The Exchanges

Q Yeah. I mean, this is, I wish I had this when I was starting out. Could you, Can you just walk us through it?

A Totally. Totally. So month one to four, so your first kind of four months on YouTube, if you're starting from scratch, so zero videos posted. I like to look at this as the establishment phase. So it's kind of like figuring out what we are, what we're doing, like, what are we even doing here? And just trying to kind of get to grips with the platform. A big mistake I think people make is they listen to people like me and other people talking about YouTube strategy. Too early and that pollutes their thinking and they end up like overthinking content, spending too long trying to make a video, trying to be perfect from the beginning. And I mean, it's the same with business, right? Like, you know, you can do all like the seminars, you can learn all the stuff, read all the books, but you know, if in four months you haven't launched anything, you haven't done anything, like it doesn't matter. So first four months for me, um, step one, find your niche. Like I really liked your point you brought up there a minute ago about niche versus sub niche. So kind of find what your niche or sub niche is. I like using the triple Venn diagram, so find the intersection between what you love, what you're good at, and what people want to watch. Very simple in theory, hard in execution, but I think when you're trying to identify what your niche is, whether that is your personal brand, whether that is so…

AI assessment note: “So month one to four, so your first kind of four months on YouTube”

Q What's your feelings towards like an off platform community? I've been toying with that idea of still producing weekly content on YouTube, but taking the live art hang to a zoom thing and maybe an email list.

A I think that, uh, You bring up a good point, which is, like, really, what's the goal, right? So I think, like, you know, the goal of what you're trying to do is to gain a, like you said in the beginning, gain a community of people interested in what you're doing. Uh, I actually think your goal is to build an audience first, and then build a community. Uh, I have this framework we talk a lot about in the pod called, you know, build an audience. Convert that audience to a community, or a portion of them, and then go and build a product. For that community. So you're, you're, you're, you're in the audience phase, right? You're, you're, you should be just focused on building top of the funnel, get interest, attract as many people who are interested into edutainment for art, creativity as possible. And then once you have that, then you can figure out off platform, Patreon, private communities like school, Facebook groups, whatever. And then from that you can create a product. And by the way, when I say product, that could be the service too. It could be event series or, or whatever, just something that monetizes that. But I think that the mistake a lot of people make is they're kind of trying to do ACP all at the same time, but it's really meant to do one at a time. So I think for you, I think about what is a realistic goal for YouTube if that's the platform. Um, and that's like, co…

AI assessment note: “I actually think your goal is to build an audience first, and then build a community.”

Q Are we talking like, are we just taking the concept of a dentist or just like any business?

A Any business. So like, um, you know, on one of my recent pods, I talked about this app called Granola, right? So it's like, wow, this is a really cool app. The AI notepad for people in back to back meetings. And It's like every, every product, every indie hacker, every founder is trying to add credibility here. So they all have this trusted at individuals at this. And I don't know about you, but I started to like gloss over these credibility slides. Now, if it said like top product of the year in an image over here, I might be more willing to try this because there's a thousand AI notepad apps. And I think that Granola would be willing to pay 200 dollars a year for some sticker over here, as well as a physical plaque that they can get similar to, like, the YouTube 100 plaque that they can go and create content and be like, Wow, we're so happy that, you know, we got the, you know, top startup of the year by, you know, Dalen Institute.

AI assessment note: “Any business. So like, um, you know, on one of my recent pods”

Q Right, so how do you think, you know, that, yeah, how should people think about, should I build a B to C thing or a B to B thing?

A Um, I'll tell you the way that I think about it, um, is, um, I think B to C is often like a bigger opportunity, can scale to be really massive, but go to market and finding product market fit, and then growing the thing is really, really hard, and you have to catch lightning in a bottle, and your odds of failure are much higher, the size of success could be larger, I mean, depending on what you choose to do, you know. Um, so there you're optimizing for, like, high dynamic range, and there are a lot of things that are, like, super difficult about it. I think B to B, you know, the dynamic range is not as large. Like, you can go to a person and say, hey, tell me about your problems. Okay, cool. I'm going to build this thing that looks like this. If I do, and like does this thing for you. And can you just tell me if, if I do that, like, will you pay me for it? How much? And then you can like go and talk to a hundred other people and get their views. Then you can like build the thing that they tell you to build as long as you're good at interviewing people and sell it and make money. And it's great. It's amazing. Um, and so I think that you can build like a, It's like a tighter range, if that makes sense. Like a tighter range of outcomes. You're less likely to fall, you know, face first and just like face plant into the dirt. Um, but you're also probably not going to create like a h…

AI assessment note: “I think B to C is often like a bigger opportunity, can scale to be really massive”

Q Uh, in AI startup land and also in financial services, it's a extremely competitive space, right? You're the smartest people in the world are going after this space. How much do you as a product person think about competition? And, and like when you're, when you're building out your product roadmap, are you like mapping it to how the competitors work? How should people think about it?

