
## The worst time to learn how to deal with a crisis is during a crisis

How's that for self-evident? But -- it's true.

You should have a plan for when things go wrong. This is especially true in software development.

The first time you're dealing with a production issue is _not_ the time to learn how to deal with one. You need to have a plan in place for when things go wrong, and you should be ready to roll when the time comes.

### Tooling is gives you sensory feedback

Lucky for you, there's loads of tools that can make life easier when everything comes crashing down. You'll want to be able to reliably see what's going on in your system, and to be able to quickly identify what's going wrong.

At [Craftwork](https://craftwork.com), our current debug stack uses [PostHog](https://posthog.com) for session replay and product analytics, [Sentry](https://sentry.io) for error tracking, and Slack webhooks for alerting the team.

### Testing your code is a baseline

If you're not testing your code, you're going to have a bad time. Having tests written for your software is a baseline requirement - great tests prevent you from shipping flawed features, and help you understand when new features break old expectations. At a minimum, write tests for the features and scenarios in your software that are critical to your business, and build the habit of adding more over time.

I have been _really_ impressed with the devX of writing tests for Ruby on Rails - and there is literally no-one better to learn from than my pal and colleague CJ Avilla - he's done a whole series on [testing rails with RSpec](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS6F722u-R6Ik3fbeLXbSclWkT6Qsp9ng) that I highly recommend, _even if you're not a Ruby developer_.

It's that good.

### Don't be afraid to ask for help

If you're stuck, ask for help. There's no shame in asking for help; you should view it as a _strength_ to know when a second set of eyes are what you need.

If you're working on a larger team, you'll get a feel for how long you should work on a problem before asking for help (the more severe the problem, the shorter this time should be).

If you're a solo founder or an indiehacker, this is one of the best things about finding community online. There's always smart people willing to help you out.

But -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- **the worst time to start building a community is when you need help.**

[The best time to start is now](https://mikebifulco.com/newsletter/today-is-your-day-to-start).

### Close the loop with affected users

Here's the secret sauce: Once you've found and fixed a problem in production, get in touch with affected users and let them know what happened, and how you fixed it. They'll love you for it, and you'll build trust with them. This is a great way to turn a negative experience into a positive one, and to build a relationship with your users.

Especially if you're a solo founder or indiehacker, vulnerability and transparency are what will make people believe in you. It's a superpower that is waiting for you to use it. Don't squander the chance!

## Get the ball rolling now

The great thing about these problem solving techniques is that each one adds value to the others, and they can be added incrementally. You don't need to have a perfect system in place to start - you just need to start.

---

## More of my work on this topic

As it works out, I've got a few more resources on this topic that you might find interesting:

### Product Analytics for engineers

I've been experiencing a downturn in newsletter subscribers through the form on my website recently. Ironically, if you're reading this, you're probably already subscribed. Rather than just throwing up my hands and saying "oh well", I decided to dig into the data and see what was going on, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to showcase the process I use for debugging web app problems that aren't as simple as "this page is crashing".

Check out [Product Analytics for engineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nWcB1a8M1s) on YouTube for the first part of the adventure.

### Automate your SaaS product's crisis response

As it works out, this topic is something I've got some experience with. Back in 2020, just after my previous startup smpl was acquired, I was applying to devrel jobs at Google. As part of the interview process, I put together a talk about how to automate your SaaS product's crisis process, based on my experience at smpl.

While the information might be a bit dated, the principles are sound, and these slides landed me a job running Developer Advocacy for Google Assistant. Check out the slides here: [Automate your SaaS product's crisis response](https://github.com/mbifulco/talks/tree/main/01-automate-your-saas-products-crisis-response-process).

---

## Don't take my word for it

There's loads of great resources out there for debugging, problem solving, and customer support for product builders. Here's a few that I've found helpful recently:

- Kent C. Dodds has a great series of blog posts on testing javascript apps. A great place to start is [Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration.](https://kentcdodds.com/blog/write-tests)

- PastMaps founder Craig Campbell has shared some incredible stories about proactive and reactive user research in his journey to to growing a sustainable business. I highly recommend following him on Threads for [gems like this one](https://www.threads.net/@that.map.guy.craig/post/C8u9Fn1yIzq).


Debug tips from a lifetime newbie

The worst time to learn how to deal with a crisis is during a crisis

Automate your SaaS product's crisis response


The endowment effect is a psychological phenomenon where people value things more highly simply because they own them. It's a cognitive bias that can be used to make your product stickier.

