Tech Brew Ride Home - (Portfolio Profile) Stashpad

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

Stashpad is the developer notepad. Devs! Download the app at Stashpad.com and help us finalize everything before the big launch! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another portfolio profile episode of the Tech Meme Ride Home. I believe this is going to be one that almost everyone listening is not only going to be excited about, but could immediately try out and help us launch and improve.

Today we're going to talk to Kara Bornstein, who is the founder of, well, when I invested, it was called Bite Base. We'll get to that in a second. But the company we're talking about is called StashPad. So, Kara, thanks for coming on first of all. But give us just the sort of two-minute high level. What is Stashpad and what can I do with it? Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much for having me today.

So Stashpad is a developer notepad. And so basically how it started is I'm a software engineer. And I started to notice that it was super scattered and chaotic for me to keep track of all the information I needed to do my job. job as a software engineer. And so at first, I thought maybe it was a problem with our team processes or with the Wiki, but when we dug in further, we saw that it was actually a personal tooling issue. So 90% of software engineers, just like me,

use a bare bones scratch pad to manage all of their thoughts and work as they go about their day. And so this is something like the default notes app on your computer. My personal favorite is the untitled text file, or it could be sticky notes, or even a plain piece of piece of paper. And all of these bare-bone scratch pads are super fast for getting things down. But when it's time to actually make sense of all that and act on it later, they're totally chaotic. And so stash pad is the first developer notepad.

That's super fast and convenient, but actually stays organized enough so that you can stay in flow, do your best work, and enjoy it. So an obvious point to make here is there's a ton of complicated tools for devs. There's also a ton of note pad and scratch pad sort of things. Why specifically is a scratch pad something that, as you said, was sort of like a tool missing in the devs sort of workflow? Yeah. Yeah.

So it's not missing. Everyone is using a scratch pad pretty much. But it's not performing up to standard. And so basically, even though everyone is using a scratch pad, there hasn't been one before what we're doing now that's actually built specific for developer workflows. And so one thing that we've learned along the journey and that we're excited to be offering now is we really focus on developers. So unlike the default notes up on your computer, this is a developer scratch pad. And what does that specifically mean?

What is designed with developer workflow in mind that what's already been out there doesn't have? Yeah, so we think of it in two different parts. So the first thing is that in Stashpad, you have all of the features that you'd expect of any developer tool. So this is things like markdown support, keyboard bindings, syntax highlighting on your code, that kind of stuff. But then even more interesting to me

is that we have specifically designed for developer workflows. So a common one that's pretty simple is it's common to copy code from your note solution into your shell. And usually you would think you like select the text using your mouse, drag across, then Commander Control C and paste it into the shell. With sash pad, one click to copy and you're in or one key press. And then a slightly more complicated workflow that we also are built for is as professional software engineers, context switching is definitely not our favorite

thing, but it's just part of the job. And so we have worked. worked really hard to make it so that whenever you do have to contact switch, you can get into what you want to focus on as quickly as possible. So changing topics, jumping to a meeting, one key press, you're in. Need to stash away something for later, but want to stay on what you're doing, you can do that. So more time and flow. Is, I'm assuming that this is also designed to plug into various people's workflows.

Like this is not designed necessarily to take over, but maybe down the road as it gets more robust, you know, it could be. But right now, it's designed to work when and how you're currently working. It's a supplement. It's superpowering, not taking over right now. Yep. So right now, basically, it's a drop in replacement for whatever, like text files, sticky notes, Slack message to yourself, whatever embarrassing, a crazy messy thing that you choose to do to dot things down because everyone has their own way. And then long term, we'll be really excited to offer more extensibility. Before this, I was an engineer at Twilio. So I am an API super fan. And so I'm really excited once we nail the full core product to make it easy to extend SashPad so that it can

