200: This is the Final Episode (really)

Jonathan Courtney

1234. Jake and Jonathan. Jake and John.

Yeah. Yeah. Jake and Jonathan.

Jake and John.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Jake and Jonathan podcast guest. I'm your one of the hosts, Jonathan Courtney. I'm your one of the hosts, Jake Knapp. And welcome to a very special episode, episode 200. Even though last episode was episode one four seven, we've decided to skip straight to episode 200 and Jake.

I can't believe it. An audience. I can't believe it. But I think we finally reached the end of season one. It's been a long season.

Jake Knapp

It's been a long season. It's been. Wonder what year did we start doing this? Let's have a look here. You can look that up.

Jonathan Courtney

So let's see. I can probably just keep scrolling down here until I find episode one. So episode one was 30 November 2017. 17. That's great.

Years ago. Years ago. Wow. Yeah. That's a long season.

Jake Knapp

It's a long season. Yeah. I'm trying to think of one of those songs that has the word season in it, like for every season turn, but I can't quite taste the season to be jolly.

Jonathan Courtney

Yeah. So, Jake, I guess this is an announcement, right? I mean, we just kind of dropped it on people anyway. Yeah, we have to put the podcast on pause here because there's just too much going on in the Jake and Jonathan personal life. Yeah, Jake and Jonathan's personal life is fucking busy.

Jake Knapp

We have been synchronizing so much over the podcast, I guess, that we've synchronized our life.

Yeah. So you were just on sabbatical? Yeah, actually, you just got back from sabbatical. We haven't talked about that at all. Yeah, we'll talk about stuff.

We'll talk about stuff. We'll talk about that. You got back from sabbatical. I've been trying to make this move. I mean, we have made this move, but we were trying to live in our own place really desperately, but instead we're living in my mom's basement.

And right now I'm still at home. And I came back for a couple days to home in Seattle, and it's really nice to be in my own space, but up there it's like a really good place for the kids to go to school. There's a very good outlook for them to have some in person time, which. Oh, nice. Looks like it's farther away here in Seattle.

Jonathan Courtney

So we're up there. But a lot of people have had the same idea to move to the same small town and do their work remotely or whatever during the pandemic so right now we're living in my childhood bedroom, like our whole family and the dog and cat and everything. There's two rooms here. Yeah. So I'm just kind of trying to reset everything, trying to maintain my own sort of sanity and everything up there.

Jake Knapp

And kind of hard for me to do the pod right now. But we managed to book this one, and you're back. So, yeah, I'm rambling. I don't even know where we're going to talk about. Whatever.

Jonathan Courtney

It doesn't matter. I actually do have some topics because so much stuff happened in the last. Do it. Let's talk. Well, I'll just say for myself, it has been really fun to do the podcast.

And by the way, just to be clear, people listening, because we ramble so much. This is the last episode of season one of the podcast. We're going to take a break for a while and just see what we want to do with it. So you probably won't see many episodes for a while. Who knows how long.

Could be months, could be years, could be centuries. You'll still see Jake and I on our respective platforms or wherever we do our thing. But, yes, this is don't unsubscribe. Don't unsubscribe, don't subscribe. Because any moment we could drop some new episodes of something in here.

Jake Knapp

Could be the same thing. Could be a new thing. Who knows? But who flipping knows? So, yeah, I had my sabbatical.

Jonathan Courtney

I took four weeks off work, and, well, okay, let's just say I took some time off work, kind of being managing a company through this Covid nightmare. It's not the year where I can actually take a proper unplugged break, but it was still pretty good. Yeah. What was the day for you? Was it, like, the amount that you checked in?

Jake Knapp

Was that typical per day, or did it kind of. Were you just sort of putting out. Fires kind of thing, the way I organized it? So unfortunately, just before I left, like, two days before I left, we had to let two people go, which was. No, not even that shit.

Jonathan Courtney

No, we had made the decision to let two people go the day before I left. We had been working on that for a while, but unfortunately, it ended up kind of landing in my sabbatical and wasn't really movable just because of contracts. And so that was already the first thing where I was like, great, cool. So there's going to be no, like, there's no way. I cannot be part of that process.

That's a very sensitive and tough process on the team leads and on the company. So that was immediately the first thing. And then there was a lot of changes to our funnels and sales funnels and everything, which we've had to change because of how Covid has affected the economy. And so I actually came in for pretty much, like, a hardcore three day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with Laura and Dom from AJ and smart. And we basically rebuilt some of the funnels.

It was like 06:00 p.m., till 01:00 a.m., Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was actually quite fun. So we were just ordering in food, doing a bit of a hackathon. We actually kind of solved some of the issues we had with the profitability in our funnels, which was nice, specifically focusing on the master class and trying to get that tied up nicely. Yeah.

So I did end up coming back for three days to work on the master class funnel, but mostly I spent time with my family. We went on a campervan, did a camper. What was that like? That was cool. It was nice.

It was the first three days. It was insanely warm. It was, like, 36 degrees celsius. I don't know, close to 100 fahrenheit. Yeah.

So it was a little bit too hot for the actual camper van sleeping. And then it dropped down to 20 degrees, which was freezing in the nighttime, so, like, 15 in the night. And then we were freezing. So temperature wise, it was hard to keep it, like, keep warm or keep cool in a van like this, but it was kind of cool. And then my wife and I, three weeks later, did a cycling trip without our child.

Our child was being taken care of. I'm glad she was being taken care of. Yeah, exactly. I was going to ask, and that was really nice. We cycled 200, don't know, 180 miles or something through lots of forests.

