William Channer: Host of DRT, Founder of Panda

Sam Solomon: This is DNFM, I’m Sam Solomon.

DNFM features the latest stories in design and tech, brought to you by Designer News. This is Episode 12. My guest today is William Channer. William is a partner at the Panda Network, which is a collection of products that solve meaningful problems for designers, developers, and entrepreneurs.

Additionally, he is the host of Dorm Room Tycoon, a podcast that features straight to the point interviews with guests such as Jason Freed, Tobias Van Snyder, and Dave McClure. In this interview, we’re going to discuss a bit about the future of information consumption and what role Panda has to play in that.

We’ll talk about his experience building products remotely, as well as thoughts on raising money for startups. We’ve got a great interview coming up, but first we’ve got a word from our sponsor.

This episode of DNFM is sponsored by the O’Reilly Design Conference. The O’Reilly Design Conference is coming to San Francisco. Product designers, interaction designers, user researchers, managers, and entrepreneurs will share important lessons on how to make a lasting impact on your organization and the world beyond, all through design.

Plan on attending, and you’ll get practical training on things like machine learning, wearable tech, Designing for the internet of things, bots, and virtual reality. Click the link in the show notes and get 20 percent off the ticket price by registering with the code PCDNEWS. Once again, that’s code PCDNEWS.

We have a couple of feature job listings from the Designer News job board this week. Brigade is looking for a senior product designer that jobs in San Francisco. Webflow is looking for a web designer and educator, and that’s a remote job. If you’re hiring or looking for a new job, we’ve got all of these and more at designernews.

All right, my guest today is William Channer. William is a partner at Panda Network and is also the host of Dorm Room Tycoon. William, it’s good to have you on the show. Hey, how are you? How are you? So this is, you get to have the tables turned on you. You’ve done, what, like a couple hundred interviews, something like that?

William Channer: Yeah, around that. Yeah, it’s interesting to see be on the other side of the table. Yeah, well, it’s it’s good

Sam Solomon: to have you Um, you know, one of the things I’d like to kind of start talking about is a little bit about your background and how you got into all of this stuff because with with panda and dorm room tycoon you’ve You have a huge amount of things you’ve worked on, uh, but your career started in advertising.

What types of things were you doing in the advertising world?

William Channer: I was a copywriter. Did you study that in school? No, I didn’t. I studied business economics at school. Because it’s probably the most creative thing you can do working 9 5. You know, when you work 9 5, There’s a period when you’ve done everything and it becomes routine and very, very standard in what you do day to day.

I had a couple of jobs before that and I realized advertising was probably the last job out there that has some kind of creative element that sort of new interesting things happening, new clients, new projects, um. It’s just fresh, it’s a constant, constant sort of inbound of fresh, interesting, interesting things to work on, you know, so.

Sam Solomon: Yeah, because instead of just working on one thing, you, and you, you’ve worked on some pretty big brands too, right? Yeah,

William Channer: that’s down to the agency, so that’s, that’s, that’s not, it’s not me sort of hitting up like Nike or British Airways, it’s. BBH or AKQA had those clients on board. So, you

Sam Solomon: know, maybe, would you talk a little bit about the types of things you did copywriting?

Because I know I came from an advertising background too, and I think maybe a lot of people don’t realize, like, the breadth of things. Like, you’re really kind of like, copywriters are really ad agencies, like idea people.

William Channer: Right, it’s not just about the words, it’s about ideas. The execution as well, but on a deeper level, deeper level, it’s problem solving.

The words are sort of the last thing. It’s sort of the icing on the cake, but it’s thinking about the best approach of solving that problem, you know? Um, so generally you start off with what’s there, what do they want, and then you figure from that, uh, the best way to tackle that. So

Sam Solomon: you’re in advertising, you’re Working for these agencies, doing creative things for all of these fantastic brands, what made you want to leave

William Channer: advertising?

Well, the good thing about advertising is that it offers, if you work for a decent agency anyway, it offers a lot of variety of what things you could be working on. That being said, because there’s always new things coming on, uh, coming on your plate, it means that you can’t build something sustaining. So you work on a, on a brief for two to three weeks and then you move on to something else.