A Uh, not directly, but I do think that, like, there was a point in my career when I felt really bad about copying anything. I was like, oh, no, you have to come up with everything yourself. And, like, I no longer believe that at all. Like, I think there are just certain primitives or certain ideas that become commonplace and, like, should be replicated by everyone. And you have to be, like, you know, it's, like, impossible that you're gonna come up with all of those yourself. And so, It's like a big world, you know? Um, and so I think you have to watch what all your competitors are doing and other people in adjacent spaces. And when they do something really great or something really brilliant, be like, oh, okay. Like we've missed that. Or we should have prioritized that earlier. All right, well, let's do that. And I, and the way that I think about that now is like, these are just primitives. Like if somebody had said, well, I'm not willing to copy the wheel. You know, like that would be really stupid. Like if the only person who could ever produce a wheel is like the person who originally conceived of it, we would all just be in the dark ages, you know. Um, so I think that it, you have to kind of like look around and see what all the smart people are doing and have a deep respect for competition and the noise around you. Um, while, and this is so important, and I'm curious your …

AI assessment note: “Uh, not directly, but I do think that, like, there was a point”

Q or an AI startup, like, thinking about, okay, I need to give something to this group of micro-influencers that Is going to get them to create a 32nd or 15 second clip that is, you know, going to go viral. So what is that product? And then reverse engineering that, that's been really helpful in terms of, like, creating an AI startup that gets, like, millions of views and downloads.

A Yeah, I, I think that totally works. And, you know, it, it all depends on who your audience is, like, who you're trying to reach and what you're trying to do. A bunch of them are going to be on TikTok and, like, You know, that's a great way to get them into the funnel. And you can just like watch the top 10 clips at any given time and be like, okay, I'm going to like emulate this format. I know that the algorithm likes this right now. And I know a lot of people who are really successful at doing that right now. If you want to target like techie people, you probably want to do it on Twitter X. If you want to target Sales people, you probably want to do it on LinkedIn. You know, like, it just, you know, and there's a format, and there's a way of thinking, and a way of talking, and a way of interacting, which is, like, native to those platforms, and you have to behave that way to be successful on them.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I, I think that totally works. And, you know, it, it all depends”

Q noticing is two things actually. One is it feels very simple, and I'm curious to like, do you think about designing simple apps and simple screens? And then two, I've noticed that it's like almost gamified in some ways. Like the danger level to me, like it feels like a game. So how, how much, how much of game design are you thinking about when you're designing apps like this?

A That's a good question. I usually don't think necessarily about gamifying it. I think about making everything very digestible to the user, and that's something that video games need to do as well. So I think it's, it's just something that maybe a coincidence that it's necessary for both. Well, I think any consumer product needs to be simple. And yeah, showing a danger level in a zero to five, I think it makes it most easy to understand rather than something like, And just like a text level, like this is fairly dangerous versus this is very dangerous. Always a zero to one, putting a number on something with like a chart. It's more digestible is the key, key theme.

AI assessment note: “I usually don't think necessarily about gamifying it. I think about making everything very digestible”

Q And what about shareable? Like, do you think about, you know, are people going to screenshot this and post it to Instagram or something?

A Yeah. So that's something where a lot of people with utility apps. So there's like a big thing, either you have the K factor app where it grows by sharing the word of mouth or posting on stories, sending to group chats, and then you could grow through influencer marketing, everything, or just posting social media paid ads, everything that I've built. Well, Cal AI was grown through influencer marketing. The previous project I built before that, We initially started growing through social media, but then it started taking off from people sharing to their friends. And what I noticed with a utility app like Cal AI is that people don't really care to share their food. And something like this, the scan skin, I don't think people would necessarily care to share a picture of a bump on them. One, I think that's kind of embarrassing. Maybe they would want to share it to their parent. That could be interesting if it's a kid that scanned something, and then the AI saying, like, this is a level five danger. You need to see a doctor. Then they might want to share it. But in that case, they could just screenshot it. I don't think it would be a mechanism of growth.

