.960] Sounds good.
[00:38:22.280 --> 00:38:22.920] All right, everyone.
[00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:24.120] Thanks for listening.
[00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.880] Please reach out if you've got comments or thoughts.
[00:38:27.880 --> 00:38:29.640] We'd love to hear from you.
[00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:32.280] And we'll see you next week.
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