And it was really, really beautiful. It was a nice four weeks, but, yeah, I mean, in this time, I think it's difficult to relax this year, to be really honest. Like, too much shit is going on. I can't visit my family. There's so much stupid shit going on.

Just running a business, not living where you were born. Just all this stuff, Covid. Like, my daughter's back in the kindergarten now. Of course, we keep getting sick as well. We have to get tested.

Like, I already had to get my first COVID test during the. I haven't gotten one yet. What's it like? Really? They stick a swab, a very large swab, unbelievably far up your nose, where it feels like it's actually going into your brain.

And another one unbelievably far down your throat. So you gag violently and then they give you the results two days later. I actually got my results within 24 hours. Yeah. And I also just came back from a retreat this weekend, which was kind of scary because it was actually really scary.

So it was like a CEO retreat thing. There was eight of us and I was a bit worried. Like, I was the most worried about COVID there. A lot of people in Europe don't really care that much. Yeah, a lot of people here, too.

You're like, yeah, it's tough. Okay, what was that experience like for you? Because I find it's tough because there's such a strong natural impulse in me to not worry about it. And like, oh, yeah. Like, I want to just not worry about it.

Jake Knapp

I want to take my mask off and just shake hands and hug, or like, that seems more natural. So did you find it hard to not. I was super worried at the start. So we were all supposed to go from Berlin in one van, eight of us, and I immediately found out that I was supposed to do that. So I rented my own car and I was like, sorry, guys, but I can't do this.

Jonathan Courtney

I can't get into. After six months of lockdown, I cannot. Work it in so hard to not get it. And also, one person had a really bad cold and a really bad cough. Didn't have a test.

So for me, I was just super nervous the whole time. Eventually that person got their test results in the middle of the retreat and it was negative, but I was still nervous. So, yeah, it was kind of like I felt very tense the first two days and I kind of calmed down. It was actually the first time I witnessed this was when I went to my wife's parents house. And there's twelve of them in one house all the time, including kids who are going to school.

And I had been in full quarantine, like lockdown hardcore. And I walked into their house and they're all in one tiny kitchen, like laughing, shouting, drinking. Oh, my God. So we talked about this earlier. I actually have anxiety problems.

Jake Knapp

Yeah. And so this massively triggered that for me. And it's impossible to explain that to other people. They're just like, come on, whatever, it's all bullshit. Yeah.

Jonathan Courtney

But anyway, the weekend turned out to be really nice, but, yeah, I was very nervous. And what's really cool about this group is that I was able to sit down on the Saturday and say, hey, I just want everyone to know this made me feel really uncomfortable, this person being sick. I felt extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't relax the first few days, and so I was able to openly tell them, and then they really understood and were really kind about it. And we kind of decided for the next in person events, which everything will always be in person.

And it's every month. We came up with some rules around wearing masks and stuff like that. But, yeah, for me, it's very hard because everyone has their own level of caring about it. Right. And I'm definitely on the nervous side.

Although maybe. I mean, I still have people in my company, but at least I can control the size of the space, how many people can be in here, the ventilation, all of that. But in situations where I can't really control it, I'm pretty nervous. But anyway, long story short, the time off was interesting, I think. I don't know.

This year feels just so weird. I can't say whether anything's good or bad. It just all feels super strange, you know what I mean? I can't tell. Time is moving at a weird pace.

Fucking shit's just weird. It totally is. Totally is, man. It's so weird. And it's weird to think about making decisions or, like, making changes to anything feels weird during this time because I keep thinking, like, when we're not under restriction anymore, we're not stressed about this anymore, will these seem like the right decisions?

Jake Knapp

But then I guess to a certain extent, it doesn't matter. You kind of got to do what you got to do in the moment. Yeah, it's really tricky. I mean, we had to keep changing our coronavirus rules in the office. We had a first coronavirus scare last week in the office.

Jonathan Courtney

Turned out to be a negative result as well. And now we've basically come up with a pretty simple thing that we're basically saying, these are the rules probably till the end of summer 2022 or something. Who knows? What are they? They're pretty simple.

So whereas AJ and smart used to be, everyone has to be in the office all the time. Now, the rule is you can work from home. It's fully flexible, remote work policy for the majority of the people working here. So basically, except for two team leads who have to come to the office, basically everyone else can work from home. And if you want to come to the office, you have to really respect very strict coronavirus rules, including social distancing, wearing a mask when you're not at your desk, et cetera, et cetera.

But you can get kicked out of the office if you don't respect those rules. So we're just making it clear. A lot of people want to use the office, they don't want to work from home. But we're just making, like, if you come in and we also say, we can't enforce this, but if you're out partying, because it's Berlin and it doesn't matter what time of year it is, it's. Everyone's partying, we just say, look, we'd prefer if you didn't come in.

If you're partying, we can't stop you. We won't try to stop you, but just think of the other people here who aren't doing that. So if you're partying or traveling a lot, just stay away from the office. So, yeah, that's just the basic thing we said. So the office is relative.

We've got this fucking huge space now and it can fit, like, 25 people. And on average, every day we probably have about six. Yeah, ghost town, that space with just six people in it all the time. It's weird. It's super weird.

Like, often Callum is on his own on the other side of this massive space, but, yeah, we'll adapt to it. A. It's. I bet it's pretty creepy over there. With Callum, just kind of.