AI assessment note: “I don't think people would necessarily care to share a picture of a bump”

Q So what is the media? What is the media distribution arm, um, for whatever it is you're creating? Um, I actually tend to think that like, And I'm curious your thoughts on this. Like, I don't know if I would, you know, in 20, 25 start with, like, essentially a blog and a newsletter as, as the way to get traffic. Like, why, why, why do you recommend starting there?

A That's a good question. I actually, I was not thinking about that from like, uh, what I would do in 20, 25. It's a really interesting one. Um, definitely like we got lucky. Cause when we started every, it was like right before the big sub stack wave. And so we got a lot of subscribers and like, that was the whole thing. And I do think that like email is just really powerful to have. Um, but it's much harder to grow a newsletter now than it was five years ago. I'd probably start with YouTube actually. Um, I think, and funnel people into, from YouTube into a newsletter, um, that feels like the right move. Um, and we have a YouTube channel and it's growing really fast and it's, it's been really great. It's like, it's definitely a little bit less effective to like get a YouTube subscriber to like Read an email, like that, that conversion is not, not, not nearly as good as it was like back in the day in like old Twitter, you know, the heyday of Substack. Um, but, uh, yeah, I'd probably start with YouTube.

AI assessment note: “I'd probably start with YouTube actually. Um, I think, and funnel people into”

Q No, it makes complete sense. I, you know, maybe this is too in the weeds, but when you're building something, how do you think about using Supabase versus Convex? Like they're both such great plat, you know, platform. So how do you, how do you know what to pick?

A Yeah. It definitely is going to get in the weeds because generally they're both great at what they do. Now, Convex wins when it comes to real time stuff, right? So if you wanted to build a chat application or something where real time, like you need some sort of real time notification or you're building some sort of like collaborative tool and you need people to see what other people are doing, I think Convex wins. Not that Supabase can't do it, but Convex by default Is, uh, real time. So anything you do with Convex, you get the data real time, which is great. But there are people, and this might be too technical, who might need a Postgres database, right? That, that's the main database that Supabase offers, and they're the best at that. No one does Postgres the way Supabase does, in terms of DX, developer experience especially, right? So it really depends on the application the user's building, The best way I would, I would say for someone who might not be as technical as your average developer is, I would ask an AI model. I'd go on ChatGPT Cloud and be like, this is what I'm trying to build, and I, I know there are these two backend as a services, which one is better for my specific use case? There might be one where Convex is better, and there might be one where Supabase is better, but generally speaking, both are great solutions.

AI assessment note: “Convex wins when it comes to real time stuff”

Q don't work for me point of view. So he goes, I always try, but it never work. I just spend lots of money and it doesn't result in sales. I think my ass might be too organic in nature to ever work with an ad source audience. I also hate ads myself and have you block origin and one block. So that might explain the mismatch. What do you think?

A I think it's different for consumer and maybe SAS products. SAS keywords are super hard to make it work. Um, and I think as an indie hacker, I kind of might even agree with him, but in this scenario, exactly with the make Europe great again, he definitely has to run ads. Um, it's a no brainer, but I actually think there is a place for testing paid ads for Even B to B space, even despite it being very expensive. Cause then I think historically what we've done is we would run ads on a target keyword and we would see the conversions on that. And after, if it's pretty good, if it's a pretty good keyword, then we were targeted in SEO, if that makes sense. Um, it's like a, why not type of thing. You don't have to spend too much, you know, as long as it's the data is significant, I think we're a okay to proceed, you know, that's all you have to do.

AI assessment note: “I think it's different for consumer and maybe SAS products.”

Q people. We were like main revenue sources, guru, you know, but what can I say? I'm, I'm a guru now, I guess. Uh, But how do you feel about this space? What do you think? What do you think I should do? I mean, we're, we're, we're like blowing up. I don't even know. We're still on a free Slack channel plan. We're still on free Slack. I don't know.

