Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

By: Sean Sun and Andrew Askins
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  • Summary

  • Two agency owners and friends talk about cybersecurity, design, and the continuous small efforts it takes to build a business.
    © 2025 Sean Sun and Andrew Askins
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Economics Leadership
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Episodes
  • Sean's building a SaaS!

    Sean's building a SaaS!
    Jan 30 2025
    In this episode Andrew talks about his recent struggles with ADHD and feeling like MetaMonster is moving too slowly. Meanwhile, Sean is planning to build a new SaaS product within Miscreants. The guys talk about the challenges of maintaining focus on a new product while running an agency, and how to set up the project for the best chance of success. Sean gets deeply uncomfortable, it's great!Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.79SeanDo you play Starcraft? Have you played Starcraft?00:03.15AndrewNo, I've never played Starcraft. I'm not a big gamer.00:04.71Seanand00:06.24AndrewLike the most time I've ever spent on video games, like my top games are like Pokemon, like Crystal.00:13.03SeanThat's true. You're like an actual sports like healthy touch grass person. I forget that.00:17.74Andrewi I'm not an there I'm a watch sports and then touch grass in like nerdy hiking ways, not like Boy Scout touch grass.00:27.01SeanYeah, but I'm like, ah ah I'm like, a you know, watch eSports and touch Minecraft grass sometimes, every guy.00:34.57AndrewWhy do you ask about Starcraft?00:35.44SeanI've been I may have gotten really into stuff. It's been like two days, but I may have spent a lot of hours into Starcraft over the weekend. But it's because, well, first of all, it's really interesting because like,00:48.14SeanI see how it's like a groundwork for a lot of other games that have been really bad at and I see the difference between people who are good at like played Starcraft and then we're good at other games like League of Legends versus not. More importantly, it's because my brain has been on like like agents, agent systems, Starcraft is like RTS where you manage a bunch of little tiny things and that move around the map.01:06.11AndrewHuh.01:08.75Seanand And like, so for some reason, my brain has that connection.01:11.48AndrewYeah.01:11.58SeanOh, so it's because I've always been really bad at it. And like my best, one of my but best friends is like, was top 200 in the US. So, it's, it's not that impressive.01:19.07Andrewwhoa Whoa.01:21.89SeanI'm i'm pretty sure it, I think it's like, you know, top 200 snapshot in time, never went pro.01:22.08AndrewOh.01:26.65SeanOh, so it's in the US. So he's Korean, but.01:28.07AndrewI mean, I mean, it's so impressive. Like why you gotta, why you gotta hate on your friend? Like your friend sounds, that's cool.01:33.85Seanthat's what we do okay okay fine fine fine he's pretty good he's pretty good at it anyway he's been rolling me constantly it's but maybe I'm just salty that he's been fucking destroyed like cool01:42.52AndrewI played Civ three for a while. Is that like similar vibes where you like, you send all your little people to go do things and you have to constantly like be like, okay, do this.01:50.93Seanyeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah01:52.07AndrewNow do this. Now do this. Now you, you guys build this and you guys build this and okay. Cool. Yeah. I could get hooked on some, some Civ three back in the day.02:02.67SeanNice, nice. Yeah, some Age of Empires, some Fred Alert.02:06.05AndrewYeah, I never got beyond Civ III.02:06.19Seanand um Okay.02:08.67AndrewAgain.02:08.70SeanAlright, alright. I mean, I need discovered football. That was my weekend. um um Amongst like some other random things, but how about you? How you doing?02:18.77AndrewI'm all right, man. i I am feeling a little stressed because I feel like the last couple of weeks, we just have not made much progress on MetaMonster at all.02:29.67SeanHmm.02:31.04AndrewSo there's a handful of of things at play here. Austin was trying to buy a house. Yeah, which just sort of consumes your life while you're doing it.02:36.98SeanOh, sick.02:41.38AndrewAnd it all happened like way faster than he was expecting.02:41.66SeanSure.02:44.48Seansure02:45.51AndrewIt ended up falling through, like they decided to pass on it.02:44.87SeanSure.02:47.47AndrewSo he's he's not buying the house, but he was going through the motions.02:48.03SeanOkay.02:53.13AndrewAnd I think it was just eating up all of his like attention as it would.02:58.84Seanright03:00.29AndrewSo that was going on. And then I've talked about robotic season. The build season of robotic season like takes up a lot of my free time. like you know, one to two weeknights and all day Saturday basically are spent at robotics and that eats up a lot of time. we've been having to fight with our landlord ah like getting our heater worked on. He keeps saying there's not a problem. We try to tell him there's a problem. We have been fighting with him on that. and then I just think for the past like two or three months, I've been in a season of like03:42.79Andrewhigher ADHD, like my ADHD feels like...
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    54 mins
  • When should you charge your first customers?

