Transistor is a podcast hosting and analytics platform that enables seasoned and aspiring hosts to stores and distribute their podcast creation.

Interested in podcasting and working at Cards Against Humanity, Jon wanted to create a better experience for his coworkers, so he convinced them to sign up for his software before anything had even been built. Once he had the users, Jon built the tools.

Initially Jon wanted to build the product completely on his own, but realizing he was a great coder but not a marketer, partnering with Justin would bring a lot of value to the table, and turn his side project into a real business.

While in college, Jon created an open-source music player, which later got him a consulting gig, an untimely turned into his first startup experience. This was also his very first project in freshly released Ruby on Rails.

When starting to build Transistor.fm, Jon already knew what he needed to create in order to host a podcast - an RSS feed, a website, and few other things. He sketched it on paper, generated a rails app, and dove right in, sketching directly in code as he went along.

Customer feedback drives some of the feature priority, and some are driven by the industry and where it is going overall.

However, they do not put too much attention on feedback because a small loud minority might be able to force a huge backlog of ideas that don't add a lot of value.

Instead, they carefully sort through all the ideas, and evaluate how those fit into their overall road map. Then, the team spends about six weeks working on each large feature, building and refining it along the way.

Before quitting their others jobs to focus on Transistor full time, Jon and Justin considered taking on venture funding to grow, but ultimately decided against it.

Now that the company is making good revenue, they would consider hiring a support person to offload some of the day-to-day stress, but ironically, hiring someone else would create stress of its own.