A Here's my take. So I'm, I'm a community guy. I, I love, I, I think there's a huge opportunity in communities, but I, I, I think of it as you're not selling community. You're actually selling transformation. So when you say, People come in and they're saying, here's what works and here's what doesn't. At the end of the day, the transformation that you're probably selling is, hey, come into this community and by, by being a part of this community and learning tips and tricks, you're going to come out of it here as like a 10 X better SEO person. And what does that mean? Ultimately, it means that you're doing 10,000 visits a month. You're going to get to a 100,000 visits a month. And That's what I think, you know, what people miss on the community thing is you're not just selling like, hey, get access to hang out with me. Like, I don't, you know, those communities end up dying because it's so hard to figure out the liquidity of like, uh, posts to comments and getting that all in there. I think, uh, if I were you, what I would do is think about How do I, like, I think about less about building a membership, sorry, less about building a community and building, and more about building a membership. So it's like, what is the de facto membership for these types of people? What are the things they want? What are the discounts that you can provide? What are the, um, What is the software y…

AI assessment note: “if I were you, what I would do is think about How do I”

Q So if you were to start something like this, you know, I buy the key insight. It's validated by people searching on TikTok. What do you, you know, how, how do you actually go and build it? Like what, where do you take it from there?

A So I, I think the, uh, First, I would go to, um, I would, I would do my research by looking at, you know, what are all to, to your point, the TikTok, um, you know, search results. I would look at, okay, well, what are the most searched results and try to find a category? Are people looking to find coffee shops? Are they looking to find, you know, coffee art in cities like Seoul? Are they going to bookstores? What, what are the top ranked kind of category of places people want to visit? Um, and then what I would do is I would kind of hack together a mobile app. There's a bunch of no code tools out there, low code tools. Um, or if you want to build something sophisticated, you could go kind of hire developer. You could also use Claude AI and, uh, and ChatGPT. Uh, there's a bunch of tutorials on how to build, uh, apps without knowing how to code with AI specifically. And what I would do is I would kind of build a directory based on cities. So what I, the, the way that I would do that is I would kind of formulate everything into guides. So I would want like a coffee guide of Seoul and within Seoul, Seoul is such a big city. Um, and it, there should be a map where I could see these are like the top 10 most incredible new relevant design forward coffee shops. If you're a coffee snob, you'd love to go there. I would love to go into that guide. And if you're monetizing it, you could ei…

AI assessment note: “First, I would go to, um, I would, I would do my research”

Q So if you were to start something like this, you know, I buy the key insight. It's validated by people searching on TikTok. What do you, you know, how, how do you actually go and build it? Like what, where do you take it from there?

A So I, I think the, uh, First, I would go to, um, I would, I would do my research by looking at, you know, what are all to, to your point, the TikTok, um, you know, search results. I would look at, okay, well, what are the most searched results and try to find a category? Are people looking to find coffee shops? Are they looking to find, you know, coffee art in cities like Seoul? Are they going to bookstores? What, what are the top ranked kind of category of places people want to visit? Um, and then what I would do is I would kind of hack together a mobile app. There's a bunch of no code tools out there, low code tools. Um, or if you want to build something sophisticated, you could go kind of hire developer. You could also use Claude AI and, uh, and ChatGPT. Uh, there's a bunch of tutorials on how to build, uh, apps without knowing how to code with AI specifically. And what I would do is I would kind of build a directory based on cities. So what I, the, the way that I would do that is I would kind of formulate everything into guides. So I would want like a coffee guide of Seoul and within Seoul, Seoul is such a big city. Um, and it, there should be a map where I could see these are like the top 10 most incredible new relevant design forward coffee shops. If you're a coffee snob, you'd love to go there. I would love to go into that guide. And if you're monetizing it, you could ei…

AI assessment note: “what I would do is I would kind of hack together a mobile app”

Q and just to clarify one thing, so when I talk about startups, I do, like, mostly tech startups. We do do some agency stuff, um, but it's mostly tech startup stuff. I think a lot of the stuff that you do, you have, you have a mix of non-tech and tech, right? So my question to you is, uh, holding companies, uh, What type of businesses can be in them?

A Yeah. So it's a pretty blank canvas in terms of how people want to approach it. And it's a, it's a big label. When I talk about holding companies, I think you can have all kinds of different businesses in there. Um, you can have asset, different asset classes as well. So in my world, like I own not only like big chunks of real businesses and I'm on the boards of those and I'm in there with the management, you know, supporting them and that sort of stuff. There's also like real estate assets. So like I have a big portfolio of real estate, um, that I control. And that's not being an investor in somebody else's fund. That's like literally stuff like you go look at the deed and like my name's on it. So, you know, when, when I look at the definition of a holding company and we'll talk about the different types here in the next couple of slides, um, you really have a lot of freedom to define what sort of assets you want to have in there and you're holding basically equity, right? Ownership of those things. So, um, those could be a portfolio of high growth startups. If you figure out a way to own big chunks of those things, you know, where you're not Not a passive investor in them. Like you could totally do that. If you want it to be agency and services businesses, you can totally do that. If you want it to be a mix, a mix of different stuff, whether it's tech, tech and non-tech like …

AI assessment note: “I think you can have all kinds of different businesses in there.”

