Overlay

Liam (00:01)
Hello and welcome to episode number three of the Official Layers Podcast Overlay. I'm the founder of Layers, Liam McCabe.

Reijo (00:08)
and I am a designer and illustrator, Reijo Palmeister.

Liam (00:12)
And as you can see, this is a little different this time. It's only our third episode, but we thought we'd go straight into producing with videos. It seems like the modern way, right?

Reijo (00:24)
Yes.

Liam (00:26)
I mean it's kind of expected these days. Although we're starting off in quite a very low production. Well, especially me, I'm just using my webcam. But in the future I'll use a better camera. But we'll see how it looks when it's finished recording and we'll upload it, see how it looks. I mean it should be at least 720, 1080p, which is...

Reijo (00:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and your audio is good. And that's great, I think.

Liam (00:55)
Which is okay I guess.

Yeah cool, so yeah we'll get into it. Like I say the past two episodes, the first half of this will just be talking about layers, and the second half we'll just talk about whatever comes up. So yeah the latest news with layers was or is, we posted on Product Hunt. So we launched on Product Hunt.

Reijo (01:29)
Woo!

Liam (01:31)
last week I think it was actually was it this week I don't really know it was Monday it was Monday go time flies was it Monday or was it last week actually it was last week I know it was last week because we won a product of the week so it can't be this week because the well I guess it's Friday but uh

Reijo (01:34)
Yeah.

Really?

Yes, yes. You got me doubting my sanity there for a second. Hahahaha.

Liam (01:58)
The Alzheimer's is coming already. No, we posted on Monday last week and did extremely well. Managed to get product of the day. I think, what are we on now? We must have got like 1500 uploads and lots of comments and so much support. Yeah, it was amazing. I shared it on...

Reijo (01:59)
Hahahaha

Nice.

Yes.

Liam (02:26)
I shared it on Twitter or X and yeah everyone jumped in, left an update, left a comment.

Reijo (02:29)
Yeah. How do you, how do you feel now? Do you feel, do you feel more validated?

Liam (02:38)
Yeah, yeah, I do actually. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. I never wanted to give product hunt such

Reijo (02:40)
Yeah?

Liam (02:50)
whatever the word is such a...

Reijo (02:52)
Important?

Liam (02:54)
importance, because I think it's more like a specific crowd of people that it attracts, and it's not like a broad range of demographics, but yeah just knowing that the people on it, which to be fair the people that uploaded and commented are a lot of our community, so it's not far from the design community in this respect. But yeah definitely I wasn't

Reijo (03:18)
That's true.

Liam (03:23)
necessarily expecting product of the day, product of the week. I was hoping for it, but yeah, it's really nice to actually get it. And I'm just annoyed that we didn't post at the start of the month, because I didn't realize the product of the month is done by calendar month, which makes sense, I guess.

Reijo (03:42)
Yeah, well, you gotta be careful there because you wouldn't know like what the because the awards depend on the competition as well, right? So the layers community pulled together, voted, left comments, but there could have been something else, some other upcoming product of the much greater community there as well.

Liam (03:45)
Um...

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think there was there was another product right, called

Reijo (04:11)
It was an AI tool of some sort, right?

Liam (04:14)
I think it was like a Notion type thing, Affine Pro free plug there. But it's from one of the Layers members, works there, and yeah he was in the discord, he was like, oh thanks for posting on this day Liam, the same day. And I was like, I didn't know! So my fault!

Reijo (04:23)
Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Oh really?

Ha ha!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair game, fair game.

Liam (04:48)
So yeah, they got the number two product of the week as well. So yeah, so we are.

Reijo (04:56)
But they were ahead for a quite a long time, I think.

Liam (05:01)
Yeah, I think they came in guns blazing at the very beginning. But yeah, we had a bit more stamina, a bit more endurance. But I think the timing was also very good. Like, I had a few people telling me that I should be posting on product on just every other month, like months ago. Yeah.

Reijo (05:04)
Yeah, but we were saved by the East Coast, I think.

Yeah.

Really?

Liam (05:29)
like post now post now and then you can just post more launches because with product hunt now you can you can post the product but then you can have multiple launches so like any new feature you can do like another launch basically whereas before it's just like a single launch of a startup but then I guess people were posting their startup again even if they just

Reijo (05:51)
Yeah.

Liam (05:56)
added a new feature just to get the traffic, you know, so I guess they introduced launches to satisfy that.

Reijo (05:59)
Yeah, yeah. But are the is the so let's say you do a couple of other launches. Other than this one now are the results cumulative like to the votes sort of stack and collect all throughout the every launch. No. So that's like a it's like a community feedback tool.

Liam (06:17)
No, I think they're separate. But I don't know how...

Reijo (06:25)
Like if you launch something that's not particularly interesting, that will be dead in the water in product hunt.

Liam (06:33)
Yeah, yeah, in a sense. But I don't know how future launches are favored by Product Hunt, like how much they're promoted. Because if I was Product Hunt I wouldn't give any consecutive or future launches as much reach as the initial launch, you know?

Reijo (06:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. The first one has to be prioritized for sure. It's like... Actually, never mind. I don't want to get into competitors already. Yeah, in the podcast. My mind was already going there because they have the debut shot.

Liam (07:07)
The D words? You're already thinking of the D word, right?

Reijo (07:19)
Yeah.

Liam (07:20)
But anyway, yeah, it was really amazing, and yeah, it was quite an intense day, because I obviously post... well, I'm in London, so GMT posts around 8am, so I was up, yeah, just

Reijo (07:37)
Yeah.

Nervous?

Liam (07:40)
No, I just wanted to get through it without layers going down. But yeah, it was good. The morning was fine in Europe because the traffic was gradual and layers handled it no problem. But then once America started to wake up, yeah, it got a bit heated.

Reijo (07:56)
Yeah.

Go with nuts.

Liam (08:08)
it did start buckling a little. And I noticed it was a couple of queries. We'll go a bit technical here just for a second. It was a couple of queries that were making the whole thing kind of fail. And it was actually prefetched queries. So like when you load layers, some pages are prefetched, so they load a bit quicker potentially. And...

Reijo (08:21)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Liam (08:37)
one of them was the activity page, and that query is quite intensive. I had to upgrade a few things to see some analytics about the database, but once I had that I could see the two queries that were causing this CPU 100% thing. So I removed those, and it performed swimmingly.

Reijo (08:56)
Yeah.

Ugh... yikes.

Liam (09:06)
I also actually had to upgrade the database. I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, the site was down, right? The site was just down for like a while. Getting a five of.

Reijo (09:10)
on the fly.

Yeah.

Did you measure the downtime? Do you remember how long it was?

Liam (09:25)
Night.

No, well it wasn't short either. It was like it must have been at least 20-30 minutes, and it got to the point where I was like, well, upgrading the database does incur down time, because for whatever reason it must have to turn the process off to upgrade RAM or whatever. And if the site's already down...

Reijo (09:29)
But it wasn't long.

Hahaha!

Liam (09:58)
might as well do it right. And hope that's the main issue. I don't think it was the main issue, but I think it definitely did help upgrading it.

Reijo (09:59)
Ah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So was that like that 20, 30 minutes, was that like your, that was your classic hacker movie scene where you had to like really sweat over the keyboard, make sure everything goes well, runs well.

Liam (10:28)
It was just one of those things where you're like calculating risk, like should... how risky is this? If it fails, if something goes wrong, is it better to have layers temporarily down, or down the rest of the day?

Reijo (10:35)
Uh-huh.

at this moment.

Uh oh. Yeah.

Liam (10:50)
But fortunately it went very well and the upgrade was actually very quick. And as soon as that upgrade hit, layers was up and it was faster than usual. I think it's even faster than it was. I upgraded the database from a medium instance to extra large. So there's a cost there.

Reijo (11:14)
Nice.