Yeah, it's quite creepy, but, yeah, so it's weird at AJ and smart right now, but as in, it's weird for me to be running a company through this weird fucking shit. But it's definitely better than it was in March when it was just like, genuinely apocalyptic. Right now, there's some sense of things are happening. How's the non master class side of the business? So it went to zero.

So the non master class side of the business, for anyone who doesn't know, is just our consulting business, like doing design work and product and strategy work for clients, essentially what you would expect. A design agency to be. Yeah, exactly. We pretty much made no money. March, April, May, June, July.

When I say no money, I mean zero, mostly zero. So minus whatever that team costs every month. And, yeah, luckily we were very conservative with our savings and stuff like that in the past, so we were able to survive that. But, yeah, the first month of bookings, pretty much. I mean, proper bookings has pretty much been September.

And now we're booked out for the rest of the year. We're booked out until February next year now, which is great. All remote. Everything's remote. Yeah, we're planning on everything being remote till 2022.

We're not even offering the other option to anybody at the moment. So everything is remote till probably 2022. That's, like, what we're thinking is probably the worst case scenario, but maybe also the likely case scenario. Yeah. I know it's hard to know what it's going to look like when there's a vaccine, what that's going to mean, how long that's going to take to actually get to enough people to.

Jake Knapp

Yeah, this feels like trying to predict the weather, like, months in advance. It's just like. Yeah. But it has been helpful for my mental health, for sure. Like, for example, traveling, doing the campervan thing, just being around other people who are also camping, doing that retreat on the weekend, even though it scared the shit out of me.

Jonathan Courtney

It was also, like the first time I got drunk and danced and had fun with people since fucking March. And I'm doing a retreat next week, the AJ and smart leadership team, which will be a lot more Covid friendly because I'm organizing it and I'm a fucking weirdo, but it has been nice to do human things with other people. That's, like, keeping me sane, for sure. How come you can't go back to Ireland? I technically can, but Dublin is now on the risk list, so I would have to quarantine.

I think I'd have to quarantine for two weeks on that side and two weeks on this side. I don't really have a month to spare. Yeah. Ireland is not handling the situation as well as Germany, actually. Most countries aren't, but, yeah.

Dublin is now in full lockdown level. Three out of four levels. Lockdown. Wow. So you can't even move from Dublin to other parts of the country anyway.

Jake Knapp

Wow. And that's where the only airport is. So cool. Yeah. So, no, I mean, it's just too risky.

Jonathan Courtney

Parents age as well. It's just a nightmare to do international travel right now. Doesn't feel comfortable either for me, especially, like, I don't want to bring the baby on a plane. You know what I mean? Totally.

She's not going to sit still. We'll have to walk all over the entire plane. She's going to be eating stuff off the ground. Yeah. No way.

God is going to be eating old masks.

Disgusting. Dude. Did you see the new Xbox and new ps five? All the announcements in the last few weeks? Did you guys talk about that?

Jake Knapp

No. Oh, my God. So it's actually really interesting. What should I look up? What should I look up?

Are you just going to tell me? I think it's too many things. Like too many things happen. So I'll just give you the full summary and it's super exciting. So, first of all, November is the first new round of consoles in, like, I don't know, six years or something.

Jonathan Courtney

So new consoles come out every six ish. It used to be like every four years, but this generation has been super long, which has been really cool. It's between Sony and Microsoft. It's between PlayStation and Xbox. Nintendo does its own thing.

They're on a different cycle, so they're not part of this. So this generation that currently exists, PS four and Xbox one, the Xbox completely fucked up their launch, made loads of really bad strategic decisions, and it was a complete, absolute disaster. And they barely sold any consoles and Sony completely destroyed them. And basically, that's where we are right now. So how do they come back?

Jake Knapp

How do you come back from that? Yeah, they've been really doing like a really impressive comeback. And this comeback has been. So, first of all, the console launches are in November. Both companies have been holding back their pricing so that they kind of undercut each other.

Jonathan Courtney

Now everything has been revealed. The PlayStation five, I'll just make sure I'm saying the right numbers here. I'm guessing. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm right. PlayStation five is $499.

Xbox Series X is 499. So they matched. But then, actually, then this is a really interesting. Let me see. PS five price.

Actually, it's pricing. Preorder pricing. Let me just get this open here. God damn it. Why doesn't it just give me a clean list?

Jake Knapp

So the new Xbox is called Series X. Series X, exactly. So PS five pricing. There's two versions. Microsoft has the ugliest web pages.

Jonathan Courtney

Here we go. So PS five with a disk drive costs 499. PS five digital edition costs 399, meaning no disk drive, 399 is the entry price. PS five, which, by the way, is extremely cheap. It's the same price as the PS four when it launched.

So it's really cheap for how powerful it is. So that's like the Switch. Like how you're mostly downloading games well, but the Switch, you could put in an sd card. So this one, you have to buy the drive. You have to buy the one with the drive.

You either buy the one with the disk drive or you buy the one which is like a digital. You just download everything from the store. And then Xbox came along with a really interesting lineup. First you have the Xbox Series X with the Disk drive, which is 499, which matches the PS five with the disk drive. But then they came out with a new console called the Xbox Series S, which sounds very similar for 299, which completely undercuts the PlayStation prices, except, but it's a lower spec console, so it can't output 4k resolution, blah blah blah blah.

But the question is, will the average person know the difference and will they just go for the cheapest thing? So super interesting. Then a crazy thing happened and Microsoft bought Bethesda Zenimax. I don't know what that is. Do you know the elder Scrolls video games?