Q laziest people are the wealthiest people. And in what I mean by that is if you can figure out how to automate a lot of what you're doing, um, and if you can figure out how to get good economics, then you've got a business on your hands. So, um, I, I'm, I'm, Chomping at the bit. I want to hear these ideas. What do you want to start with?

A I think I'm going to go with like the biggest and maybe most complicated one first, because that's the one I wish I had the most, particularly because I'm a solo founder. Like I said, all those hats and some of the hats that I'm wearing, I really enjoy, but many I don't. I'm not a really good marketer. I do that and I can also sell and I can also do biz dev and go through my financials and all of that, but I wish there was somebody else to do this for me. And most of the time we have just Businesses that kind of are agents for us that are like agencies that do this work for us, particularly with like taxes or marketing design. We kind of source that out. But what I want is an AI co-founder. I want a virtual, always on, twenty-four-seven, always available co-founder that does that stuff for me. That is not just there for me to kind of bounce back and forth ideas. We can, we already do this. I think if you look in the founder community, there are many, many people who now use ChatGPT or Anthropics Cloud In this constant conversation about what should I do next? Or how should I do this? Give me 10 versions of this. Give like write an email, but write it with the tone of that person. And then you kind of like piecemeal all of these tasks that you would otherwise have to do all by yourself together with the help of an AI. I think that's like the initial stage we're already at that m…

AI assessment note: “what I want is an AI co-founder. I want a virtual, always on”

Q So when you find a format that's working and scalable, does it make sense to create new accounts for it? Is that what you're saying?

A Yeah. Yeah. It does. Yeah. Because the algorithm works in a way where Um, if you think about like TikTok wants, if, if content is good, TikTok wants to show it to the right people. Like it's in their best interest to get more watch time. So if they're, if they know that a certain account has a lot of, uh, so for example, if this, like, if this reached XYZ audience, then now TikTok or Instagram reels, they know that This account, sir, this content did well with this audience. Um, so if you make another video that looks similar, has the same face, the same, you know, format, then it'll be a lot easier for it to, for the algorithm to serve that content to the same audience again. Um, so if you see, um, if we go back to the colostrum videos, This account figured out that the food content works, so they just spam the same thing every day. Um, so the algorithm knows and expects what audience to serve it to. It just helps with the algorithm. If you put too many faces in a single account, um, then it'll hurt your, your reach. The algorithm kind of gets confused. Like, who do I, who do I show this to? Um, so it's, it's not so much about making the whole page look aesthetic. It's more because people don't really Look at the page anyway. It's more like optimizing it for the algorithm and making sure it knows who to serve the content to.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. It does. Yeah. Because the algorithm works in a way where”

Q Do you want to show one, while, while we're still waiting, do you want to show one last use case that people could, could use Lindy for?

A I, so we're currently looking for this, uh, designer. And so, so this one looks very complex, but again, like once you get the hang of it, it's basically just like add nodes and, and branching and conditions, right? And so what I did here is like, okay, we're looking for a designer. I'm going to send you random ass information about designers. It could be, I spend an embarrassing amount of time on Twitter. So like most of the time it's going to be a Twitter link, right? It's like, ah, I really like this guy's work. I just saw him on Twitter, right? Sometimes it's going to be a portfolio. Sometimes it's going to be just a name. Sometimes it can be anything, right? And so you can see at the very root here, it's like, what did I give you? Did I give you a website, an email address, a LinkedIn link? And here its job is basically, hey, and you can see this is why it goes on this like site quest here. There's like multiple branches, like find the email address. So I have a Google Sheets where like I already log a bunch of email addresses. Um, but if it's not there, then there's going to be an AI agent here. And again, this is the beauty of AI agent. I'm just giving it a high level goal. Like browse for a bit. If it's a Twitter link, maybe it's there. Look for the portfolio and give up after four attempts. Like if you've, cause sometimes AI agents get stuck in the loop. They go on lik…

AI assessment note: “we're currently looking for this, uh, designer. And so, so this one looks very”

Q action is worth studying. And I call that my got got swipe file. You can call it whatever you want, but I got inspired by Marshawn Lynch. He, he said, uh, uh, hilarious, funny, um, A thing. He's like, I'm gonna get got, but I'm gonna get mine before I get got though. And so, that's the got got swipe file. Do you use my mind or anything like this?

