May 2024 Summaries

What’s it like building Jam this week? We’re shipping design updates, making decisions about a new product launching soon & discovering that intuition is a form of data. We’re trying something new: hitting record on an unfiltered conversation about building our startup each week. No fluff, just real decisions, moments and challenges. This week, Jam’s lead designer Chris Rodemeyer joins the podcast to discuss design iterations for Jam's Slack app, dogfooding at Jam, a niche idea for new Jam swag, future changes to Jam notifications, using intuition as data, getting a new product in beta ready for GA, team challenges of the week and thinking about the "why" in Jam’s onboarding. Can't get enough design talk? Check out this other episode: Growing the Design Team with Jam founders. Subscribe to Building Jam on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Building Jam | Ep. 5 Growing Design`: This week, Plushcap is discussing the challenges of building a startup and specifically hiring a second designer for their company, Jam. The conversation is unfiltered and real, with no fluff or editing. They share insights on why hiring a designer is harder than an engineer, how they look for designers at Jam, and how the designers' personalities have shaped the product. The discussion also touches on working with senior designers, talking to new audiences about their product, and sharing personal anecdotes such as reacting to a mind-blowing website. The episode aims to provide valuable information and insights for those interested in design and startup growth.

Jam for Notion` is a tool that enables developers to create tasks in Notion with all the context they need in one click, streamlining their workflow and increasing productivity. It allows users to capture technical details about their web app or website and automatically creates a task in the selected Notion database, providing a seamless integration between Jam and Notion. The tool aims to reduce friction and save time by eliminating the need for manual data entry and allowing developers to power through tasks without losing steam. By integrating with Jam, users can now create Notion tasks directly from their website or web app, making it easier to collaborate and work together across departments. With this integration, developers can focus on their work while knowing that all necessary information is being captured and stored in a centralized platform, ultimately contributing to a more productive and enjoyable software development lifecycle.

Building Jam | Ep. 4 Just The Marketers` This episode of Building Jam focuses on the marketing strategies employed by the first marketers at a startup, with hosts Ian and Ivanha sharing their experiences and challenges in growing the company's marketing efforts from scratch. They discuss various tactics such as the owl video experiment, creating a tone and messaging for feature launches, and the importance of sizzle reels, while also sharing their own personal struggles and lessons learned throughout the process. The conversation is unfiltered and candid, providing a realistic look at the decisions and challenges faced by startup marketers.

Jam for Azure is now live, allowing developers to create developer-ready issues in Azure DevOps with just one click. This launch marks the first major step into the Microsoft ecosystem and follows previous integrations with GitLab and Notion. The move aims to help large enterprises deliver quality software faster for their customers, with 32 Fortune 100 companies already on board. With this new integration, developers can now auto-complete issue details with console logs, network requests, and other relevant information.

This week on Building Jam, the creators share their approach to building community as a startup, highlighting the growth of events and challenges that come with it. They discuss how getting builders together has become a core part of what they do, despite initial doubts about the necessity of such events given their remote team's global reach. The conversation touches on various aspects of hosting events, including predicting attendance rates, finding demos for AI demo nights, and measuring event ROI, as well as challenges that come with building community marketing without a traditional forum.

This week on Building Jam, the Head of Engineering at Jam discusses the challenges of scaling and hiring in their startup, sharing real decisions, moments, and challenges. The conversation covers topics such as why hiring takes so long, what's going to break when expanding the team, and how they're changing decision-making processes to accommodate more people and opinions. They also share insights on choosing the right candidate, managing a growing team, and balancing strategy with execution. The episode provides an unfiltered look at the startup's journey, offering valuable lessons for builders looking to scale their own businesses.

GitLab issues can now be created in 2 clicks with all the necessary information for debugging through a new integration launched by Jam. This update marks the start of Integrations Month at Jam, where new integrations and related features will be shipped every week. The launch is seen as a response to user requests and aims to improve developer productivity.