Episode 775 | A.I. Coding Tools, User Experience, Racking Your Own Servers, and More Listener Questions (with Derrick Reimer)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What shortcuts are actually worth taking when you're building a SaaS? In this episode, Rob Walling and fan favorite Derrick Reimer delve into listener questions about startup development. They discuss the impact of AI coding tools on building minimum viable products (MVPs) and the importance of user experience (UX) with advice on balancing UX investment based on the product's nature. You’ll also hear a breakdown of the real costs of leaving the cloud, plus tips on email deliverability and validation. Throughout, they highlight how validating ideas through user feedback and research is still critical, no matter how fast you build. Episode Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years and whenever I set up a new account, I'm reminded why traditional banking feels stuck in the past. When our previous bank faced solvency issues, we needed to spin up new accounts quickly that could handle millions in funds across multiple businesses. Mercury had us up and running almost immediately. I manage half a dozen different Mercury accounts across a wide range of companies – from my personal, single-member LLC to MicroConf, our 7-figure global events and education platform, to TinySeed, our venture fund and accelerator. Mercury easily handles them all. The interface is elegantly simple for daily banking, paying invoices, and sending and receiving international wires, yet powerful enough to handle the multi-step approval processes we needed to put in place when funding founders with large transfers. Anytime founders ask me who they should set up their accounts with, I send them to mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust; Members FDIC. Topics we cover: (4:55) – How AI coding tools are changing the MVP timeline (16:11) – When UX design actually matters (and when it doesn’t) (23:47) – Should you ditch cloud hosting for your own servers? (32:38) – Pro tips on email deliverability and keeping out of spam folders Links from the Show: SaaS Launchpad Course MicroConf Remote | May 21, 2025 Windsurf AI Editor SavvyCal Derrick Reimer | LinkedIn Derrick Reimer (@derrickreimer) | X If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years, and whenever
0:04.9	I set up a new account, I'm reminded why traditional banking feels stuck in the past. When our previous
0:10.5	bank faced solvency issues, we needed to spin up new accounts quickly that could handle millions
0:15.4	in funds across multiple businesses. Mercury had us up and running almost immediately. I manage half a dozen
0:21.5	different Mercury accounts across a wide range of companies, from my personal, single-member
0:25.7	LLC, to MicroConf, our seven-figure global events and education platform, to Tiny Seed,
0:31.3	our venture fund and accelerator. Mercury easily handles them all. The interface is elegantly
0:36.7	simple for daily banking, paying invoices, and sending and receiving
0:40.3	international wires, yet powerful enough to handle the multi-step approval processes we needed
0:46.1	to put in place when funding founders with large transfers.
0:50.0	Anytime founders ask me who they should set up their accounts with, I send them to
0:53.7	mercury.com.
0:55.1	Check the show notes for more details and note that Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
1:01.0	It's another episode of startups for the rest of us.
1:03.5	I'm your host, Rob Walling.
1:05.1	And in this episode, Derek Reimer and I sit down and we answer listener questions.
1:10.7	We answer a question about the
1:11.8	impact of new AI coding tools. Talk about user experience and how much time you should or
1:18.5	shouldn't invest in the early days. Talk about racking your own servers versus cloud hosting,
1:25.2	the tradeoffs between those two things, email deliverability and reliability,
1:29.8	risks around that. And we handle another topic or two, if you can possibly believe it. We packed it in
1:35.5	to this amazing episode. And if you stick around until the hidden track at the end, you'll get to
	...

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