It’s, it’s like a constant state of fluctuation of just doing different, many different things and, and, and that’s great. Um, but there was a period where I wanted to build something. And just keep contributing to one thing and just seeing it grow, grow, grow, um, and advertising to offer

Sam Solomon: that, you know, I think I’ve said this a few times on the show before, but I completely understand that sentiment, you know, in advertising, you do have this ability to kind of.

Really be creative and, and stretch, you know, your experience, you gain a lot of experience in a short period of time, but once a project’s done, you don’t, there’s, there’s not really any more equity in that project, um, you know, you kind of, it’s just kind of moving on to the next thing and, you know, I don’t know if this was for you, but for me personally, I kind of felt like I was, um, you Almost kind of on this hamster wheel where, you know, you basically work, work, work on something and then it’s gone and then you work, work, work on something and then it’s gone.

William Channer: I mean, this is not a good thing, but for any sort of creative idea person, you can get attached to your idea. And it’s like, you see a spark of potential and then you’re like, Hmm, maybe we can explore this. And then you go down this road of bringing this idea to life. And then. You sort of have this bond with it, you know, if you want to say not to get too sentimental, but it’s like, yes, we’ve made this happen.

And then next week it’s like, okay, forget about that. That’s done with now. Let’s work on something else. And it’s, it’s not painful, but it’s sort of, oh man, you know, is that it? Was that it? You know, it’s sort of undervalues sort of what you did that week before because now everybody’s thinking about the new thing.

Yeah, I sort of got tired of that, but I mean, advertising is great for, uh, training your mind to come up with new ideas. Um, and not to value ideas so much.

Sam Solomon: So while you were working in advertising, did you, did you start having ideas? Were you, were you working on Dorm Room Tycoon

William Channer: then? Dorm Room Tycoon, the podcast, came out of university.

So I, I attempted to do a startup at uni and drastically failed. Um, and that was just out of being naive about what it really takes to build. Um, a successful product or

Sam Solomon: business. What type of startup did you, could you tell us a bit

William Channer: about that? Uh, it wasn’t, it was a photo app that allowed you to vote when you were shopping for stuff.

So it was called Voto. And let’s say you go to a retail store, um, Foot Locker, and you want to decide between these, uh, Jordans and these Dunks, these Nike Dunks, you can take a photo of both of those shoes and then, uh, get friends to vote for which ones they like.

Sam Solomon: Gotcha and so you you are very green had no idea really like like a lot of people’s first companies really have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

William Channer: Yeah it’s just chasing the glory and and and that happens when you see a lot of headlines a lot of people writing about success stories and they paint this picture of oh it’s really easy um so yeah don’t i can came out of that frustration of realizing that hey. I need to learn so much more about this design working with people, um, and all that.

So don’t tycoon is, is a podcast show that focuses on just extracting as much know how and wisdom, if you want to say that from people that I’ve admired. So my, my co founder at the time, we used to read a lot of books like lean startup and the four steps to the epiphany by steve blank and eric reese, the idea of like, hey, View these guys rather than read their books and share notes, you know, so that’s where it sort of came from.

So podcasting wasn’t something that was hot at that time. It was quite a while ago, but it was just a great way to sort of connect with these guys and really get inside their mind and sort of pick their brains on a deeper level. And then moved on to Panda, which was my partner’s idea.

Sam Solomon: We, I do want to ask you about Panda, but before we move on to that, one of your very first interviews on dorm room tycoon was with, uh, David Hahnemeyer Hanson, who is a partner at 37 signals.

He’s the creator of rails. I’m curious how that interview came about. How did, how did you get him on your

William Channer: show? I, I guess the obvious, the obvious answer would be to say luck. Um, I was just really lucky. So he came, I think this is when he was promoting Rework. So he came down to London and he was promoting this book and he was at a conference and um, there was like, during a, during a break, it was really strange, during a break, and I’m not even a developer, but I’m just there because.

It was, it was a good conference and, uh, during the break, he was, he was just there with his agent, publishing agent, uh, and he was just by himself and no, all these developers were around him and nobody dared to even talk to him, you know, or anything. It was just, it was just really strange and I thought, Hey, you know what?

