Mostly Technical

1 hour 21 minutes

133: Do The Hardest Thing with Jesse Hanley

Aaron is joined this week by Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento, to talk about building a seven figure business, why he feels less stress now than he did when he started, migrating from Heroku to Planetscale, and more.

Sponsored by InterNACHI, Honeybadger, Bento, Vask, and NativePHP Ultra

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

Going to Laracon? Sign up for the Mostly Technical Pre-Party!

(00:00) - 5 TB of Data
(11:12) - Laravel Live Japan
(15:46) - Seven Figure Business
(24:32) - Advice for Indie Hackers
(28:57) - Pick Better Problems
(32:50) - Friends of Bento
(42:33) - Heroku to Planetscale
(01:15:02) - What's Next

Links:

26 May 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 18 minutes

132: Ian Shipped Outro!

Ian and Aaron discuss finally recording Token Town, Ian finally shipping Outro, the benefits of working in public, what's coming next to Solo, and more.

Sponsored by InterNACHI, Honeybadger, Bento, Vask, and NativePHP Ultra

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

Going to Laracon? Sign up for the Mostly Technical Pre-Party!

(00:00) - We Finally Recorded Token Town
(07:43) - Outro Is Live!
(21:43) - Working In Public Is Required
(27:54) - What's Next For Outro
(30:22) - What's New With Solo
(43:59) - Free vs. Paid
(55:20) - First Actual Resume
(01:04:41) - Starting A Movement
(01:12:36) - Everybody Loves Discord

Links:

19 May 2026, 12:00 pm

39 minutes 15 seconds

Token Town 001: What is Anthropic Doing?!

In the first-ever episode of Token Town Aaron & Ian break down pricing changes for Claude -p and the Agent SDK, a temporary 50% increase to Claude's limits, leaps in hacking ability, and more.

Sponsored by Bento.

Links:

15 May 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 6 minutes

131: Crush My Competitors

Ian and Aaron talk about what's cooking with Solo, why Aaron's hiring his first full-time employee, Ian's frustrations with moving the team to Codex, and a feel good AI story.

Sponsored by InterNACHI, Honeybadger, Bento, Vask, and NativePHP Ultra

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

Going to Laracon? Sign up for the Mostly Technical Pre-Party!

(00:00) - Follow Up
(04:20) - Solo Update
(11:52) - Business Dad Pushback
(19:15) - Raising Money
(24:39) - Aaron's First Full-Time Employee
(31:30) - Ian's Hiring Troubles
(39:26) - A Laravel New 👀
(43:27) - Moving to Codex
(48:57) - Where's Outro?
(59:34) - A Feel Good AI Story

Links:

12 May 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 1 minute

130: Two Grandmas Roll Up

Ian and Aaron discuss the most harrowing experience of Aaron's life (complete with the funniest ad transition in Mostly Technical history), talk about Ian's trip to the Laravel Roadshow in NYC, and dive into what's cooking with Solo.

Sponsored by InterNACHI, Honeybadger, Bento, Vask, and NativePHP Ultra

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

Going to Laracon? Sign up for the Mostly Technical Pre-Party!

(00:00) - The Birthday Party Incident
(10:45) - He Starts Doing The Slip & Slide
(21:01) - The Stuff of Legends
(26:57) - More Kids = More Productive?
(32:58) - Solo Is A Meta Harness
(48:13) - It's Video Week!
(55:06) - Laravel Roadshow

Links:

5 May 2026, 12:00 pm

56 minutes 56 seconds

129: The Bounds of My Pettiness

Ian and Aaron discuss how Aaron wants to destroy (?) Solo's competitors (!), using AI to find security holes in your app, delaying Token Town until May, and more.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, & Laravel Private Cloud.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - The AI Apocalypse
(11:18) - Delayed (Again)
(15:04) - Let's Talk About Solo
(29:24) - Number Go Up
(42:13) - Sell More Solo
(48:17) - Wrap It Up

Links:

28 April 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 24 minutes

128: LaraProm

Ian and Aaron discuss Solo finally being ready & why its MCP capabilities are so intriguing, LaraProm (?!) at Laracon US (!), Ian's conundrum corner, and more.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, & Laravel Private Cloud.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - Vacation Is Awesome
(11:40) - Thunk Boys Follow Up
(14:12) - Ian's Conundrum Corner
(22:43) - Prom?!
(36:14) - Solo Is Ready
(52:58) - Solo's MCP Server
(01:16:02) - Token Town Debuts This Week

Links:

21 April 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 24 minutes

127: Charge It To The Game w/ John Drexler & Daniel Coulbourne

Ian is joined by John Drexler & Daniel Coulbourne of Thunk to talk about their new app Tidy, what constitutes a moat in the age of AI, why phone spam is the absolute worst, and so much more.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, & Laravel Private Cloud.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - Bottomless Pits
(03:05) - Tidyup.agency
(15:30) - Zero Risk Agency
(23:23) - The Schtick Is The Moat
(37:52) - You Might Need To Pay Some Professionals
(44:53) - Everyone's Playing Their Hands
(52:39) - Business Dad Thoughts
(01:22:03) - The Hard Pitch

Links:

14 April 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 35 minutes

126: Scope Explosion

Ian and Aaron talk about why neither of them shipped this past week, how to surface features in an application, tweets going viral....oh, and they're starting a new podcast. Welcome to Token Town.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, & Laravel Private Cloud.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - Ian Didn't Ship
(06:33) - Aaron Didn't Ship
(11:48) - Solo & MCP
(21:16) - Surfacing Features
(32:45) - Is AI Hype Dying Down?
(37:42) - Viral Tweets
(50:29) - Filter Out vs. Filter In
(01:01:07) - Claude vs. OpenClaw
(01:15:29) - Durable Objects & Databases
(01:27:04) - Welcome to Token Town

Links:

7 April 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 12 minutes

125: No Turning Back

Ian and Aaron talk about setting a release date (!) for Outro, huge updates to Solo, a new Cloudflare course, exciting news on the real estate front, and so much more.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, Laravel Private Cloud, IttyBit, and Ray by Spatie.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - It's Shill Season
(04:02) - Ian's Gotta Ship Outro
(15:00) - Superpowers Are So Good
(20:15) - Cloudflare Durable Objects Course
(31:32) - Cloud Pricing
(36:41) - MCP Servers
(47:23) - Solo Updates
(01:00:18) - Aaron Francis Empire Update

Links:

31 March 2026, 12:00 pm

1 hour 15 minutes

124: Old Man Yells At Cloud

Ian and Aaron talk about choosing between Faster.dev & Solo (which one is more likely to pay off?), the pros and cons of using AI to build bespoke internal apps, youth sports, Project Hail Mary, and so much more.

Sponsored by SavvyCal Appointments, Bento, Laravel Private Cloud, IttyBit, and Ray by Spatie.

Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

(00:00) - Kids Sports
(05:19) - Building Internal Tools
(17:23) - Empire of Scripts
(24:41) - Everybody Wants CLI & MCP
(29:46) - Solo Will Never Be Done
(45:46) - Faster.dev vs. Solo
(59:36) - Vibe Coding An App To $10k
(01:06:11) - Project Hail Mary

Links:

24 March 2026, 12:00 pm