I've been talking a lot about Podscan and the positive developments—the improvements, the good things that have happened to the company and to me over the last year and a half since I started this journey. But building in public is about sharing the ups and the downs, the wild joy ride and roller coaster … Continue reading When Profitability Disappears — A Podscan Reality Check
Author: Arvid Kahl
I write about bootstrapping, audience-building, and building in public at The Bootstrapped Founder.
Formerly FeedbackPanda (exit/2019)
Wrote Zero to Sold, The Embedded Entrepreneur, and made Find your Following.
Jack Friks — Building Tools That Empower Without Overwhelming
Jack Friks (@jackfriks) is the founder of PostBridge, a social media scheduling tool that grew from his own frustration with spending hours posting across platforms to a $18k/month business. We explore the evolution of social media toward authenticity, the challenges of building lean products as a solopreneur, and how to navigate the noise while maintaining a … Continue reading Jack Friks — Building Tools That Empower Without Overwhelming
From Code Writer to Code Editor: My AI-Assisted Development Workflow
There's something deeply unsettling about being dramatically more productive while feeling like you're barely working. That's the strange dichotomy I find myself in every day now with AI-assisted coding. My output has multiplied significantly over the last few months, yet I often feel like I'm under-utilizing my time. It's probably the most interesting and confusing … Continue reading From Code Writer to Code Editor: My AI-Assisted Development Workflow
Taylor Otwell — The (Quite Entrepreneurial) Creator of Laravel
I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Taylor Otwell, the creator of the popular PHP framework Laravel. https://share.transistor.fm/s/e54e4d96 Not only did he invent this highly popular open-source framework; he also turned it into a very profitable business that helps developers build profitable businesses themselves. I know very few other open-source devs that … Continue reading Taylor Otwell — The (Quite Entrepreneurial) Creator of Laravel
AI is a Threat to SaaS Multiples
Today I want to share something that's been on my mind ever since a conversation I had with an investor friend of mine, Tyler Tringas. We were doing some fear setting, looking at how my business is performing, what it would look like if things went better, what it would look like if things went … Continue reading AI is a Threat to SaaS Multiples
Building AI Businesses Without Breaking the Internet
There's a term I've been reading a lot about this week that's been keeping me up at night: model collapse. And if you're building any kind of AI-powered business, which, let's face it, most of us are these days, this should probably keep you up too.00 https://share.transistor.fm/s/4ff35c52 The concept is deceptively simple, but the implications … Continue reading Building AI Businesses Without Breaking the Internet
AI is Flipping Our Relationship with Technology
Last week, I read a tweet by Channing Allen, one of the co-founders of IndieHackers, about the term "second brain." He was saying how it was kind of crazy that just a couple years ago, folks were publishing bestselling books on the brilliance of spending hours a day doing manual data entry into spreadsheet apps … Continue reading AI is Flipping Our Relationship with Technology
When to Choose Local LLMs vs APIs: A Founder’s Real-World Guide
Should you run language models locally or just use APIs? Now, I know what you're thinking. "Arvid, Local AI vs APIs been debated to death." But here's the thing – most of these conversations happen in a vacuum, full of theoretical scenarios and benchmark comparisons. What I want to share today is what I've actually … Continue reading When to Choose Local LLMs vs APIs: A Founder’s Real-World Guide
The Founder’s First Hire: When to Let Go of Your Weaknesses
After about a year of building Podscan.fm, my podcast platform and social monitoring tool, I've finally reached that general area of profitability. It's that break-even moment that every founder aims for, and now I'm at a point where I really need to focus on things besides building the product. Why? Because the product is clear. … Continue reading The Founder’s First Hire: When to Let Go of Your Weaknesses
The Job To Be Done: Understanding Customer Value Communication
One thing that I really struggle with is communicating clearly to my prospective customers what the value of the product is for them. There are several reasons why this is the case. https://share.transistor.fm/s/06455cb3 I'm building a product that is both a podcast database and a podcast alerting system and a podcast forecasting or trend analysis … Continue reading The Job To Be Done: Understanding Customer Value Communication