In a [famous experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect), participants were given a coffee mug and asked to set a price at which they would be willing to sell it.

The average price they gave their shiny new mug was about $7.

Another group of participants were asked to set a price at which they would be willing to buy the mug.

In this case, the average price was $3.

<Highlight>
...In other words, for the exact same object, participants assigned a higher value to the thing they owned versus the thing they were thinking about buying.
</Highlight>

The misalignment between these two prices is the endowment effect in action. People value things more highly when they own them.

## Free trials and the Endowment Effect

One way is to offer a free trial of your product. By giving people the opportunity to use your product before they buy it, you create a sense of ownership. They become attached to the product and are more likely to continue using it after the trial period ends.

Companies like **Spotify** and **Netflix** take advantage of the endowment effect by getting users hooked quickly. By offering free trials, they give new customers a chance to feel what it's like to _have_ access to their vast libraries of media.

This creates a sense of ownership, making it hard to part ways with the service when the trial period runs out. The value they see during the trial makes it easier to pay for the service, and keeps customers coming back for more.

Similarly, **Slack** and **Notion** use the endowment effect by empowering free users. By offering thoughtful free tiers, they make their products sticky and useful. Once they're onboard, it is really hard for customers to give up what they've gotten used to.

By the time their users get to the end of their trial period, they are so attached to the product that they can't imagine going back to the way things were before.

## Designing a great trial experience

To make the most of the endowment effect, it's important to design a great trial experience. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. **Make it easy to sign up**: The easier it is for people to sign up for your trial, the more likely they are to do it. Remove any barriers to entry and make the process as simple as possible. In many cases, this means not requiring a credit card up front, as counterintuitive as that may seem.

2. **Show value early**: Give people a taste of what your product can do right away. Show them the benefits of using your product and how it can help them solve their problems. This may also mean giving unfettered access to your product during the trial period, and restricting access to premium features only after the trial ends.

3. **Measure success**: Track how people are using your product during the trial period. Look for patterns in usage and identify areas where people are getting stuck. Use this information to improve your product and make it stickier.

4. **Offer support**: Make sure people have the help they need to get started with your product. Offer tutorials, guides, and customer support to help them make the most of their trial. Use information collected through analytics to offer personalized tips and support to users.

You've spent countless hours building an great product - make sure people get a chance to see how great it is. Offering a free trial is a great way to do that, and the endowment effect can help you make your product stickier in the long run.

---

## Tools for making a valuable free trial

Setting up a free trial for your product doesn't have to be complicated. There are plenty of tools available to help you get started. Here are a few to consider:

1. If you use **[Stripe for subscriptions](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/trials)**, you can configure a free trial period for your customers. This allows them to try your product before they buy it, without having to enter their payment information up front.

2. It's nearly impossible to get your pricing strategy right on the first try. That's the thesis that my friends over at **[Stigg](https://www.stigg.io/)** have based their products on. They make it easy to test different pricing strategies and see which one works best for your business.

3.  If you're building a developer product with usage-based billing, you should check out **[Unkey.dev](https://www.unkey.com/)** - they make it dead simple to add analtics and usage-based billing around API keys to your product.

---

## Some products-in-progress worth checking out

- [Pastmaps](https://pastmaps.com/plus?src=tinyimprovements) is a vast library of historical maps that you can overlay on modern maps. Seeing how your neighborhood has changed over time can be really eye-opening. Pastmaps has a 7-day free trial for its premium features, and is being built by Craig Campbell, who goes by [@that.map.guy.craig](https://www.threads.net/@that.map.guy.craig) on Threads.

- [PodCharm](https://podcharm.com/) is a product designed to help podcasters do a better job of growing their audiences. PodCharm's free tier is _super_ generous, and sends a strong signal: PodCharm will be successful only if its customers' shows are successful. That's a win-win alignment of incentives. Shout out to my dude [Tony Mastrorio](https://www.threads.net/@tonydotcoms) for building this. Give it a shot if you're a podcaster.



The Endowment Effect: why useful trials make for sticky products

Some products-in-progress worth checking out


My front door is a 10 minute walk from a small, serene park in a city-edge neighborhood.

In the first hour of sunlight every day, the park feels like a sanctuary: birds sing, neighbors take their dogs out for a morning walk, the meandering creek bubbling with life.

It's a slice of heaven less than a mile from the busiest parts of Charlotte, a small-but-growing city that's now nearly a million people strong.