seamlessly fit into your workflow in whatever way it works for you. And you can totally customize it. So you mentioned that you have a developer background yourself, Twilio. And I think you said at the at the start that like this was something that you identified yourself and felt like there wasn't good tools for. But give me a deeper sense of how the idea came about. Like, did you, it was this one of those things where like you're just talking to, you know, colleagues and being like, wouldn't it be great if there was something like that? And they were like, yeah, exactly. We, somebody should do that at some point. Tell me the, tell me the origin story of this idea. Yeah. So I wish that was the origin story that started that we just started there of

hey, I think there's this problem. Here's a scratch pad solution. And that's often what I tell is the story now when I tell people about it. But the reality is when we started SpashPad, I was a software engineer. My co-founder is also a software engineer. We noticed the problem really at first, like I had described, kind of around getting all that information together so that you can do your work efficiently. And when I said that we thought maybe it was a wiki problem, we really did.

And so two engineers, we think we could solve a problem, start building without doing the right research. We actually built a Wiki solution before this. And what we saw was nobody wanted it, which was humbling and definitely not the most fun. But the cool thing there was that we then had these engineers who were talking to us and telling us they didn't want that. And they were telling us what they were doing.

And so how we came to Sashpad, is all of these developers who didn't want the wiki that we were building or any other one for that matter, we're like, we don't want that, but I'm using a scratch pad all day. And we're like, okay, maybe we should make a better scratch pad. Well, let's just stay here for just a second and think about that. Because people talk about all the time, you know, pivoting in startups and things like that. But what you're describing is interesting where you set out to solve a specific problem that you felt was out there, And literally the first people you try it on are like, yeah, that's gray and everything.

But my real problem is over here. So like, what is what happens in your head? I mean, obviously, you have to have a certain level of humility to be like, you know, I thought this was the problem, but the problem is really that. Do you, is it more like, but I did set out to solve problems for developers, for productivity. And so screw it. Who cares if I thought that it. the problem was A and it's really B.

Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of it. It definitely was not like it was hard to, I didn't, I can't say that I accepted it immediately as soon as like I saw like the first 10 people didn't want it. I was like, okay, maybe more. And that's part of how the audience for researching personal developer notes got to be. But it definitely was like, we wanted to solve this problem to basically just make, help developers like myself work better and also enjoy. that work, that seemed like an opportunity. And we jumped right into a solution because it was so

comfortable for us to build stuff. And that was a lot more comfortable than actually like talking to people. And then when we realized that people didn't want it, that that sucked. But, but it was really cool. And like definitely a light ball moment when we started to ask people like, okay, you're not using this. Let's reset. Tell me about your day. What are you doing? And the the scratch pad, it wasn't actually even, it wasn't something people were voluntarily telling us about it first. They were saying, oh, yeah, for notes, I use different, more robust solutions and this team one and all this stuff.

And then I'm like, okay, can I actually watch sit with you as you're doing your work? And I'm like, okay, you're using a scratch pad. You're doing that to you. And you. Oh, and look, I'm doing that also. Okay, reset. Let's try this. What did it aside from you know asking friends and family and colleagues and things like that

what other resources out there are there at that stage of developing something where it's like hey i i put this together give it a try and people are like meh but how do you like also sort of like throw the doors open i mean just what are the resources that exist for the super early stage to be like, hello world, come, give this a go. And then, because that's the first step before you can even get the feedback. So, yeah, that's a great question. So one place is, like, as far as online stuff goes, is like indie hackers. The website has a pretty strong community.

And we definitely, when we first, before pivoting to personal notes, what we did was write a post about that in indie hackers. And we got like 150 signups before we had implemented it. who are like, okay, this is the right way to do it. Let's do it. This is feeling better. But honestly, to say, like, oh, post on this website or that one, there's no easy answer. Like, to get the feedback that you need in order to build something great, you have to kind of get out there and hustle. And the cool thing is that, like, people get really excited about entrepreneurship. They want to be part of it a lot of the times. And we need them to be part of it. because all of that help,

like that's how, how the like the countless iterations and everything, that's how it gets there. And it's exciting to be able to do that with the community that you built. But you kind of need to build that community one way or another. For me, it was definitely because I had worked at Twilio and there are a lot of, obviously a lot of developers who worked there who are super smart.