Skyrim? No. Doom. You know Doom. Doom, yeah.

Like Microsoft bought the company that owns all of these huge video game franchises for 7.5 billion the day before preorders went on sale for the Xbox. And it's like one of the biggest gaming acquisitions of all time. It's some of the biggest games of all time. So it means they'll be exclusive on Xbox. It means they'll be potentially likely exclusive on Xbox.

But actually Microsoft has a really different, their strategy is this thing called Game Pass, which is basically the Netflix of games. And you can get the console. What do you mean? Well, the game pass, I was just looking at this, I don't know if this is what it is, but you can just basically pay $35 a month and you get, it's insane. 24 months and you don't pay for the console up front.

Yeah, exactly. While you do pay for the console, it's included in the price. Okay. It's like getting a phone. Exactly.

This is a totally different strategy. Like Sony's strategy is sell boxes. Microsoft strategy is sell Game pass subscriptions. They already have 15 million subscriptions. And what they announced with this new ZeniMax acquisition is that all of these Xenomax games will be day one on Game Pass.

So it's not like this second rate thing. It's actually the best games coming out on this console will be there on Game Pass day one super cheap. It's like 20 something dollars per month and you get the fucking console and all the games. It's a ridiculously good deal. And the whole conversation of like the day before this Zenimax acquisition, people were saying like, sony did it again.

They've got all the best games. Microsoft doesn't care about games. They just blah, blah, blah, and then they buy Zenimax and it completely changed the entire conversation. It's actually crazy. It's really, really interesting.

Jake Knapp

It is interesting. That's been the exciting shit. It's interesting because I imagine that part of the reason those two consoles were around for two years longer than the normal cycle is. It's probably getting harder to jack up the hardware specs enough to make a huge meaningful leap. Right.

That has to be part of it, I'm guessing. Or maybe it takes so long to make games that you really want to be able to count on the existing console. I don't know, but yeah. I don't know why the business model. Ends up being the big differentiator.

Because I'm guessing that between the Xbox and the PlayStation, you're not like, oh, this one has way better graphics or something super similar. It's all about what's your experience doing the thing? Yeah. Visual design wise. I just want to say this now because obviously this used to be a design podcast.

Jonathan Courtney

The Xbox Series X, including the controller, in my opinion, is the absolute winner. I think it's a timeless looking design. The controller, I love the black buttons with the colored letters. I think it's super elegant. Whereas I think the PlayStation five is not going to age well at all.

I think it already looks too teenage boyish to me. It's not cool. It actually looks very uncool. I think I'd be embarrassed to have something like that. It looks so embarrassing.

Jake Knapp

It's funny. It looks shit. If you showed me these two and you were like, you erased the logos and you were like, which company came up with which thing? I guess the controller is kind of a giveaway for Xbox, but the console looks like, to me, it looks like something Microsoft would have done. You're totally right.

Jonathan Courtney

Actually, if you look it up, the PS five looks like the Xbox 360 and the Xbox Series X looks like the PS four. Like, in terms of visual language. Oh, yeah, they've swapped. Like, you're actually totally right. Yeah.

But I love look at the Xbox controller. If you could go to this link here, you'll see like a lineup of the controllers and a really nice photo. Just actual effort went into making this an elegant piece of hardware. Whereas the PlayStation, they're trying to make it look like kind of an alien spaceship thing. And I just dislike that.

It turns me off so much. The visual design of the PlayStation five. I think it's cool. And I said that last time, I think it's cool that they went for something like this, but it's weird because. The thing has such a prominent place.

Jake Knapp

I just think the context of where this thing lives, right. It's probably in your living room. Right. The idea that you want the PS five demands so much visual attention and it's such a opinionated. God, I don't know.

Even has, like, the blue led, which to me is just like. But that's very PlayStation. But it's also very all kind of cheap technology stuff. Click on the second link I just sent you and have a look at the two xboxes next to each other. I think these will look good.

Oh, interesting. In ten years. Yeah. I like the series S with the. Big black circle in it.

Yeah. I have to say, the Xbox one X, which was designed by a guy called Andrew Kim, this is sort of derived from it, and it's really beautiful. It's Xbox one X. Yeah, Xbox one X. Naming situation here is difficult.

Jonathan Courtney

And the controllers are, I think, really beautiful. The only bad thing about these controllers, which I find really dumb, is that you still have to put batteries in them, even though the PlayStation has had rechargeable controllers for centuries. I don't get the batteries thing, but I'm sure they have a reason for it. You have to put batteries in the Xbox controller. Yeah, it's fucking weird.

Jake Knapp

I don't get it. I've had a PS four for the last few years, and I'm like, just seeing the reviews online and it's like. And you can change the batteries really easily. I'm like, battery? Why would I put batteries in there?

Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, it's stupid. Still, the controller. I just love the visual language of the whole Xbox lineup right now. Yeah, it's very good. Do you get what I mean?

Jake Knapp

Yeah, I'm totally right there with you. It looks way better. It looks like well designed, as opposed. It looks like it went through a lot of iterations and it was carefully designed and the visual language was carefully thought about. Whereas the PlayStation looks like they saw a scene in a movie where there's a space actually, in episode two, star wars.

Jonathan Courtney

Episode two, Obiwan Kenobi goes down to this planet where all the clones are. Yeah. Do you remember this? And there's like, the building looks like this fucking console. That's what it looks like.

Jake Knapp

Maybe they were like, oh, let's collect some inspiration for this. And they just. Episode two, they were planning to look at, like, a lot of things. And the first guy was like, all right, check this. I really like this part.