Liam (11:19)
layers should be performing a lot better now. But yeah, so that added to the overall intensity of the day. But yeah, after that it was kind of smooth sailing really. Nothing major went wrong, I don't think.

Reijo (11:22)
less.

Yeah.

Yeah, and no more waitlist.

Liam (11:40)
Yes, that's true. I removed the waitlist. I thought it'd be a bit silly if I posted it on Product Hunt with the waitlist because then all the comments might have been like, oh yeah, I signed up but I can't get in. So I kind of just removed it.

Reijo (11:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you think it's gone for good now?

Liam (12:01)
I don't know. I haven't brought it back just yet, but I'm not opposed to bringing it back.

Reijo (12:05)
Yeah.

Liam (12:08)
But yeah, that went very well. Got a nice big traffic spike, got plenty of new users, plenty of new signups, and I think it has had a more long-term effect as well. So traffic is obviously not as much as the spike now, but it's more than it was before regularly. I think general

retention and engagement is up as well. So like product does have a good effect. I think it's also just the people that browse Product Hunt right from all walks of life and working at various companies and they might want to share it and there have already been a few blog posts about layers and people sharing it on LinkedIn. So that kind of reach just allows people to

Reijo (12:39)
That's good to hear.

Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (13:01)
C layers and if they like it they share it so all that is good. So yeah that's...

Reijo (13:05)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And just like the emotional impact of having a positive launch to it.

Liam (13:15)
Yeah, yeah, very true, very true. Yeah, if it didn't do well, what would I have done? Ha ha ha.

Reijo (13:22)
It would have been catastrophic. It would have felt sad, but I think... Yeah, what it would have told me would have been that the community traction is not there just yet. But it was majorly successful with a lot of people...

Liam (13:27)
I would have burned everything.

Reijo (13:47)
whose opinion at least I value a lot, supporting it, chiming in and sharing and trying to show support. So it was rewarding to see.

Liam (13:58)
Yeah, but I definitely think it was the timing. Like I said, I was talking earlier, people wanted me to post it earlier. But I think there's got to a point where it had a community already, right? Like Discord was at a thousand people. The Twitter has 20k followers. So it's like, if X amount of X percentage of those upvote product, you're going to do well, right?

Reijo (14:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Liam (14:27)
Whereas if I had done it last year, I would probably have much less of a chance. It would have been a much uphill battle. So I think we did it at the right time. That's product hunt. And then another thing that went live this week, actually, we launched a competition, first competition on Liz.

Reijo (14:32)
Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Woo!

Liam (14:56)
partnered with my buddy Tobias from Supernotes, he works on Supernotes which is a note taking app. And he's just launched some complementary apps for it, so an iOS and an Android app, and he was...

just seeing a lot of tweets or posts or whatever of a lot of designers like to make app icons for apps they really like and like it's become really popular for apps to have like alternative icons for people to choose and so to be us was like oh maybe we can do that on layers Liam we can team up and if anyone wants to make an app icon for super notes they can do that

Reijo (15:28)
Yeah.

Liam (15:41)
and layers can organize and facilitate that. Yeah, so we did that. And that's still ongoing. Yeah, I think it's a month long.

Reijo (15:52)
It's a month long, right?

Yeah. So if you're listening to this later, it's the last state is like the end of the end of March, right?

Liam (16:06)
Yeah, yeah, we'll put it in the show notes.

Yeah, so I think it's going well. I think there's already been a few entries. There's a slightly new layout to the layer page now. I think it's kind of reverted to the sidebar version, because it works a bit better with showing the layer replies, or the entries in this case.

Reijo (16:15)
Yeah.

Liam (16:37)
it will help when annotations go live as well, because you'll be able to see them in the sidebar. The only thing that's lacking now is a full screen view for the layer, and really big portrait layers. They don't really suit fitting on just the viewport. So just a full screen view and annotations.

Reijo (16:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Liam (17:07)
We'll have to go live. We'll be going live, actually.

Reijo (17:09)
Yeah.

You have a timeline?

Hehehe

Liam (17:13)
I mean yeah we do have time because we're going to be partnering up with an agency for some feedback sessions and I think they've got back to me saying end of the month might be good for them a Thursday end of the month. So yeah I was hoping to actually get them

Reijo (17:26)
Oh, yes.

Liam (17:41)
obviously, but a bit more before like a week or two. But yeah, that's exciting. They're going to be taking over the Work in Progress hub, if you will. So for half a day or a day, they'll be available and anyone who posts in the Work in Progress hub, they'll be able to get feedback. We're trying to figure out...

Reijo (17:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Liam (18:10)
how to request feedback if we need to label it with something because they thought that maybe some people won't want feedback and if they leave feedback and they don't like it they're like, but I think if it's all in the work in progress hub you kind of expect it now that's the whole point

Reijo (18:23)
Ah.

oof

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think that's if you post something into the work in progress, it's sort of in, I wouldn't say it's inviting discourse, but a discourse is something that will naturally happen over something because no decision is final there yet. You can still argue directions, you can still argue approaches.

Liam (18:52)
Yeah.

Reijo (18:55)
garbage you should have done XYZ, then it might offend somebody I think.

Liam (18:58)
Try again.

Yeah, but I yeah, so there's gonna be a little redesign to the to the hub to make it clear like, this is, this is a feedback session is ongoing. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it should be good.

Reijo (19:15)
Yeah, yeah. Duck.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting.

Liam (19:29)
Other things with layers, job postings are now paid, that's a boring one. Advertising interests, this is a good thing actually because I don't know who knows if everyone knows, but layers is obviously just run by, built by me, it's my solo founder and I'm bootstrapping this. And I have thought about raising money and looking

It's gotten quite tight at times and it is getting quite tight currently, but recently there's been a bit of an uptick in advertising. We've had a couple of advertisers in the past which have been very, very helpful. But I think since the product launch may have attracted a bit more interest and got a few more people wanting to advertise.

Reijo (20:26)
Nice.

Liam (20:29)
So that is good. I have a couple of sponsorship packages already, just like three tiers. So that is very good. It just means Layers is close to sustainability basically. Yes, breaking even. It's a tough thing to break even.

Reijo (20:36)
Nice.

Breaking even.

Liam (20:57)
as traffic obviously goes up, costs go up. So yeah.

Reijo (20:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

But when you talk to these advertisers, when you respond to the interest, who do you have in mind or what is the ideal person or company to advertise on layers?

Liam (21:26)
Yeah, so the current ones have been agencies, so creative agencies, digital agencies, and then more recently there's been like an inspiration gallery, as well as an AI tool for creating logos I think, and then

Reijo (21:33)
Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah, that'll get some ruffle feathers for sure.

Liam (21:54)
And then there's another potential one which is like a no-code builder. So they're all relevant really, and I haven't looked at any of them and been like, why do you want to advertise on layers? Does this make any sense? Because I mean, yeah, if it was something random, like some sporting thing, I'd be like...

Reijo (22:03)
Oh!

Hahaha!

Liam (22:22)
I probably wouldn't want to see this on layers. Yeah, definitely not. It would have to be asked at least.

Reijo (22:23)
Go Liverpool!

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Liam (22:30)
But yeah, so far it's just been very relevant and somewhat targeted, if that's the right word. But yeah, it hasn't got to a stage where I guess a lot of platforms have like, I don't want to see this ad, you know, when you...

Reijo (22:38)
Yeah.

Mmm, yeah.

Liam (22:55)
Maybe it'll get to that stage at one point, but hopefully.

Reijo (22:58)
Well, that would, I think that'll, that's one of those good problems, I think. When you have, when you have options to advertise.

Liam (23:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, also you can just get rid of ads by subscribing to Plus Pro Tip. Did I? I don't think I even did the plug at the beginning, did I? Oh well.

Reijo (23:15)
Bam! Plug right there. Yeah.

That was a beautiful segue. So yeah, that was, yeah, beautiful.

Liam (23:27)
It was entirely planned.

