We released episode one of this podcast on June 11, 2012. Now, more than a decade later, we're celebrating the 500th episode of our show. In honor of this milestone, Victoria, Will, and Chad caught up with each of the past hosts of the show: Ben Orenstein, Chris Toomey, and Lindsey Christensen.
We chatted about what they’re up to now, what they liked and learned from hosting the show, their time at thoughtbot, and more!
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Transcript:
VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido.
WILL: And I'm your other host, Will Larry.
CHAD: And I'm your other host, Chad Pytel.
We released episode one of this podcast on June 11, 2012. Now more than a decade later, were celebrating this: the 500th episode of our show. In honor of this milestone, Victoria, Will, and I caught up with each of the past hosts of the show: Ben Orenstein, Chris Toomey, and Lindsey Christensen.
We chatted about what they’re up to now, what they liked and learned from hosting the show and their time at thoughtbot, and more. First up: Ben Orenstein. Ben was the very first host of the show back in 2012 when he was a developer at thoughtbot. He is now the co-founder and Head of Product at Tuple, a remote pair programming tool for designers and developers. Ben, it's great to talk to you again. It's been a while since you and I talked. How have you been?
BEN: I've been decent, yeah. It's fun to be back to my roots a little bit. I told some folks that I work with that I was coming back to the pod for the 500th Episode, and they were stoked. So, it's kind of a treat to get to be on these airwaves again.
CHAD: What have you been up to since you left this show and thoughtbot?
BEN: Well, I started a company. So, I was at thoughtbot for a while; I think it was seven years. And I eventually sort of struck out to start my own thing–had a false start or two here and there. And then, I ended up starting a company called Tuple, and we still exist today, fortunately.
Tuple is a tool for doing remote pair programming. We started off on macOS and then wrote a Linux client. And we're launching a Windows client now. But it's sort of, like, screen sharing with remote control for developers who are actually writing code and want to have great, low latency remote control and who care about screen share quality and that sort of thing.
I started that about five years ago with two co-founders. Today, we are a team of 11, I think it is. And it's been going well. Our timing was really great, it turned out. We launched a little bit before COVID. So, remote work turned into a lot more of a thing, and we were already in the market. So, that helped us a ton. It was quite a wild ride there for a bit.
But things have calmed down a little lately, but it's still fun. I'm, like, really enjoying being a co-founder of a software company. It was what I've always sort of wanted to do. And it turns out it actually is pretty fun and pretty great. Although there are, of course, the ups and downs of business ownership. It is never quite as calm or relaxing as being an employee somewhere else.
CHAD: You started Tuple instigated by...full disclosure: thoughtbot's an early customer of Tuple. We're still a customer. We use it a lot.
BEN: Woo-hoo. I appreciate that. Thank you.
CHAD: If I remember right, you started and were sort of instigated to create Tuple because there was a prior product that then Slack bought, and then it started to degrade. And now, it no longer exists in the same way that it did before.
BEN: Yeah. So, there was this tool called Screenhero, which I actually started using --
CHAD: [inaudible 02:14]
BEN: Yeah, first at thoughtbot. Some other thoughtboter introduced me to it, and we woul