<Image
  publicId="newsletters/beyond-the-walled-garden/park"
  alt="A photo of a sunrise over a grassy hill in a park"
/>

On the other side of the park, what was once a quaint bungalow neighborhood on the city's outskirts has had one house after another bulldozed. It's now lined with freshly built mcmansions, built on speculation for suburbanites with deep pockets.

In the past couple months, one build in particular has caught my attention - a huge, swollen brick home built right to the edges of its boundaries. It's located on edge of the park, with its back yard oriented so that the sun rises perfectly through the trees, highlighting the simple wooden footbridge that crosses the creek, built years ago to give homeowners access to the park.

The new home has risen from its foundation quickly, and while I don't typically _love_ the design choices made by home builders in my area, this one really sticks in my craw. Someone made the decision to build an 8 foot fence around the perimeter of the yard - completely obscuring access to the park.

I know _someone else's home_ shouldn't make me this mad - this home will probably sell for close to $2M (if not more). But, to me, the builder has _completely_ lost the plot.

Why would someone buy such a beautiful plot of land and spend their money hiding from it?

## Spotify and Substack walled themselves in

This, I feel, is a great metaphor for strategic missteps by companies like Spotify and Substack. Two different products in different spaces, built to take advantage of a huge opportunity – have built very strange walled gardens around their products that sounded like a good idea at first.

Spotify established a huge user base as the de facto music subscription for many people. In the never ending search of growth, they wanted to make their platform the place where everyone goes to listen to podcasts as well.

Rather than build the best podcast player in the world, they bought up podcasts left and right, making them exclusive to Spotify.

For many people, this meant their only choice to listen to their favorite shows was to switch to Spotify.

Does that sound like a great way to build a sticky product? I'll let you decide, but it's safe to say that their [$1B Bet on podcasts isn't going well](https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/spotify-1-billion-bet-isnt-going-well/75665f50-cabb-48c9-8f5c-d05e94d8f7f8).

In the creator world, newsletter authoring platform Substack was heralded as the author's best friend - they made it easy to write a newsletter and build an audience. It was among the first newsletter tools to promise network-effect growth by letting authors recommend one another's newsletters as a first-party platform feature. They added features for podcasters, as well as [some twitter-like features](https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/05/substacks-new-short-form-notes-feed-looks-a-lot-like-twitter/) as a response to Twitter's leadership collapse.

Then... they made some gutless decisions around content moderation.

Substack continues to [refuse to shut down alt-right, and hyper-conservative newsletters](https://mashable.com/article/why-are-people-leaving-substack-content-moderation-controversy) with _seriously_ weak reasoning for their [anti-censorship stance](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/03/substack-user-revolt-anti-censorship-stance-neo-nazis):

> "...we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse."

Ah, _cool_.

I'm sure you can understand why authors are leaving the platform in droves - after all, one of Substack's value propositions is that they'll recommend _other authors' work_ to help newsletters grow.

Woof.

Meanwhile, competing product teams see opportunity knocking: Ghost announced that they're [adding fediverse features later this year](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/look-out-substack-ghost-will-join-the-fediverse-this-year/ar-AA1nvI4S).

## Sneak in while the walls are being built

There's a lot to be learned from the decisions companies make about their products once they get really large - these sorts of missteps can opens the door for thoughtfully built and well-timed products. As a builder, do your best to keep an ear to the ground for fissures opening up in the giants' walled gardens.

If you can find a way to build a product that solves a problem for users and takes advantage of a misstep by a competitor, you're in a great spot to grow quickly.

I'm not saying you should wait for a competitor to make a mistake - but if you're paying attention, of course - build your thing with conviction because it's a good idea, but also be ready to move quickly when opportunities arise.

You can be the one to build the footbridge over the creek, and let the sun shine through.

---

## Champagne for my real friends

I thought I'd share some work from people in my network this week. You're going to love these:

- Josh Finnie wrote a great article about [Adding JSON-LD to his Astro site](https://www.joshfinnie.com/blog/adding-json-ld-to-my-blog/) - it's a great read if you're looking to improve your site's SEO.

- CJ Avilla published an article about [Caching ViewComponents in Ruby on Rails](https://www.cjav.dev/articles/caching-viewcomponents), which we've been implementing at Craftwork recently.

- Over on Primary Focus, Ms. Natalie produced a great interview recently about [what parents need to know about ADHD and kids](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsqG7m5NQ1E&t=7s). Her guest is super knowledgable and it's a great watch.


