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Under the Radar

216: Shark Battle

 

00:00:00   Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05   And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10   So this last couple of weeks, I've seen a couple of interesting sort of like, I don't

00:00:14   know, relatively substantial changes in our sort of the things that you and I are interested

00:00:20   in or relate to our business. And I thought there were two of them in particular that

00:00:23   stood out to me as things that were worth talking about. And it's specifically, it's

00:00:27   app transparency tracking or app tracking transparency, ATT, and Apple's new podcasting

00:00:34   sort of overhaul initiative. And there was sort of a commonality between those two things

00:00:39   that I think just, it just sort of stuck with me this week. And specifically, it's that

00:00:44   I think, app tracking transparency, which is this, in case you don't know, in iOS 14.5,

00:00:49   which just rolled out a few days ago, Apple's changing the way that the sort of essentially

00:00:55   the rules around advertising and tracking within an application are applied. And so

00:01:00   that you cannot sort of essentially co-mingle any data about a user between multiple sources.

00:01:08   You can do sort of first party tracking potentially, but you can't share it. And so this comes

00:01:12   into play most often for advertising, where if you had a situation, say an app install

00:01:18   ad, where you're in Facebook, you see an ad for an application, you tap on it. And then

00:01:23   in the, you know, they go to the App Store, they download the app, they open it up, and

00:01:27   you can attribute that, you know, that install to that ad very specifically. And that's

00:01:32   something that they, Apple provides some amount of support with their SKAd network thing,

00:01:37   but generally they're restricting and changing that. And then on the other side, you have

00:01:43   the changes around podcasting and podcast subscriptions. And while sort of in the process

00:01:48   of rolling out Apple's new podcast subscription system, they seem to have changed or at least

00:01:54   now provided a mechanism by which it is possible for organizations to be in sort of a list,

00:02:01   have a podcast listed in iTunes, but listed in such a, sorry, in iTunes, in Apple podcasts,

00:02:07   but listed there in such a way that doesn't share the public feed for that podcast more

00:02:12   generally. And so this is something that I know you use and many third party podcast

00:02:17   clients use to serve as she used the Apple podcasts directory as an authoritative public

00:02:24   directory, which has lots of benefits in terms of they do, you know, sort of quality assurance

00:02:30   and filtering on people who submit to the, the, the Apple podcast directory to make sure

00:02:34   that they're appropriate, not doing things that are illegal or problematic and it can

00:02:39   be relatively sort of viewed as an authoritative reference. And they're changing that so that

00:02:44   now shows can optionally essentially not participate in that public directory sort of feature that

00:02:51   Apple has provided for years. And in both of these cases, the thing that really struck

00:02:56   me and I think they both have both of these things have fairly substantial impacts on

00:02:59   us in terms of if Apple ends up, if many shows end up sort of signing out or declining being

00:03:04   an Apple's directory, that'll affect you a lot with your overcast directory and ATT affects

00:03:09   me in so far as you know, a lot of my revenue in my applications is coming from advertising.

00:03:14   And it's a bit too early to say, but I think it's very likely that there will be a substantial

00:03:19   short term drop in my revenue for the next few months while people work out what they're

00:03:23   going to do. My hope is that eventually it'll kind of settle back up to where it was. But

00:03:28   who knows, like there's this very seismic change in my business. And what's strange in some

00:03:34   ways is like, you and I are the like the small little fish in this giant ocean that are being

00:03:40   affected by the waves caused by like two giant sharks fighting like we're these little minnows

00:03:43   swimming along and then these big sharks fighting and it's like in ATT case, it is Facebook

00:03:48   and Apple, I think who are the two that are sort of at ends at sort of sort of at ends

00:03:53   about this where I think Apple probably sees that, you know, the bulk of app install marketing

00:04:02   seems like it's being driven by Facebook. As far as I can tell, like I've been spending

00:04:05   a lot of time in a world that I'm not particularly familiar with, which is the like, UA, which

00:04:10   apparently is the user acquisition world. It's by far the best tool as far as I can

00:04:17   tell, people would say is the Facebook tool where it's this very kind of mechanized system

00:04:22   of getting people to download your app and you have deeply integrate with the Facebook

00:04:26   SDK. And so it provides metrics back on how valuable by customers to you. And so you can

00:04:31   essentially end up in a world where Facebook can tell you this user is going to be worth

00:04:36   a dollar to you, I can show your ad for, you know, 90 cents, and so you'll make 10 cents

00:04:41   on each user. And so if that's the case, and you have very high confidence of that, we

