In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
All content for Frontmatter is the property of Leanpub and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
Isaak Tsalicoglou, Author of Phoenix Product Codex
Frontmatter
51 minutes 55 seconds
6 months ago
Isaak Tsalicoglou, Author of Phoenix Product Codex
In this episode of the Leanpub Podcast, Len Epp, co-founder of Leanpub, interviews Isaak Tsalicoglou, author of Phoenix Product Codex. Isaak shares the story behind his book, which grew out of real-world problems faced in his family’s business. He explains how he built a REST API for managing product data using Elixir and the Phoenix web framework, with SQLite and Ecto for database modeling.
The discussion explores Isaak’s transition from product management and marketing into full-stack development, the advantages of using Elixir for reliability and performance, and how the Leanpub platform helped him iteratively write and publish his book. Len and Isaak also discuss broader issues like digitization for small businesses, and the role of developer-entrepreneurs building real tools for real problems.
Check out Isaak’s work at via his Leanpub author page.
This interview was recorded on May 5, 2025.
The full audio for the interview is here: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/leanpub_podcasts/FM312-Isaak-Tsalicoglou-2025-05-05.mp3. The Frontmatter podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub, in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/frontmatter/id517117137, and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts.
This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Frontmatter
In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