A I don't. I'm actually one of those people that books marks things on X, and then it just gets completely buried, and I never go back to them. So I know a lot of other people are like me because I was actually looking at my X analytics this morning, and I noticed that in the last 28 days, I've gotten a 100,000 bookmarks on my content. So that means that probably a lot of people listening bookmark my content, um, and they are probably like me. They probably lose track of it. It's very, I mean, yes, there's folders on X, um, but it's, It's not designed really to capture inspiration. That's not why people, uh, it's not why the product managers, product designers at X, you know, they want to create engagement and, you know, it's not about inspiration. So, um, show me, show me my mind.

AI assessment note: “I don't. I'm actually one of those people that books marks things on X”

Q like, maybe, like, a selfie video from one of the girls talking about her experience, and, um, and, and, and, You know, just very tight. I, I actually bet these people are not getting hit up that much, um, with, with high value, like value add content that are actually going to make their jobs easier in a lot of ways, right? Like they're looking for this stuff. Aren't they?

A Yeah, no, they absolutely are. And I think that you could have campaigns where you could say either this is what it costs and you make it like as cheap as possible and just go for volume. And then say, here's what it costs. If the school can't afford that, you know, we can do a fundraising thing. You could even have, you could run programs where, ah, local businesses or families sponsored it, and then part of the costs were paid for by the proceeds. I mean, you could get really, really creative on how to do this because it's software, right? You're not hiring a teacher to do this. Um, you know, you're, you know, you have, like, 80% gross margins on those online courses, so it's also something that can be done and can be scaled up and down. You know, you can have more support at high-end boarding schools where we're facilitating a demo day or making intros to, you know, people in the community, but you could also do a bare bones version of it for, um, you know, inner city schools where it's, you know, maybe, like, Maybe Nike wants to support it for a thousand schools. I mean, I think you could get really creative on how to pay for it, and because it's online courses, um, there's also like amazing recurring revenue, because once you're in a school and people are getting value, it's not going to be ripped out of that school.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, no, they absolutely are. And I think that you could have campaigns”

Q All right. Well, let's start with step one. How do we find a directory idea that, uh, is worthwhile to go after?

A Yeah. So there are many ways of doing it, but the best way is to start based on keyword research. So the keyword research is a way to see whether people search for certain keywords and certain phrases. And even if you think that certain idea is great, but often other people might not think so, and you can figure out whether that's true or not by seeing what Google says about that. And, and Google has this tool called Keyword Planner that people usually use to plan their ads. But you can also use that tool to see the traffic for directories. Uh, not for directors, for keywords. And I basically spend hours in that tool every day, just throwing all random ideas into that tool and seeing whether there's traffic or not. And I can show on a real example, I have even an idea I want to test today. And I will show you how I would test that idea actually right here on the.

AI assessment note: “the best way is to start based on keyword research”

Q Can you talk, can you talk more about that?

A Yeah, I think, like, there's a, there's a difference between, like, good theft and, and, uh, you know, bad theft. Uh, there's a really simple term that he, he talks about of, like, even yourself being copied of, um, the elevator test. Like, if you get into an elevator with someone who copied your work, or, uh, would they pat you on the back, or would they punch you in the face? Where it's just, like, uh, like, we all know the feeling of if someone, like, Take something we do. Uh, and you're like, that's like way too similar to what I do. Uh, you would, you would be upset if they walked into an elevator elevator with you. And then, you know, the feeling of someone who is inspired by you and they, they make something and you're like, dude, great, great job with that. Um, that's like a really, uh, simple, simplified version of it. Um, but you know, the, the other thing he talks about is, um, In the beginning, and we did this as creators, plain and simple. Like when we first started as the Colin and Smear channel, we were desperately trying to be like Casey Neistat. I think everyone was at that era. Uh, he was like this amazing daily vlogger, uh, was able to tell stories about his daily life that, uh, it just felt like no one had ever seen before and everyone wanted to be like him. And we tried our best and failed miserably. He's a much better storyteller and also lived a much more…

AI assessment note: “there's a difference between, like, good theft and, and, uh, you know, bad theft.”

Q And do you mind just zooming in a little bit as well?