I’m just going to say hi. So I went up to him and said, Hey, hi. Um. Doing this podcast, love to have you on. He’s like, yeah, sure, I’ve got some time. Um, so it was great timing because I got him at a time when he was promoting stuff, you know? Um, so he’s open to that. A lot of times it’s just great timing and taking the initiative.

So that’s how I got him on. If I emailed him, I don’t think he would have said yes. So let’s

Sam Solomon: switch gears a little bit and talk a bit about Panda. So Panda is the flagship product and you guys also have the Panda Network, which is like a collection of products between you and your partner, Amit. So tell us a little bit about, you know, what you guys are working on these days.

William Channer: So what is Panda? Panda just makes it really easy for you to get information in one place. If you go to a designer or developer’s computer, typically they have endless tabs and we want to sort of streamline that by providing a better browsing experience. Do you remember the term surfing the web?

Certainly. My hypothesis, if you want to say that, is that that’s quite an outdated thing to surf the web, to browse the web. The future for me is To have a browsing experience where, um, you don’t have to go to different parts of the web. Everything comes in one place. Interesting. Um, things come to you through learning your behavior, your browsing patterns.

It knows what things you want to read, when you want to read. I feel

Sam Solomon: like in a lot of ways, that’s something that Facebook and Twitter and a lot of social networks have been, have been trying to work towards.

William Channer: Facebook and Twitter are actually, News platforms with, with added with a social element and panda is also, uh, uh, a news, a news platform, but structured around sort of different layouts and, and integrations.

So Twitter is just a feed really, and same with Facebook and, and panda sort of is, is based around that feeds and, and bringing in many websites into one place and presenting them with this streamlined themed. Uh, feed approach, sorry, any designer or developer has a routine, they get into the office and they check out their favorite websites and, uh, they start work.

What we found is that the serious designers spend a lot of time learning to stay ahead of what’s going on. You know, I, I, I spoke with one designer and he said he spends half of his day reading, um, and, and, and learning and then the rest of the half of the day on client work for those that are serious about their craft, they generally consume a lot of information and we want panda to be that place where they get that information.

We don’t want it to be a place where you’re going to check out cute cat gifts or. Right gossip about Kim Kardashian, you know, the Buzzfeed listicles, right? The things that you might check out on the weekends, but not the thing you check out at work.

Sam Solomon: Yeah. So, ed, educational content, um, you know, inspiration type stuff.

These are the things that you want. Your, you

William Channer: are enhancing your craft, right? Because we’re giving, we’re giving you the gems, the things that other designers, um, are checking out. Other thing, the, the things that other designers are, are valuing, you know. So yeah, do you know Bloomberg Terminal? It’s sort of like a trading.

Sure. Yes,

Sam Solomon: that’s that’s real where Bloomberg gets all of their I think most of Bloomberg’s money still comes from those financial terminals.

William Channer: What they’ve done cleverly is they’ve compressed everything into one screen where the trader can see the trader can make informed decisions based on the information on that screen to the sort of Average user that sort of doesn’t need that Sort of intensity of information, it might be overwhelming, you know, but for a trader, it’s almost like a pilot and when, when you see that, when you see that that dashboard, the cockpit, you know, it’s like, Whoa, what’s going on?

How is this? How is this simple? You know, but, um, or how is this intuitive? But for them, it’s everything that they need at disposable. So we won’t panic to be like that. It’s, it’s, A tool that just gives designers and developers what they need, the information they need, uh, in a, in a quick, efficient way. So we’ve, today we’ve launched a new layout, and, and what we’ve realized is that people have different browsing patterns.

You know, when you go on Facebook or Twitter, it’s just one feed. One stream and users are forced into that UI, but we think that people have different ways of browsing and we try to accommodate that with various layouts and we launched one today and we’re going to keep on doing that, you know, a developer browsers, things completely different from a designer and it’s, it’s, it’s subtle and you don’t realize it until, until you can see how.

A developer has a different layout compared to a designer, you know, it’s like, huh, that’s interesting.

