Debug Information

Processing Details

• VTT File: 19f5cab5.vtt
• Processing Time: September 11, 2025 at 01:02 PM
• Total Chunks: 2
• Transcript Length: 103,838 characters
• Caption Count: 1,002 captions

Prompts Used

Prompt 1: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 1 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:07.280] What's up, dude?
[00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:08.400] How's it going?
[00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:09.680] What's going on, man?
[00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:11.920] Question for you.
[00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:19.680] Do you think that all this new AI stuff represents any sort of risk to the job that you do, that you and I do?
[00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:24.000] Not just podcasting, but like running indie hackers as a community?
[00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:26.880] No, I don't think so.
[00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:42.880] I'm very optimistic about like AI, the new wave of AI, and basically any technology, as long as I maintain like a relationship with that technology where I'm like, how can I use this?
[00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:47.920] Like, I'm totally fine making myself redundant in any job.
[00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:55.840] It's like, as long as I'm really proactive about it, I currently don't have a lot of concern, but maybe I'm just not, I'm too short-sighted.
[00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:01.600] So you don't have any like thoughts that like, okay, maybe there just won't be any of these jobs.
[00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:02.960] Hey, what's up, KP?
[00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:04.480] Yo, KP.
[00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:05.120] Hi, hi.
[00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:06.160] How are you guys?
[00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:06.480] Good.
[00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:07.040] How are you?
[00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:07.440] Good, great.
[00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:08.480] How are you doing?
[00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:08.800] Great.
[00:01:08.800 --> 00:01:09.920] Great to see you.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.600] We are engaged in a spirited debate on AI.
[00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:14.480] Not really a debate.
[00:01:14.800 --> 00:01:17.840] GPT-4 or GPT-4, the whole thing?
[00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:18.720] GTC.
[00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:20.080] What are your thoughts, KP?
[00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:23.440] Like, do you feel at all threatened by the advent of AI?
[00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:35.920] Not really threatened, but I feel like I have to be sharp on my toes in the sense that I have to readapt and relearn and be open to learning the new way.
[00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:37.760] But this is exactly what I was saying.
[00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.640] It's like, as long as you are adapting, like you're like...
[00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:41.040] Yeah.
[00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:43.840] If you don't adapt, you're going to be royally screwed now.
[00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:47.600] Like, if you weren't screwed 10 years ago, this is the chance.
[00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:57.400] I mean, this is the opportunity for like all of us will feel like the truck drivers we joke, we joke about who, you know, who are worried about the semi-trucks like being automated, right?
[00:01:58.000 --> 00:01:58.880] Exactly, exactly.
[00:01:58.880 --> 00:01:59.360] Yeah.
[00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:05.960] Yeah, yeah, it's like it's, I think, the first time in my adulthood, like the first time in my career, I've ever felt like, oh, should I have to adapt?
[00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:07.640] I kind of felt like that when mobile came out.
[00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:08.040] Yeah.
[00:02:08.040 --> 00:02:08.840] And then I just didn't.
[00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:10.200] I was like, I'll just keep making web apps.
[00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:13.240] And it was actually like the golden age of web apps for like a decade.
[00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:14.600] So it was like totally fine.
[00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:22.520] This is the first time I'm like, if I don't learn AI stuff, like a year or two from now, everything I've built might be obsolete and I might not have the ability to catch up.
[00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:22.920] Yeah.
[00:02:22.920 --> 00:02:28.280] Courtland, you know that Paul Graham article where he says, keep your identity small.
[00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:28.520] Yeah.
[00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:31.560] It's like a really famous Paul Graham article.
[00:02:31.560 --> 00:02:41.560] And I think it mostly has to do almost like with the emotional downsides of strongly identifying as like this kind of person or that kind of person.
[00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:44.760] Oh, I'm an XYZ religion follower.
[00:02:44.920 --> 00:02:45.960] I'm this, right?
[00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:53.240] If you tie yourself to a certain identity, then when anyone attacks you or criticizes you, you're going to like cling to that and not really think logically.
[00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:54.920] But that's purely the emotional side.
[00:02:54.920 --> 00:03:04.520] I think there's also like a like career longevity, sustainability side where if you don't feel as attached to like, what are you, Courtland?
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:05.800] You are a programmer.
[00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:07.160] Like I, Cortland, am I a programmer?
[00:03:07.160 --> 00:03:09.080] I've been programming since I was 12 years old.
[00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:10.920] Someone else might be like, I'm a writer.
[00:03:10.920 --> 00:03:13.560] Like I have great judgment, great creativity.
[00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:23.320] If you have those kinds of identity attachments, I think you're going to be a lot less open to re-evaluating ways that you can provide value to people.
[00:03:23.320 --> 00:03:26.520] It's like if it's 1890 and you're like, I'm a horseshoemaker.
[00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:28.600] I make horseshoes.
[00:03:28.920 --> 00:03:30.760] See, I actually have a question for you guys.
[00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:37.080] You know, do you ever wonder what am I going to be doing 25 years from now?
[00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:37.800] Oh, yeah.
[00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:39.080] All the time.
[00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:44.600] The reason I even bring this up is, and this is a good context for some of the background of our sort of pod.
[00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:53.360] Kirtland, like when I saw both of you, I was so desperate and longing, wanting to be a founder.
[00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:55.360] Founder, founder, founder, founder, founder, right?
[00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:00.480] I know that there's millions out there who might listen to your stuff and my stuff too.
[00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:06.880] There is aspiring founder is such a great place to be because everything feels like you know a hike away.
[00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:08.640] Like if you just take the hike to the top, right?
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.400] You're talking about when we met three years ago.
[00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:11.840] Yeah, three years ago.
[00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:12.480] Yeah.
[00:04:12.480 --> 00:04:15.280] In December 2022, I became a founder.
[00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:18.000] Finally, the identity thing that Channing's referring to.
[00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:23.040] Founder, CEO, felt great for 90 minutes.
[00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:27.200] And then I was like, okay, what next?
[00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:28.480] Where's the customers?
[00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:29.360] Where's the revenue?
[00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:31.280] Where's the ARR, MRR?
[00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:36.800] And I'm like, the biggest shift is like with some of the stuff, especially I started out as consulting, which is like a services.
[00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:39.680] I'm like, I get a distance scale, there's labor hours.
[00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:43.600] I'm like, all these things started like, and then I'm like, it's not as fun.
[00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:46.240] Yeah, this is not as fun as I thought it was fun.
[00:04:46.880 --> 00:04:48.160] And three and a half months into.
[00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:50.640] Being a founder is kind of like doing cocaine.
[00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:51.920] You get a 90-minute high.
[00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:52.800] Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:54.320] You have like a cool high for a while.
[00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:56.320] Shit.
[00:04:56.320 --> 00:04:59.600] And this is funny because I don't have a logo.
[00:04:59.600 --> 00:05:01.120] I don't have a business card.
[00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:05.040] And I thought that when I became a founder, I would have all of these ducks in a row.
[00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:07.360] Like, I would go to stables, I would get a printout.
[00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:09.200] I would get, I had nothing, right?
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:13.680] The moment I got the first Stripe notification is when I really felt a sense of peace.
[00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:14.960] I'm like, oh, okay.
[00:05:14.960 --> 00:05:15.600] All right.
[00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:18.000] Shit, this is legit now and we're in it.
[00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:24.080] But oftentimes, three and a half, four months into this, now I feel like I finally got a little grasp of this.
[00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:30.520] But I'm still having to force myself into this mindset of you're never going to have a salary again, man.
[00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:33.960] Like your job is to make friendship with risk.
[00:05:34.280 --> 00:05:42.120] Your middle name has to be volatility and shit that you can't control, like, you know, like being able to be resilient through the ups and downs, right?
[00:05:42.440 --> 00:05:46.280] So sometimes I kind of wonder, what would I be doing 25 years from now?
[00:05:46.280 --> 00:05:59.320] Like, and because I'm never gonna go back to W-T2, like once you're a founder, it's almost like unless something royally screwed up and like I really, really, really need the job, I don't think I'll ever go back to WTU.
[00:05:59.960 --> 00:06:01.560] I wonder, like, what would I be doing?
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:07.480] And so that brings us to this point around, as a founder, really, your identity has to be small.
[00:06:07.480 --> 00:06:08.040] Yeah.
[00:06:08.040 --> 00:06:09.800] You're just forced to keep it small.
[00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:14.600] If not, you're so attached to one idea, like, oh, one particular problem or whatever.
[00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:18.440] And you're like, if that doesn't pan out, you feel like a big void.
[00:06:18.440 --> 00:06:22.680] So the better version is just keep it small, like what Paul was saying, you know?
[00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:31.240] Well, part of that journey that you had where you were not a founder, you were a W-2 employee and you saw people like Cortland or whatever, right?