00:04:44   may as well dial that up, you know, as much as you can. And but I think Apple doesn't

00:04:48   like that at a certain point, they're losing control of, you know, app acquisition, which

00:04:53   you previously had been guarded by the App Store. And so they're having this kind of

00:04:57   argument about, you know, essentially who could control that and ATT is one of the results,

00:05:02   but it has a big impact on me. And I think the podcasting side, this introduction of

00:05:07   the, you know, optional public URL thing, it's like, I think Apple is, I could imagine

00:05:12   very much in the same place of feeling like them and they and Spotify are now competitors

00:05:18   in the podcasting space. And, you know, Apple providing things that are kind of more altruistic,

00:05:25   or sort of just generally public goods, maybe come be probably something more problematic,

00:05:31   because they and Spotify are now competing for who's going to be the dominant player

00:05:35   in podcasting, who's going to have control of that, who's going to be the one there.

00:05:40   And for all I know, this public URL thing is a result of, you know, someone like NPR,

00:05:45   or National Public Media, or some large organization that says they don't want to see this control

00:05:51   with Apple, or they want to, you know, it's like there's all kinds of strategic things

00:05:55   you could imagine where these large organizations are having these arguments, and the result

00:05:59   is a checkbox in Podcast Connect or whatever it's called, that now can have this profound

00:06:04   impact on you. And I think this is just one of these things that I'm, over the course

00:06:08   of my indie career, it's happened several times where you have to, hey, I think there's

00:06:14   just the question of accepting that this is sometimes what happens and, you know, sort

00:06:18   of that we don't have control or a seat at the table for some of these situations that

00:06:23   affect us profoundly. And some of these things will just happen to us and we're just like,

00:06:27   okay, well, let's just roll with it as best we can. But it's also like, sometimes it's

00:06:31   just rough, and it's just tough. And it's like, I've been seeing you talk about sort

00:06:35   of this impact on Overcast and how it's, you know, the things and changes that you

00:06:39   have to do and roll from it. And I just kind of feel for you because it's like, it's not

00:06:42   your fight. It's not nothing to do with you. But you're, it's not, you're affected by it

00:06:47   nevertheless.

00:06:48   Yeah, I feel like, like this reminds me a lot of back, geez, probably 10 years ago now,

00:06:54   it was a while ago, when we started seeing the mostly widespread disappearance of useful

00:07:01   public APIs to web services. You know, a lot of us, for example, were building apps and

00:07:06   things and other utilities on the Twitter API. And the Twitter API was, you know, ran

00:07:12   fine for years. But then it started to become, I would say, strategically costly to them,

00:07:20   or at least, or possibly even strategically abused by their competitors. One of the greatest

00:07:24   examples and I think one of the things that really made them shut it down quickly was

00:07:29   when Instagram launched, one of the fastest contributors to its early growth was that

00:07:36   you could basically import your Twitter social graph. And it was one of those like, find

00:07:39   your friends on Twitter, now on Instagram kind of things. And Instagram grew so quickly

00:07:44   from that, and so successfully, and they so like, successfully basically took Twitter's

00:07:49   social graph and built theirs on top of it, that Twitter very soon after that, started

00:07:55   really locking down their API and shutting it down. And they cut Instagram off from that

00:08:00   feature. And, and that was an early example of like these two big companies, you know,

00:08:05   Twitter, Instagram, and then later, you know, when Facebook bought them, they continued

00:08:08   to fight in other different ways. And so all the all the ways that Twitter locked down

00:08:12   their API back then, or change the terms or whatever else, they were doing it to prevent

00:08:19   people like Facebook from taking advantage of them. But it impacted all the small developers

00:08:23   to who were using that same API for things that Twitter normally would be, you know,

00:08:28   it would be too small for Twitter to even care about. But that like these two giants

00:08:32   fighting kind of wrecked that world. And, and we saw like, you know, the great, the great

00:08:38   like web 2.0 trend of all the public services or all the big services having public API

00:08:42   that you could, you know, write cool things against, we saw that trend come to an end

00:08:46   as these companies all got bigger and, and realize that, oh, we're better off like,

00:08:51   keeping the keys to our kingdom ourselves. And if we're going to have an API, it'll

00:08:54   be very limited and, you know, only give people like these kind of accessory purposes that

00:08:58   we don't plan to do ourselves, but not give away like the core product as API access.

00:09:04   And so I think you see a lot of that with the, certainly with the new podcast changes.