Yes, so yeah, the advertising is picking up, which is good. It's good for sustainability, it means layers is here to stay potentially. And with that, yeah, I also built a mini dashboard, so advertisers can now track impressions and clicks themselves. They can just go on layers and check out their personal dashboard. And in the future, I'm hoping that it can be completely self-serve, so anyone can go to the advertise page.

Reijo (23:54)
Nice.

Liam (24:03)
put in a title tagline and a creative and then submit it for approval and then they can like say how many impressions they want to buy, 100,000 or whatever, and then it will be approved or not, and that should be a bit more automated.

Reijo (24:13)
Nice.

All right.

Liam (24:21)
And yeah, that's advertising. And then the next thing is the weekly interview series we started doing called Behind the Mask is doing well. We're primarily just posting that on X. You may have seen a few already, but obviously X isn't that great for viewing previous posts, tweets, archives, that sort of thing.

Reijo (24:50)
Yeah, or long form.

Liam (24:52)
things kind of get lost. Well, long form, they do have this article thing, which I noticed that I kind of got access to it after I posted a couple behind the masks. Have you seen that?

Reijo (25:05)
No, I have not.

Liam (25:08)
It's like a long form content on Twitter, on X.

Reijo (25:16)
Would it solve the archive issues as well, or the previous posts issue as well? Or just having a seamless long tweet?

Liam (25:24)
Ehm

It might do actually because I think... I'm just checking the profile now. I think there might be a tab when you go on your profile. Yeah, so yeah there's a tab on your profile that's just articles. So I guess maybe I should start doing them as articles and then you can just go on the articles tab and you'll see all of them. Do you see it?

Reijo (25:52)
I... yeah, you must be subscribed to Premium Plus.

Liam (25:57)
What do we even read them?

Reijo (26:00)
to write them.

Liam (26:01)
write them.

Reijo (26:02)
Yeah, it will be scammy if it would be for reading as well.

Liam (26:11)
Yeah true. So that actually might be a good solution in the interim. Yeah I might try that, see how it works.

Reijo (26:25)
But at the same time, having like a space on layers for them, I think with that, holistically, it makes more sense.

Liam (26:36)
Yeah, definitely. Somewhat inevitable that players should have some kind of blog. And yeah, we're starting to produce more and more content. So behind the mask and even this overlay podcast, it makes sense for them to have a home and yes, it's good for just SEO as well, getting content out there. So yeah, that will be on the roadmap. Have to figure out.

Reijo (26:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Liam (27:05)
When... there's so many things, it's surprising, I mean there's so many things like to work on, or you could work on, and prioritizing what's...

Because there's also, there's also, go on.

Reijo (27:16)
Like, right?

Right now, there's obviously the plates full. There's tons of things to work on. How do you prioritize right now what to work on? And did the product hunt, launch, change your way of prioritizing issues?

Liam (27:36)
Well, to be honest, since product hunt, maybe a bit before, I've spent way more time on just business and marketing type stuff, you know, rather than dev. So before, 90% of my time was dev, just building out features, fixing bugs and stuff. And now, like when I wake up every morning, I'm doing like a social post, I'm prepping it behind the mask. I'm trying to get more people.

Reijo (27:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Liam (28:05)
for behind the mask. I'm trying to... I'm getting more emails, so I'm responding to advertisers, responding to potential partners, that sort of thing. And then yeah just mundane business stuff like

Reijo (28:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Liam (28:23)
Yeah, so, but I think...

Reijo (28:26)
So it's not that you don't want to do the dev work, it's that there's so much other stuff that you have to do now as well, is that sort of naturally gets deprioritized because the product is solid underneath, right?

Liam (28:34)
Hmm.

Well that's the thing, it's solid to an extent. It's also like I think there's quite a lot there on layers now that's like good enough for plenty of marketing you know, and just focusing on getting it out there. I mean I would, there's loads of features I want to build, but I also want to just like try and build it as

Reijo (28:56)
Yeah.

Liam (29:10)
Make it as stable as possible. I'm kind of getting a bit fed up of a lot of the bugs that exist and still exist now. And I just want it in a state where, yeah, there's just very, very few bugs.

Reijo (29:16)
Yeah?

Is that dealing with, so you're dealing with like the business side of things, you're dealing with the development side of things, is it demoralizing or sort of affecting you, affecting your morale to deal with the bugs then as well?

Liam (29:44)
I've always hated when things aren't working or broken. I like...

Reijo (29:51)
Like I built it, it should be perfect, right? Like I don't make mistakes.

Liam (29:57)
No, I mean, of course, they'll always exist, but it's the discovery of them. I find it somewhat embarrassing and humiliating. I'm like, I've worked on this so many times, and why does this bug exist? And then I'll find another bug and realize that I didn't even know that one existed, and I'm like, for God's sake, like you're telling me

Reijo (30:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Liam (30:26)
this filter hasn't worked since whenever I'm like, yeah, it does, it aggravates me. And then it feels like, and then it feels like there's so many, right? And it becomes a little overwhelming. And it's like, ah, yeah, it's quite, um,

Reijo (30:30)
Yeah.

Whoa.

Yeah. Then you have to start prioritizing the bugs themselves, right? Like what's like what's breaking the experience? What's sort of like slightly annoying? And what's should be there is not there and stuff like that.

Liam (30:57)
Yeah, and sometimes it's not an easy fix. Like there's another issue with the scheduling order and I'm like, oh for flip's sake, I swear I fixed this and then I take another, take another. I'm glad you're enjoying this, bro. This is hell!

Reijo (31:15)
I am. Yeah. But I think this is also, this is, I don't, I don't know how else to say it, but I don't think this is something that is also going to go away. Because I've been like, I've been a part of startups to build products and there's like, you think the developer swears like this is, this is, this is foolproof. Like this is not going to break. No, you're going to find an idiot.

who finds a way how to break the interface. There's gonna be someone who does something unexpected, which you guys then have to fix. So I don't think it's gonna go away. I think your pain tolerance will just gradually rise. That's the thing.

Liam (31:59)
It's just the likelihood of them finding something right, the probability you want to try and reduce that as much as possible.

Reijo (32:05)
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And, but you, you react to the bugs quite quickly. You fix them. Like if somebody, somebody flags something on this score, do you get it fixed quite easily, quite quickly? I don't want to say it's easy, but it's you do it quickly.

Liam (32:19)
Yeah, if it's an easy fix, yeah, I'll fix it right away. If it's not, it'll take me a bit more time.

Reijo (32:28)
Have you encountered something that was something like an iceberg that you didn't see under the water? It was like, ah, it seems quick. Like we'll do it now. And then when you get into it, you start investigating it, you realize like, ah, maybe this is more complicated than I thought.

Liam (32:49)
Well, I can bet you know the main, one of the main bugs on layers. I bet you can name it. Come on. There's one bug that has been there since its inception. And it never, it never, I, notifications, no, they should be okay. Now, there's a bit there's a bigger one.

Reijo (33:01)
Act notifications.

No?

What? This is good that I don't know it. Means that I haven't experienced it enough.

Liam (33:15)
This is good.

It's basically the tags and the skill, the multi select.

Reijo (33:25)
Ah, you know, I will, I will record like, this is a bug that has become a part of the way I use layers. I'm going to record the video and show you how I actually use, how I actually use the posting feature or layers. I, yeah, I glance up like it doesn't, that's how it works for me.

Liam (33:40)
You see it and you're just used to it, is that what you're saying?

That's that's see that's the worst. What are you talking about? Like yeah like peep.

Reijo (33:53)
This is why I didn't realize it, because that's the standard operating procedure for me.

Liam (34:01)
That's that's shit. That's clever shit. But I mean, it's good. It's good. It's good that those types of bugs exist, but it doesn't necessarily dissuade people, right? I always thought that at the beginning, like if the platform is...

Reijo (34:06)
And it is.

