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Arvid Kahl

I help founders and creators serve and empower their customers.

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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Featured Post

50% New Users Overnight… and a Burning Server — The Bootstrapped Founder 330

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, This week was a duality of extremes for me. On one hand, I experienced an unprecedented growth spurt in my user numbers, while on the other hand, I stumbled into frustrating scarcity and infrastructure problems. That’s entrepreneurship for you: big wins while struggling to not lose control of the whole thing. 🎙️ Enjoy the blog post and the podcast The juxtaposition of these two experiences in a single week was both challenging and enlightening. Today, I...

5 days ago • 9 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, As I watched the latest Apple Keynote from WWDC, one sentence really stood out to me: "AI for the rest of us." Apple is going to introduce artificial intelligence into their devices, software, operating systems, and apps in a way that will make it ubiquitous within a few months, maybe even weeks, once people start downloading and installing the latest beta version of iOS. The question is, how will that impact consumer expectations around AI? 🎙️ Enjoy the...

12 days ago • 8 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, A few months ago, I raised a low 6-figure investment for Podscan. Here's the conversation between me and my investor, @tylertringas, that happened just before I signed the contract.You usually don't get to listen in for one of those. Today, you will. Tyler and I discuss how the Calm Company Fund navigates the alignment challenge between founders and investors, what makes a business like Podscan investable, and the risks of funding a portfolio of niche...

14 days ago • 1 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, This week, I ran into two very interesting instances of platform risk in my own software business. I will share what happened, what I did, and how I intend to combat them in the future. 🎙️ Enjoy the blog post and the podcast And before I dive into the nitty gritty details, be aware that this episode might get a bit technical. Don’t worry, there’s something to be learned from this even if you don’t know what an AWS RDS blue/green deployment is. Because the...

19 days ago • 7 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Zeno Rocha (@zenorocha) went through YC to build Resend, yet he still acts and thinks like a bootstrapper. In a world of polarized opinions about venture funding and not raising money, Zeno is both "one of us" and "one of them" — for both sides! Today, we talk about overcoming purism and embracing pragmatic entrepreneurship, starting with picking a niche Zeno truly understands: developers. We dive into how he's building an email platform that makes email...

21 days ago • 1 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, AI has an image problem among founders, particularly indie hackers and within the online communities that we frequent. In the builder community, we are constantly inundated with shallow copies of the same kinds of tools. There are GPT wrappers, social media auto repliers, AI starter kits, boilerplates, AI search, AI coding tools, AI, AI, AI… — and frankly, half of the products on the Product Hunt front page have AI in their name, let alone the subtitles or...

26 days ago • 7 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Tim Schumacher (@TimSchu), the mastermind behind SEDO and Adblock Plus, now leads the SaaS Group to new heights. With $60 million ARR, 20 thriving businesses, and 300 employees, Tim shares his incredible journey from a coder to an influential entrepreneur in scaling businesses. From his strategic focus on developer and online marketing tools to his forward-thinking perspective on the role of AI in reshaping the industry, we dive deep into the bootstrapping...

28 days ago • 1 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, I recently learned of the “Dream Customer List” approach to sales and marketing, and I love it. The idea behind this list is simple: you think about who your best possible customer is, and you add a hundred real-world examples of them to a list. And by best customer, I really mean “dream big”: if you run a SaaS that renders movie end titles, you want to sell to Pixar or the Legendary Pictures. Maybe you run a video effects software business, so you’d put...

about 1 month ago • 7 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) has made AppSumo a massive success — and he's spilling the beans on how to launch, build, and grow a successful software business. Noah likes to keep things weird, and our conversation is proof of that: from Taco T-shirts to failing at entrepreneurship, we walk through the ups and downs of a wild and intriguing founder journey. If you're looking for guidance that actually helps you find your footing, Noah's your man. 🎙️ Enjoy the...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Podcast, YouTube, Blog Dear founder, My therapist recently introduced me to the concept of stress as enhancement in exposure therapy. The basic idea is that a little bit of stress can focus you to a point where you make new neural connections and realize new (and beneficial) insights that help you change for the better. Well, I was able to put this to the test earlier this week. Because all of a sudden, without warning or any indication, Podscan slowed down to a crawl, and then went down...

about 1 month ago • 10 min read
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