Sam Solomon: Yeah, you know what this kind of reminds me of, and I know he was the last guest on your show, and I don’t, I don’t know if I remember, but I know when Scott Belsky was on this show, um, like one of the things he’s really big on is this interface layer where there’s almost like one, um, Uh, portal where users get all of their information.

I mean, hearing you kind of talk about your vision, um, your vision for Panda, to me, that sounds like there’s a lot related to his thesis on the, on the interface layer.

William Channer: Yeah, the question you ask is, you have to ask yourself is what does the future look like? And things are gonna be, become so much more automated to the point where, you know, I, I think the web will be like, I don’t need to type anything in, you know, I think the idea of typing a web address will, I would like to see that go, you know.

Uh, www dot, like, why do you need to type that in? So, uh, it sounds abstract now, but I think we’ll be in a place where it knows what I want when I want. So, at 6 p. m., what I, what I’ve presented with is going to be completely different at 11 a. m., when it knows that I, that I do something at that particular time, you know.

Sam Solomon: You were talking a little bit before, you know, about Dorm Room Tycoon, and how that kind of mirrored your, you know, your own interests. And how the last few guests you’ve had on have been, um, kind of, uh, venture capitalists or knowledgeable about that industry, um, what did you learn from them or what were you trying to learn from them?

William Channer: I think, I think you have to be careful about what you read online because the, the common, the common thought now is that you should raise money, right? It’s, it’s sort of the, the expected step that every startup founder should do. We only tend to see one side of everything. And during these interviews, I wanted to find out more about the other side, the downside of raising money.

Um, the things that people don’t talk about, the popular, the things that are not so popular, but are very, are very common. If you dig deeper with a, with a, with a founder that failed, and he may say, or she may say, we raised money and we, we failed because we couldn’t raise again. Not because the product was bad, but because we, we just burned through our cash and they didn’t give us more money, you know, um, I wanted to understand, I wanted a realistic picture and not one that was sort of fabricated, which I think is, which I think we have a lot of in, in, in our community, a lot of, um, people sharing their success stories and people not sharing their failure stories.

Sam Solomon: So the failures are usually a lot more difficult to tell. So I, I, I definitely agree with you there.

William Channer: Yeah, so I just wanted to understand what it really requires to raise money and how to go about doing it and if it’s something that we wanted to do. So I’ve been to a lot of investors and stuff and I’ve spoken to a lot of founders as well.

Just email them and some guys are like, Hey, be careful. Once you raise money, it changes everything. Yeah. They’re like, are you sure you want to do this? But then you read about it and it’s like, of course you need to raise money if you want to go big, you know, um. I think that’s

Sam Solomon: something that’s interesting because I do feel like if you, if you are raising money, if you don’t expect there to be, um, a lot of competition and like a really quickly growing market, to me that’s when it makes sense to, to leverage outside money.

If you, um, think that there is a huge market that, um. In the end, this thing could be something that was really big and you need capital to be able to get to that point. That’s like, that’s like the one time it makes sense. You know, to me, right, just raising money to raise money, um, just seems, you know, you’re right, a lot of people do do that just because they think the next thing they need is to go out and raise more money, but it just doesn’t, to me, that, that, that seems silly.

William Channer: Um, yeah, you just want to make an informed decision. Raising money is like taking steroids. You just want to know what are the downsides of taking a steroid. Right. You know, what’s the downside of taking this medication? You know, what’s gonna, what’s it gonna cause? Hair loss? You know, what else? So

Sam Solomon: you guys, you guys decided not to take money, right?

That was the, after your conversations, that the decision that you guys ended up at?

William Channer: We decided that it’s not something we should focus on now. Raising, raising money takes up a lot of time. If you don’t need to raise money, then don’t raise money. That’s that’s the advice that people have said. If you don’t need it, don’t do it.

It’s just a matter of finding the right people as well. It’s not just about raising money, but it’s about building alliances and building partnerships with people. Ultimately, building relationships with other people and, and, and that can change, that can change the dynamics of a lot of things. Just change the flavor, if you want to use that word, of just how you feel about things on a day to day.

An email from an investor that you don’t like is just going to mess up your whole day. I’ll mess up your whole week. You want to be happy when you’re working on something, you know, you want to enjoy what you’re doing. So, when you have somebody that you don’t like, now on the team, then, then what? That, that whole experience of building this product sort of becomes sour, um, you become resentful.