A Yeah. So this is Replit's homepage. So we're going to use the agent at least as the access point. So we'll, we'll go into the coding as well, but Replit agent is like great at setting up the project. So we're going to use that to kind of set up the project, get the initial, get the initial prototype going. Um, and you could, of course, create the project manually, and we'll cover that in a bit, but let's go through the agent now. So I just type, like just in a sentence, like a map of scenic drives in the Bay Area. I have no idea where it's going to pull the data from. I have no idea what libraries it's going to use. And again, just a simple idea, and we can hit start building now. So this tells me it's still in early access. Um, Now, uh, any minute now we should go into a chat interface. Um, and the agent should start working on proposing, uh, a plan for me.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. So this is Replit's homepage.”

Q And I don't think people realize how amazing this is. As, you know, I'm a pretty bad engineer, and the fact that you've abstracted all of this away, and just basically you press a button and it's deployed securely, like this is How big of a deal is this?

A It's a pretty big deal. Like, uh, like again, when, uh, I mean, if you, if you want to try to, like, figure out, you know, for example, like how to deploy to, how to deploy to AWS, uh, let's see here what Google tells us. Uh, first of all, you need to look for something is AWS Amplify. It gives you a choice code deploy or amplify. Okay. What does that mean? Uh, so you get started under deliver, you choose deploy and continue, name your app and environment, just like the app and the code of the console is save deploy. And so you need to figure out how to use the AWS CLI. You need to figure out how to, uh, put your application code in there. So you need to use something called SCP and FTP. What the hell is this? Like, What is SCP and how do you use it? So now you're down this thing called secure copy protocol and you need to be able to, uh, use it, you know, open a shell and, and, and type a command and know how to use it. And you're already down a rabbit hole that you really don't want to be down. And so for us here, we're just really trying to make it a couple of clicks. You get all the security and all the features you need out of really any kind of, um, the best, uh, cloud providers available. And, and, uh, uh, I will say also our prices are very, very affordable, are in line with, are very competitive in line with, uh, really top, top cloud providers.

AI assessment note: “It's a pretty big deal.”

Q Hey, don't worry. I'm, I'm just going to make names. We'll, we'll, we'll keep going. I'm going to say Tim Ferriss and Mark Cuban for fun, whatever. Okay. So inside, what are some like conversations that have had, like, are they talking with you sometimes? It's like an office hours where they ask you questions and you answer.

A Sometimes it'll be with me, sometimes it'll be with my team, but it'll be, um, very tactical. So it'd be like, how to get from zero to a 100,000 followers with, uh, you know, Sean Pory. I'm just making an example. Um, but they're all, they're all like that. Um, so we'll take an expert and it'll all be really, uh, Around the tactics to get from point A to point B, like, give the secret sauce. And then we also run something called sprints, which is, um, you know, in the next 30 days, we're gonna go collectively get to a 100,000 followers. So everyone signs up to a sprint, and we provide, um, Like a lot of the curriculum, the trainings, the guest speakers, the accountability to help get, get you there, and then everyone kind of shares, um, what they're learning.

AI assessment note: “Sometimes it'll be with me, sometimes it'll be with my team, but it'll be, um, very tactical.”

Q different types of vertical SAS businesses, how to think about wedges, which is like a wedge product, which is something I really would love for you to get into. Um, how to think about picking a market for your vertical SaaS. And maybe I'd, I'd also just love you to go through pricing. Like, how do you think about pricing your vertical SaaS? So where do you want to start?

A Yeah. So let's, I, let's start on, um, How to dive in and actually start one of these things. And so I think it's much more of a, I think vertical SaaS is much more of a science than an art. I think people believe starting a software business is this artistic thing where you got to come up with some crazy big idea and, you know, you got to hold it close to the vest and you can't tell anybody about it and you got to raise millions and millions of dollars. I think it's a very like mathematical scientific approach in vertical software. And so I'd love to just walk everybody kind of through How I, how I think about that, uh, as a place to start and that'll lead well into wedge products and we can give examples of wedge products and, you know, how to actually get in the door at some of these businesses. How does that sound?

AI assessment note: “let's start on, um, How to dive in and actually start one of these”

Q And what do you say to people who are like, wow, he's right. There is an opportunity in machine shops, but I live in Tribeca, and I've never even visited a machine shop in my entire life. I don't know anything about it. Is there still an opportunity for people?