[00:06:31.240 --> 00:06:34.920] You see the founders and you go, oh, applying this guy, I want to become that thing.
[00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:41.400] That thing, like the journey to become that is this like big hit of novelty, right?
[00:06:41.400 --> 00:06:46.120] Like you had to like make changes, you probably had to make sacrifices, and then like you became that and that was fun.
[00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:49.400] And then you got there and you're like, okay, like what now?
[00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:52.040] I almost call it like the final horizon myth.
[00:06:52.040 --> 00:06:56.920] It's like this idea that when you get to that thing, it's just like the horizon is just going to be gone.
[00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:04.760] But like as a founder, the really magical thing in my opinion, is that like, all right, do you have no more products that you can build?
[00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:07.480] Do you have no more like markets that you can tap into?
[00:07:07.480 --> 00:07:13.080] Do you have no more parts of the business that you are like that like represent weaknesses for you?
[00:07:13.080 --> 00:07:15.680] A lot of people are good at coding, but they're not good at marketing.
[00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:19.120] A lot of people are good at writing, but they're not good at talking to people, right?
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.360] For me, that's the fun thing.
[00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:26.000] I was talking to a friend the other day about this, and he has a, he's a, it's our buddy Brandon Channing.
[00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.800] He has a good quote on this, which is just like, if you like something, do it again.
[00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:32.240] And then Charlie Munger has another quote.
[00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:34.800] He says, the fundamental rule of life is to repeat what works.
[00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:47.760] If there's something that made you really excited, whether that was building stuff with no code, whether that was like making money for your startup, whether that was doing marketing, and then you like accomplish whatever goal you were trying to hit with that thing, like you shouldn't change your life and stop doing that thing.
[00:07:47.760 --> 00:07:48.960] Just go back and do it again.
[00:07:48.960 --> 00:07:54.400] And chances are you'll actually like it just as much as you did the first time around because the goal was never really the point.
[00:07:54.400 --> 00:07:55.040] Yeah.
[00:07:55.040 --> 00:08:03.360] And so it's become weird now where there was a big change shift in my mindset too, because for 12 years I was on W-2 in America.
[00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:05.200] But I always felt that I had the founder DNA.
[00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:06.800] I know a lot of people think this, right?
[00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:08.320] They're like, I know I want to be a founder.
[00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:08.960] Like, I knew it.
[00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:10.080] I knew it.
[00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:18.240] Now that I'm here, and when you're in W-2, and especially in corporate life, because both of you, if you guys remember, when I met you, I was working at Delta Airlines.
[00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:28.080] It's another thing that a lot of people, a big part of their brain's bandwidth goes into how do I balance my full-time job and my passions?
[00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:28.320] Yeah.
[00:08:28.960 --> 00:08:31.360] For me, that was the biggest thing to solve at the time.
[00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:32.960] It was like, how do you balance as if there was.
[00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:34.480] And you have a family too, right?
[00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:35.520] I have a family too.
[00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:38.000] And now I look back, I'm like, that's the easiest shit.
[00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:39.360] That's like literally shit.
[00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:41.680] Right now, like what I'm going through is a full.
[00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:46.000] Now it's like I can't, like, I look in the mirror and I can't escape.
[00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:50.800] Like, I'm the full responsibility for the company, and there's no way to hide.
[00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:53.200] I can't even blame, I can't even say, oh, I have an identified job.
[00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:58.640] Like, my full-time job is getting customers, building services, the fellowship, and whatever.
[00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:01.320] So I'm like, oh, there's no escape being a founder.
[00:09:01.560 --> 00:09:09.720] So the horizon thing, back to channeling, it feels like now I'm spending a lot of time not worrying about what's my next goal.
[00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:12.520] That used to be my whole default for the last 10 years.
[00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:16.120] Now I'm thinking about it's almost an infinite game.
[00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:19.000] What is the next three, four months thing that I want to chase and pursue?
[00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:20.600] Like with fun.
[00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:21.720] Because it's an infinite game.
[00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:26.200] Like I'm never gonna, we will never gonna have a day where I'm not worried about having a customer, right?
[00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:31.400] Unless like you, I don't know, you hit like a billion dollar outcome, like, you know, like Figma, right?
[00:09:31.400 --> 00:09:36.200] But even they're worried, like, the Adobe deal is being pulled out or something, I think.
[00:09:36.200 --> 00:09:38.680] So it's like, there's never certainty.
[00:09:38.680 --> 00:09:49.080] So my friends, who I still have friends with from Delta Airlines and when I was a tunner, they always think that when they have all the answers, they can be a founder.
[00:09:49.400 --> 00:09:52.840] Because they think that certainty is like what leads them to being a founder.
[00:09:52.840 --> 00:09:58.840] And what I've learned is that just being a founder is just being friends with uncertainty.
[00:09:58.840 --> 00:09:59.720] That's it.
[00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:01.880] So we should probably introduce you at this point.
[00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:02.520] Okay.
[00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:04.600] Who it is we're talking to.
[00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:09.000] You are KP at this is KP underscore on Twitter.
[00:10:09.240 --> 00:10:15.480] Like you mentioned earlier, we all met in Atlanta in 2019, back before we even know how to spell pandemic.
[00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:16.200] We're very NSA.
[00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:17.720] Oh my God, that was pre-pandemic.
[00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:19.400] Oh my God, that's right, that's pre-pandemic.
[00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:21.800] Yeah, a lifetime ago, it feels like.
[00:10:21.800 --> 00:10:24.440] And you were running, I think, the ND Hackers Atlanta meetup.
[00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:26.920] And so you were very ambitious, you're very starry-eyed.
[00:10:26.920 --> 00:10:31.240] And I just read a tweet on your profile this morning where you said, you know, my life then versus now.
[00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:33.640] So, in 2018, you said you were stuck in a corporate job.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:35.480] You had no revenue, no exits.
[00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:41.000] You published no podcast episodes, you'd started zero side projects, and you only had a couple hundred followers on Twitter.
[00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.800] And then today, you've got over 42,000 followers on Twitter.
[00:10:43.800 --> 00:10:48.640] You've built 16 projects with no-code tools, and you're kind of an authority on no-code.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:52.000] You're a writer, you're a podcaster, you're also an authority on building in public.
[00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:53.680] You've had two exits.
[00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:57.920] You're a founder, she said, you're a CEO, and you've done hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
[00:10:57.920 --> 00:11:02.960] So, you've come a long way as a sort of indie hacker who, like, in a way, feels like you have your hand in every pot.
[00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:07.600] Like, I don't know if you're the build in public guy, or the no-code guy, or the writing guy, or the community guy.
[00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:09.520] You're like, all of these guys.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.720] All of them.
[00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:12.880] And I want to say thank you.
[00:11:12.880 --> 00:11:19.280] And back to Channing's point about keeping my identity small, I actually identify as none of them.
[00:11:19.280 --> 00:11:26.240] I think I'm just the same guy awestruck about entrepreneurship as the game, the meta game itself, right?
[00:11:26.400 --> 00:11:32.000] And I'm trying my best to go back to those shoes of like the day I met you both.
[00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:33.200] And you guys don't even know.
[00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:34.480] And I have to say this on air.
[00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:35.760] I'm recording, right?
[00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:36.240] Yeah.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:39.120] Oh my God, I was so starstruck.
[00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:40.560] I was so starstruck.
[00:11:40.560 --> 00:11:43.200] And I was so happy to see your faces.
[00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:54.160] And I was like, first of all, Courtland, like for anyone listening to this, the background story, which I have to narrate from my vantage point, is that I was running these meetups in Atlanta.
[00:11:54.160 --> 00:11:57.280] And I think we ran like eight or nine in a series.
[00:11:57.280 --> 00:11:58.800] Every month was a meetup.
[00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:03.920] And I finally negotiated my way to get a free venue at Atlanta Tech Village.
[00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:06.880] And that became a one-year contract for us for the venue.
[00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:07.360] And I was saying.
[00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:09.600] And you're building as a Calendly, I think, right?
[00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:10.720] Yeah, they have Calendly.
[00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:13.040] They have Sales Loft and a few others.
[00:12:13.040 --> 00:12:14.480] So we were doing this.
[00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:23.280] And then I think out of the, I don't know where, maybe in Indie Hacker Slack or somewhere, I mentioned that I'm doing the meetup and you said, oh, yeah, KP, I'm going to be in Atlanta.
[00:12:23.280 --> 00:12:26.160] Maybe we can align our dates to have the meetup where I'm there.
[00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:27.680] So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:31.400] I will remove our calendar update.
[00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:35.240] I will make it so that the meetup happens on the day you're here.
[00:12:35.880 --> 00:12:42.840] And what I didn't know was that you were going to show up with your entourage, which is like you showed up with Channing, you showed up with your mom.
[00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:43.160] Yeah.
