A retrospective of the first 110 episodes of the TechZing tech startup podcast
This is a guest post by Gordon Oppenheimer who submitted these comments on the TechZing blog for episode 110.
In the past month and a half, I have listened to all 110 episodes [of TechZing]. Here are my thoughts:
The Show Name
In my opinion, you were committed to the name with the first link/mention pointing to TechZing. All the discussion about it got kinda old but in retrospect it is one of the aspects of the show I like the best. I got to listen in on your struggles about the name and your decision making process (more on that later).
Unusual Guests
It is a great idea, and I like the choice of guests. This is the “Zing” part of the show.
Straying off Tech Topics
You seem to have a good balance. The non-tech topics, for the most part, do interest me. More “Zing” parts.
Build vs Reuse
You most often talk about this with regard to frameworks. In different ways, you both advocate writing your own framework. You have both been coding for a long time and I think you forget what it is not to know all that you know. For me, I started using a framework (Codeigniter) about a year ago because the possibilities for coding were too vast and I felt lost. The framework gave me some structure that was built on what others had learned. I may not understand all the reasons it helps or hurts yet but at least it gives me a reasonable direction.
Justin and Jason Projects
This is the BEST part of the show. I get the sense that you feel a little guilty asking guests about your own projects. However, this is where I learn the most. The rest of the stuff on the Internet tries to distill everything down to THE answer. But as you have mentioned, there is no ONE answer. When you ask about your own projects or discuss them with each other, I get to listen in on the decision making process.
Show Suggestion
Get a panel of guests and use the whole show to discuss all aspects of a single project (yours or some other struggling startup). Discuss marketing, pricing, freeium vs trials, payments, technologies, A/B testing, revenues, costs, professional help (accounting, legal, business entities), etc… It would be like a case study.
Thanks for the show!
End of guest post. If you haven’t heard TechZing and you’re looking for a totally new type of tech podcast we invite you to check it out at http://techzinglive.com