It was a lot of like reaching out to my former colleagues, finding anyone who is kind of interested in developer productivity. Oh, you built this crazy thing with Emacs. Show it to me. Tell me about it. You have a friend who did that too. And just kind of like very manually working your way through to learn, meet people. That's kind of how we did it.

And how hard is it to actually push people for, no, don't just tell me it's great. Tell me what is not great. Like, tell me, like, that sort of dog fooding early beta stuff, or I guess Alpha of stuff where it's like, okay, it's functional, but like, what would you really like to see? Or what have I done that's dumb? Like how, what's your philosophy on that in terms of like, you know, it's almost like focus grouping and interviewing and things like that, but getting people to give you the actual tangible product feedback that is actually where the gold lies?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one thing is definitely whenever you talk to people to frame it. And so to say very clearly, like, I know you want to be nice and stuff, but it's actually much nicer to me if you are rude. And so usually when I'm doing like user feedback sessions, I'll be like, okay, imagine and like this is your totally lazy part of the day. So like any like laziness or stress that you have right now, just put it on me and bring that self, that version of yourself,

not a super nice polished version. So that's one thing, the framing. Then a second thing is that I always ask very specifically like, what's one thing that would work better? What's one thing that's not working great in the app? And that's where I'll get something pretty specific, like this key binding shouldn't work this way, or I would want code box to work this way instead of this way.

So something like that. And then probably the most interesting thing is we're very specifically focused on this scratch pad use case. But it's always interesting to see, especially in earlier iterations and still now, If you are not using stashpad as your only scratch node solution, what else are you using or what adjacent things are you using and why are you going? And that's what tells us like, okay,

it's because you like the way that you can prioritize notes over here. So for that use case, you go here, right? Or, oh, because you need a different type of notes. You're going to go over here. And so that kind of some of those things we don't want to take on because you want to keep scope narrow. But some of those, it's like, okay, if we did, this, I think the product would be much better for this type of use case. Well, since we're on this theme of seeing what works and throwing the spaghetti against the wall

sort of stuff, as I mentioned at the beginning, you did a name change, which we don't even have to bring up the old name again, the dead name, as it were. But what is that like, too, when you get down the road, you know, you haven't done a ton of branding yet. That's at the stage we're at right now is getting out there and doing the real hello world stuff. But what's the thinking behind? Well, we can't go really public with this name because it's not good enough. And just give me a little bit of that of literally changing horses with a brand with a name, a very basic thing like that. Yeah. So a lot of what we were looking for, I will say the old name. The old name was bite-based. And the issue with the old name is that when you think about saving a note, it didn't really have a verb

associated with it that was natural to use. So like if you want to bite a note, you can, but like that would be weird and we're not really going for that. So we were thinking like, okay, what are verbs that we like very developer focused? And so there's like save and store to jot something down, write something create. We really like stash. And it's kind of coming from get stash. It's fast and messy and that's a lot of what the product is like. And then the second thing is, as I've even said throughout this conversation, we are a scratch pad, a notepad. So it's It's stash pad, a combination of the pad and the fast. The stashing, yes.

Yes. So how long have you been in development of the current iteration of this? And how many people have you been sort of dog-footing with it thus far? Yeah. So we started working on, right now it's a desktop app. And we started working on the desktop app this past fall. and we've been onboarding a little over 100 people each month where we're just kind of trying to get as much feedback as we can

and make iterations as quickly as we can. Yeah, that's where we're at right now. And just this week, you launched the new website. So I'm assuming we're at the point now where we're on the cusp of hello-worlding it. But if there are people listening right now, and want to help you kick the tires some more before the great debut. Where should they go to do that? And what sort of feedback are you looking for right now?

Definitely. So you can go to stashpad.com. As of this week, it's the first time that you can get instant access. So as soon as you go there, stashpad.com, you can download the app. And the type of feedback that we're looking for is, kind of like I've mentioned throughout this conversation, this conversation. Our goal is to reduce friction in every interaction that you have as you're taking notes and managing your thoughts and all that stuff throughout the workday. And so I'd love

if you can try it out, share your feedback, see any points that aren't reducing friction enough. And then we can really get that all robust for a launch later in the month. So I want to underline that. You are actively, you're basically begging people, please try it out, And tell us. Is that feedback. Yeah. Do not try it out in silence. No shyness.