---

## Try these out though

Here's a few tools that I think are worth checking out:

### A podcast player for note takers

[Snipd](https://www.snipd.com/) is a podcast app that automatically transcribes podcasts and lets you take notes from them as "snips". It's a great idea - you may recall a few months back [I built a podcast summarizer with AI](https://mikebifulco.com/newsletter/build-something-useful-with-ai). I think the gang at Snipd are on to something really special here.

### Make storyboards that don't suck

[Storytribe](https://storytribeapp.com/) an app for creating storyboards using vector images. They have created an _immense_ library of customizable vectors that you can assemble to make some really compelling storyboards for your next product, feature, or presentation.

### Ghost is the CMS for creators

I mentioned [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?via=mike21) above (that's my referral link, btw) - it's a CMS that makes it easy for creators to build a website, write a blog, and publish a newsletter. They're adding some really interesting features this year, and I think they're a great alternative to Substack for authors who want to own their content and their audience. I actually help run 2 different sites with Ghost: [APIs You Won't Hate](https://apisyouwonthate.com) and [Primary Focus](https://primaryfocus.tv) both use it.

---


Beyond the walled garden: what Spotify and Substack get wrong

Spotify and Substack walled themselves in


As the winter has turned into spring this year, I've been doing a whole lot of walking. Most days, I do a steady 4-5 mile lap around my neighborhood. It's a great way to get some fresh air, get some exercise, and get some mental space to balance out the hours I spend sitting at my desk.

It's _also_ a fantastic time to listen to some podcasts and audiobooks, and I gotta tell you: one book in particular has taken hold of me. I can't stop thinking about it.

It's called [_Unreasonable Hospitality_](https://amzn.to/3WaVvXl) by Will Guidara.

## Unreasonable Hospitality

Guidara is a restauranteur and hospitality expert. He's known for his work at Eleven Madison Park, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City. Guidara also cofounded as Make It Nice, a hospitality group that includes several other restaurants and bars.

In the book, Guidara talks about the principles of hospitality that he's learned over the course of his career in the restaurant industry. He talks about the importance of listening to customers, and anticipating their needs.

<a href="https://amzn.to/3WaVvXl" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
  <Image
    publicId="newsletters/unreasonable-hospitality-and-design/unreasonable-hospitality"
    alt="Unreasonable Hospitality book cover"
    caption="Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara"
  />
</a>

Guidara's teams are the **best in the world** at providing a memorable experience: they look for small details about their guests that they can use to make them feel special. They go above and beyond to make sure that every guest has a great experience.

They do this while trimming away the unnecessary, the superfluous, and the extraneous. They're not just about making people feel special -- they're about making people feel _unreasonably_ special.

One thing I love about the author is that despite working at some of the top restaurants in the world, he describes himself as _more cheeseburger than caviar_. That hits home with me.

## Fine dining, smashburgers, and... TypeScript?

Although _Unreasonable Hospitality_ is largely about restaurants, it's not just for people who work in food service. It's for anyone who wants to create a welcoming, inclusive, and memorable experience for their customers.

In other words, it's for _everyone_ who works in product design. If you're reading this, that almost certainly includes you.

## Hospitality and design principles

Guidara's book is full of stories and lessons from his time in the restaurant industry. He talks about the importance of creating a welcoming environment, of making people feel special, and of going above and beyond to make sure that every guest has a great experience.

As a designer, I found myself nodding along with a lot of what Guidara had to say. The principles of hospitality that he talks about -- things like making people feel welcome, anticipating their needs, and creating a sense of community -- are common to some of my absolute favorite end user experiences.

The most memorable products I've ever used have gone out of their way to make me feel like I was part of something special. Some examples:

### How We Feel

The gorgeously designed [How We Feel](https://howwefeel.org/) app is a mood tracking & journaling app that is pleasant to use, visually appealing, and just-the-right-amount of instructive.

<Image
  publicId="newsletters/unreasonable-hospitality-and-design/how-we-feel"
  alt="How We Feel app"
  caption="How We Feel distills a complex set of emotions into a satisfying, 2-dimensional space."
/>

The first time I fired it up to log my mood, I was immediately struck by how _nice_ it felt to use. The app lays out a huge number of selections for _current mood_ on a 2-dimensional axis: left to right is _pleasant_ and _unpleasant_, and top to bottom is _high energy_ and _low energy_. It's a simple, intuitive way to distill a complex set of emotions into a satisfying, 2-dimensional space.