Liam (34:22)
so bad but people are still returning because there's a quality there, there's an essence there that they're like I'm still going to return because I have faith that it will be fixed because it's gonna be worth it. I'm glad that exists but I'm ashamed that I haven't fixed that bug. I hate it. I can't replicate it at all. I know the issue now, but just being able to replicate it my side,

Reijo (34:30)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes, and that's super important.

Yeah?

Liam (34:51)
make it much more easier to fix. But I'm probably just gonna end up building my own Flippin multi-select component, because it's just, because that's what I've done with everything else, right? Like the whole grid thing, I used every known package that exists, and it just didn't satisfy all layers requirements. So I'm like, oh, Flippin' out, I'll just build my own. Like I've tried doing it the easy, quick way, you know?

Reijo (34:51)
Well... Typ-

Well...

Yeah.

Oh no.

Yeah.

Liam (35:20)
and using stuff that's available. And yeah, I've gone through all of them, and it's arguably taken longer than if I would have just done it myself. So

Reijo (35:22)
Yeah.

Right?

So, yeah.

Liam (35:33)
Anyway, rant over.

Reijo (35:36)
Well, yeah, like, but there is definitely you're totally right on the money. There is a silver lining with that specific bug that even though yes, it is like, I'm, I'm a clear example of this, like, I didn't even realize that was a bug anymore. That's just, that's just how layers works. But to be honest, also my browser, my browser is overloaded with like, I have

Liam (35:55)
Oh my god.

UGH

Reijo (36:05)
several different outblocks. I have some sort of like ad trackers and stuff like that, like tons of plugins in the browser. So if something's gonna break, it's probably gonna break in this specific browser, I think. So...

Liam (36:19)
Yeah, it's just annoying that I've never had the issue. Like, yeah, that's just one of the things of development. Like some things you're, yeah, some things you'll just never experience where you just have to test on as many different environments as possible.

Reijo (36:28)
Works well for me!

This is a... here's the hard question. What's the worst browser to develop for?

Liam (36:44)
Oh well it's notoriously Internet Explorer, but I think these days Edge is pretty good. But like I don't think-

Reijo (36:51)
Yeah? Why about Safari?

Liam (36:56)
Faray is usually fine, it sometimes acts a bit differently but compared to Internet Explorer, I haven't tested layers on Internet Explorer since I started.

Reijo (37:05)
I don't think you should. Like, for your own sake, of your own mental health, I don't think you need those kinds of worries. Hahahaha!

Liam (37:12)
But that's really not good though. I need to do more testing. I need to make it much better on every browser. I really need to, there's services that allow you to do this like browser stack, but it can be a bit slow, a bit of a pain in the ass. But I really just need to get my own virtual server, and have Windows. The thing is I've put it off because I have the very...

Reijo (37:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (37:41)
initial like base spec M1 Mac and it's just so it's not really um it's not really up to a lot of tasks you know it runs out around very quickly so if anyone wants to donate me a an M3 MacBook no hopefully yeah like that's a thing i'll invest in if i get more money from advertisers etc i'll

Reijo (37:51)
Oh really?

Nice!

Liam (38:11)
be able to run all these virtual servers with all these OSes and test everything.

Reijo (38:15)
Well, for now it's just a comfortable excuse to say, Ah! I don't have the hardware for it. Fuck it.

Liam (38:22)
Yes, I do not have the finances to test Internet Explorer. I am sorry. Please, please subscribe to plus I mean, it's a cop out really, I'm sure I can find a way but

Reijo (38:29)
Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. Yeah. Like the only people, not to paint with a too broad of a brush, but the only people using Internet Explorer are probably like government people of various sorts, which I don't know what.

Liam (38:46)
I mean, it doesn't exist anymore, does it? Like it's edge, right? I mean, unless you're using an old Windows that has Internet Explorer. Yeah.

Reijo (38:50)
Ehh

All right, right. Like, but you can imagine, you can imagine the, the hardware that's being used by like, for like hospitals or, or some government agencies, they use like XP still stuff like that. Uh, so have fun fixing that.

Liam (39:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean for those you just pop up a message that says, oh we do not support your browser, please upgrade.

And then just hope that popup doesn't appear on like a modern browser.

Reijo (39:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah.

Liam (39:32)
Yeah, so, but yeah, that was kind of a segue into investments somewhat. What, how I would, how I would spend money if I had it. Well, it's happening. It's, it's happening. It's happening slowly. So like we're getting money from.

Reijo (39:39)
Oh yeah, that's true.

If I had it. Yeah.

Liam (39:54)
advertisers like I say we're getting more and more plus subscribers so now it's just a case of how do you how do you reinvest that money what do we put it in and yeah where to spend it like it's also been a thought of mine if I was ever to raise or look for funding for layers obviously where would that money go and I've had some initial thoughts

Reijo (39:58)
Yeah.

Liam (40:26)
The first one being just a new MacBook, which is nothing, but the other would be like who would I hire, what sort of team would I want to build out layers, and what does layers really need to grow. I initially thought, well there's a few features that I still want to build out that could potentially bring in more revenue.

Reijo (40:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (40:53)
there's stuff like I eventually want to have like a portfolio feature so it's more of a custom profile that hides all the layers UI and you can put a custom domain in front of it and you can customize the layout and just make the whole thing a bit more personal. So that's something I want to do and then there's like a

Reijo (41:01)
Mmm.

Yeah

Yeah.

Liam (41:22)
marketplace I think layers is kind of on the verge of just like adding a link that allows you to buy someone's pack or set or whatever so and it has been requested since the very start of layers as well it's like oh I just I just made this icon pack is there a way I can put a link to sell it on layers so I mean you might as well just have like a whole

Reijo (41:33)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Liam (41:51)
whole page, a whole tab dedicated to that right, like layers marketplace and then layers can take commission or whatever.

Reijo (41:57)
and your profile as well.

Liam (42:00)
What do you mean?

Reijo (42:01)
like assets like for sale or you know like you can specifically you can sort of sort throughout all your layers you could sort out like ah these are the things that are made for sale or like this is the thing these are the things you can purchase

Liam (42:16)
Yes, yes definitely. Yeah you can have your own little shop right. Yeah and then those would obviously take a cut. I didn't realize that the commission that some of these marketplaces are taking is so high these days. Do you know? Have you ever sold on a marketplace like a digital resource marketplace?

Reijo (42:20)
Yeah.

It is cutthroat. It is.

Um, my, so.

Liam (42:43)
It's like up to 50% or something ridiculous.

Reijo (42:48)
That's ludicrous. But I think my experience with those types of things is mostly with Stripe. So Stripe takes a cut. And of course, when the sums go up, the cut gets bigger and bigger and bigger as you process the transaction. So lately I've been looking at it, at the Stripe transactions and going like.

Liam (43:00)
Mm.

Hmm.

Reijo (43:15)
Like yeah, I get it. It's very comfortable for the client to pay by a card Super super easy and I love it for them fuck like stripe

Liam (43:20)
Yeah.

Do you not have a, do you not have whys in Estonia?

Reijo (43:29)
This is great, it was made by Estonians. How dare you? Yeah, Wise was founded by two Estonians.

Liam (43:33)
Oh, oh really?

my naivety. But I thought the whole point of WISE was much less fees, no? Or it's just bank transfers, there's no... yeah.

Reijo (43:46)
Yes, but it's a PANG transfer. It's not paying by card.

Liam (43:54)
Yeah, but surely most companies these days are used to bank transfers, or are they not?

Reijo (44:00)
Yes, yes, but card is so much comfortable, so much more comfortable, especially like if you have a car saved in like in your browser and stuff like that, super easy. Bank transfers, when I think about making a bank transfer myself, I always, I go to ridiculous extents to not do a transfer and find a way to pay by a card.

Liam (44:05)
Now...

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's a little more convoluted, but it still doesn't take that long. Like I did one the other day. It took less than, it took less than, took less than like two minutes. Like I had to create a new, I had to create a new, a new person. So you put the eye ban in and, and that's it.