No shyness. This is the opportunity for the Mutant Podcast Army to have a real impact on a product right before it launches. So please, yes. Reach out to Kara and to me with all of your feedback. So what is to the degree that I'm not asking you to give away any secrets or spoil any exciting stuff, but like what is your strategy for as we're describing? later this month, basically debuting.

What is your thoughts in terms of how to reach the market that you hope to find fit with, as they say? Yeah, so a lot of it is going to be more kind of public press things we're going to be going on product hunt, which I'm excited about. I've never done that with the product before. But then even more so what we're looking for is folks who can give us feedback so that we can make sure that the product is really just the best node solution for them out there,

then kind of working to, working with them by offering things like discounts on some of our premium offerings that are going to be coming to help us really get the ball rolling and referring other folks who would get value from it. I should have asked this at the beginning with your background, but I know you've worked at startups before, but is this your first time as a founder,

your first rodeo doing this sort of thing? Yeah, first time as a founder. What have you found that is different about project development and project management when you're the boss, you're the one in charge, you're a small team, and it's basically all on your shoulders. Are there sort of anything over the last six months since the fall or whatever that you've found is different about doing this under your own shingle, I guess? Yeah, probably, that's a great question. Probably two main things.

So the first is that I never really thought this aspect of it would be my job, but I feel like a very big part of my role is just saying no to stuff that we could build. Because there's all this awesome stuff we want to build. I get really excited about stuff. I want to build everything. We cannot build everything. So a lot of what I do is just being like, okay, we want to do this. Let's stash it away for later, right?

Save that for later so we can make sure we do a really good job on something. thing because we do have limited resources. So that's one thing, just like really, really heavy prioritizing and ruthlessly. And then the second thing that might sound cliche, but I honestly didn't realize it until kind of getting further along on this journey, which is, OK, it sounds like, OK, there's founders and founding team.

That's kind of who it is. They're going to build this and get it off the ground. That's not at all how it works. The extent to which we need help from other people who can give us advice in tons of different areas, give us the product feedback that we need to actually make something awesome. You just need to reach out for so much help when you're a founder.

And I hope to be able to return that because it's definitely, it's just, that's kind of what tech entrepreneurship sits on. Well, and also in this case, again, our big ask of everyone listening is, if you're a dev, go try this out and give feedback. Don't be shy. But the advantage is, is in theory, again, people that get involved right now can help build their sort of dream version of this.

Because not only can you be like, you know, I really wish it had this, but you can also give the care on the team, you know, here's what your roadmap should be. Here's the next thing you should add. Here's the next thing. Like that sort of thing. This is so it's the advantage that you have is people are being helpful to you. But in theory, you'll end up being helpful to them by designing the tool that they didn't know they couldn't live without. Yes, exactly, exactly. So let's end it there by underlining the ask, which is all developers, please try it out.

It's dashpad.com, you said? Yep. Yep. And don't be shy with your feedback. But any other asks that you might have, I don't know if you guys are hiring or looking for introductions. to any teams or companies or anything like that, anything off the top of your mind that the audience can help out with, even if they're not devs. What do you got?

Well, the first thing is always just more, more intros to devs, because that's the most important thing. And then, let's see, what else can we get help with? I think that's the biggest thing, honestly, for us. Just the more developers we can talk to who are vocal and what they want and in what works and what doesn't, that's our focus right now. Well, what we'll do also is keep everybody up to date on the launch when it's on product hunt.

I'll be sure to mention that as well. So again, this month is a key month. You're watching this company and this product debut to the world. So this is exciting. We're all going to be able to watch this happen in real time. So we'll talk more and share more when the launch happens in a few weeks. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Kara. Thanks for coming on.

And again, everyone, try out Stashpad. And more on this very soon.