[00:12:44.760 --> 00:12:47.640] I'm so happy to go here that she was called our entourage.
[00:12:47.960 --> 00:12:51.160] Shout out to we grew up in Atlanta, so our mom is there.
[00:12:51.160 --> 00:12:51.560] So we got to do that.
[00:12:52.200 --> 00:12:53.880] That was the part that I was like, what?
[00:12:54.200 --> 00:13:00.600] And, you know, I think it was hot coming off of like a lot of press interviews of you guys and about the Stripe acquisition and everything.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:05.720] And I was like, all these outcomes sounded so awesome.
[00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:10.680] But what really made an impact on me was that I could relate to you guys.
[00:13:10.680 --> 00:13:11.960] And I thought that was so cool.
[00:13:12.520 --> 00:13:16.840] And I was like, man, I saw a little bit of me in you at the time.
[00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:25.560] And so I owe it to you that it made me feel like, yeah, I can maybe push myself a little bit, put in the work and just keep at this.
[00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:31.640] Because if these two guys have done it and they're so relatable and they're so humble, maybe I could do this too.
[00:13:31.640 --> 00:13:34.520] And so a lot of my success, I owe it to influences like you.
[00:13:34.520 --> 00:13:34.920] Wow.
[00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:35.640] That's wild.
[00:13:35.640 --> 00:13:36.040] I have to say.
[00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:38.520] That's sick that you were just starting out.
[00:13:38.520 --> 00:13:40.040] Like, I didn't know that until now.
[00:13:40.040 --> 00:13:40.360] Yeah.
[00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:43.960] So that happened at the tweet that you were talking about.
[00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:47.320] Like, that was in the same time zone, the same time period.
[00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:47.720] You already saw that.
[00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:49.080] People saw that.
[00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:50.120] And you were running shit.
[00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:50.520] Yeah.
[00:13:50.520 --> 00:13:50.680] Yeah.
[00:13:51.400 --> 00:13:52.840] KP seems to have Atlanta locked down.
[00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:54.360] He's like the entity here.
[00:13:54.360 --> 00:13:56.120] It was a sick meetup spot.
[00:13:56.120 --> 00:14:00.440] There was like a roundtable of all these successful founders, successful indie hackers.
[00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:02.520] You were sitting there like with the presentation.
[00:14:02.520 --> 00:14:05.720] You're like, all right, first person, like, go, next person, go.
[00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:08.760] And now, looking back on it, you're like, oh, yeah, I was just getting started, right?
[00:14:08.760 --> 00:14:11.240] I still had still my full-time job.
[00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:15.520] Yeah, that was crazy because I was trying to make it happen, you know, with whatever I could.
[00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:16.800] I was also on a visa at the time.
[00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:17.760] Now I have my green card.
[00:14:17.760 --> 00:14:18.240] Shout out.
[00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:18.800] Thank God.
[00:14:18.800 --> 00:14:20.400] Immigration, you know, thank God.
[00:14:14.600 --> 00:14:21.600] God left America.
[00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:31.040] Man, it was so many obstacles at the time that were like, mentally in my head, were almost like, oh, you can't be a founder.
[00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:34.000] Like, there are all these obstacles and all these limiting beliefs.
[00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.480] And so I was looking for any ray of hope, I guess.
[00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:42.480] You know, and when you guys showed up in Atlanta, I was like, with the entourage with mom, I was like, well, you know, this is still.
[00:14:42.720 --> 00:14:47.200] So this is why I thought of you as like a community organizer because of like the indie hackers meetups that you're running.
[00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:54.240] It's not easy to run a meetup and to like recruit members and to get the space and provide for food and make sure it's entertaining and everyone learns.
[00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:56.720] So it's like, that's like a vocation in and of itself.
[00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.280] I think simultaneously we're like this no-code guy.
[00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:02.080] Like you were just like, we're getting really into no-code.
[00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:06.080] And then now, like in more recent years, I've seen you do a lot of build and public stuff.
[00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:11.520] And so I guess I want to ask you, like, if these are your babies, which one is your favorite baby?
[00:15:11.520 --> 00:15:14.400] Like, which one wins out over all the rest?
[00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:15.840] Oh, that's a tough one.
[00:15:15.840 --> 00:15:16.000] Yeah.
[00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:18.960] Maybe which one has made you the most money as an indie hacker?
[00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:21.120] Oh, which one has made me the most money?
[00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:22.640] I think community organizer.
[00:15:22.640 --> 00:15:25.120] It's massively underrated, that skill.
[00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.800] Also, first of all, I didn't even know that was a skill.
[00:15:28.800 --> 00:15:35.920] Like, to me, the skills were very clearly defined, like sales is a skill or programming is a skill, right?
[00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:40.000] And so, shout out Drew Riley, who's also from Atlanta.
[00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:41.760] You guys know him.
[00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:49.760] He would come to these indie hacker meetups in Atlanta, and he would stop me one time and said, Kippi, you realize you're a pretty good community builder.
[00:15:49.760 --> 00:15:51.760] Like, you should look into this thing.
[00:15:51.760 --> 00:15:52.960] And I was like, come on, man.
[00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:54.720] Like, I'm just getting pizzas for us.
[00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:56.320] I'm just like, you know.
[00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:57.760] And he's like, no, no, no.
[00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:01.800] This, like, this kind of human router thing, I've felt that all my life.
[00:16:02.120 --> 00:17:34.880] But I never really realized it's a skill that's valuable to others until I started doing indie hackers meetups and became intentional about tech and realized tech is one of those industries where you know there's a lot of introverts and there's a lot of like freaking influential people who don't by choice come out and hang out and do a lot of networking like the salesy greasy networking right i was gonna ask you are you a you an introvert or you an introvert i'm an ambi ambivert i think i'm yeah but i used to grew up as an introvert so i can relate to same yeah same exact here i grew up thinking i was an introvert yeah telling myself i'm an introvert and then like as i've gotten older like yeah they keep the mouth now now if i say an introvert they're like no you're not no you're not they'll they'll kill me but but i can relate to them so i can understand how an introvert thinks i understand like this bullshit like salesy like you know shaking hands and like trading business cards bullshit that used to happen all around atlanta and i was like there has to be a better way to do community and my sort of canvas was indie hackers didn't have any consistent streak of atlanta meetups i was like okay clearly there's an opening here i'll dive in and the bar is actually much higher to convince and impress developers as opposed to maybe an average joe in tech the developers are so prudent and they're so like they're like picky as fuck you know they're like yeah they're like here i'll put on my developer hat for a second because it'll kind of answer a question i'm curious about which is developers often are like, they see things very functionally and they're like, What's the point?
[00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:35.520] What's the purpose?
[00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:37.360] And that's exactly.
[00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:46.320] And like, that's the thing that uh sort of has people have tension with when they don't want to just go and glad hand and go network for reasons where they're just like, What's the point of it?
[00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:53.840] So, when you first started trying to build this community and get these meetups going, like, did you have a value proposition?
[00:17:53.840 --> 00:17:57.840] Were you like, here's what you're gonna get out of it, or were you just like, hey, let's all just like meet up?
[00:17:57.840 --> 00:17:59.200] Yeah, what was your approach?
[00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:00.720] Farmer, former.
[00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:06.400] And I knew that I will get lashed out, I will get like kicked out of the meetup space if I was doing any of this stuff.
[00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.680] Because I knew indie hackers, I knew the persona, I knew the kind of people there.
[00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:12.240] So, I said, okay, what's the real utility?
[00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:17.840] You know, what would make someone get in the car, drive up to this thing, and then really spend an hour?
[00:18:17.840 --> 00:18:24.000] And my answer to that was: number one, was actual accountability and vulnerability, which is missing.
[00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:29.040] Because a lot of developers, like, you know, they get roasted when they post something on hacker news.
[00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:31.920] They're like, people come at you, right?
[00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:37.200] And so, I was like, is there a more vulnerable but candid way to share feedback?
[00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.040] That wasn't my number one thing.
[00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:46.080] And I thought I could model this myself, where I would look at someone's landing page and they would ask me sales copy feedback, and I'd be like, this sucks, but this can be better.
[00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:48.400] Or this, look at Harry Dry's example, or whatever.
[00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:48.960] Number one.
[00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:55.120] Number two was accountability in the sense of how do we build a very simple routine.
[00:18:55.120 --> 00:19:00.000] So I would publish three-step prompts that were kind of like mastermind questions.
[00:19:00.320 --> 00:19:02.560] Basically, like a stand-up, what have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:06.800] Which is an infamous question now because Elon Musk also asked this to Parag, right?
[00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:08.480] What have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:11.920] I think it's a pretty strong prompt.
[00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:21.200] If a bunch of indie hackers meet every Friday for 18 months, which we did, and just ask each other, what have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:23.400] I think all of them were going to be bangers and ballers.