Reijo (44:35)
It's... it doesn't... yeah... it doesn't kill me... yeah... it doesn't kill me.

Yeah, but I also like when you give me a payment link by card, like I know all of the correct details are being inserted correctly. With bank transfers, there's always like a go and double check everything five times, make sure I'm sending the right, it's the right name, it's the right I-man, it's the right Swift, it's the right amount. There's so much things there. There's so many places where I can make a mistake there.

Liam (45:16)
Yeah, there was a famous example of that. I think it was some person at Citibank, if you heard of Citibank, huge bank. They were tasked to transferring some inordinate amount of money, like 800 million, and they just had to fill in this form and send it to whoever they're sending it to, and they sent it to the wrong person.

Reijo (45:27)
Yeah.

Good lord.

Liam (45:44)
And the person that received it or the company that received it was like, yeah, we're not sending this back. Yeah.

Reijo (45:51)
Right?

You snooze, you lose. But like, I don't, there has to be, there has to be some sort of a clause. Like when the sums go that big, like I understand if you make a mistake within like 500 euros or 500 pounds, like the bank is not going to waste their time on trying to untangle this, but 800 million.

Liam (45:55)
You're gonna have to sue us.

Uh...

Yeah.

Yeah, you'd think that they would just send it back immediately.

Reijo (46:24)
But you would also think that they would get the details correctly for 800 million. You would think that there would be many people double checking that transfer.

Liam (46:36)
Yeah, I don't know. I mean these catastrophes happen.

Reijo (46:43)
It would be good to be on the receiving end of it.

Liam (46:44)
Um.

Yeah, but can you imagine being the person that did it though? God, you'd try and remove that from your memory, right? Otherwise you just... oh god.

Reijo (46:53)
Hehe

Yeah, you would not be able to live that down. Yeah, I lost my company 100 million.

Liam (47:01)
It's just...

like what you'd been known for.

Reijo (47:07)
Yeah, you can't even sue, like, what are you gonna do? Gonna sue that person? You're not gonna recover 800 million pounds from that person. It's done.

Liam (47:18)
Hehe

I'll have to try and find the link to that, hopefully it is, I think it was quite a large amount of money like that.

Reijo (47:29)
Anyway...

Liam (47:30)
I will put it in the show notes. But yeah, anyway, we got into this because, yeah, how would you spend money, well I'll ask you, Ray, how would you spend money on layers to grow it or maintain it or whatever?

Reijo (47:37)
investments.

I don't know what the 10 next steps would be for after receiving an investment, but I would agree with your first couple of steps. I think those are right steps. First being hiring somebody, hiring an extra developer, so somebody who helps you develop the features. So you get...

more time to run the business and develop the business. And then the next hire would be again taking something off your plate, which is growth and handling growth, four layers as well. So you get more time to come up with the features of some sort. What sort? I don't exactly know. Yeah, a growth hacker. Right? So yeah.

Liam (48:27)
a growth expert.

A growth hacker, Rare, yeah? I'll hire a growth hacker.

Reijo (48:41)
I don't, I'm not a marketing person. I don't know. Fuck sweet. Fuck all about marketing. Uh, but it's clear to me that whatever you've been doing so far has worked. So I trust your judgment to find that person to continue to do, continue doing so. And for the same for development as well.

Liam (48:56)
Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a common thing with a lot of founders. They're like, Oh, I just want to hire another me, which is very arrogant, and egotistical.

Reijo (49:06)
This is my thought, right? Well, listen, if it like, without you the product wouldn't be there. So there's a reason to be egotistical here.

Liam (49:20)
Yeah, to an extent. But also, I would love a team, but also I don't want a team that just does nothing, and well, not nothing, but like tasks that aren't real, really crucial. Like, because you can build features till the clouds come home, right? You can hire 10, 50 devs and like build every feature known to man, but will that help in the long run?

Reijo (49:27)
No. Yeah.

Run it real, right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (49:49)
Yeah, I guess you don't know. You don't know. It's all about expert.

Reijo (49:52)
I don't know. Yeah. But it sounds like an expensive adventure. But I don't know if it's a necessary adventure.

Liam (50:01)
you're very wise very wise I keep thinking of that wise meme no

Reijo (50:09)
Would it make you feel good? I think it would make you feel good. Like, yeah, I've got all these developers helping me. We're building all these great features. Does it actually move the needle? I don't know. Feels good though.

Liam (50:23)
that's I don't know that's the thing that's what concerns me like I don't I don't like wasting cash and like a lot of tech is essentially not wasting cash but that maybe they would argue it's just research and development like you don't you don't know what's gonna click you don't know what might work so you work on you work on loads of features and then the one the one that works you obviously prioritize and get rid of

Reijo (50:45)
Yes.

Yes.

Liam (50:50)
the others, which is a good way to work really, because it's kind of what Google has done throughout the existence. They've worked on so many things and sunset it like most of them.

Reijo (50:53)
Yes.

Well, to a point where it's a known part of the product ecosystem. It's like when you buy into the product, whatever the thing is that they've made, you can almost expect like, ah, let's give it 12 months and then it'll be done. Which is not a good, I don't think that's a good thing to acquire as a company.

Liam (51:10)
Hmm.

Mmm, yeah.

No, no. So yeah, so there is that. But yeah, like I said, there's definitely a few features that I'd love to build out and having an extra dev, an extra pair of hands building those would be incredible. And especially having maybe another dev as well, just to...

Reijo (51:42)
Yeah.

Liam (51:49)
maintain the codebase, the infrastructure, making it super performant and stable. That would also be incredible.

Reijo (52:01)
Do you think, from a development perspective, me speaking, knowing almost nothing about development, I'm assuming that the next hires, or let's say, the next steps for the product are going to be more critical because they're going to happen before a larger scale operation?

it's more important to get the fundamentals right now before things start breaking later on when you have tons more traffic transport interactions and users.

Liam (52:33)
Hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, it's a tough one. It's really a tough one. Like I don't think any developer ever wants to have to rebuild, basically, start again. And every developer wants to have the best foundations possible. But at the same time, it's kind of like

Reijo (52:50)
Mm-hmm.

What's the cost of those foundations?

Liam (53:05)
Well, it's more like what's the plausibility that you can just predict the future. Like, how do you...

Reijo (53:10)
Ah, okay. Yeah, okay. That's so you make an educated guess in that sense then

Liam (53:16)
The codebase grows in kind of like an agile way and it needs to be flexible in the regard that whatever the customer wants, you can build that feature. And that might not be a part of some grand plan, some grand foundation.

which can result in a codebase that's all over the place, but you can still slowly grow the foundation basically, rather than throwing it out. I think it's important to continually review and upgrade existing things just so they don't go too out of date, and I probably need to do that myself actually because I haven't upgraded a lot of things, because if

Reijo (53:42)
Hmm.

Liam (54:08)
like if it ain't broke don't fix it for example, but at the same time, at the same time that's how things just get really old and tired and less performant in the long run let's say.

Reijo (54:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (54:28)
But yeah, it would be good to have a rock solid foundation. I think there is one there. But like you say, at a larger scale, who knows if that will be the main foundation, or whatever this foundation is, this core essence of the codebase.

Reijo (54:49)
Yeah, yeah. Okay. But so but stepping back from that, what like how much do you think you would need in terms of investments? Like if you had to put a number like give me a give me an amount of years and amount of pounds.

Like, make a prediction.

Liam (55:12)
This is what I'm trying to figure out. If I was to hire a couple of devs, the cost of devs obviously varies globally. I mean, if I was hiring someone in the US, a decent one might be upwards of 200-300 grand, whereas in Europe it'd probably be a third of that.

Reijo (55:25)
Okay, good question.

Yes, yes.

Liam (55:38)
maybe further west or further east, sorry, it might be even lesser than that. So it's like, and I don't necessarily care where they're from, you know, I just want them to be decent. But maybe, I don't know, maybe you start with the max and be like, oh yeah, I want to hire a design engineer, so the market rate, the max is x, so if I have that, then at least I can, I have

Reijo (55:41)
For the least.