So, For us it’s like hey, we don’t need to raise money now Let’s just take our time and not rush into it because I think if you do that It’s going to set you on a path of regret and we want to avoid that. So I’m not against raising money I think I’m just against people raising money to pay their rent.

Sam Solomon: I think that that is a valid point I mean if you when you’re to the point where you can take advantage of it and know you can take advantage of it. That’s That’s, you know, when you should go out and do it.

William Channer: Right, if you think you can build something like Stripe or Airbnb, then, like, you should be going all out and raising money from those guys, you know?

But if you’re raising money to sort of get product market fit and, and figure things out and, I don’t think that’s the best thing to be doing. Well,

Sam Solomon: so you guys didn’t raise money. You know, you guys are continuing to work on Panda and you guys just went through this, uh, this new redesign, right? Or this, uh, this retooling of Panda.

And I know I saw something you guys are going to be offering some pro features. Um, what types of things can people expect from those pro features?

William Channer: So we want to focus around integrations and, uh, more layouts. So a lot of what you see on Panda now will be free. I actually, there was a comment recently, is Panda charging now?

Um, and I think my partner Ahmed handled that really well saying, no, everything you have up to now is free, but we’re going to do more. We’re going to offer more. You’re going to dig deeper into this problem of helping you get information, the right information to help you. Be better at what you do on a day to day your craft, you know, design developer.

So we’re just going to do more around that. Yeah,

Sam Solomon: gotcha. You know, one of the things you guys work remotely, right? I’m at is in Istanbul. I think that’s correct. So actually, first of all, how did you guys meet? Second of all, I guess I’m curious, how did, how did Panda come to be?

William Channer: So, like when, when you work, I, I think this goes back to working at advertising, is the ability to produce so many, it teaches you to produce so many ideas, um, because they expect that, that’s sort of the, the rhythm of that industry.

If you don’t produce ideas, what are you doing? I was working at BBH and this guy was saying, you know, uh, we’re an ideas factory. That’s what we manufacture. That’s what we make here, you know, so I always had lots of ideas and I contacted Armut on Dribbble People asked me how do you guys meet? I said we met online

What? Contacted him on Dribbble and I had an idea and It was an email idea and he showed me Panda. He, he already, he already built Panda. I think it was, he launched it a month ago before I got in contact, one or two months ago, three months ago. And he showed me and I was like, hey, this is cool. I’ll be interested in working with you on this as well.

So we sort of, I was gonna work on my idea and work on his idea as well. And the more I was working on his idea, I was like, hey, this is actually really, really cool. Um, and I, I have a podcast show where I have sponsors on. So at the time, MailChimp and Squarespace were sponsoring my podcast show. And I told him about Panda.

It was actually called something else, actually, before that. Um, we had to change the name because we got, got attacked by some, by some folks online. Um, We spent one weekend just rebranding everything, which was, which was crazy. New, new URL, new everything. That’s, uh, yeah, that was pretty, pretty stressful, but it was the right decision at that time.

So yeah, um, hooked up with our man and we just found a way for us to make money through advertising. And we’ve just kept our costs really low and, uh, we’ve just been, this, it’s just been consistent with it and just trying to. To nail this problem, you know, of creating a really, really good product that has utility and that serves a purpose and, uh, offer new features.

Sam Solomon: Do you find it, you know, difficult to collaborate? You know, you guys are in different cities. Um, how, how do you guys keep in touch? Yeah, that’s,

William Channer: that’s, it’s really challenging. We, we over index on the smiley face. Uh. When, when you’re working remotely, it’s really hard to tell how the other person on the other side is feeling.

It’s really, really hard. And you don’t know how you sound when you type something in Slack, you know, you don’t know how you’re being interpreted. So Smiley

Sam Solomon: faces. Smiley faces. You’re happy.

William Channer: Like, hey, how come this hasn’t been done yet? Smiley face. It’s like,

how does it work? I think it’s the passion for the product, you know. It’s almost like we’re, we’re both committed to making this work, so we put our differences aside and we just, um, plow through it, um, but it, but it is really hard. Have you

Sam Solomon: guys met face to face?