[00:19:23.120 --> 00:19:24.040] Dude, I got to do that.
[00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:25.760] That's YC on a nutshell.
[00:19:25.760 --> 00:19:27.280] That's what you do in Y Combinator.
[00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:30.680] You got to, and you're in a room full of other smart people, and they ask, what did you do last week?
[00:19:30.840 --> 00:19:32.200] And you don't want to feel dumb.
[00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:34.760] So, like, yeah, you can't buy it.
[00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:36.280] Yeah, it doesn't work.
[00:19:36.280 --> 00:19:38.440] Dude, Courtland, I'm hitting you up with that like tomorrow.
[00:19:38.440 --> 00:19:39.880] Like, what did you ship yesterday?
[00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:41.400] Like, what the hell did you ship yesterday?
[00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:43.000] Well, we had the podcast.
[00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:45.880] All right, like, well, that was at 4 p.m.
[00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:48.440] What did you do before you went to bed?
[00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:51.880] So, we had that as sort of the main anchor.
[00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:54.840] I didn't call it mastermind, it was just a prompt.
[00:19:54.840 --> 00:19:59.080] And then I would say the third part was show, don't tell.
[00:19:59.080 --> 00:20:02.280] So, if you build something, you know, get on the stage, show.
[00:20:02.280 --> 00:20:05.160] That's what I was trying to route people to Courtney when you were there.
[00:20:05.160 --> 00:20:12.920] I was trying to get as many people who were building cool shit to show you because I knew that they would feel the way that I felt about showing it to you, right?
[00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:28.600] And so, they all, like, after you left, you guys left, they were like, KP, this is the best meetup we had, you know, because it's one thing to say, yeah, yo, we had like, you know, Indie Hacker's founder here, but it's something else to say, he actually saw the shit that I was building, you know, and he liked it or he resonated with it, you know.
[00:20:28.600 --> 00:20:39.160] So it's fascinating to me that, um, in a way, like to go back to your sort of Hacker News comment, like it can be scarier to put your work out on the internet than it is to share with people in person.
[00:20:39.160 --> 00:20:41.160] When I was younger, I would have thought it was the exact opposite.
[00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:43.800] Like, internet, nobody can see your face, you're anonymous if you want to be.
[00:20:43.800 --> 00:20:46.680] Like, no, like it's just random usernames, like, let me just put my stuff out.
[00:20:46.680 --> 00:20:49.880] But in person, it's like you're on a stage, you know, like that seems scary.
[00:20:49.880 --> 00:20:52.120] But the reality is, it's almost always the exact opposite.
[00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:55.560] Like, a small room, 10, 20 people, you see them present.
[00:20:55.560 --> 00:20:57.800] You know, there's a lot of empathy, there's a lot of connection.
[00:20:57.800 --> 00:20:59.800] Hacker news or Twitter, it's cutthroat, right?
[00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:01.240] People don't know you, they don't care about you.
[00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:05.960] If you do anything slightly wrong, they're just gonna cut you apart and then you know, link to their own product.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:07.400] That's a competitor of yours or something.
[00:21:07.880 --> 00:21:09.960] It's a dog-eat-dog world online.
[00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:24.800] Well, there's also like the fact that you're in person when people are reviewing, like they feel more pressure to like, number one, give it the time of day, really think about what you're trying to do, et cetera, as opposed to getting like off-the-cuff responses.
[00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:34.800] Like, there was a very famous, I don't know if it's famous, but Peter Levels posted on Hacker News and said, like, hey, you know, I don't even know what product he was launching, but he like kind of posted about it.
[00:21:34.800 --> 00:21:36.720] And it was like, you know, I make a lot of money.
[00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:38.640] Here's my this or that.
[00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:42.480] And there was a negative comment that was just like, oh, great.
[00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:45.600] Another guy who like talks a talk but doesn't walk the walk.
[00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:48.640] He's famous for talking about how you can become famous.
[00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.160] And then Peter literally just commented in response to that person.
[00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:55.360] He's like, well, actually, I've done like these five products, right?
[00:21:55.360 --> 00:21:57.440] Like, I really do walk the walk, et cetera.
[00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:01.440] And the person, it was like the only time ever where someone on Hacker News has apologized.
[00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:04.320] He was like, oh, I didn't really read anything.
[00:22:04.560 --> 00:22:07.280] Now that I look and see, your stuff is pretty sick.
[00:22:07.280 --> 00:22:08.640] I am sorry.
[00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:09.040] Right?
[00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:14.080] And it's like, that would never have to happen if someone's sitting in a room with you.
[00:22:14.080 --> 00:22:14.480] Right.
[00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:24.640] The most classic Hacker News comment is the one on Dropbox's launch in 2007, where they launched Dropbox, and the first comment was like, I have a few qualms with this app.
[00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.160] Number one, it doesn't seem very viral or income generating.
[00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:30.880] Number two, I could build this myself as a little week user.
[00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:32.720] Yeah, I could build this in a weekend.
[00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:36.880] And it turned out like Dropbox made billions of dollars and was like one of the most viral apps of all time.
[00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:38.640] But the Hacker News trolls don't care.
[00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:39.280] Yeah.
[00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:44.560] It's almost like if you don't get roasted, it's almost like that's when you should worry on Hacker News.
[00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:47.440] Yeah, even a real founder, if you didn't get roasted on Hacker News.
[00:22:47.440 --> 00:22:47.840] Right.
[00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:51.040] So, this, I think, rolls into something that you're super good at, KP.
[00:22:51.040 --> 00:22:54.240] You're an expert on building in public.
[00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:57.360] This is something that's near and dear to my heart as an indie hacker.
[00:22:57.360 --> 00:22:58.880] Indie Hackers is all about transparency.
[00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:03.480] It's all about not only talking about how much money you make from your projects, but also building them in public.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.800] But I don't even have a definition for build in public.
[00:23:05.880 --> 00:23:09.320] Like, what does it mean to build in public, and why would anybody do that?
[00:23:09.320 --> 00:23:15.400] So, I'm curious, you're the guy, like, how would you describe to listeners why that's a thing that matters?
[00:23:15.720 --> 00:23:19.640] I feel like there's as many definitions of this as there are indie hackers.
[00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:24.680] So, I'll just kind of say that, you know, make what you want to make out of it.
[00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.560] But here's my sort of reflection on it.
[00:23:27.560 --> 00:23:31.640] I think it's really the philosophy that I think is more important.
[00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:36.840] You know, the philosophy of transparency and the philosophy of openness and putting yourself out there.
[00:23:36.840 --> 00:23:39.640] So, it's not just transparency for the transparency's sake.
[00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:41.160] There has to be some skin in the game.
[00:23:41.160 --> 00:23:44.440] There has to be some level of vulnerability when you're building in public.
[00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:47.160] Otherwise, it's just, you know, it's too fake.
[00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:49.960] Like, everybody on Instagram is not building in public.
[00:23:49.960 --> 00:23:50.840] They're just social.
[00:23:50.840 --> 00:23:53.160] They just have a lot of social media posts.
[00:23:53.160 --> 00:24:10.120] The way I think about it is: it's a combination of, you know, sharing your journey as it unfolds and sharing not just the highs, you know, the real sort of Instagram, like just the top 1% situations, but things that really affect you, things that really were top of mind for you.
[00:24:10.120 --> 00:24:17.480] And documenting this journey, putting things out there, and co-creating with a group of audience who care.
[00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:25.640] Now, how do you get people to care is like the same question that I had when how do I get people to come show up to the indie hackers meetup?
[00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:27.960] It's by giving value, right?
[00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:31.320] Doing the things that they would feel compelled to come attend.
[00:24:31.320 --> 00:24:36.120] So the same thing when people say, oh, I posted about the fact that I had a banana at 4 a.m.
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.840] and nobody cared and nobody liked my building public tweets.
[00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:40.040] I'm like, nobody gives a shit.
[00:24:40.040 --> 00:24:44.600] Like, the point is, what's in it that's valuable to somebody else?
[00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:52.640] With Peter Level's example, he constantly tweets about sort of the new things he's doing with AI, the photo AI and a few other products.
[00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:57.200] It's super compelling for someone developer who's like, how is this guy doing this in a PHP file?
[00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:58.080] How?
[00:24:58.080 --> 00:25:00.000] Like, what are some new plugins he's using?
[00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:02.320] What are some new things he's touching on?
[00:25:02.320 --> 00:25:07.040] So I think there has to be an element of utility, not just content for the sake of content.
[00:25:07.040 --> 00:25:08.320] So that's how I would define it.
[00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:15.520] What do you think is the difference between building in public and just being transparent?
[00:25:15.520 --> 00:25:16.800] Because I'm a fan of both.
[00:25:16.800 --> 00:25:18.480] Sometimes I kind of confuse them.