    When should you charge your first customers?
    Jan 16 2025
    In this episode, Sean's Shmoocon trip got spicy 🌶️ 🥵 and Andrew is riding the high of a great prospect call for MetaMonster. Sean gives feedback on the experience of using MetaMonster, and Andrew debates when (and how) to start charging early customers. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.38SeanHow's your poop?00:01.58AndrewOh, fuck you. yeah00:05.86SeanI'm sorry, we can cut this out.00:06.93AndrewNo, no, no, it's all good. Everybody poops, man. I didn't actually poop this time, but I do poop.00:10.21Seanyeah oh I hope so.00:13.46AndrewPoops are great.00:17.43AndrewPoops are great. Well, I that was not expecting that. Okay.00:22.77SeanSorry, sorry, how's robotics?00:26.27AndrewRobotics is great. Yeah, we're I think two weeks into the season. And this is going to mean nothing to anybody who hasn't been involved with first robotics, but we're making a big switch from tank drive to swerve drive this year and from time based to command based robot programming.00:46.76AndrewSo.00:46.34SeanWhoa.00:47.88AndrewYeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. Tank-based is kind of what it sounds like. you know If you imagine how a tank moves, it's like two tracks moving at the same time. um And so it's simple, but it's also like not very precise. Whereas swerve drive, you have four wheels that can all move independently, and so they can and they can rotate. So you can move forward, backwards, left, right.01:14.66SeanHmm.01:15.53Andrewdiagonal you know you become a queen instead of a ah ah rook and it's uh does that metaphor make sense it's nerdy as fuck but it makes sense01:27.02SeanYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, it does. It was just not, it was just not the metaphor. Like, it just took me a second. and I was like, I didn't, my brain did not go to chess. I was like, what is it?01:42.87AndrewAnd then, yeah, but the the flip side is it's just way more complicated. So Swerve Drive, you have because you have you go from like four motors that are basically doing the same thing you have to control and to eight motors that can all operate independently. And there's a lot of like tuning and.02:04.02AndrewPID controllers, which are this like math thing that you use to like set a location on within like robotics. So you have to tune like your PID controllers and set your like encoder offsets and just get everything be very precise about everything. And then it's also like strongly encouraged that you use command based code which is like a little things are a little more like obfuscated away from you versus like in timer based you're like there's a timer running throughout a match and you're just constantly getting02:41.44Andrewhitting the same function over and over again. And then in command-based, it's a little more abstracted. And so it can be like just a tiny bit trickier to debug things. So we've just like we have taken a big step up in complexity of our electronics and programming. And guess who's the electronics and programming mentor on the team?03:02.00SeanAustin.03:03.27Andrewyeah03:05.38SeanYou, you.03:05.70AndrewI wish. Dude, I wish Austin was on the team.03:06.88SeanThat'd be crazy.03:07.90AndrewThat would be a blast.03:09.98SeanThat'd be the coolest robot there. That'd be cheating for the kids.03:14.81AndrewYeah. But yeah, it's been super fun. And I you know finished up workday and then went and spent two and a half hours at the robotics center yesterday and spent that whole time trying to tune our surf drive. And it is still not doing what I want it to do. So I'll be going back tomorrow night.03:35.90SeanHow many kids do you have to work with? Like just on your team?03:38.99AndrewYeah, so our team, the first year I did it, we had three kids. The like most competitive teams often have 40 or 50 kids. so And they often have tens of thousands, if not six figures of funding.03:48.64SeanWhoa.03:53.94AndrewAnd we had our first year like two grand. So that gives you an idea of like scale. This year, we're up to, I think, 15 kids.04:00.80SeanYeah.04:06.77AndrewWe've got a handful of eighth graders who were having them build a separate robot so that they can get a as much hands-on experience as possible.04:15.39Andrewthen we have a couple of seniors and like a junior who were who are super involved. And so I've got one senior who is interested really interested in programming and electronics.04:28.12AndrewAnd so usually he and I are working together with a random eighth grader.04:33.22SeanNice.04:34.05AndrewYeah.04:34.64SeanNice.04:35.16AndrewYeah, it's fun.04:35.57SeanCool.04:36.45AndrewIt's cool. Also, our team's all like Hispanic, and like half of them don't speak English. Well, not half. yeah This ...
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    41 mins
  • Sean's first impressions of MetaMonster