00:09:11   You know, it's, it's frustrating. The app tracking transparency thing, I think is multifaceted.

00:09:17   You know, that is Apple trying to preserve privacy, but they also have a monetary incentive

00:09:24   to do so. And so it's, it's a little uncomfortable because when, when Apple execs talk about

00:09:30   how they want to protect people's privacy and limit tracking and everything, I believe

00:09:33   them like, I believe they truly do believe that. And that is a major reason to do this,

00:09:38   but it's uncomfortable that Apple also financially gains from limits they place on this. I think

00:09:46   it's absolutely true. You mentioned a few minutes ago, you mentioned that like the Facebook

00:09:52   system and network of like app install ads and everything largely has taken over distribution

00:09:57   control from the app store and Apple really doesn't like that. Apple also tried to build

00:10:02   their own thing, app store search ads, which I funnel lots of money into kind of a scary

00:10:07   amount that I shouldn't ever really look at the total for. But, and the reason why Apple

00:10:13   made app store search ads was in part to address that demand, but also because Apple is now

00:10:19   the company that like, there was this quote a long time ago, I forget, I forget where

00:10:23   it was from about Bill Gates. And it was like, it was like somebody's mother describing Bill

00:10:27   Gates and as like the kind of person who would come to your house for dinner and say, I'll

00:10:32   take all the potatoes. Thank you. And that's becoming Apple now. Apple wants a piece of

00:10:40   every single market that they have any control over whatsoever through the funnel of iOS

00:10:46   and app store and at purchase policy, they want all the money from all the industries

00:10:51   and all the apps, and they will not be satisfied until they get it. And they seem completely

00:10:59   maybe blind to the problems of antitrust pressure and everything that result from this. But

00:11:05   regardless, when Apple sees an area where someone else is making money in the app store

00:11:09   and they're not getting their cut, they move into the area in a big way so they can get

00:11:13   their cut. And that's really destructive and it's a really bad look. And they don't even

00:11:20   need the money that badly. You know, like, destroying some industry, you know, for them

00:11:24   to make 0.1% more revenue is also not a great look. And so the app tracking transparency

00:11:29   stuff definitely falls into this to some degree. You know, they really don't want other ad

00:11:35   networks and other big data brokers like Facebook making all this money on this app install

00:11:41   channel that's not running through Apple. But they also want to clamp down on all the

00:11:45   other crappy ad providers that are in a billion, you know, crappy apps and crappy games and,

00:11:52   you know, snuck into like weather apps and stuff to sell your location and everything.

00:11:56   There are legitimate privacy concerns to what they're doing as well. So that one is, I think,

00:12:01   a little less cut and dry. The podcast thing though, I feel really just sour about that

00:12:10   because what they, so you know, there's two changes they made. Number one, they launched

00:12:14   a subscription podcast payment option in the app that basically works just like the App

00:12:19   Store but for your podcast. So Apple takes 30% for the first year, 15% for subsequent

00:12:24   years of subscriptions. And they did this obviously with in-app purchase. And if any

00:12:33   other app wants to do that, we can't without giving Apple 30%. Which means we have to either

00:12:38   offer podcasters a much worse deal like, you know, because Apple keeps 30% and then we

00:12:44   have to give them 30% so then we can maybe only give podcasters, you know, 50% after

00:12:49   we take 20 for ourselves to run the whole thing. Or we have to take nothing ourselves

00:12:54   and run this whole program with no money which is kind of impossible because this kind of

00:12:58   program requires a lot of administration. So they've now created this additional market

00:13:03   for like paid directly into apps podcast services that we literally can't compete with them

00:13:08   on because of their own App Store policy. And they know it. And they did this to compete

00:13:12   with Spotify really. That's like Spotify is like their big bad enemy because Spotify

00:13:16   is making a bunch of money that Apple wants. But it also affects everyone else who's making

00:13:21   a podcast app because now there's this expectation now that the two biggest podcast apps are

00:13:26   going to have these paid options for publishers to sell podcasts, sell premium podcasts right

00:13:33   in the apps. Now every smaller app can't compete. And it's because these two big companies

00:13:38   like you were saying like these two big sharks are fighting with each other trying to take,

00:13:43   you know, bigger portions of each other's money while the rest of us smaller players

00:13:47   in the game are just kind of getting hit by the flag here. The other problem again was

00:13:51   the as you mentioned the the whole iTunes API which like every podcast app has been

00:13:56   built on for forever basically except like a few of the very biggest ones that were exceptions

00:14:02   but for the most part almost every podcast app that most people listening to this will

00:14:06   have heard of queries the iTunes API for directory and filtering. And it's important you know

00:14:12   because not only does it keep out things like you know low quality search results, things

00:14:17   like you know spam and illegal copies of other people's podcasts, but it also prevents us

00:14:21   from having to deal with things like illegal content. You know certain content is illegal

00:14:25   in certain countries. Hate speech is illegal or at least in very poor taste almost anywhere.