A Yeah. So look, I didn't know anything about trade schools. Um, I went to traditional education. Like I had family that went through the trade school route, but I, you know, I lived in California. I was like the tech guy. Right. I started a bit my business in college and, you know, obviously if you have the domain expertise and you spent a bunch of time in machine shops, right. You're going to be, uh, a step ahead of someone who hasn't, but And there's a correlation with successful outcomes and actually, actually having the industry expertise, but it's not a requisite at all. So, you know, we've built one of the biggest vertical SaaS businesses in the country for trade schools, and it's, I didn't know anything about trade schools until I started a decade ago.

AI assessment note: “having the industry expertise, but it's not a requisite at all”

Q I like it. We're running out of time, but I, I have to ask one, one more piece to the scorecard, uh, because I know people are in the comment section are going to be like, you got to ask this. Pricing. How do you think of it? Do you have a framework for thinking about how you price these things?

A Yeah. So, you know, pricing I think is like the least thought about thing in software and, and which is crazy. It should probably like be one of the most thought about things in software. Um, My approach is pretty, pretty basic, but I think it works. So my approach is I understand how much does the thing cost that I'm solving, right? And once I figure out how much the thing costs, I shouldn't say cost, how much are they paying for the thing that I'm solving today, right? Um, and then I can look at actually coming up with some sort of pricing model. So let me go, I'll give you a concrete example. So we came up with a retention tool. Um, we kept hearing from all of our end customers that like student retention was a problem. Like all their, they had a bunch of students that were dropping out of, you know, their, their trucking, you know, school. Um, and so we said, okay, we're going to build a tool that like analyzes all of their academic data and their attendance and, and basically floats up a risk score that tells you which students are at risk in real time. And then we're going to automatically text those students. Um, who are like trending in the wrong direction and, and try to motivate them via text, you know, with resources and ways to get back on track. Right? So then we said, okay, well, how much is it is tuition for a school? Well, it's 20,000 dollars.

AI assessment note: “I understand how much does the thing cost that I'm solving”

Q Exactly. We can unpack that later in the video. So, uh, what you're kind of saying is, you know, utility doesn't need to be like your standard utility around Uh, just covering, covering the phone, but it could mean like, how do you, how do you put utility and marry that to what's happening in the cultural zeitgeist? Is that what you're saying?

A Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. Cause I think your luxury point is actually an interesting one. And I spend a lot of my background is in like the conversation around luxury and higher end and items that sell for a premium price point. And so like the concept of luxury, I think is really important for people with ideas to understand is there's basically like luxury is inherently rooted in craft, right? People buy the Hermes saddle or whatever it is because of the quality level with which has been sustained over a period of time. And then the, the desire that comes from people, you know, wanting to attain the ability to acquire that quality level. So luxury is inherently rooted in craft. And since an iPhone case, I don't know how much craft you can apply to that. We've already seen the carbon fiber cases and rare Python leather or whatever. It doesn't really change my experience. But then one level down from that, we have what I call designer products, right? Where the design differentiates it. You can charge a premium because the design is so cool or so interesting. And a good example of that is, I don't know if you've seen those metal cases that are like two pieces, but it's like a little metal Like almost like liquid metal looking thing that goes on top and the bottom. They advertise on, on Instagram a lot. That's a designer case, right? You're charging a premium for …

AI assessment note: “Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. Cause I think your luxury point”

Q Just to finish up on the TikTok thing, what else do people need to know about building on TikTok, starting a business on TikTok?

A Uh, It's an operational nightmare. Um, The hardest part about that is dealing with TikTok and your inventory being in there and not. So like I mentioned, I was at a toy brand, uh, with this beforehand, we, we were getting, we got shut down on TikTok shop so much that we basically stopped. Um, we had a product that was on the edge of compliance. There's a reason for that, but basically there's just so many logistics around shipping and customer service and compliance and violations and strikes. That's like all automated by TikTok that you have to be, you need to have a uniquely insane and process driven operational person who is dedicated to that, to work through the scale. But if you are, it is likely worth that on the other end, especially if you are, have a good Amazon business, because the crossover is huge. And if you're walking into a retail conversation, something I like to call out is I worked with this water brand called chlorophyll water, where he was really early on TikTok, the founder seeded out a ton of product on TikTok. When he launched, we had this whole SEO strategy we put together, but he had, there was something like a billion views on the chlorophyll water hashtag when he launched. And he walked that right into retail. And was like, look at the demand for my product. And it is, but this is not a product that is consumed online. People don't buy cases of water…

AI assessment note: “It's an operational nightmare. Um, The hardest part about that is dealing with TikTok”