The real magic comes after the first few times you log your mood. The app gently and progressively presents short, thoughtful videos to help you understand your mood better. It's like having a therapist in your pocket, and it's _so_ well done. Hooked!

### Tuple

My team uses [Tuple](https://tuple.app/) for remote pair programming. The app is fast, reliable, and beautifully designed. You can _feel_ that is has been made for devs, and helps my team work more closely together even though we're spread out across the country.

So what stood out to me about Tuple? At the end of most calls, you're presented with a UI asking you to rate the call on a scale of 1-5, with an open text field for notes.

In my experience most calls are a perfect 5/5. However, if I ever have a less-than-perfect call experience (which is a vanishingly rare occurrence at this point), I'll leave a short note about what seemed to go wrong.

The Tuple team has _never_ failed to follow up with me about my feedback. Their reps are friendly, helpful, and _so_ knowledgeable. Good customer service is _such_ a difference-maker, and Tuple nails it.

<Image
  publicId="newsletters/unreasonable-hospitality-and-design/tuple"
  alt="Tuple app"
  caption="Tuple offers simple productivity, and their support staff are absolutely wonderful."
/>

## Designing for hospitality

So how can we apply the principles of hospitality to our design work? Here are a few ideas:

**Do an experience audit:** Take a look at your product from the perspective of a new user. What's the onboarding process like? How easy is it to find the features they need? Are there any pain points that could be smoothed out? Are there moments where you could show them a better experience based on what you already know about them?

**Take a look at your competition:** What's the typical experience like for your competition's users? How can you differentiate yourself by offering a more welcoming, inclusive, and memorable experience? Is there a way to identify a niche in the market that you can serve better than anyone else?

**_Talk_ to your users:** You just can't beat conversation. Reach out to a variety of your users to see what they like about your product. Talk to your best users, ones who may be at risk of churning, and if you're able, ones who have already churned. Take note of any commonalities and differences in these conversations. What can you learn from them?

## Take the idea, and go parabolic

Once you've done your research, I think it's helpful to ask a more pie-in-the-sky question: in a _perfect_ world, what would you do to blow your users' minds? What would make them feel like they _specifically_ are being seen?

Write down these ideas in as simple of a format as you're able to - a sentence or two is fine.

Then, ask yourself honestly: how close can you get to these ideals with the resources you have available? Move the needle as much as you can, and keep iterating.

You'll know when you've hit the mark. Your customers will, too.

> Go get yourself a copy of [_Unreasonable Hospitality_](https://amzn.to/3WaVvXl) by Will Guidara. You'll love it.

---

## From around the internet this week

- YouTuber Foureyes Furniture recently shared the story of how [one of their designs was stolen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urn4nPBAgUg) by a large-scale manufacturer of furniture. I love Foureyes' work, and it's a bummer to see this happen to them. The storytelling in this video is top-notch, and it's a great example of how to turn a negative experience into a positive one.

- My Brother, My Brother, and Me is my favorite podcast (shout out to my sister Kris for recommending it to me years ago!) Their recent episode [707: Crispy Cuppy Puppies](https://pca.st/bu1cd830) is one of the funniest I can remember. It's strange, and it's worth a listen.

## My work online

- 🎙️ My interview for APIs You Won't Hate with [Suchintan Singh from Skyvern](https://apisyouwonthate.com/podcast/apis-for-websites-that-dont-have-apis-with-suchintan-singh-from-skyvern/)
- My work on Openapi.tools was featured in the most recent APIs You Won't Hate newsletter: [Revamping Openapi.tools](https://apisyouwonthate.com/newsletter/revamping-open-api-tools/). You may remember my recent dispatch about working on a project with Astro - this is that, and it's getting closer to launch!


Designing for hospitality

Fine dining, smashburgers, and... TypeScript?


## Everyone loves a generous free tier

There are loads of free tools I use to get my work done, and I love recommending free tools for others to use. A quick search of articles and newsletters I've written shows 99 mentions of the word "free". I'm no stranger to the free tier, and most of all, I'm a huge fan of products that use their a free tier to prove their value, and then convert me to a paying customer.

I thought it might be interesting to share some of the products I pay for. Like most developers, I'm pretty sensitive to price: I'm willing to pay a reasonable fee for services based on the value they provide, but I'm also quick to cancel a subscription if I feel like I'm not getting my money's worth.

So with that in mind, here's a few tools I pay for, and why I think they're worth it:

### Transistor.fm

**Price: $19/mo**, which includes unlimited shows and episodes, and 20k downloads per month.

I've been using Transistor.fm to host my podcasts for a few years now. I've used few other podcast hosting services over the year, but I've found Transistor to be the best fit for me.