00:14:31   Things like pornography that might show in the artwork of podcasts. Like there's all

00:14:36   these problems that we don't have to deal with if we use Apple's API. And Apple has

00:14:40   maintained that API you know kind of like hands-off basically and kind of quietly allowed

00:14:46   us to all use it for I think 15 years, 16 years something like that. So it is really

00:14:52   disappointing when that changes and that seems to be the result of like literally I think

00:14:58   it was mostly the result of pressure from one podcast network. That was what prompted

00:15:02   that change. And again it's like some company complains to Apple that their needs aren't

00:15:07   being met by Apple solution. So Apple you know company to company kind of makes this

00:15:11   thing and now it screws all the little guys. And it's unfortunate but I think we will

00:15:21   get through it and I'll tell you how in a minute. But first we are sponsored this week

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00:16:28   not a subscription backend. You've actually used this before, right?

00:16:31   Yes. So I use RevenueCat for all of my subscription management so in WidgetSmith and WatchSmith

00:16:36   and I got to say it does exactly what it says on the tin. It works great and I mean when

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00:17:06   Yeah. I don't know anybody who's excited to build this stuff themselves. This is definitely

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00:17:20   for supporting our show and all of Real AFM. So I wonder like my strategy for avoiding

00:17:29   I mean so ad tracking transparency doesn't really affect me because I do all my own in

00:17:33   house ads and there's no tracking anywhere and so that doesn't affect me at all. Although

00:17:37   I recognize that's a special case and that many apps are affected by this including yours.

00:17:41   The podcast changes so far it's not that big of a deal. So far it's you know a very small

00:17:51   percentage of Apple podcasts queries have resulted in a missing feed URL where people

00:17:57   have removed their feed URL from this API. I have currently for the last day I have it

00:18:02   at 0.1% of queries have a missing feed URL. So so far it's not that bad but it could become

00:18:10   bad if a lot of you know big company shows do this and what this has taught me to do

00:18:18   is you know what it was it was not wise to rely on Apple's benevolence for all this time

00:18:24   because Apple has Apple has been a wonderful benevolent steward of the open world of podcasting

00:18:29   for a while like a you know like a sleeping giant. Unfortunately the giant woke up and

00:18:34   it's hungry and it's the giant of services revenue or at least potential services revenue

00:18:41   and this is an area of Apple where we can no longer trust them to do things that aren't

00:18:47   really slimy blatantly for money because they keep doing it over and over again like they

00:18:53   keep selling out their user experiences their their kind of incentive cleanliness and things

00:19:01   all in the name of services revenue and that's just going to keep happening. So I think it's

00:19:05   smart for us as indies to plan for that to assume that these big companies are going

00:19:11   to keep hitting each other and it's going to it's going to occasionally hit us and to

00:19:16   try as much as possible which I know is hard but to try as much as possible to keep a bit

00:19:20   of distance. So you know for me I'm not going to launch my own paid program even even if

00:19:26   the in-app purchase stuff was solved which it isn't and even if I was allowed to compete

00:19:31   on a level playing field with Apple which nobody is which again I have a lot to say

00:19:37   on that topic we'll save that but even if I could do that I don't want to have to run

00:19:42   this giant payment program and and make deals with every single podcaster individually and

00:19:46   everything I'm also prohibited by in-app purchase policy from integrating anybody else's system.

00:19:53   I can't do that if somebody makes like you know like like there's a couple of like you

00:19:56   know bitcoin based things going around if somebody makes a podcast system where people

00:19:59   can pay each other and I probably can't integrate it in my app because Apple will probably reject

00:20:04   it for not using their in-app purchase system and I probably can't use their in-app purchase

00:20:07   system because of the rates and everything else and that would wreck the whole system.

00:20:10   So I'm just not going to do this for now and I'm not going to have any kind of competing

00:20:14   offering and I'm going to have to recognize like okay well I just have the app full of

00:20:18   free podcasts and that's not a bad place to be.