[00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:27.920] I feel like there's a lot of overlap, but I feel like transparency can oftentimes just mean numbers with no narrative.
[00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:38.720] And like, for example, if I just posted a bunch of my screenshots of, you know, retention charts or MRR or whatever, that's transparency, extreme transparency.
[00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:44.320] And if I post like customer names and like, you know, where they're joining from, what locations, all of that stuff.
[00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:46.160] Plain text, passwords.
[00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:47.280] Yeah, like all this stuff.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:49.680] I think that's all transparency, right, for the sake of it.
[00:25:49.920 --> 00:26:05.600] But I feel like building in public is kind of like as a founder, you know, using these numbers and screenshots or whatever pieces of your story and putting it out there and almost seeking connection and trying to like build with others in a way.
[00:26:05.600 --> 00:26:07.360] I think the build part is important.
[00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:10.720] And so I think that's the difference, you know, in my view.
[00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.280] I mean, there's so many social media accounts I see like on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.
[00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:24.240] And they're like talking about, oh, here's the story of how McDonald's, whoever the guy created McDonald's, and like there's all these like shit posts.
[00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:25.840] I think his name is Ronald.
[00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:26.640] Ronald.
[00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:27.440] Sorry.
[00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:30.360] Someone's going to roast me on this and I deserve it.
[00:26:30.360 --> 00:26:32.600] You know these Instagram accounts that they're like pseudonymous.
[00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:36.920] Like there's like 7,000 tweets a day and they're like anonymous.
[00:26:37.160 --> 00:26:40.040] And they're talking about architecture around the world.
[00:26:40.040 --> 00:26:41.320] I don't think they're building in public.
[00:26:41.560 --> 00:26:43.880] They're like posting a lot.
[00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:45.400] But that doesn't mean they're building in public.
[00:26:45.400 --> 00:26:49.720] I took a bunch of notes on building in public a couple years ago and I was like, I should know more about this.
[00:26:49.720 --> 00:26:52.040] And then I promptly never did anything with it.
[00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:53.240] But I still have my notes.
[00:26:53.560 --> 00:26:55.960] I feel like you already naturally built in public, though.
[00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:58.600] I think that's the way you're building the podcast.
[00:26:59.320 --> 00:27:07.560] Not only the podcast, I remember when you did the new redesign of the website and you wanted new suggestions and feedback on how you wanted to.
[00:27:08.920 --> 00:27:11.640] I'm like a little league build in public guy.
[00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:12.040] Yeah.
[00:27:12.040 --> 00:27:12.520] But that's it.
[00:27:12.520 --> 00:27:13.400] That's exactly it.
[00:27:13.400 --> 00:27:22.680] So you were asking feedback, if anyone remembers this, Cortland, or I don't know if both of you or one of you, you were asking feedback on indie hacker profiles, like how you want the profile page to be.
[00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:23.000] Yeah.
[00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:23.400] Yeah.
[00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:30.440] I think this is kind of where I fall down on building public because my natural tendency is to just like build everything in secret.
[00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.360] I don't even like launching stuff, KP.
[00:27:32.360 --> 00:27:36.680] Like my, like the way I launch most stuff is I build it and then I silently release it and I don't tell anybody.
[00:27:36.680 --> 00:27:40.440] And then six months later, if it's like going okay, then I put it on product hunt or something.
[00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:45.560] I'm like, look at this new thing that's not even new anymore because I just don't want to put it out there.
[00:27:45.560 --> 00:27:47.080] I call this the launch ladder.
[00:27:47.080 --> 00:27:51.000] I haven't published a post on this, but I want to, like, I've been made a bunch of tweets on this.
[00:27:51.000 --> 00:28:08.120] But I feel like, you know, building in public, if it feels like too daunting or it's just not your personality, then I have this launch ladder thing where I'm saying, like, okay, launch it to four of your besties, like, launch it to, you know, your four best friends in a group chat.
[00:28:08.120 --> 00:28:16.000] Then go from there and launch it to your Telegraph channel or if you have a, you know, Slack channel.
[00:28:14.600 --> 00:28:17.840] Then launch it to a bigger group.
[00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:20.160] And then, of course, launch it to a product hunt, right?
[00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:27.840] At every turn, make sure that you're seeking feedback and just seeing like what resonates and then iterating based on the feedback.
[00:28:27.840 --> 00:28:32.640] We're in kind of an unfair position that's awesome where we have our own community that we can build in public too.
[00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.800] Very similar to you having like your Atlanta meetup, where it's like, this is a safe place to come.
[00:28:36.800 --> 00:28:43.360] Post your stuff, and these people already like you before you put it on Twitter or happen to use a Reddit or product hunt or somewhere where like people don't know you.
[00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:43.840] Yeah.
[00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:51.200] But I think when I look at like the world heavyweight like champions of building in public, like Peter Levels is obviously one.
[00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:52.320] Tony Denn is really good.
[00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:53.520] Jean Furry is really good.
[00:28:53.520 --> 00:28:55.040] Like there's just a lot of people who are great.
[00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:56.240] Who inspires you?
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:58.080] Who do you think is like doing it the best?
[00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:00.640] And what do you think makes them so good?
[00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:06.720] Because when I see someone who's really good at building in public, they're not just doing it for shits and giggles and not just doing it to feel good and authentic.
[00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:13.840] They're also like crushing it with their products and making millions of dollars because they have such a huge engaged audience that they can launch to.
[00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:14.320] Yeah.
[00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:16.880] I mean Danny Postman comes to mind.
[00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:20.160] He's crushing it along with Peter Levels.
[00:29:20.160 --> 00:29:26.960] Peter Levels, I feel like, is one of my favorite examples because he's just, the guy is sort of relentless, you know, and I want to be like him.
[00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:30.160] Like, he's just made so much money and he won't quit, man.
[00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:30.880] Come on.
[00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:32.800] And he doesn't care about threads.
[00:29:32.800 --> 00:29:34.640] His feed is not manicured.
[00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:38.400] People have taken this too far and then they've gotten into the threadboy category.
[00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:42.960] And then there's like manicuring and like lawn care that's going on in people's tweets.
[00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:48.080] And the other day, somebody I reacted to, I was sharing one of my friends, and it's like, hey, Dick, have you seen this thing?
[00:29:48.080 --> 00:29:51.200] And he was like, no, no, no, I don't retweet anybody's stuff anymore.
[00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:51.760] I was like, why?
[00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:53.760] And he goes, no, no, no, I just want to keep it clean.
[00:29:53.760 --> 00:29:54.480] I'm like, what?
[00:29:54.480 --> 00:29:56.080] I don't want to loot my feed.
[00:29:56.080 --> 00:29:56.960] Are you a gardener?
[00:29:56.960 --> 00:29:57.600] Like, what's going on?
[00:29:57.600 --> 00:30:00.120] Is this your, like, have you been at a nail salon?
[00:30:00.120 --> 00:30:01.720] Are these your toenails?
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:02.040] What's this?
[00:30:02.280 --> 00:30:06.440] I think I've literally heard of people referring to their feeds as like a garden.
[00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:21.560] Here's my thing: as the guy who went from 414 followers to 42,000, my comment is: if I don't get to tweet whatever the F I want to tweet in whatever format I want to tweet, what was the point of building an audience?
[00:30:21.560 --> 00:30:29.960] The same thing with some of these people who, some of these indie hacker friends that I have who are like, you know, crushing over seven-figure businesses, ARR.
[00:30:29.960 --> 00:30:32.840] And I call them and they're like, no, no, I don't take calls.
[00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:36.360] I just, you know, and I look at my calendar and they're so busy.
[00:30:36.760 --> 00:30:42.520] And my thing is, this, like, if you're working Wall Street hours as a founder, you're doing it wrong, man.
[00:30:42.520 --> 00:30:56.040] Like, you know, the point of being a founder is you're trading certainty and peace of mind and like just paycheck and W2, you know, mortgage piece to this autonomy to work from anywhere.
[00:30:56.040 --> 00:30:56.440] Yeah.
[00:30:56.440 --> 00:31:01.720] And to take off the day if you want to and pick up a phone call from Courtland if he calls you, like, goddamn.
[00:31:01.720 --> 00:31:05.640] I called Bru Riley and he's in Brazil and he's like, hey, KB, let me know what's going on.
[00:31:05.640 --> 00:31:05.960] Right?
[00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:07.320] That's what we want.
[00:31:07.320 --> 00:31:12.520] There has to be some upside to being, you know, taking on this treacherous path.
[00:31:12.520 --> 00:31:17.480] But anyway, back to, yeah, I think Peter Levels is so hungry and I love that he just doesn't care.
[00:31:17.480 --> 00:31:26.840] You know, even like the nuance, the photo AI and some of the new ones he's building, he truly shows you that it's the same loop that everyone has to go through.