Liam (56:06)
I have that money to find whoever I can, because I've got the market rate. So, and then, I always had the idea for growth. I'd want someone to help with just maintaining steady growth in the sense that, of like targets, reaching targets.

Because I think a lot of people want layers to grow and they want more people on it so they can like... I guess people want more reach, right? I'd like to think people want more connections, but it's probably reach that they want. Like a lot of people say... Yeah, they want an audience. Yeah, a lot of people say that like, yeah, layers is great, the engagement isn't that much.

Reijo (56:47)
They want an audience.

It's smoke.

Liam (56:55)
which yeah it's small, it's not gonna be a dribble, a behance overnight. It took them 10 years to do that, but I would like someone to be able to manage that, and just basically set specific goals, like monthly goals, to try and reach.

Reijo (57:04)
Right, right.

Liam (57:23)
and one angle to take is SEO and just making sure layers is optimized for search engines because otherwise you're just missing out on people trying to find things right I think layers already has one side of it which is good word of mouth like people like the product they want to share it they're already telling people about it

Reijo (57:34)
Mm-hmm.

See ya.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (57:53)
So it's how do you get the people that don't know another person two or three times removed that is on it, right? If they're like 10 times removed, how do you get those people? So the main source for a lot of traffic is still search engines. So just giving yourself that chance, layers the chance to appear in the search results is,

Reijo (58:06)
Yeah.

Liam (58:23)
I think worth an investment because you can also just do paid ads, which I've actually started trying. Because yeah, you get a lot of services offering free credits. So that's kind of why I just jumped on them just to try and get the free credits. Like X, for example, for a verified organization.

Reijo (58:31)
Yeah?

Nice.

Liam (58:50)
an obscene amount, I think like 200 bucks a month, but currently you get the same amount in ad credits. So it's essentially like you're just buying ads plus the benefits of the verified organization, which I haven't necessarily measured, but I'd like to think maybe it gives you a bit more reach. But I think the ads definitely do. The ads give you more reach and I've just been using the ads to promote.

Reijo (58:52)
OOF

Yeah.

Liam (59:18)
layers posts, so like anyone's work that we feature, if it's doing well, I'll boost it up and then I'll boost like, I'll boost the behind the mask interviews. So yeah, there's that. And then recently just started trying Reddit as well, ads on Reddit, because they also offer a free, I think it's either 100, 100.

Reijo (59:26)
Nice.

Liam (59:46)
dollars or two hundred dollars free credits if you spend a hundred quid so I'm like why not might as well try it so

Reijo (59:49)
Okay.

It's interesting because really to me, in the context of design or tech, it almost feels like a separate kind of an organization like Layers already. People sharing what they make and people commenting on it and uploading it. There's already a community aspect there. So I'm interested in how those would...

perform or how those would do on Reddit, those ads.

Liam (1:00:29)
Yeah exactly, same. There's a few big subreddits there, like Rdesign and Rwebdesign and RgraphicDesign, which there's millions of people on, but you don't really know how active they are. I don't think they are that active. But it's more just getting the word out there, you know? It doesn't...

Reijo (1:00:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Liam (1:00:52)
someone that just browses reddit regularly and is looking for a design community but doesn't know where to find one, it's like oh I browse reddit but it's dead. I'm a bit fed up of Behance or Dribbble or whatever, is there another one? And up appears layers and they're like eww what's this?

Reijo (1:01:08)
Yeah. Bam.

And no more waitlists, so... Fire away!

Liam (1:01:18)
yeah no more waitlist. Yeah so yeah that's where I would invest some money initially. Oh and also the other thing was I've always wanted to... I've always wanted the members of layers to somewhat own layers as well. So the way you can do that would be some sort of crowdfunding, not just crowdfunding but allowing...

people to buy shares, so kind of like a public company where you can just buy shares. You can kind of do the same thing privately, you just need to have a process that allows it. And I could do all the research myself, but it would also be good to have just some general consultation there, making sure I do it right.

Reijo (1:01:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It sounds very... That idea I think sounds very interesting. And I think that idea comes, at least from my perspective, it comes at the right time. When a lot of people are, as you said, fed up, I think, with the status quo or with certain monopolies, like Tribble or Behance or stuff like that.

people want an alternative and then there's an option to get even more involved. Really put your money where your mouth is. I think it's good. However, how do you execute this in the most correct, reasonable way so it works out? That sounds like a kind of worms to me. But also I'm not versed in lore or how...

Liam (1:03:06)
Yeah.

Reijo (1:03:10)
investments or how to do things like this. So sounds sketchy to me.

Liam (1:03:14)
Yeah, but it also just gets very fundamental very quickly, right? Like what makes a good community. And I always thought surely the better communities or the best communities would be owned by its members. Like I don't think any of them actually are. Like if you think of the main social medias, they're all privately owned, right?

Reijo (1:03:22)
Yes.

Yes.

Liam (1:03:41)
Actually, are there any public ones? I can't remember. I don't know. Actually Twitter was public and then Elon bought it right so it went private again.

Reijo (1:03:52)
So he literally wanted, he that's owned by the community. That's what he did. He bought it.

Liam (1:03:59)
Mmm, yep. Heh, yeah.

Reijo (1:04:01)
whether it worked out or not, that's still up to be decided, I think.

Liam (1:04:06)
God that is true actually because it was public and then

Yeah, because anyone could buy any amount of shares he bought, a majority of shares compared to everyone else. Yeah, but yeah, I just want layers to be, I don't know, democratic and like people vote on features and they... The roadmap or the direction of layers is down to the community itself and not just...

I mean, I think it's good to have experienced individuals pointing people in the right direction. But, dunno.

Reijo (1:04:52)
Yeah, I agree with you. What I'm in my head, what I'm concerned about is not making it look like it's paid to win or it's paid to play. So, let's say you open up the doors for personal investments so people can buy shares.

What do they get for those shares? I don't know. Uh, but let's say there's a, there's an organization, let's say, uh, a large design studio or a tech company that buys a huge, huge amount of shares. Does that give them then some sort of this more deciding power or just like, or, or what it, what it should give them is just an, it's just an option to DM you directly. That's it.

Liam (1:05:40)
Mm.

Reijo (1:05:49)
That's it.

Liam (1:05:50)
I think in my head it doesn't give you any more power or voting power. I think every member should probably just get a share by default, like one share, and that gives them voting rights. But buying more shares is more just...

Reijo (1:06:03)
Yeah.

Liam (1:06:11)
I want to invest in layers because I think it will do well. I want it to do well and I think I can get a return from it. I think it should be... I mean I've not really thought about it a huge amount, but buying more shares would be more about just believing in layers and wanting a bigger return. Rather than having the power of deciding the direction of layers.

Reijo (1:06:15)
Mm-hmm.

More. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (1:06:41)
that should still be a majority voting percentage system. I mean, which can also be gained.

Reijo (1:06:47)
Mmmm

Yeah, exactly. I would like, I would put a hard line there to say to say to say that, like all you can buy shares, you can expect a return on the investment, you can vote on things that you think like the community things are important. Whether any of that is actually then brought into action is will be up to you or people who you

specified to do those things. I would not trust the community to make the right decisions.

Liam (1:07:26)
Oh shit, you're not a believer in pure democracy.

Reijo (1:07:26)
Yeah.

Absolutely not. To an extent, yes. I think that's the truest way to do things is democracy.

Liam (1:07:43)
I mean, I kind of agree because democracy voted for Brexit and Trump and stuff like that.

Reijo (1:07:50)
That was my next example. You got you fucking got Brexit and you're talking about democracy. The Americans got Trump and they're not talking about democracy. So. Bon Appetit.

Liam (1:07:58)
Uggghhh...