00:20:22   Most podcasts will continue to be free or will do their own payment system that I am

00:20:26   compatible with where they just you know they give you like a private URL that you can subscribe

00:20:29   to like I'm fully compatible with that and there are ways that I can make that even better

00:20:33   and so I'm going to focus on that kind of thing and being being the place for free podcasts

00:20:38   and and the open world of podcasting and I'm going to reduce and maybe someday eliminate

00:20:44   but at least for now reduce my dependence on Apple's directory and really focus on the

00:20:48   things I can do because ultimately all that other stuff is not within my power and it

00:20:53   never will be and so it's not worth wasting a lot of time on.

00:20:57   Yeah and I think there's such an element of it's like the two things that come to mind

00:21:01   for how to sort of think about these sort of large big business to business conflicts

00:21:07   and how they impact us like the two words that come to mind for me are acceptance and

00:21:11   diversity and it's like at the first level it is just accepting that this is the case

00:21:16   and that it isn't a situation where it's like wishing that it was a different way or being

00:21:22   like well it was like this in the past and now it's different and kind of getting stuck

00:21:25   on that I think would be an easy way an easy sort of rut to get stuck into that's like

00:21:31   why you just want the easy version or the version that it was before and you do not

00:21:36   have to work at it but at a certain point I think it's just I've and this is you know

00:21:39   talking to myself is I just have to accept this is the reality and there may have been

00:21:44   a world where in the past like for up tracking transparency if it reduces the sort of the

00:21:49   income that I can get from advertising in my applications which by the way it's like

00:21:52   I'm not implementing ATT in any of my apps in terms of all of my apps were essentially

00:21:58   transitioning to being untracked which is a decision that I'm delighted and happy to

00:22:02   do but I know we'll have you know a financial cost associated with it but it's like that's

00:22:08   just the reality of the circumstance I find myself in and I can just accept that and I

00:22:12   feel good about it in some ways and I feel better that I have the ability to kind of

00:22:16   influence the ads that are shown in my app in a better way now that I can just sort of

00:22:21   by inaction in some ways by not showing the ATT prompt you know my users are having presumably

00:22:28   and hopefully having you know a slightly more private experience online which is great and

00:22:35   I think the other side is just diversity and it makes it just sort of is that sense of

00:22:39   that being too reliant on any one thing in terms of in the ATT case it's a revenue model

00:22:46   or in the case of the podcast thing it reminds me just about in general with APIs or sort

00:22:51   of third party things that we're reliant on it could be a library it could be an API it

00:22:56   could be anything that it's like being too reliant or too sort of bought into one thing

00:23:03   necessarily creates a circumstance where you can have difficulty like this and you can

00:23:09   be it can be you know sort of the degree to which you are stuck into one particular thing

00:23:12   is the degree to which you you will be in sort of discomfort if that whatever it is

00:23:18   that you're sort of locked into turns in a way that you don't like or doesn't benefit

00:23:23   you and so it's like I feel very glad and I'm that you know over the last couple of

00:23:29   years I've been trying to get you sort of diversify my income away from advertising

00:23:34   and now I have a meaningful amount of my income coming from things like the subscriptions

00:23:39   that I have in widgets Smith and watch Smith and it's you know before that it's like

00:23:43   my advertising was the main thing of that was my business it was like probably 90 95%

00:23:48   of my revenue was coming from advertising and so if you know there's a sudden 30%

00:23:54   40% drop in that then that's a pretty profound impact whereas now I don't overall basis

00:24:00   it'll be you know more muted it'll be something that I can sort of accommodate more specifically

00:24:07   and the thing that's I think too it goes along with a bit of acceptance is when I think

00:24:11   about Apple making their moves and that well I can sort of have kind of just sort of like

00:24:16   emotional or personal opinions about is it the right thing is it the wrong thing I very

00:24:20   much understand why they're doing what they're doing and it's nice in some ways to have

00:24:26   some clarity about that that it's very much like the old thing of you know Apple's

00:24:30   priorities it's like it's Apple first then it's customers and then it's developers

00:24:34   and in that order and in some ways that's a bit of a slam is or at least that's the

00:24:38   way it's often used is that it's like oh you know Apple doesn't care about developers

00:24:41   that Apple cares about itself and it's like well but if they didn't if Apple cared about

00:24:45   developers more than they cared about themselves or their customers would lead to a circumstance

00:24:51   that would likely not be as good in the long run that many of the situations that if Apple

00:24:55   is not defensive and does not sort of put its interests and its platform ahead sort

00:25:02   of if it isn't a good steward of that it could end up in places where it loses control