In episode two, when Obiwan Kenobi goes down to the planet, they're like, okay, cool. And they're like, let's just do that.

Jonathan Courtney

It's weird because the PS four actually has a very elegant visual design. Like, very. I have this german word in mind, but I'm trying to think of the english word, but understated. Very understated. Like, that's what the PS four looks like right now.

The one I just sent to you. Yeah. That's beautiful, actually. It's a beautiful understated thing. The controller, obviously, I don't think the controller looks very good aesthetically.

And it also doesn't feel that great compared to the Xbox controller. But it's definitely a lot nicer than the PS five. Fucking ugly boy. Shit. It's so teenage boy.

I can't. Yeah. Like, 15 year old Jonathan would have been like, yeah, I do kind of like the one with the PS five, with the disk drive. The fact that it's asymmetric. Like, it's actually not a symmetric object.

Yeah, it looks cool. They went so into it. Yeah. Have you seen the Xbox 360? It had the same concave breathing in.

They made a big deal out of it like that. It was like, the console is breathing in. Back in the day, they kind of had this whole design thing about it, and I was obsessed with it. That console turned out to be pretty broken. What is the drive on the PS five?

Jake Knapp

Is that like a Blu ray drive? Yeah, it's a Blu ray drive. God, it's so big. The whole thing is so big. The console is huge.

Jonathan Courtney

If you look at comparisons to the consoles, if you look at the PS five versus, for example, your switch standing next to it, you'll be shocked. Wow. Like, the controller is almost the same size as the switch. So imagine how big this fucking console is. It's like a tower.

Jake Knapp

Like a desktop tower. Yeah, it's huge. That's also one of the big differences between this generation. This generation, last generation, have been using pc parts, like standard pc parts. Okay.

Jonathan Courtney

So it is essentially a pc tower. That's also why both of them kind of look like pc towers. That's essentially what they are. They're pc towers with custom software on it. That's all it is.

They used to make, like, super complex speciality chips, each of these console makers. And then it basically meant that no one could develop for these things. You know what's also interesting? This generation, Microsoft, because they have this game pass thing now. All the games work on all the consoles, which is super cool.

So you never have to worry like, oh, I'm getting a new console. None of my old games will work. All of the old games work on the new console because it's a service just running on a more powerful machine. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's super.

Especially for a casual gamer like me. I find that it just makes the catalog much bigger. There is going to be a new Switch next year, but it's just, I mean, what Nintendo should do is just make a more powerful version of the current Switch and keep it exactly like it is. Do small improvements and you can keep all the old games. But Nintendo often does really dumb shit, so we'll see what actually happens.

Jake Knapp

They usually do like the smartest thing you can't believe in one iteration and. Then once every ten years. Yeah. Nintendo is one of these companies where they do really smart stuff and you're like, oh, my God, they really nailed it with Animal Crossing and, wow, like the Switch and all this stuff. And you think they know this?

Jonathan Courtney

You think they know why it's working, right? You're like, wow, they're really nailing it on. They're bundling all these games, and then they come out with like a sock that you wear on your head and you have to use your tongue to fucking drive around. And you're like, oh, okay. They didn't know that.

Jake Knapp

The reason. They didn't get it, when they came out with the Switch light, I was really kind of like, oh, that's cool. They brought out a cheaper version of the Switch light. And, oh, yeah, and also it doesn't switch. You can't take off the controllers.

Jonathan Courtney

I'm like, oh, that's a bit weird. But overall, they rarely do this apple thing of kind of cleverly bringing out products that make sense or even the Microsoft thing here. When I look at these two products side by side, it's like what they have here is Series X, the fastest, most powerful Xbox series s next gen performance in the smallest Xbox ever. So it's like you get the really powerful one or you get the one that's less powerful, but both can play all the same games. You just have that choice.

If Nintendo just looked at this and said, cool. So the current Switch is now the low powered one, and let's make a switch pro, which is the higher powered one. Like Apple would do way too easy for Nintendo. They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't do something as basic and intelligent as this.

Jake Knapp

Yeah, you're right. It'll be something. What are they going to do? They're like, all right, we've got the new thing called the Quadro switch. There's a screen on, it's actually a cube of screens, and it doesn't have controllers anymore.

Jonathan Courtney

You squirt water at the sides and that's how you drive forward.

Jake Knapp

Oh, man. So it's going to work. Gosh. The downside to taking a pause from the podcast is. This is, like, one of the funniest part of my week.

Jonathan Courtney

We'll just have calls. We should call each other. It'll be a private podcast. Yeah. You don't want to hear the dark shit we talk about off pod.

Off pod. We call it in the business. Yeah, I mean, I think pretty good run. I mean, like, fucking 200 episodes over 17 years. It's kind of crazy.

Most podcasts don't. Okay, it's not 200. It's 150 episodes over three years. But most people give up on their podcast after a week. I'll tell you, I am 99% sure that there will be a season two of something.

Jake Knapp

I don't know what that's going to look like. I don't know if you'll feel up for it and I'll feel up for it at the same time, or if you'll do something new with it, or if I'll do something new with it for a while and then we'll come back to it or whatever. But I do have to notice that in my current mental and overall life stress state, I'm like, yeah, it makes sense for us to not try to do this call. I mean, I don't even have the Internet. At my mom's house, where I'm living in the basement is less than one meg per second.

