Miscreants is growing fast! And Andrew is rebuilding MetaMonster

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

Whoops! Our last recording got botched halfway through and only Andrew's audio was saved. So we recapped what we talked about in the last podcast and got into some new stuff in today's episode.

Sean is back from his busiest RSA yet and growing Miscreants like crazy! In fact, they're growing so fast that Andrew is hiring a full-time product designer to join the Miscreants team. Meanwhile Andrew is also rebuilding MetaMonster from the ground up (well, Austin is) and thinking about how to build products with AI at the core instead of just tacking it on. The guys talk about the Vercel AI SDK, the value of time in market when growing an agency, Sean's progress on his new Margins product, and more.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Margins: http://margins.so/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:01.81
Andrew
Yo, so funny reason that I was late to this podcast recording. I was distracted trying to write a job description for the miscreants product designer role that we're trying to fill.

00:00:13.82
Sean
yeah.

00:00:17.66
Sean
That's true. You want to write the other ones, by the way? trying to hire like three more roles at this point. Yeah.

00:00:24.94
Andrew
That's nuts, man. Hey, actually, i was going to put in here.

00:00:26.23
Sean
I'm

00:00:28.46
Andrew
How many people have you hired in the last year?

00:00:31.76
Sean
I don't fucking know. I don't know, man. I can't.

00:00:34.90
Andrew
If you had to guess, like, give me give me a number.

00:00:37.42
Sean
In the past year,

00:00:41.08
Sean
five, six.

00:00:42.96
Andrew
I guess six. So I'm just going to leave it as six.

00:00:44.50
Sean
Yeah. Okay. to fire Yeah, we've hired so many full-time.

00:00:50.71
Andrew
Or should I say, like, we've grown the team by 50% or something like that?

00:00:55.02
Sean
Sure. Yeah, we've grown the team by 50%. It sounds way better.

00:00:58.97
Andrew
Yeah.

00:00:58.92
Sean
We've doubled in size. we're about to double the fucking team again at this point i think i like said on a call that jj heard where i was like yeah like we're trying to be like you know 25 30 people by the end of the year and she so yeah that was her reaction don't know

00:01:10.57
Andrew
Yeah.

00:01:15.03
Andrew
I'm sorry. What?

00:01:19.88
Andrew
I wonder why. i wonder why your COO would be is shocked to hear you want to triple it in size by the end of the year.

00:01:27.88
Sean
Yeah, yeah, but this was, you know, it's not triple in size. It's six times in size because just kind of said it

00:01:36.66
Sean
last year. ah home or or like the beginning. I think I said in the beginning of the year. i mean, I don't know. Inbound has been good. Inbound has continued to be really good.

00:01:47.89
Sean
RSA was really good. So it just has kind of kept growing. and It was i was kind of said not in jest, but in hyperbole.

00:01:59.66
Sean
It was hyperbolic. I feel a little less hyperbolic at the moment.

00:02:00.98
Andrew
Yeah. I will say...

00:02:06.94
Andrew
I will say always thought that like 20 to 30 people would be kind of the perfect size for an agency because at least for us, it was big enough that we could have enough clients to that.

00:02:14.82
Sean
Mm-hmm.

00:02:22.91
Andrew
Like if we lost a client or two, it wouldn't be like 20% of our revenue, 30% of our revenue.

00:02:27.42
Sean
Yep.

00:02:28.04
Andrew
Like it would be a smaller chunk. It would be,

00:02:30.23
Sean
Yeah.

00:02:30.70
Andrew
You know, we could have a good manageable number of clients. It was still small enough that you wouldn't have a whole lot of process or red tape. It would still be pretty flexible, pretty collaborative.

00:02:40.12
Sean
Yeah.

00:02:41.74
Andrew
and And also big enough that, like, if you lose an employee, like if ah if an employee takes a new job, you weren't losing, like, you know, when we sold Crit, we were six full-time people, 10 including part-time.

00:02:47.89
Sean
Mm-hmm.

00:02:53.71
Andrew
And so if we lost one person, like one full-time person, that was, you know,

00:02:54.21
Sean
Mm-hmm.

00:02:58.47
Sean
It hurts.

00:02:59.71
Andrew
20% of our full-time workforce.

00:03:01.87
Sean
Yeah.

00:03:03.66
Andrew
That's brutal.

00:03:05.33
Sean
Yeah.

00:03:06.87
Andrew
So I do think that's a good size. Now, would you want to stop there? Because you are more ambitious than I am, probably.

00:03:14.82
Sean
I am i am greed personified. Yeah. I mean, when when the years started, i like one of the exercises I did with JJ was that we sort of mapped out what a 20-5 to 30-person agency would look like.

00:03:30.21
Andrew
Yeah, I remember this.

00:03:30.53
Sean
you know with yeah yeah and Yeah, I think maybe I showed you as well that org chart.

00:03:34.35
Andrew
Yeah.

00:03:36.49
Sean
I mean, I think agency-wise, I'd probably stop there. I'm saying probably, i don't know, give it like six more months, I'll let you know.

00:03:46.79
Sean
I can't, i think i i I think I can't fathom like more.

00:03:51.38
Andrew
Running a 50-person agency or something.

00:03:53.54
Sean
Yeah, yeah, like that, like I can, I think at that point it's just, like, I

00:03:54.31
Andrew
Yeah.

00:04:01.50
Sean
i think, I mean the market is huge for sure.

00:04:06.89
Sean
I think I would just, I think my shiny objectpreneurism would just want to do other, like even in that 30, right? There was still like two people were doing merch. other There was like a developer on a product and I think those things would grow.

00:04:19.97
Sean
I think mysteries as a whole, I can see becoming larger and larger, but like pure client services, I don't know. I think it's, I think quality of work still matters and I still worry about getting too large in that way.

00:04:31.97
Andrew
It's definitely like possible to scale while maintaining quality, but it is fucking hard.

00:04:36.95
Sean
Yeah, I mean, we've won deals because people are unhappy with killer agencies because ultimately, you're large, even now, can't even now we can't like even now when a creator comes to us and they're like hey i only have like this much money to do it like like i have three thousand dollars to do something right it's like dude we can't like we can't take that but like at this point we'd rather just do it for you as a like here's a free creator program and like you know ultimately like you have to know that you're not going to get like

00:04:55.63
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:05:11.23
Sean
creative director bends time on every single part of it, you're gonna get, it's gonna be a training project for ah junior. It's still gonna be go...