00:25:07   it loses the ability to affect the change it wants it is bending over to serve too much

00:25:11   to accommodate things and ultimately the platform would suffer and I think it's a reasonable

00:25:16   thing for a company to want you know it's like Apple's interest is Apple it's like

00:25:20   it does not exist as a charitable organization does not and like at this nonprofit that exists

00:25:25   it can have principles and it's reasonable I think for us to hold it it's you know

00:25:31   serve the organization to its own principles but it is certainly something that goes along

00:25:36   with that acceptance that it's like they're they're always it makes sense for them to

00:25:39   work in their own in their own self-interest and the mess the best I can sort of diversify

00:25:44   myself to sort of soften the blow of that or potentially to align myself with their

00:25:48   interests is going to put me in a better place and then trying to do something that is going

00:25:54   to be you know sort of antagonistic or service to be being in be being in that conflict like

00:26:02   the last thing I want to do is to get into a fight with Apple that's just doesn't

00:26:06   make sense to me I'd rather just be my little minnow swimming along in the ocean and sometimes

00:26:10   these big waves will you know sort of knock me around when they're bit having their

00:26:13   fights with these big companies but it's like I'll just do my best to just keep swimming

00:26:17   and hope for the best and hopefully I've done enough diverse diversity that I can sort

00:26:21   of weather it and enough flexibility that I can just accept it when it happens and you

00:26:26   know just roll with it yeah I mean I don't think we have much of a choice because like

00:26:29   like I also don't want to get into a big fight with Apple because frankly that's

00:26:33   a full time job like you need the like you need to be a bigger established operation

00:26:39   and basically devote you know hire some lawyers and basically devote yourself to like sticking

00:26:44   a finger in Apple's side or you know presenting yourself at all these like congressional or

00:26:48   court hearings like that's that's a huge job and I have no interest in that world

00:26:54   I want to make apps and I want to you know do my thing over here and I and I also don't

00:27:00   think there's anything wrong with the strategy of avoidance you know like when when I decided

00:27:04   to make a podcast app whatever it was seven years ago that's a long time now but you

00:27:10   know at that time this was pre-serial podcasts were a pretty good business but they weren't

00:27:17   like a mainstream massive thing yet they it was nowhere near like as as hot as they are

00:27:23   now I don't know if I would have jumped into it if I was starting today like I think

00:27:28   I think right now I have an actual tendency to go to areas that are underserved because

00:27:33   frankly I don't like like heated competition and I don't like entering super hot markets

00:27:39   where a lot of big companies and VC people are throwing a bunch of big money around I'd

00:27:43   rather take a step back and kind of do my own thing over here in like a smaller pond

00:27:48   and when I started making a podcast app that was a smaller pond it no longer is but and

00:27:53   I have no intention of leaving this business but like I think there's nothing wrong with

00:27:57   taking that strategy of like going where there's not a bunch of turbulence from big companies

00:28:02   and big money because that's that's a that's just you're playing with fire at that point

00:28:07   and if you if you thrive on that kind of thing great but I really don't and it's worth

00:28:13   kind of knowing yourself in that area like knowing whether you want that level of of

00:28:17   heat and turbulence and competition or whether you're much happier kind of you know flying

00:28:22   under the radar. Yeah exactly and I think that's a great point

00:28:26   is and I think that is the so often is like it's the benefit of being it's like that's

00:28:31   the benefit of being an indie I think in a lot of ways and it's like turning it around

00:28:34   in a sense of if you were trying to be a venture backed company you need to be in the area

00:28:40   that has that like is the next big thing right that that's what you're aiming for if you're

00:28:46   in that market if that's what you're going for and it's like in some ways what I love

00:28:50   is that the indies like the best place for you to be is not the next best thing is to

00:28:55   be the thing that is solid and reasonable and interesting and compelling and intellectually

00:29:00   stimulating but is just going to be a nice comfortable like interesting space to explore

00:29:06   and work on and that is unlikely to be full of conflict and turmoil that you can just

00:29:10   merrily make a nice living doing the thing that you enjoy and then hopefully just sort

00:29:15   of stay out of the way. Yeah and it can be tricky to find an area

00:29:19   that is calm but not dead but I'd much rather roll that roll that die I guess my metaphors

00:29:28   are falling apart here but I'd much rather try to find that kind of thing than jump into

00:29:33   the the big turbulent wave pool and get my butt kicked. Exactly. Thank you for listening

00:29:38   everybody and we'll talk to you in two weeks. Bye.

00:29:41   Thank you.

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