It's DSL, but it's, like, really overtaxed up there. It's really bad right now. I couldn't even guarantee you we could do the call, period, let alone. And life just feels super unsettled and crazy. But I also recognize there have been a lot of times when, especially even during the pandemic, I've thought, man, of all the things that I've spent time on during the last three years that we've been doing this, one thing that's really cool about the podcast is how it feels like the connection with listeners has been really good.

Yeah, we keep doing this thing, and then at least it felt like at times, like, yeah, this is a really nice thing where we put in a little bit of effort, and if people stick around and listen to it, it feels like a very unphony way to share or document what's going on. Whereas most of the things that usually writing a newsletter, for example, feels like, really, I'm always really stressed about doing it and overthink it too much. Takes a long time, and I'm never happy with the amount of time it takes to do it or posting it. I've just totally given up on posting stuff on Twitter. Yeah, I haven't logged into Twitter in years.

Jonathan Courtney

Yeah. Writing blog posts or things. So this has this really nice sweet spot of being able to share. And I know from the notes we get from people that they really care about it, but it's a big, like, even in the situation where there's an Internet and there are other demands on time, it actually does take a big time chunk because you and I have to schedule, and it's the evening for you right now. It's evening time.

Jake Knapp

This takes away from being home. Right. And I find a lot of times I'll put a lot of energy into this, and I'm like. I'm like, wow, okay, now I'm kind of behind for the rest of the day. Exactly.

It does feel like at this time, that is not the wisest crater to put probably in either of our weeks. Yeah. Let's stabilize our fucking lives first and. Then come back stabilized before we have the patient record a podcast. Yeah, that's what they say, isn't it?

I think so. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's what they say. You know what would be cool, actually, if you did enjoy this podcast over the last few years, do let us know right in. We'll both get this email.

Jonathan Courtney

PBC. Because it used to be called product Breakfast Club. Pbc@ajsmart.com. If you have something nice to send or, like, if you enjoyed it, or if you have any nice memories over the last three years, do send that in. You can just put subject line, last episode or final episode or whatever.

I'll share all of that with Jake. And that will be a nice little way to put a little bow tie on it for a while. You don't have to write in. You can also send Jake. I guess Twitter would be for you.

Where would you. No, don't do Twitter. No, email me at. Hey@jakenapp.com. Yeah, okay.

Hey@jakenapp.com. Yeah, so if you want to specifically send a message to Jake. Hey@jakenapp.com. If you want to send me a message specifically, I'm just trying to think, should I give out my email address? Don't you do PBC?

You did PBC? Yeah, PBC at AJ. Smart. Jonathan will see that first. Anyway, that doesn't go to both of us.

Jake Knapp

So if you want to send a message to him, if you were like, jake sucks. Yeah, Jake sucks. Then send that to PBC and he can choose whether to share. Exactly. I'm also taking a break from social media, which I started pretty much in June.

Jonathan Courtney

I haven't really been logging into Instagram or anything, which has been pretty nice, actually. I've basically just logged into the community on Facebook for our workshopper group. That's basically my social media interaction at the moment, which is kind of nice because I'm just like, you know what? There's too much shit going on at the moment in the world. There's no, like, social media just enhances it, basically.

Yeah, it's like, Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump.

Donald Trump. Coronavirus. Coronavirus. Coronavirus. Coronavirus.

Coronavirus. Donald Trump. Fires everywhere. Because Twitter is just like Instagram. It depends what current kind of big scandal is happening.

Last time I would have logged in, sometimes I downloaded just to look. Last time I logged in, it was like, fires was the main theme. Yeah. That everything is on fire was the main theme. I unfollowed everyone so that I wouldn't see so much stuff.

But now Instagram added in a thing where if you get to the end of your feed, it just starts recommending shit. Oh, God. So, yeah, I think it was a good idea for me to just kind of back out of Instagram. That's funny, because I remember them making a really big deal about how they were like, you could finish your feed and be done. Yeah, no, you can't now.

Jake Knapp

They made a big deal about that. And then quietly, they're like, actually, here's more stuff. Yeah, exactly. Just when I literally. I did my thing of unfollowing everyone so that I'd have an empty feed and I could just check my dms, and now I open it, and it's just like, Donald Trump.

Jonathan Courtney

Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Yeah.

And of course, if you don't read it, you're also irresponsible. Fuck off, everybody. You should be getting your news from this podcast. That's where you should be getting it from. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I don't really have any of the topics. Oh, man. You know what's too bad? Have you seen the teenage engineering, like, teasers for their new product? No, I don't know.

Something new. Well, they don't. They haven't announced it yet. And what I was just thinking, it's too bad is we'll never be able to announce what it is on this podcast. Wait, where are they teasing it?

Jake Knapp

It was in. I'm signed up to their newsletter. Yeah, I don't see anything about it on their website. They've been sending emails about it. Oh, wait, here is a hint.

Jonathan Courtney

Apparently, it's going to be a Bluetooth speaker. Oh, that's cool. It says teenage engineering's next product is probably a Bluetooth speaker. Psy, we know that's an n gadget thingy. Yeah, I see that.

Do you know they did Ikea products that teenage engineering did? Yeah, they did. I saw. When I was in IkEa recently, I saw some teenage engineering stuff. Oh, yeah.

Jake Knapp

Here it says, and Ikea products. Oh, wow. They look really cool. People are already saying it's disappointing. Who fucking knows?

Jonathan Courtney

You don't know everybody. You know freakvins. You don't know freakvins collection. Bluetooth speakers. You know what never really happened?