    Sean's first impressions of MetaMonster
    Jan 10 2025
    Andrew and Sean are back for Season 3!! Andrew's onboarding his first users to MetaMonster, and as alpha user #1 Sean has lots of thoughts. Meanwhile Sean actually took some time off??? And he used it to start writing. The guys talk MetaMonster, product design, and personal branding. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.98SeanI'll lie down for a second. Happy New Year.00:02.47AndrewYep.00:03.08SeanHow you doing?00:03.53Andrewah Perfect. No, that's not the perfect metaphor.00:06.47Seanahhu00:07.40AndrewThis isn't going to be a year of lag. This is going to be a year of getting shit done and moving fast.00:09.32SeanHell yeah. Yeah.00:12.99AndrewYeah.00:13.56SeanWho's in three, baby?00:14.79AndrewSeason three. Oh, are we going to start a new season?00:18.12SeanI'm going to, I call it any season. Did you see me create the show, delete the show and recreate it and slack? Yeah.00:25.17AndrewNo, I miss that.00:25.14SeanYeah. It is not season two ah episode It is season three, episode one, 2025.00:30.50AndrewLove it.00:32.13SeanUm, how you doing?00:32.18AndrewFuck yeah. I'm good, man.00:33.85SeanHow's your. Yeah.00:35.55AndrewMy holiday was great. It was super, super chill. We stayed here in Detroit, um just... hung out with family and friends and relaxed through a kind of a quirk.00:48.82AndrewMaddie's little sister got COVID a few days before Christmas. So we had to delay Christmas and do like kind of a second Christmas.00:55.36SeanOkay.00:55.52AndrewAnd so on Christmas day, we were just home, just the two of us with the cats. And we were like, oh shit, we really like this.01:00.74SeanSweet.01:05.02AndrewLike don't get me wrong, love family, love friends, wanna see them as much as possible. But there's something really nice about just have just being you and your partner on Christmas morning, like drinking mimosas, being lazy, not getting out of bed right away, eating some some yummy pastries.01:13.30SeanHell yeah.01:25.46Andrewum We unwrapped some things for the cats and like a couple of things for each other and it's just super chill. It was really nice.01:32.65SeanNice. Sweet.01:33.39AndrewYeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other thing from this break was I just found myself like for the first time in recent memory, wanting to work.01:36.36SeanSweet.01:44.30AndrewLike I didn't want to take more than a week off because no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.01:44.50SeanHell yeah. You're becoming me. I like it. and like I'm rubbing off on you.01:51.84AndrewI just like, I'm feeling drawn to work right now and it's a season. It'll pass. Um, I'm, I know that I'm okay with that, but. But yeah, I'm feeling really hyped about Meta Monster. I really want to get going on it, do more with it.02:06.89Andrewum get it off the ground. So I'm feeling really excited. And um small update there, this week, as you well know, we started to bring on our first outside users.02:18.15SeanMhm.02:20.94AndrewSo not, we're calling, I'm thinking of this as like a friends and family round of alpha testing.02:27.01SeanHell yeah.02:27.54AndrewSo it's not a, these aren't, potential customers really. they're They're people who we just trust to get in and start finding bugs and edge cases and giving us good honest feedback on how the product feels. um While we wrap up a couple of last features that I think are really important for giving our first potential customers the real full experience. Like right now, bulk generation doesn't work. So you have to generate things one at a time. And so to me, we're not fulfilling the promise of MetaMonster until we have bulk generation done.03:02.96Andrewum But yeah, we've we've started to onboard our first couple of users, ah friends and family users. I think I created three accounts yesterday. I'll hopefully create two or three more today. um And yeah, so what do you think? You've been in the product now.03:20.06SeanYeah, I mean, you know, as alpha user number one, um just so everyone's aware, alpha user number one, ah president yeah president of MetaMonster fan club.03:23.71AndrewYeah. Got to give you your props. I'm sorry for not not mentioning that.03:33.07Seanah I like it. I mean, I like it. It's buggy. It's toss you a bug early on. those I mean, I don't think anything's like, like, I think core functionality, everything's working great. um It's like more very basic, like UX things.03:53.81SeanGood found value out of it pretty quickly. um I ran worth driving through it. I honestly ran some client sites through it as well um You know, I think like ah I mean worth driving is pretty large now too But even like some client sites like it's an easy way to spot like oh shit that meta tag is ...
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    42 mins

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