I mean yeah someone famous said like whether it was Twain or Winston that democracy is the worst kind of government but it's better than all the rest

Reijo (1:08:16)
Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Liam (1:08:18)
So it's the only system that we have that's half decent. But yeah, it'll be an ongoing challenge. And like, players isn't a flippin' parliamentary house. It's still just a design platform. It won't hold much responsibility, but at the same time, you still want to try and keep it fair and less, try and prevent spam and gaming and that sort of stuff.

Reijo (1:08:35)
Right.

Whoa!

Yeah, yeah, but there's a reason why you created the platform, right? There is a meaning behind this. There's a, there has to be a meaning in the work. And you don't want that to go to waste. To waste that on working on things that are not beneficial for the platform.

Liam (1:09:04)
Hmm.

Do you know my main reasons? Do you know my core values for layers?

Reijo (1:09:19)
Please, do explain.

Liam (1:09:21)
No, do you know them? I'm just wondering if I've ever made them clear or...

Reijo (1:09:23)
No. This is this is also something that should go on to the same place where like the behind the mask and stuff like that. Not to get into like writing like writing manifestos, but this is something that should be clear to the community I think.

Liam (1:09:33)
Yeah, yeah.

Well yeah, it should also just be on the about page, right? I should spend some time creating an about page. But no, I think the main values I have for layers would be... I got a bit fed up of all these existing communities and the short-term reward systems. So I blurted on about those for a while, just like vanity metrics in general.

Reijo (1:09:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (1:10:10)
I don't think they're good. I don't think they're bad in some ways, but in the long term I don't necessarily see a lot of benefits. So there's a lot of short term focus with these platforms, and I want to see what a long term focus might look like. I want to try and invest in...

long-term connections and relationships, because I think those are way more beneficial, and they have been in my life. I've received lots of, well arguably, it's all relative likes and views on previous platforms in the past, and yeah it's been great back then, but it's more what they led to, right? The longer term relationships, the people I met through those platforms.

Reijo (1:11:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (1:11:10)
just finding a way to focus on those rather than these numbers, which can all these short term likes and stuff that kind of go away really quickly, right? You receive a like, I was like, oh, awesome, I received a lot of likes, even product time, like we see a lot of votes, this is incredible, but the next day you're like, I guess I do feel.

Reijo (1:11:36)
Yeah, it's very...

Liam (1:11:39)
I do feel validated, but in the long run, what's the actual substance?

Reijo (1:11:44)
Well, I think you're a little bit comparing apples to oranges. I feel like having success with a tweet, just a single tweet, and having success with a launch on Product Hunt, I think those are two different things. I think the Product Hunt launch, yes, it still is just upvoting, but commenting the community support.

having that moment product of the week, product of the day, whatever, I think that's much more significant than just a semi-successful tweet, which is very ethereal. It's an addiction, I think, another healthy one.

Liam (1:12:23)
Yes, yes.

Yes, yes. And I think, I think, yeah, so that's, that's one of them. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's, that's the main one, I guess. It's more, I want layers to focus on long term reward, not short term reward.

Reijo (1:12:50)
This is some and to stress this, this is exactly the shit you should write about in the about page. That's exactly what people should understand. And that will also nip a lot of comments or feedback in the in the pod. Like, why don't I see activity? Like, why don't I see my likes? Why don't I see my followers? Like, why don't I get all of that sort of.

Liam (1:12:58)
Yeah.

Mm.

Reijo (1:13:19)
immediate dopamine that I've been used to. There's a deep conceptual reason why you don't see those. Unless you're a plus, which is you should get plus if you want to.

Liam (1:13:23)
Mm.

Hmm. And it's not.

Yeah, but it's also like I'm not necessarily against those, and the gamification can be a lot of fun.

Reijo (1:13:38)
Yes.

It's a way of leveraging, but it cannot be the end goal, I think.

Liam (1:13:50)
Yeah, because well, like ultimately, like the only winners are the people that are good at gaming the system, right, like, and figuring out what gets the most, whatever the gamified metric is. It's not about actual core values. It's just the system.

Reijo (1:14:00)
Yes.

Yes.

Liam (1:14:13)
So.

Reijo (1:14:14)
I would like, but it's a, it's a, to me, these two ideas of having, focusing more on focusing more on long, let's say long term interactions, but, and communication, gamification are two concepts that sound opposite to me a little bit. We have gamification, at least typically into this product design context is very much.

Liam (1:14:37)
Hmm.

Reijo (1:14:42)
They want to get you to the next immediate step, which is like, like for Duolingo, for example, is a great example of gamification. Um, but I think they also go way, way too far in my opinion. So my, I tried to learn Spanish. Uh, but now I just hate Duolingo because they keep pestering me. And now I specifically don't want to learn Spanish because fucking Duolingo.

Liam (1:14:45)
Mmm.

Mm.

Reijo (1:15:12)
Uh...

Liam (1:15:12)
Yeah Duolingo is a great example, it's the most gamified app ever.

Reijo (1:15:17)
Yeah, it tries to guilt trip me into learning a new language, which maybe works on some people, but doesn't work on me.

Liam (1:15:29)
I don't think it's as bad because it's not comparing you to other people necessarily. It's still just a singular game. I think they may have introduced some leaderboards, but yeah.

Reijo (1:15:36)
That's true. Yes.

So how do you square gamification with long-term rewards? Is there, you're not going to introduce a streak counter, you're not going to introduce lead rewards. What is it? How are you going to measure that?

Liam (1:15:52)
Mmm.

yes that is the question

Reijo (1:16:08)
Like is it going to be jobs acquired? Is it going to be projects completed? Like true interaction, truly true relationship created between clients and designers?

Liam (1:16:25)
I mean, I guess one milestone is, eventually, I want the community to get to a size where people are having meetups, right? And I think in real life, meetups are very valuable, and just way more valuable than how many likes you have on layers. Like you're meeting people, you're getting to know people, you're building a network, you're building connections.

Reijo (1:16:35)
That'll be beautiful.

Probably, I think.

Liam (1:16:51)
that is going to be that is going to be far more or can be far more valuable. Well, I'd like to think it is I'd like to think it is

Reijo (1:16:58)
Yeah, that's a very good way to put it. I would like to think that it is as well. I'm not a meetups person. I don't like them personally, but that doesn't mean that I see the value in them for other people, I think.

Liam (1:17:06)
Mm.

Hmm. Well, but you maybe not in real life meetups, but just remote meetups as well. Just online.

Reijo (1:17:20)
That's true. Yeah, that's, that's fine. I think. Yeah.

Liam (1:17:23)
But yeah, anyway, we might be having a guest in the next podcast to talk about this a bit more, on how to grow layers and how to just maintain and manage a community and try and prevent or how to avoid all the pitfalls that current communities have gone through.

Reijo (1:17:29)
Oh yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam (1:17:54)
if that is possible. I mean, Les, Les!

Reijo (1:17:57)
It'll be interesting for sure.

Liam (1:18:00)
Yeah, there's benefits from being small at the moment, but obviously when you're large, the problems grow.

Reijo (1:18:05)
Yes.

Yes.

There's those like, I think there's also a layers are small. So it's, so it's easy to cross correct for you, I think. Uh, and B, um, there's, I think there's definitely a, uh, an argument of a lesser evil. Like I really, really don't like. Tribble, but I don't particularly like layers, but it's a lesser kind of a, like I'm a willing to accept layers as a platform.

even if I don't like it, because I really don't like Dribbble. I think that's like the competition. I think that could be an argument that's made, that people are just trying to find an alternative and Layers is at the right time in the right place. Even though it's a great platform, it's just... Yes. I think that's what it is right now.

Liam (1:18:39)
Thanks for watching!

It's the best compliment you've ever given, Ray.

the lesser of five evils.

Reijo (1:19:07)
And that's, I think that's very temporary also, because if you, once it grows, you develop, inevitably community problems will develop in some way. Not sure which, how that will sort of express itself in layers, but community problems will develop. And then it will become that sort of like, it will take triples position in being the, being the bigger evil.