[00:31:26.840 --> 00:31:30.040] There's no shortcuts to product validation.
[00:31:30.040 --> 00:31:34.600] You may have some audience, but you still have to take the brunt of someone's harsh feedback.
[00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:36.680] Like, people still roast him on his feed.
[00:31:38.200 --> 00:31:39.160] Regardless of how much success he's doing.
[00:31:39.320 --> 00:31:41.520] He created his own little hacker news bubble in his own product.
[00:31:41.520 --> 00:31:42.080] Right, exactly.
[00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:43.160] People just roast everything.
[00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:44.040] It never goes away.
[00:31:44.040 --> 00:31:44.640] So I love that.
[00:31:45.040 --> 00:31:46.400] I think it keeps his.
[00:31:46.560 --> 00:31:49.120] Arvid Carl is another, you know, I don't know if you're Arvid's on the podcast.
[00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:49.840] Arvind's awesome.
[00:31:44.520 --> 00:31:50.080] Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:51.040 --> 00:31:52.960] He's also grown his following a ton.
[00:31:53.600 --> 00:32:02.960] And I think one of the things that I see from looking at Peter, I'm not sure if it's still penned at the top of his Twitter, but it's kind of like, you know, hey, I've released like 70, 80 projects.
[00:32:02.960 --> 00:32:05.040] Yeah, and like, you know, only four of them make any money.
[00:32:05.040 --> 00:32:08.480] And the cool thing about building in public is nobody remembers the ones that failed, right?
[00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:09.520] I remember he was writing a book.
[00:32:09.520 --> 00:32:11.120] I have no idea how much money his book made.
[00:32:11.120 --> 00:32:12.320] He never talks about it anymore.
[00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:13.040] No one cares.
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:15.040] He was making like a Slack clone.
[00:32:15.040 --> 00:32:16.240] No one even remembers that.
[00:32:16.240 --> 00:32:18.480] He was tweeting about it like it was going to be the best thing ever.
[00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:19.520] Now it's just gone.
[00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:21.520] And everybody only remembers his hits.
[00:32:21.520 --> 00:32:23.200] I was also looking at Tony Denny.
[00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:23.840] He's the same thing.
[00:32:23.840 --> 00:32:26.720] He's been building these AI chat products.
[00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:30.560] And he's had a few of them that just didn't go anywhere.
[00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:32.000] He's got like 80,000 followers.
[00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:36.720] So it's not like having a bunch of followers means everything is an instant hit any more than it is for anybody else.
[00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:40.000] But like his second or third try, he made, what's it called?
[00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:40.880] Typing mind, I think.
[00:32:41.040 --> 00:32:41.120] Right.
[00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:44.400] Yeah, it's a new user interface for ChatGPT.
[00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:46.880] And that one is just making money hand over fist.
[00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:52.080] And it looks like everything somebody touches turns to gold when you see them posting in public about that success.
[00:32:52.080 --> 00:32:56.320] But they literally could have been posting like a month ago about all of their failures and people just forget.
[00:32:56.320 --> 00:32:56.800] Yeah.
[00:32:56.800 --> 00:33:00.560] I mean, I'm a practical walking case study of like, I said the same thing.
[00:33:00.560 --> 00:33:14.640] Like if you go back to 2018 tweets, there were some tweets where I would say the like it's the same message and then I would repost it now and there'd be like a bunch of replies and a bunch of people like, you know, like liking, sharing and like, yeah, comment, engagement.
[00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:15.760] And I'm like, what?
[00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:17.920] It's the same content, same piece of content.
[00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:25.840] What the difference, I think, is, you know, I've become a lot more relaxed at this game.
[00:33:25.840 --> 00:33:28.720] I've built up a lot of social capital with this game.
[00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:34.760] And so when you give a lot to a set of people for a long period of time, they're just bound to reply.
[00:33:34.760 --> 00:33:37.080] They're bound to reciprocate.
[00:33:37.080 --> 00:33:42.680] And so oftentimes in the beginning, we just think that it's the meritocracy of the ideas we have, the insights we have.
[00:33:42.680 --> 00:33:43.720] It doesn't matter.
[00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:45.240] Just help people.
[00:33:45.240 --> 00:33:49.000] They'll thank you in the long run and they'll want to be around you.
[00:33:49.240 --> 00:33:50.680] What you're doing is building it public.
[00:33:50.680 --> 00:33:56.200] But I also think that there's some value in just pure transparency, pure like, hey, this is a purple cow.
[00:33:56.200 --> 00:33:57.160] Come look at it.
[00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:02.360] But you just have to know the use case that you're addressing there is like you wanted to sort of market.
[00:34:02.360 --> 00:34:05.000] You're not necessarily trying to have like deep connections.
[00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:13.960] And I just speak from experience because I love seeing when people are really transparent about super weird, extreme shit.
[00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:15.320] Like I love purple cows.
[00:34:15.320 --> 00:34:17.640] Like every single week, I feel like I find a purple cow.
[00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:19.160] But give us a couple examples.
[00:34:19.640 --> 00:34:22.440] A couple examples are, have you ever heard of Brian Johnson?
[00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:24.200] He's the founder of Braintree.
[00:34:24.520 --> 00:34:28.920] So Brian Johnson is like one of the wildest, weirdest people ever.
[00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:31.240] He's number one, he's like, you know, multiple hundred million dollars.
[00:34:31.240 --> 00:34:32.120] He sold Braintree.
[00:34:32.120 --> 00:34:34.280] He's a founder of a bunch of different things.
[00:34:34.280 --> 00:34:40.760] And what he's done with that money is, if you've heard of longevity, it's like there's new science where you're trying to like live forever.
[00:34:40.760 --> 00:34:47.880] Brian Johnson is the number one like guinea pig of all of this science that's just coming down the pike.
[00:34:48.280 --> 00:34:51.000] He was on the news for a while, for a month ago or something, right?
[00:34:51.160 --> 00:34:51.480] Yeah.
[00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:51.960] Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:51.960 --> 00:34:53.000] So he was on the news.
[00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:55.880] Like a lot of people interviewed him, and you'll get little snippets.
[00:34:55.880 --> 00:35:01.480] But he himself will post the most transparent things, which is actually where the most interesting stuff is.
[00:35:01.480 --> 00:35:08.200] So, for example, he has on YouTube, anyone can YouTube it, it's called My Anti-Aging Protocol Broke a World Record.
[00:35:08.200 --> 00:35:25.040] And this thing has like 300,000 views, and it's literally just a like two-hour video where he and his like main biologist, his main doctor, he spends two million dollars or something a year, like rejuvenating every single cell in his body.
[00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:32.400] He wakes up, he eats like exactly 1,977 calories per day, all vegan.
[00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:42.560] He like, it's like, and you, and he takes a 45-year-old biotech CEO, may have reduced his biological age by at least five years through a rigorous medical program that costs two million dollars a year.
[00:35:42.560 --> 00:35:49.920] And it's just him staring blankly at the camera and like a perfect caricature of like every dystopian sci-fi show that shows like Silicon Valley billionaire.
[00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:51.040] Impact billionaire, right?
[00:35:51.040 --> 00:35:55.120] Yeah, injecting like stem cells with small children into their arms so they could live like that.
[00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:57.920] But it's like, hey, take my take my YouTube view, right?
[00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.720] Like, I'm the first person to watch that, right?
[00:36:00.720 --> 00:36:01.680] And there are tons of other people.
[00:36:01.680 --> 00:36:04.000] So, I mean, look, and I don't like Brian Johnson.
[00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:05.360] I don't know Brian Johnson, right?
[00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:10.880] I don't feel like attached to him or familiar with him, but that's like pure transparency, right?
[00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:12.160] I think there's something to it.
[00:36:12.160 --> 00:36:16.800] Like, I feel like humans are just innately so curious about the process.
[00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:26.480] I feel like a lot of the time when you're living through the process of something and the journey of something, it sucks for you, but it's so much fun for others.
[00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:28.400] So, like, you know what I'm trying to say?
[00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:30.960] Like, you know, being a founder sucks shit for you.
[00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:33.920] Like, God, you know, like, it's so mundane, so boring.
[00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:35.680] You have to do the same seven things over and over.
[00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:43.440] Like, debugging, let's say, for example, when you like publish the code base, you're just going through stuff is so boring as hell for you and your peers.
[00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:46.720] But for someone out there, this might be the Brian Johnson moment.
[00:36:46.720 --> 00:36:48.080] Like, they are looking for this shit.
[00:36:48.080 --> 00:36:51.600] Like, how do you, like, what do you go to the, you go to the start?
[00:36:51.600 --> 00:36:52.240] Do you go to the middle?
[00:36:52.240 --> 00:36:52.880] Like, where do you start?