What never really came out was like, the play date. Yeah. Wasn't that supposed to be out by now? Well, they did say 2019, but they didn't really commit to anything. That's why they also didn't take preorders.

I mean, I physically used it and had it in my hand, so it did exist. I'm just wondering if they can. The website for the play date is so amazing. Love it. Okay, here's a status update from.

Oh, wow. From December 2019. Okay. September 17. We're very happy to once again be sponsoring the world wonderful game devs of Expo.

Jake Knapp

This isn't the news. Oh, August twelveth. Finally. We can hear you yelling from here. Yes.

But when is play date coming out? Expect a big update in the next few months with our timeline, preorder details, a surprise, and title of the free games you get in season one. I wonder if this is something which I wondered when I visited the panic office. I was wondering, like, with my personality, if I started something like this, I'd be super excited about it for a while. But as it would drag on, I wonder if it's like, I don't know, should we fucking just give up?

Especially with the COVID thing. I mean, it's not because it's a small team, right. So you only have to have a few people get kind of like, oh, man, this has been a rough year. Yeah. And then it probably slows things down a lot.

Not like we've like, oh, we have 20,000 people working on this. I guess they all just have to keep working on it. Yeah, it's just a small, little team. Speaking of working on products, Jake, I'm working on our first new big course. Oh, really?

Jonathan Courtney

Program thingy? I wouldn't say course. I'd say, like, program. Since the masterclass, pretty much like. I don't want to say.

I'll tell you, obviously. Can you say it and Jace will beep it out. Yeah. So it's called. Well, I'd have to beep out the entire description and name.

I hope Jace was listening this far. You know what I mean? Okay, I'll tell you everything, but Jace, please beep all of this out. It's called.

Jake Knapp

That's a good name. You don't have to beep out. That's a good name. No, leave out. Yeah, so I actually tried a lot of different names, but that's kind of like the.

Jonathan Courtney

So our is called because the topic is more around blah, blah, blah. And so the people in there where the new product, the goal is obviously to kind of. And the focus is really on, which is essentially.

Jake Knapp

Oh, cool. Yeah, I can see some of the. Stuff, but honestly, I don't know. It's going to be in beta. As soon as it is, I'll send it to you.

Jonathan Courtney

It's going to be in beta from. Okay, from now on, you can unbeep Jason. So from middle of November, we actually have a date. We're going to start individually contacting people and asking them if they want to jump on a call. We'll show them the product and then we'll offer them the product.

And probably we won't publicly launch this until summer, next year, I'd say. I think we'll take that long just to get it done, basically. I'm super curious about how this goes. Me too. Super curious.

I'm kind of freaked out as well because we've booked all of the filming equipment for two weeks from now. And I'm just nervous that I won't be so long since I made such a big program. I'm nervous that I just don't got it anymore. Yeah. Oh, man.

Jake Knapp

But I'm super, super curious. This is one thing that you and I. I hope that pausing the podcast opens up. You and me having just like regular conversations about me too. About biz strategy stuff.

Jonathan Courtney

Biz. Although as much as possible, we, I know, have to make this as normal a conversation as possible. It is not possible for me to 100% forget that there's an audience to this, of course, and try to make it about things that people would care about and also not be as unguarded and honest as I try to be. To not be like a little holding things back. Yeah, of course.

I mean, we had a conversation before the podcast that we're definitely not going to have on here. Yeah, it was dark. Yeah, it was very dark. It was pretty serious. Yeah.

But I mean, as soon as I'm. I'm literally making the course curriculum right now. As soon as I have, like, a first draft, I'll definitely be asking if you have time to have a look at the course curriculum before I even start filming or anything like that. Yeah. And then you have to spend 3 hours giving me detailed notes.

Jake Knapp

Yeah, of course. Is there anything you want to drop on the audience or give a last thing, some ideas or some resources or anything you'd like to leave people with or something like that? I would say I'm realizing that. I think I project that there will be a time when both of us, or one of us will start to think like, oh, we want to do something with a podcast again. And since this is the last episode that will be in there for a while, and since people who are still listening at this point are the diehards.

Jonathan Courtney

Yeah. I think it would be really interesting if you did send an email to hey@jakenapp.com. And or pbc@ajsmart.com. Both. Send it to both.

Jake Knapp

Whatever. With like your. If you're like, you know, my favorite parts of this podcast were x, Y. Or Z, when Jonathan was. Like, what I would really like from you guys, or from you, Jake.

Or from you, Jonathan is like, x, Y, or Z. Like, let us know. And I'm not saying we're going to do that thing because we'll just do whatever we want to do. But it would be interesting because then we can kind of come back to that if there's that moment where we're like, okay, what should we do with a podcast? Like, it would be fun to come back to that, and I'd be kind of curious to see that.

In the meantime, the best way to keep up with me on stuff is going to be my newsletter or like the Sprint newsletter, which I'm doing kind of now with John Zaratsky, which means it's more regular because he's a more reliable person than I am. So you can go to thesprintbook.com and sign up for that newsletter, but definitely don't unsubscribe from the podcast because something may happen here. Yeah, perfect. I think for me, the newsletter is all AJ and SmartNewsletter, which is ajsmart.com newsletter is probably the only way to hear what we're up to because it's a good newsletter. Oh, thank you.

Jonathan Courtney

Thanks. There's a team of people trying to make it good. Yeah. So you'll get a lot of emails about product design, but every so often you'll hear something. Well, there's good links in there, though.