**Killer features:**
Transistor does many things amazingly well but these are among my favorites:
It's easy to use: starting a new show takes a few minutes. Upload your episode and you'll be off to the races in no time.

It never breaks: Never _once_ have I needed to worry about my podcast feed being down.

They add thoughtful features that make my life easier. For example: you can add guests to individual podcast episodes for better SEO (and you know I love SEO), they have great HTML embeds to share episodes and shows on your website.

Transistor makes it _dead easy_ to get your show listed on all the major podcast directories. This is a task that is fairly time intensive otherwise, and loads of podcasters don't do it, which is a huge mistake. You don't want your show to _only_ be listed on Apple Podcasts, do you?

<Image
  publicId="newsletters/take-my-money-tools-i-pay-for/transistor-fm"
  alt="A screenshot from my Transistor.fm dashboard"
  caption="A screenshot from my Transistor.fm dashboard. What's that last one on the list? 🤔"
/>

Being the nightmare-dev that I am, I've also sent the Transistor team a few support requests while poking around with the [Transistor API](https://developers.transistor.fm/), and they've always been quick to respond and helpful.

**Try it:** If you're thinking about starting your own podcast, and want to give Transistor a shot, you can use my referral link to get 15% off your first year: [Transistor.fm](https://transistor.fm/?via=mike-bifulco)

## Descript

**Price: $12/month**, which includes 10 hours of transcription per month, and 20 hours of screen recording per month.

Descript lets you edit audio and video files like they were a text document. Read that again. It's _wild_. I was an early adopter of Descript, and have been using it to edit Podcasts and videos for years now.

**Killer features:**

Do you say "um" and "uhhh" a lot when you're speaking? Descript can remove those for you. Do you want to add a section to your podcast where you're talking about a product, but you don't want to re-record the whole episode? Descript can do that for you. Do you want to add a video to your podcast episode? Descript can do that for you.

Descript can export video in portrait or landscape, which makes it trivial to create content for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

I also love their audiogram feature, which you can use to make closed captioned clips from podcasts for social media.

<YouTube youTubeId={'nPZjfG6SWeY'} />

**Try it:** ready to make audio and video editing feel like magic? Give [Descript](https://get.descript.com/09k9hymsebq1) a shot using my referral link.

## Backblaze - automated cloud backups for your computer

**Price: $18/month**, which includes unlimited backups for two computers.

Having a backup of your computer is one of those things that many people don't think about until it's too late. I've been on the short end of that stick one too many times in my life, so I take a military mindset to backups: two is one, and one is none. I have my computer backed up locally to a NAS (network attached storage) device using Time Machine, and I use Backblaze as a cloud backup for my computer's hard drive. It's a set-it-and-forget-it kind of service, and I've been using it for years.

**Killer features:** Install it once, and it does its magic. If you ever need to restore from a backup, you can download your files from the web, or have them send you a USB hard drive with your data on it ([for free](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/usb-hard-drive-restore/)\* - as long as you ship it back within 30 days!). Super thoughtful, and well worth the price for peace of mind.

**Try it:** If you're not already backing up your computer, you should be. [Try Backblaze](https://secure.backblaze.com/r/00ponv) using my referral link for a free month of service.

---

## Some other bits I've shared online this week

- 🎙️ My podcast interview with [Zeno Rocha from Resend](https://apisyouwonthate.com/podcast/building-a-simple-api-for-email-with-zeno-rocha-from-resend/) went live last week on the APIs You Won't Hate podcast feed. Zeno is a great guy, and I've been a fan of his work for years. We talked about his new product, Resend, and how he's using APIs to make email marketing easier for developers.

- **This weekend** I'll be doing some live coding on YouTube: join me for [Rebuilding openapi.tools with Astro](https://youtube.com/live/wyJYInvZya8?feature=share) Saturday morning at 10am Eastern.

## 🔌 Until then, unplugging

I'm taking some time off from work this week to recharge and spend some time in the sun. It's something that I try to do regularly to take care of myself - work, life, and everything else can be a lot to handle, and it's important to take time to recharge. I hope you're able to do the same!

I'll be back in your inbox next week with more thoughts on building things on the internet. [Stay positive and love your life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgTDLlDY_yY) ✌🏾


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Some other bits I've shared online this week

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Take my money! Some of my favorite tools... and why I pay for them