Liam (1:19:28)
Mm.

guess it doesn't have to grow to its full potential. I mean you could keep it small, you could keep it somewhat gate-cubed. I mean basically...

Reijo (1:19:37)
No. Yes, I think that's... Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's a it's a when you say it out loud, it's a horrible concept, I think. You need like, um, implement implementing, yeah, implementing gatekeeping, I think. However, there is some sort of I don't know how to do it. I'm not the person to do it. I shouldn't be even having an opinion on it.

Liam (1:19:55)
Not wanting to take over the world.

Reijo (1:20:11)
But how do you maintain some sort of quality in the community? Because it's clearly, very clearly not worked out for Dribbble.

Liam (1:20:12)
Thanks for watching!

Mmm

Reijo (1:20:22)
I don't know.

Liam (1:20:23)
Hmm. Yeah.

Reijo (1:20:25)
How do you enforce that? Well, I don't know. But it will be a problem.

Liam (1:20:30)
But it's more how do you please everyone, right? Like the more...

Reijo (1:20:34)
I don't think that's dead on arrival. Like you won't be, that's not something you will be able to do. Like you can have all the lives you want. That's not going to be happening. I think there's still people who will be like, nah.

Liam (1:20:47)
Mm-mm.

Reijo (1:20:48)
There's still one free stuff for free. There won't be that moment where you please everyone.

Liam (1:20:51)
Hmm.

there's so many companies and agencies who have done so well on Dribbble and got so many clients and are used to a lot of reach right, but it's just not physically possible to split the reach to everyone equally and evenly right.

Reijo (1:21:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, when I have to, when I think about analogy, I would use is like, layers is like, like

like organically grown dribble, like farm grown, like it's not industrialized. It's not like a machine of death, right? It's sort of like, you know, the farmer, like, you know, where the meat and milk is coming from. That's how I imagine layers to be.

Liam (1:21:42)
How wholesome.

Reijo (1:21:45)
Well, this is like this is but this is where the community is at, right? It's very it's right now is at least it's sort of tight knit somewhat. It's growing by word of mouth. People like it. But it's not reached a tipping point yet where it's just an avalanche of spam and garbage.

Liam (1:21:59)
Mm.

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I always saw that as a problem as like feeds, algorithms, and making sure people see what they want to see, as opposed to a data problem. I mean, you can also fix it with just like trying to keep the community small and tighten it and waitlisted and you know, and knowing everyone in the community.

That's one way of doing it. But the other way is having an open tool and just ensuring that people see what they want to see. By simply getting rid of the recent feed, for example, you can get rid of spam. It'll still be there. No one will see it.

Reijo (1:22:45)
That's true. That's true.

That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just won't see it. Yeah, it'll just cost you... It'll cost you hosting. That's what it'll do.

Liam (1:23:05)
Well, if no one sees it, the cost is minimal. The bandwidth is minimal. But it does mean, I mean, I have thought about it. It does mean that people have to do their own discovery. Or you have a separate discovery page, which is more curated, right? Which I do kind of like, because it means, well, I do and I don't. It means you have to put more effort yourself into discovery. Things aren't handed for you.

Reijo (1:23:07)
Eh, yeah.

Yes.

This is a yes, it'll be more difficult. It won't be spoon fed to you. But I feel like there's an interesting, there has to be some sort of an interesting way here how to solve it in sort of like a natural way. For example, what I have in my head is I follow people on layers who I think whose work I think is worthy. Worthy is a bad word to use, but it's like, you know,

Liam (1:23:35)
Um...

Ha ha ha.

Worthy of the great, Rayo!

Reijo (1:24:04)
whose work is of quality that I want to replicate. I want to be as good as they are.

Liam (1:24:15)
But how do you find them? On the recent page or Twitter or what?

Reijo (1:24:18)
Uhhh

Liam (1:24:20)
on the popular page.

Reijo (1:24:21)
This is a good question. Maybe recent. But let's say recent goes away. So I only see people who I follow right now. Now, I would be incredibly interested in the people who those people follow. Like the people who I look up to, who do great work, who I want to I'm inspired by. Like who are they inspired by?

Who do they look up to? Who are those people they follow? I'd be interested in that. So having a very, very customized niche understanding.

Liam (1:25:01)
That's, that's, I think that's a common, that's common feature, that's a common feature that layers should do eventually. Like if you go on any social media platform, there's always suggested follows, right? And that's based on, it's based on who's following your followers, et cetera.

Reijo (1:25:18)
Yeah, but it's, it's tricky in design because some people would like to only follow illustrators. Some people would only like to follow web designers or product designers or like type people only would want to follow type people. And there would be like, like areas that don't match together well, even though, yes, I think this, this person's work is great.

Liam (1:25:36)
Hmm.

Reijo (1:25:47)
the people they follow are not that actually relevant to me because I'm not interested in that specific area.

Liam (1:25:53)
Yep.

Yeah, I think the other problem is you're discouraging people to join the platform because they won't be discoverable, right? New people.

Reijo (1:26:11)
Yeah.

Yes, that's a problem. So it would work best if you're transferring a community, right? If you already have a community on X or people you follow, people who follow you on X, then you create a profile on layers as well, share that on Twitter. Then that sort of sparks the growth in some way. But starting from scratch, but to be honest, starting from scratch on any platform is kind of a, that's a rough deal anyway.

Liam (1:26:17)
Um...

Mmm.

Reijo (1:26:43)
But it's, it's not going to be easy. Yeah. So.

Liam (1:26:44)
true. It does, yeah, it does. It's a bit of work, right? And then the other problem which always annoys me is you amass all these people that you follow, but you never review, you never review them. So like some, you've some people you've just been following for like five, 10 years, which you wouldn't even want to follow if you actually saw them in the list again, I think. No.

Reijo (1:26:56)
Yeah.

Mmm.

I don't think so. I feel like maybe I have a distorted perspective on this, but I feel like even if I've been following for somebody for many years and their work has transformed into something that I'm not inherently interested in, I'm not going to unfollow them because it's very interesting to see for me how, because I've sort of been along for the journey. It's very interesting for me to see how they've gone through different...

Liam (1:27:36)
Mm.

Reijo (1:27:40)
different phrases. So unless they turn into something that's completely like over some red lines for me, I'm not gonna unfold them just because they don't make the work that I want to see. It's just a different type of thing. But that's just me.

Liam (1:27:57)
I see.

But yeah, basically we're hoping to have a much deeper discussion about this next time. And it will be our first guest, so yeah, hopefully it goes ahead. If it doesn't, we're still hoping to have guests on in the future. If you have anyone in mind, just let us know. And

Reijo (1:28:10)
Yes.

Yes.

Yep.

Liam (1:28:26)
Yeah, I guess we'll call it there. It's been an hour and a half. So yeah, thanks for listening. If you have any questions or feedback for us, for Rayo or I, we've got an email. You can just send us an email to overlay at layers.to. We're also on Twitter. You can just message the layers account or you can message my account, Liam P. McCabe or Rayo's account, which is...

Reijo (1:28:29)
Yeah?

Ray of Rites or next.

Liam (1:29:00)
And yeah, Overlay is also available everywhere. So whatever podcasting app or service that you use, you should be able to leave a rating, a review and subscribe, please do. Yeah, it really helps. And yeah, we're hoping current schedule is, we put out one every two weeks. And yeah, we'll be doing.

Reijo (1:29:11)
Please do.

Liam (1:29:27)
Moving forward I think we'll be doing video as well. And actually we didn't even use our screens this time but in the future we're probably, we're hoping to just go through layers features directly on the podcast as well as I don't know, reviewing layers, that sort of stuff, making use of actual screen recording.

Reijo (1:29:31)
Nice.

Nice.

Liam (1:29:51)
Cool, and that's it. Thanks so much guys. Ciao. See you later.

Reijo (1:29:53)
Alright, bye!