That if you try your hardest, things will somehow work out.

Sometimes, shit just happens

Hey guys - Oscar here from Fountain,

First off I want to apologise for any issues - we are a small team just me and one other developer and sometimes it can take some time to get to issues reported. For example we've had over 8000 support tickets in the past 2 years... 🤯

Anyway I wanted to address each point in turn but first I'd also like to mention for the past 3 months we've been working on Fountain 1.0 which is a complete redesign of the app to address design, ux, and functionality that will make the app even easier to use. The 1.0 release is almost ready - if you'd like to help beta test it before general release please join our telegram group here - https://t.me/+ZMnGthLREYQ3N2Rk

Onto the specific issues...

• earnings - our earnings features are not some unsustainable marketing gimmick that we use just to attract new users. We strongly believe that users of Fountain provide amazing signal of what episodes are worth listening to and as such should be rewarded in a fun way and that's what the daily rewards are designed to do. Having said that we need this to be sustainable and as such the rewards are funded by our transaction fees and promotions fees. As we've grown over the past year we have had a lot more users and as such the pool of rewards per user is less which is why you've probably noticed less rewards. I'll also note that we have deliberately not focussed on building out the earnings features so we can focus on the listener experience, design, and ux to make Fountain the best podcast listening experience first - this is what the Fountain 1.0 release is all about and I'm really excited for you all to see it. Once Fountain 1.0 is out we are going to work on the earnings features some more and have some really cool ideas for how we can improve it and increase the rewards.

• @BitByBit21 lnurl withdrawals - I regularly use the LNURl Withdraw feature although recognise that this being the only withdrawal option is not ideal. Can you please let me know the wallet you tried withdrawing to that failed?

• @benwehrman forward/backward skip buttons are super lagged - this is fixed already and will be available in Fountain 1.0 which should be live in the next couple of weeks. Since it's such a big release some of the bug fixes over the past few weeks haven't been applied to the 0.8.x version that's currently live on the app stores.

• @siggy47 my fear is the app isn't making it financially - the best thing you can do to support Fountain is sign up to our premium subscription. Only around 4% of our users sign up for premium and whilst we can probably increase this by introducing the kind of annoying feature-blocking features that Spotify use to push you to premium - we also want to make the free experience great. I believe between our premium subscription and transaction fees we have a solid business model - but again if we don't deliver an amazing listening experience we won't drive either of these and that's why we're so focused on it for Fountain 1.0.

• @grayruby they don't seem to be getting advertisers anymore - we do have a large number of podcasters promoting their shows on Fountain and they are seeing great results.

• @BitcoinIsTheFuture battery drain - this should already be massively improved in the current live version 0.8.6 - but 1.0 has even more optimisations to the underlying podcast library database on the device which should improve things even more. Are you still experiencing the battery issue on 0.8.6?

• @nkmg1c_ventures does Fountain take any fees from streamers / tippers? - yes we charge a 4% fee for all boosts / streams. If you sign up to premium the fee is reduced to 1%. We also change a 20% fee for all promotions.

Thank you to everyone who shared feedback in this thread - it's really helpful and for anyone else that wants to share issues / feedback / bugs / feature requests - please reply somewhere on this post and I will give you my response and try and get what you want into Fountain 1.0.

Thanks again for all your support! 🙏

I think it would be nice to finish 2023 and start 2024 with:

1. "Fiat Ruins Everything" by Jimmy Song,

2 "The Bitcoin Standard" by Saifedeen Ammous and

3 "The Broken Money" by Lyn Aden.

I find it really depends on the individual. I know people who can just jump into a project / task without a plan and able to complete it very well. I also know people who can't even begin to work without planning out every little detail.

Personally, I like to have an idea / an outline of the project and try to divide it up into smaller tasks that I complete according to dependencies and according to urgency. At the same time, I always keep in mind that things don't go according to plan most of the time, and will change my plan / adapt along the way, according to the current situation.

I find that having a plan that is simple, straight forward, and easy to communicate is especially important when working with other people. Other people cannot read our minds, at least not yet, so it's better to have a plan that can be communicated to others such that others know what you will do and what to expect. As misunderstandings and arguments usually arise from miscommunication and difference in expectations.

what have you done @k00b