[00:36:52.880 --> 00:37:01.240] And so, there's a lot of fascination we have as humans, you know, like the gameplay thing, the whole Twitch gameplay as a genre is crazy.
[00:37:01.240 --> 00:37:04.760] Like, you kind of would have thought people want to watch people play video games.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:05.000] Right.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.920] But we're fascinated by these random things.
[00:37:07.240 --> 00:37:11.560] That's sort of where sort of desire to build stuff in public comes out.
[00:37:11.560 --> 00:37:16.440] Like, because I actually don't know what the heck I'm doing right now, guys.
[00:37:16.440 --> 00:37:17.800] Like, I'm just trying to figure it out.
[00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:19.960] Like, I have no clue where my career is right now.
[00:37:19.960 --> 00:37:21.160] You're in the explorer phase.
[00:37:21.480 --> 00:37:22.360] I'm the explorer phase, yeah.
[00:37:22.520 --> 00:37:24.280] I was on decks for two years.
[00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:28.200] And I, okay, I saw the inside of a rocket ship startup.
[00:37:28.200 --> 00:37:30.200] And then I joined day one.
[00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:32.600] And I was like, okay, maybe it's my time to take the plunge.
[00:37:32.600 --> 00:37:34.680] I took the plunge in December 2022.
[00:37:34.680 --> 00:37:36.360] I have no freaking clue what I'm doing.
[00:37:36.360 --> 00:37:42.840] Everybody wants, like, you know, when you have an audience, I think there's a thing that, oh, you must be around smart people.
[00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:45.560] So you must be smart and you must have smart answers.
[00:37:45.560 --> 00:37:49.560] And I'm like, you know, I don't have any answers.
[00:37:49.560 --> 00:37:50.200] You know, like that.
[00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:53.480] That's just a funny proposition, right?
[00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:58.440] So as you figure things out, it just sucks because your ego is taking a daily beating.
[00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:07.720] But I still force myself to still hit publish and still tweet about what I'm thinking that day because I will know that somebody out there is my Channing Allen.
[00:38:07.720 --> 00:38:11.800] Somebody out there is reading that shit and be like, yeah, man, this is awesome.
[00:38:11.800 --> 00:38:12.360] Like, you know?
[00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:13.880] So two things.
[00:38:13.880 --> 00:38:17.560] I think number one, do you enjoy being in the exploratory phase?
[00:38:17.560 --> 00:38:19.000] Like, do you like it?
[00:38:19.560 --> 00:38:24.280] I like it more than the alternative, which is being in W-2 and like being a slave with somebody's Mercy.
[00:38:24.440 --> 00:38:24.840] Yeah.
[00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:25.160] Okay.
[00:38:25.160 --> 00:38:34.360] Because to the point we were discussing earlier, like, if you can find a way to explore and you like exploring and you can find a way to financially support yourself continuing to explore, like, that's an awesome life.
[00:38:34.760 --> 00:38:38.840] There's such a pedestal about what it must look like to be a successful entrepreneur.
[00:38:38.840 --> 00:38:40.760] You'd have one company that's killing it.
[00:38:40.760 --> 00:38:41.000] Yeah.
[00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:46.480] Like, my buddy Greg was tweeting the other day about how he moved to Silicon Valley and he started an agency.
[00:38:46.480 --> 00:38:50.080] And then someone he really looked up to and respected was like, Greg, that's not ambitious.
[00:38:44.520 --> 00:38:50.960] It's not what we do here.
[00:38:51.200 --> 00:38:52.480] You need to go for the gold.
[00:38:52.480 --> 00:38:57.360] And so he had all these other more ambitious projects that did okay, but he wasn't happy.
[00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:58.320] And now what is he doing?
[00:38:58.320 --> 00:38:59.360] He's back to running an agency.
[00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:01.280] Then he just spun up two or three more agencies.
[00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:06.560] And yeah, that's not like what we stereotypically hold on a pedestal, but like that's what makes him really happy.
[00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:10.480] And he gets to get paid money for doing it and designing the exact lifestyle that he wants.
[00:39:10.480 --> 00:39:13.600] So if you like exploring, you should explore.
[00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:25.280] I made a tweet recently about this and I was talking to some folks in the fellowship and they were like in this pressure because they think that the other friends who went to Harvard and other ones who went to Stanford, they're all building this hyper-growth startup.
[00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:28.960] They're like, KP, I'm feeling not living the life I went to Harvard.
[00:39:29.040 --> 00:39:35.760] I was like, here's the thing: take all the energy you have in ambition and put that into joy.
[00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:44.160] Because some of the greatest things the world has ever seen were built because purely somebody pursued their joy, you know, in art, programming, whatever, right?
[00:39:44.160 --> 00:39:48.240] And so I don't know if you know if you guys feel this way or not.
[00:39:48.240 --> 00:39:53.520] Maybe I'm just, it's so hard to be ambitious and humble, you know?
[00:39:53.520 --> 00:39:56.960] Like, it's so freaking hard because everybody wants so much out of you.
[00:39:56.960 --> 00:39:57.360] Yeah.
[00:39:57.360 --> 00:39:57.680] Right?
[00:39:57.920 --> 00:40:02.240] Like, everybody, by the way, Courtney, every time I go to the ATV, they're like, KP, what are you doing, man?
[00:40:02.240 --> 00:40:03.440] Like, chicken can't say, what?
[00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:04.880] You're crushing that tutor, man.
[00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:05.920] He's doing so great.
[00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:06.640] What's your startup?
[00:40:06.640 --> 00:40:06.960] What's it?
[00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:07.840] Is it Canada?
[00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:08.960] What is it?
[00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:12.000] And so I'm like, I'm doing a fellowship.
[00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:12.960] And they're like, what?
[00:40:14.560 --> 00:40:16.000] But that's what I'm trying to say.
[00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:22.240] Like, being like okay and secure with whatever part of your life you are.
[00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:29.720] And also, I noticed a lot of people, um, channeling to your point, like a lot of people wait until they get to the pretty parts of their career to start sharing in public.
[00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:36.600] You know, and I think that's a disservice to the world because you're making it seem like Cortland woke up one day and he started indie hackers like that, right?
[00:40:37.240 --> 00:40:47.960] Or channing, or like, you know, so we all go through the process, and the process is humbling, including two Peter Levels, Arvid Call, whoever, second time, third time, four-time founder.
[00:40:47.960 --> 00:40:58.440] The process sucks as you're going through it, but you should have to find the process that sucks less for you or feels like you know, somehow weirdly fun for you.
[00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:10.520] But make it transparent that people see this, that it's not a pretty ambient slide deck, you know, it's so emergent and changes every day, and you have to react to it.
[00:41:10.520 --> 00:41:18.680] I know on the um on the topic of not necessarily gardening and grooming your Twitter and being too serious about it, there is some strategy, right?
[00:41:18.680 --> 00:41:23.400] Like, you did something to grow from 400 Twitter followers over 40,000.
[00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:27.320] Because I know a lot of people who tweet a lot and they try to put their heart into it, and they don't get there.
[00:41:27.320 --> 00:41:31.480] Um, what is your advice for somebody, especially like an indie hacker, who's like, okay, I'm out here.
[00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:33.240] Uh, maybe they're in a similar situation to you.
[00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:43.960] They don't have one huge killer startup, they're trying lots of different things, they're exploring how can they, I guess, do a better job building in public and build some sort of an audience for themselves.
[00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:46.120] Just use the Donald Trump 3 a.m.
[00:41:46.200 --> 00:41:48.520] on the toilet tweet strategy, right?
[00:41:48.520 --> 00:41:48.920] There you go.
[00:41:50.120 --> 00:41:51.080] That's what I would recommend.
[00:41:51.080 --> 00:41:52.520] I don't know, I'm not an expert.
[00:41:52.520 --> 00:42:01.080] I mean, a lot of the strategies are so obvious, which are spend a lot of time studying other tweets that inspire you.
[00:42:01.080 --> 00:42:06.760] The thing is, people think that you all you always have to write like the four thread boys that are winning today, right?
[00:42:06.760 --> 00:43:55.720] My thing is, you have to study and learn the formats, you have to study and learn the presentation of a certain idea, but you could choose who you want to learn from so in my early days i remember i would like look at like ryan hoover's tweets i would look at you know greg's tweets some of the guys that i really liked and admired you know uh amanda's tweets and see like okay how are they framing the you know the opening line how are they framing this stuff and um i still do it now because part of us also i'm lazy i'm like i don't want to start from scratch i like look at what they're doing and like okay this format seems to be working so this what then the tweet that you read out earlier in the beginning um kotlin the me then me now is a very popular format you know that right like it's yeah of course and so i took the format but the the difference is you still get to be you in the so the stage is twitter and you get to be whoever you want to be on the stage so if you see most of my tweets 99 of the tweets are stuff that i would say to someone in real life it's my personality it's who i am it's authentic so i don't so i think that's a that's a big hack is that i used to sound like somebody else in the beginning and i shifted that over to being very me i'm very reflective as a person and journal every day so my journal brings out five tweets a day easily in the morning um number two is the big tip that i had was i actually in 2020 i was at 2000 followers or something i genuinely saw the power of being prolific where i think i was holding back trying to like you know trying to like only put out the smart tweets or the good sounding ones and then in 2020 july something happened and i think over the weekend i had like 100 new followers which i was like oh my god, this is crazy and and from then on, I just thought, I'm just gonna be prolific at this, like every day consistent and not holding back, having fun.
