Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Should software founders attend tech conferences? The answer is a resounding yes. If you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have completely disagreed. So today, I’ll share my journey from skepticism to enthusiasm about tech conferences — how they can be invaluable for entrepreneurs in ways that go far beyond just keeping up with the latest trends. 🎧 Listen to this on my podcast. Let’s go back in time, to before the entrepreneur in me had awoken. A couple of...
12 days ago • 5 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Andrew Davies (@andjdavies) runs marketing for Paddle, the payment provider that powers several of my businesses. They also recently ran an AI launchpad accelerator, which massively impacted the trajectory of my business, Podscan. It's about time we chat more about money on the pod.Today, I get to talk to Andrew about all things payment, why a Merchant of Record is something way too few bootstrappers leverage, and what the future holds for online payments....
14 days ago • 1 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Just a few years ago, I was a wholly different coder. At my best, I was breezing through documentation and writing mostly functional code. At my worst, I’d be chasing typos and strange bugs for hours, to no avail. Not once would I have thought of using AI to help me — because it didn’t exist. But things have changed. 🎧 Listen to this on my podcast. We now live in a world where software developers who don’t use AI tooling to write code are becoming extinct....
19 days ago • 9 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Earlier this week, I came across a quote that resonated deeply with me: "I can accomplish anything, but I won't really be worthy until I accomplish the next big thing." This sentiment, shared in a Hacker News conversation about similarities between founders, got me thinking about the self-limiting beliefs we entrepreneurs often grapple with, especially when running solo businesses. There’s always some kind of balance to strike. Never clear-cut. Always in...
26 days ago • 4 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, @kerollmops, the technical brain behind the open-source search engine Meilisearch, joins me for a nerdy chat about all things search.I’ve been using this blazing-fast tech for my own business, podscan, and kero has helped me through a few challenges over the last few weeks. I really want to dive into the economics of building a business on top of an open-source piece of software.Let's chat about self-hosted search engines today! 🎧 Listen to this on my...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, I recently came across a tweet by Nikita Bier about onboarding in software products that made me reflect on my own choices for the first touches that my customers have with my product. It also got me thinking about the general expectations we have for software products we use for all kinds of purposes. 🎧 Listen to this on my podcast. In his tweet, Nikita stated: If at any point you think it’s a good idea to build a user tour in your app, stop and go for a...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, I ran into a pretty substantial question this week. Am I working in my business, or am I working on my business? I’ve been spending so much time building features, talking to customers, implementing fixes, dealing with infrastructure problems, and even trying to upgrade the product design. All of this is still working in the business – it’s operational work in the trenches. It’s taking small steps, looking at the ground, instead of dreaming of giant leaps...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, There’s this famous saying by Paul Graham from one of his most well-known essays: a command to all founders and startup operators to “do things that don’t scale.” Graham explains that at the beginning of starting a business, there are things you should do as a founder that you know will never work once you have hundreds or thousands of customers. But it’s precisely these things that make it happen. The learning from these hands-on projects allows you to...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, These last weeks have been a bit much. What do they say? “Take a break before the break takes you?” Well, I got quite close to that this week. 🎧 Listen to this on my podcast. I’ve been quite active working on Podscan in many different ways, and it has been overwhelming at times. I found a way to cope with this, and I found a way to still get done what I needed to get done, so I wanted to share the whole journey and the whole emotional state that I was in...
2 months ago • 12 min read