William Channer: Yeah, we have, we have. Actually, the first six months, we never met face to face.

We never did Skype, VigilCam. We like it was

Sam Solomon: super just work you you guys spent six months working on the same thing without without ever like doing any sort of Video chat,

William Channer: we didn’t know what each one looked like we had no that’s incredible Yeah, it was just we just both would withdraw to this idea, you know And it also comes down back to this credibility thing as well.

So I had a great portfolio Of things that he did before and I think that sort of followed through to panda network. We like to build a lot of things and that’s sort of his DNA. He likes them work a lot of products because as a freelancer, that’s a great way to get clients to show show them what you what you what you’ve done.

Um, and then my background advertising come up with ideas as well. Um, so when we sort of combined forces, it was, it was, it was a, it was a good thing, but he, he saw what I did with Doron Tycoon and he, I saw what he did with his other products as well, his portfolio.

Sam Solomon: That’s cool. It’s cool to, it’s cool to see how, you know, those, you know, how those things come together.

William Channer: Yeah. And then you can sort of see their footprint, their online footprint, you know, and you can see, okay, this guy is. It’s serious about what he’s doing. Um, but that’s, that was my opinion on it. It’s like, okay, this guy’s serious. You can meet a lot of people that they always have ideas and they always want to do stuff, but they, they, they have nothing to show at the end of the day.

Uh, and there are other types of people that don’t talk and they just get on with it. Um, and it’s sort of surrounding yourself with those people. Yeah, and when you do, because everybody is Obsessed with work and doing stuff, all the, all the other small things that people might worry about, like contracts, sign this please, um, and all that stuff.

It’s not really important because everybody is just drawn to this mission that nobody even thinks about that. We don’t even have a, we don’t even have a contract today, like a working contract. It’s just, it’s really weird when, because I’ve done other small projects and people send me a contract and it’s like sign here and it’s got all these terms and stuff and it’s like, but everybody’s different.

So I’m not saying not to have contracts and stuff, but it’s just when, when you find the right people, you find the right people. And when you find the right people, things generally take care of themselves, you know, for those, for those that are listening, you know, when I do my interviews, I always think about how, how I can make the interview really useful for them.

I think for those that want to collaborate more, like it all comes down to collaboration, there’s, there’s no point being an independent person because, uh, two minds are much more. Can do so much more than, than one mind, just, just because I don’t know, I don’t know why it’s like that, but partners generally Accomplish more, can be a support for that, you know, let’s, a common example would be, Armut messaged me on the week, it’s like, hey, people are working, let’s, how come you haven’t responded to my messages yet?

And if I was an independent worker, I could say, Oh, it’s the weekend. I’m just going to relax. But when you have somebody else there, it’s completely different. You know, it’s, uh, uh, there’s, of course there’s expectation, but it’s a constant reminder that, Hey, we’ve got stuff to do. I believe that we as humans can sabotage our own success as well, you know, so, uh, we can justify things to ourselves quite easily.

So, oh, I’m not going to go to the gym today, or whatever, you know, but when you have like a working, when you have a, a gym partner, it’s completely. The difference, like, I have to go

Sam Solomon: to the gym. Yeah, they’re, they’re depending on you to be there, so it’s kind of, it, it force, it forces you to be like, alright, I’m, you know, it’s maybe Saturday, I’m gonna get up and go to the gym though, because there’s that expectation that you’ll be there for that person.

William Channer: Yeah, exactly, and it’s like doing a startup and a product as well, it’s I have to deliver because that person I have to deliver it, not because it’s good for me, but because it’s good for that, that person. It takes the motivation to another level, you know, we have to launch this deadline because the team has been working so hard and if we don’t launch, it’s going to demotivate the whole team.

But you deliver it, not because of selfish reasons, but because there’s other people involved and you don’t want to let them down. So for those, for those listening, it’s like, find somebody great. Um, and, and don’t settle and, and, and be good yourself as well, you know, I think that’s also important. Make sure you bring something to the table as well.