I always look through. There's like ten links or something and I always look through and they're good ones. These are actually all from our slack channel. So during the week, the Slack channel builds up with cool things that we all see and then it gets put into the. So the AJ and Smart newsletter is probably the only place where you'll.

I'm not going to be very much on social media, so if you dm me on instagram, probably won't see it. So, yeah, AJ and smart newsletter probably is the easiest way. And I would like to give some just little things. So, for example, I think the tv show the boys is amazing. I've been watching.

Jake Knapp

I haven't heard of that at all. It's about like, imagine if superheroes were in the real world, in the real kind of fucking depressing corporate America world, and actually people had superpowers. Imagine how much they would abuse them. That's like a really crazy, dark fucking. What's that on?

Jonathan Courtney

It's on Amazon prime. Okay. It's one of the best shows I've seen a very long time. The boys. The boys.

I finished the magician's trilogy. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a great book series. And yeah, I will also say I mentioned a few times, kind of offhand, one of the biggest life changing things I've spent money on this year has actually been therapy. And I think that's something that we were just talking before the show.

It's something that probably people like me don't talk about enough, probably. The more people who I kind of watch and listen to talk about that, the less weird it seems. And that's why kind know, even for me, hearing people like Tim Ferriss talk about that made it less weird for me to go and do it myself. So I would say, if you ever thought, like, oh, maybe I should go, like, I'm feeling like, for me, it's anxiety is kind of my problem. I didn't even know what that fucking word meant until the start of 2020.

But yeah, I just had this lifelong issue with now what I know is called anxiety. Being going to therapy, that's actually been the best use of time and money for me in the last, I don't know, probably five years or something like that. So that's something I definitely want to leave some people with. If you're ever kind of like, I'll do that next year. I put it off probably for maybe it was like four years ago.

I remember my first journal entry where I was like, maybe I should go to therapy, but I was too embarrassed, so I just didn't do it. And then I started this year. Should have started four years ago. So that's a little nugget for you. Well, it's sort of like.

Jake Knapp

It seems to me like it's like having a personal trainer for your mind more than. I don't know. I guess there's like a. I'm trying to think of what tv show or movie or something planned to this idea of what therapy was. In my head, that's kind of like not what it's like where the person's, like, lying back on the couch, and they're just kind of like, I don't know.

The whole thing seems like Baloney. Yeah. I think the reality is that it's much more about there's science behind it. Like, there's actual science behind the ways that it works, and it does work. And we have all these weird stigmas about things that anything that relates to the mind, whereas these things are like, as the way that they work is structurally, in some ways predictable and as addressable scientifically as much as anything that happens to your body, which we generally don't have stigmas about.

Unless it involves, like, the butt.

The genital is generally the general genital butt area, but we treat the mind like, as if it was the genital butt area. And that's crazy. I agree. I was definitely too embarrassed. And also, I was the type of person who would, like, if someone's telling me that they're depressed or that they're going to therapy for that, I'm like, oh, this person's weak.

Jonathan Courtney

You know what I mean? It's just like a stupid thing that would come to my mind because I didn't really get. I just was too unself aware and stupid. But, yeah, now I'm like, oh, no. Actually just talking to.

All I'm doing is having someone who is asking me questions, and I am talking. And therefore, by talking, I'm figuring things out. I didn't know that's all it is, really, for me. And that's been quite helpful. Yeah.

I've also been going to butt and genital therapy. Yeah. I can't really talk. How do you say the word butt and how do you say the word. B-O-T-I would say but and bought.

Jake Knapp

Okay, I can hear the difference. But and bought. How would you say it? But and bought. You just kind of say, but, like, but.

Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, but and bought. But and bought. Okay. Yeah. Bot I think that's a good way to end it.

Jake Knapp

I think so. All right. That really kind of sums it up. The whole thing in a nutshell definitely sums it up. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to however many episodes you listen to.

Jonathan Courtney

If anyone here has been listening since day one, like, holy shit. Thanks so much as well to Jace Jason. By the way, he sent me a message recently saying, the Jace thing is not true, and he likes to be called us. He was fucking with you, man. I don't know.

Jake Knapp

Oh, he probably was. All the love to Jason. His email address. I'm not going to give away his email address, but it does have Jason in it. Yeah, maybe.

Jonathan Courtney

I have no idea. Maybe what he wanted wasn't available. Yeah, great. Thanks so much to Jason. If you want him to edit your podcast, in the description, you'll see his email address and his company name.

Thanks also so much to Amer Khalifa from, who's been doing the fucking show notes for this podcast for three years as a, like, amazing. For free. 200 episodes for free. 200,000 episodes for free. And, yeah, Jake, thanks so much for you as well, doing this podcast with me every week.

It's been really fucking fun. Yeah, thank you, man. This has been a blast. So it's a good season one. Yeah, great.

Very great season finale. Yeah. What should we call the episode so that it's so clickbaity that all the people who have stopped listening will listen. This is the final episode, I guess is the most clickbait. Yeah, probably is.

Okay. People will not believe that that's actually the truth because we did that before when we changed the name.

All right, let's sing it out. Sing it out. 1234, Jake and Jonathan. Product. Jake and Jonathan season one breakfast.

Jake Knapp

Season one is over 200 episodes. 700 episodes. Thank you. Oh, had to do a fart. Bye, everybody.

Bye.

200: This is the Final Episode (really)

Primary Topic

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Episode Chapters

1. Introduction and Announcement

2. Personal Updates and Reflections

3. The Impact of COVID-19

4. Gaming Industry Insights

5. Closing Thoughts

Actionable Advice

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Transcript