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Arvid Kahl

Being your own boss isn't easy, but it's worth it. Learn how to build a legacy while being kind and authentic. I want to empower as many entrepreneurs as possible to help themselves (and those they choose to serve).

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Many Heads, Not Many Hats: The Founder's Identity Crisis — The Bootstrapped Founder 431

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, We often joke in entrepreneurship about founders having to wear many hats. But I think that metaphor is wrong. It's not about swapping hats. It's about growing entirely new heads. THE BOOTSTRAPPED FOUNDER • EPISODE 431 431: Many Heads, Not Many Hats: The Founder's Identity Crisis 15:18 MORE INFO Not just the cover of the head — the head itself. A new brain that thinks different, speaks different, prioritizes different. And somehow, these heads are all...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Sometimes software founders are a weird bunch. They've built their businesses on open source software and the contributions of people who've done a lot of work for free. They've benefited at great length from infrastructure and tooling built on open standards that facilitate free exchange of data and ideas. Yet when it comes to their own software business, they hold the opinion that you should have as much vendor lock-in as possible when it comes to your...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, I saw something on LinkedIn the other day that stopped me mid-scroll. It was a post—clearly AI-generated, you could tell from the cadence, the slightly off phrasing, the generic inspirational tone—and underneath it were dozens of comments. Enthusiastic comments. Supportive comments. And every single one of them was also AI-generated. Bots responding to bots. A whole conversation happening, and not a single human being was involved. But every part of that...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Many of the technical founders I know really don't like marketing. And it's not that they don't understand it. They know how important it is to run an effective business. But they don't really know how to do it right. They don't know how to leverage their technical skills to make marketing easier. And they just feel—it's evident and obvious to them—that their time would be better spent implementing product features and technical solutions than stumbling...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, I really want to clean up a little bit when it comes to vibe coding and software as a service businesses, because I think there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of hype, and a lot of complaints about the imminent demise of software as a service solutions. And I think it’s time that we have a voice out here that is not a doomer. I’m certainly not an apologist for the SaaS movement either. But giving some realistic expectations of where we are and where the field...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Last time I'll mention this, I promise: it's Cyber week, and I'm running my biggest sale of the year. I've slashed my Bootstrapper's Bundle by 50% - that's both my books (Zero to Sold and The Embedded Entrepreneur) as eBooks and audiobooks, plus my complete Twitter course Find Your Following. Everything I've learned about building, selling, and growing a bootstrapped business, all for $25. Normally over $150. If you've been on the fence, this is the...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Before we dive in today: it's Black Friday week, and I'm running my biggest sale of the year. I've slashed my Bootstrapper's Bundle by 50% - that's both my books (Zero to Sold and The Embedded Entrepreneur) as eBooks and audiobooks, plus my complete Twitter course Find Your Following. Everything I've learned about building, selling, and growing a bootstrapped business, all for $25. Normally over $150. If you've been on the fence, this is the moment. Grab...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, If you had asked me a couple of years ago if I loved coding and software development, I would have given you a resounding yes. No other job had ever been as enjoyable. No other activity had ever been as rewarding as building software, writing code, building systems that do what I want them to do in ways that other people couldn’t. But if you ask me this now, I have a much more nuanced perspective. And it comes from two places: having been a software...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, One of Podscan’s main customer profiles that I’ve recognized over the last couple years building this business is marketers - people who think in marketing terms, who have marketing jobs and marketing goals. And in a way, even my other customer profiles - founders, builders, public relations experts, researchers - all of them have a similar process to how they use the data that Podscan provides, whether it’s the alerting system or the deep full-text search...

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, When you build a software business as a founder, you have a dream. That dream is to build something that people actually need, that will make you money, and that you can keep building and make better - and make more money as you build it. Maybe there’s an extension to that dream where you sell it for millions, or where you build a company that allows you to retire. But the core of the dream is this: you have a thing that you think needs to be built, you...