Um, and when two people come together, it leads to other good things. But it’s all about collaboration. With Panda Network, it’s all about collaboration. We’ve done, we collaborate with a lot of people outside of, outside of Panda as well. Um, we’re always interested in working with talented folks. Because everybody has their own experiences.

And when you put that together in, in a pot, or whatever, good things happen. It’s, it’s just, it just, it’s always like that, I don’t know why, but it’s

Sam Solomon: always like that. William, we’ve been talking for a pretty good amount of time, and I’m going to have to head to my, uh, head to my first meeting here soon. But, um, you know, as someone who’s, you know, kind of had a pretty strong pulse on the design industry, who’s, uh, talked to a ton of people in technology and design, I’m curious what you think, um, Outside of Panda is one of the most interesting things that’s that’s happening in the design world right now.

William Channer: A lot of people talk about Figma. It’s really funny because Yeah, it’s, it’s really funny just seeing how people’s, I read an article today how somebody says, yeah, this is the Sketch replacement now.

Sam Solomon: Really? People are already saying

William Channer: that? Yeah, and this person previously used to write a lot of articles about Sketch, encouraging people to use Sketch, and it’s like, wow, are we just going to abandon Sketch

Sam Solomon: now?

Yeah, you know, I, to me, it’s a, for a browser based tool, it did seem like it was, uh, it was much faster and much smoother than I expected it. Because the UI, I think, is based on Sketch’s UI, it seems to me that it is, um, You know, it’s easy to figure out, like, what results you’re gonna get by doing what. With that said, A, my designs have, like, 14, 000 rectangles in it.

I’m curious how, I’m curious how Figma handles, um, would handle something when, you know, the tool that I design Is, uh, is very similar to spreadsheets. So you do have like a million rectangles. Um, I’m curious how it handles that. And the other thing is I’m not sure that to me, I don’t know that being able to designs be working on the same either art board or file with someone at the same time, I don’t know, to me, if that’s something that is, um.

You know, that’s that valuable, or if I would want to do it like I think, you know, sometimes people will be in the same Google Doc as me, um, and while I think it’s, it’s great that someone can go in and leave comments, having just having someone working on the same file, I find very distracting, um, anyways,

William Channer: but it addresses a problem that we’re facing today, which is remote working.

Ah, yeah, you’re right, you’re right. Um, I, I think it’s. It’s definitely a step in the right direction. The problem we’re facing today is collaboration and how we can collaborate better when we’re in different parts of the world. Um, so they’re addressing a real problem. So I think they’re, they’re onto something.

Let’s just see what happens. But yeah, I, I, back, back to what I was saying, I just find it interesting how, how fickle things are, you know, and nothing lasts forever. So, you know, it used to be Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch. And now it feels like this new thing is coming on it’s designers always jumping on to the next thing.

So it’s quite

Sam Solomon: scary, you know, it’s fantastic though that, um, you know, when it was just photoshop, it really was just photoshop. I think probably the best thing is now that there’s a competition, at least in the interface world. Um, there’s other options outside of, uh, you know, Adobe’s, You know, Adobe’s products for product designers.

So I think having things like sketch and, and Figma, I think that only makes the, the tool, the separate tools on their own, uh, better for people like us.

William Channer: Competition is good. It is good. That’s a good thing.

Sam Solomon: All right. Well, uh, you know, William, I think that’s all the, all the time we’ve got. I’m, you know, this was absolutely fantastic talking with you

William Channer: today.

Thank you for having me. It’s really interesting being on the other side. I’m totally unprepared for this, but it was fun. It

Sam Solomon: was fun. My guest is Panda Network partner and Dorm Room Tycoon host, William Channer.

Okay, everybody, that’s gonna wrap it up. Episode 12. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe. DNFM is on SoundCloud, iTunes, and of course you can always listen to us online at designernews. co slash podcast. If you have any comments or feedback about the show, please reach out. You can find Designer News on Twitter at designernewsbot or me at Samuel R.

Solomon. We’d love to hear what you think. Are you interested in supporting DNFM? If so, please get in touch with us about sponsorship opportunities. Once again, my guest is Panda Network partner and Dorm Room Tycoon host, William Channer. I’m Sam Solomon, and this is DNFM.

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