[00:43:55.720 --> 00:43:56.760] I say this a lot to people.
[00:43:56.760 --> 00:43:58.760] Like the internet's kind of an open book test, right?
[00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:00.280] You can like, you're allowed to cheat.
[00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:05.160] You're allowed to go look at someone else who's succeeding and then like reverse engineer what's working for them.
[00:44:05.160 --> 00:44:08.120] So if you're trying to get big on Twitter, you don't just have to just figure it out from scratch.
[00:44:08.120 --> 00:44:15.720] Go find someone else who's good at Twitter and scroll down their Twitter timeline, which if it's not too well manicured and gardened, you'll find some good stuff.
[00:44:15.720 --> 00:44:18.520] A good example is that tweet you said that, you know, it's a format, right?
[00:44:18.520 --> 00:44:24.040] You say a year and then a colon, and then you type what you did in that year, and then you say like this year and then a colon.
[00:44:24.040 --> 00:44:27.240] John Yonku had a good play on this tweet today, too, that I saw.
[00:44:27.240 --> 00:44:31.160] He said, 2018, quit job, take a risk, try to build a tech business.
[00:44:31.160 --> 00:44:34.440] 2022, built tech business into something sustainable.
[00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:37.800] 2023, AI makes all tech work obsolete.
[00:44:37.800 --> 00:44:38.760] There we go.
[00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:39.160] Right?
[00:44:39.160 --> 00:44:42.680] But that's like, it's literally such a common format that people can parody it.
[00:44:42.680 --> 00:44:43.240] Yeah.
[00:44:44.040 --> 00:44:46.040] There's so many meme formats too, right?
[00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:50.680] So I think your formats are so important when it comes to Twitter.
[00:44:50.760 --> 00:44:58.680] And Twitter is also my other strategy or my other tip is follow the right kind of people.
[00:44:58.680 --> 00:45:00.440] Don't follow a lot of people.
[00:45:01.240 --> 00:45:02.600] But also don't have zero followers.
[00:45:02.600 --> 00:45:05.000] That's, I think, a little too snobby.
[00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:13.560] But follow the right kind of people who are three, four steps ahead of you or 10 steps ahead of you and you want to sort of learn from them what their thoughts are, what their ideas are.
[00:45:13.800 --> 00:45:15.560] So that helps you with the curation.
[00:45:15.880 --> 00:45:18.840] I'm actually interested in talking about the technology side.
[00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.160] Courtland just mentioned AI.
[00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:25.640] And one of your other personalities is the no-code space.
[00:45:25.640 --> 00:45:28.680] And I don't know, maybe soon to be the AI space.
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:31.400] All my no-code friends have jumped the wagon.
[00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:32.360] They're already AI friends.
[00:45:33.160 --> 00:45:35.800] Yeah, it's kind of non-indistinguishable at this point.
[00:45:35.800 --> 00:45:36.360] Yeah.
[00:45:36.360 --> 00:45:38.840] I have kind of an interesting relationship with no-code.
[00:45:38.840 --> 00:45:45.600] I mean, first off, I know how to develop, I know how to build apps, and I really like coding, and I'm fairly fast.
[00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:48.160] So I feel like I'm not really the market for no code.
[00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:51.680] I mean, I can build a website probably in whatever, half an hour, have it online.
[00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:57.040] But I also had this interesting experience with, I was teaching my girlfriend how to code two years ago.
[00:45:57.040 --> 00:45:58.560] She was looking for a job.
[00:45:58.560 --> 00:46:06.000] And I was like, oh, I kind of had this opportunity where I can teach her the sort of traditional HTML, CSS, JavaScript stuff.
[00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:12.560] And then I can also let her play around with Bubble, let her play around with some of these other no-code tools.
[00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:20.000] And it was interesting because on the one hand, I saw her get stuff out the door with no code tools in like a week.
[00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:21.760] But then she was sort of frustrated.
[00:46:21.760 --> 00:46:23.760] She kind of hit a plateau.
[00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:27.760] And slowly she was chugging along with the actual code.
[00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:30.400] And it took like a month before she could do anything.
[00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:32.400] Like she was completely fish out of water.
[00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:33.360] She was really frustrated.
[00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:34.480] She cried a couple of times.
[00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:36.320] I'm not going to tell her about this podcast.
[00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:37.280] I don't want her to yell at me.
[00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:48.800] But then once that flame got sparked, there was this takeoff where she sort of had this linear progression that quickly kind of had plateaued with no code.
[00:46:48.800 --> 00:46:51.200] So I wonder if, like, how to think about that.
[00:46:51.520 --> 00:46:52.000] Yeah.
[00:46:53.200 --> 00:47:02.640] The thing that comes to mind with code versus no code is like, you know, IKEA Furniture versus building tables and like real carpentry, right?
[00:47:02.640 --> 00:47:14.960] For a certain kind of persona and a certain kind of founder, especially maybe a non-technical founder, domain expert, someone who's in climate tech, and they just have this particular marketplace they want to manifest.
[00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.680] But they're just like so impatient.
[00:47:17.680 --> 00:47:20.640] They want to show the prototype and show like how it looks and stuff.
[00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:24.400] I think for that person, no code is the right move, right?
[00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:36.280] Get a Dallo or Bubble marketplace template quickly or software quickly and then tie it to a table data and then just show how it looks and maybe even grow it to a decent extent.
[00:47:37.480 --> 00:47:39.560] You can connect stripe payments and stuff.
[00:47:39.560 --> 00:47:45.720] So I think to me, no code has always been a great way, assembling IKEA furniture, right?
[00:47:47.000 --> 00:47:52.120] You're not a car printer just because you followed instructions and assembled a desk.
[00:47:52.440 --> 00:48:01.640] But true development and true building, true code and true programming, I think are lifelong skills.
[00:48:02.040 --> 00:48:03.160] And it's a craft.
[00:48:03.160 --> 00:48:05.640] And you guys know this, more than me, it's a craft.
[00:48:05.640 --> 00:48:10.680] And so you can never confidently say, oh, yeah, I've reached the horizon of code.
[00:48:11.240 --> 00:48:12.280] You're always learning.
[00:48:12.280 --> 00:48:14.680] And AI shows up and you have to relearn now.
[00:48:14.680 --> 00:48:16.280] So you're always learning.
[00:48:16.280 --> 00:48:24.040] And I think a lot of what code teaches you is to think systematically, methodically, and to interface with the computer.
[00:48:24.040 --> 00:48:27.240] Basically, understand how to write syntax.
[00:48:27.240 --> 00:48:30.040] And so I think that's a skill that's valuable for life.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:38.600] But for a lot of people, because it's so daunting, because it's a bit, you know, it's a bit slow to learn, it's slow to pick up as a skill.
[00:48:38.600 --> 00:48:42.200] It's like, also intellectually, I think it's a little, it's hard.
[00:48:42.200 --> 00:48:42.680] Code is hard.
[00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:45.080] It's very hard, as you know, intellectually.
[00:48:45.480 --> 00:48:51.560] So the vast majority of the people may not self-select themselves out of this game completely.
[00:48:51.560 --> 00:48:54.200] And I think that's the missed opportunity as a human race.
[00:48:54.200 --> 00:49:05.920] The other analogy that comes to mind is I grew up in India and I didn't see any female grandmas or aunts, my aunts driving a car, you know.
[00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:11.080] And one thing I noticed when I moved to the US when I was 21, I was like, a lot of grandmas driving cars.
[00:49:11.080 --> 00:49:11.880] I was like, what?
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:12.440] How?
[00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:24.160] And I realized the biggest difference is the majority of the cars in the US are automatic transmission, which is a pain in the ass to have a stick, to drive a stick when you're 85, you know?
[00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:24.800] Yeah.
[00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:27.360] So that to me is no-code in a way.
[00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:33.120] So if no-code is the automatic transmi

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
80] And so you can never confidently say, oh, yeah, I've reached the horizon of code.
[00:48:11.240 --> 00:48:12.280] You're always learning.
[00:48:12.280 --> 00:48:14.680] And AI shows up and you have to relearn now.
[00:48:14.680 --> 00:48:16.280] So you're always learning.
[00:48:16.280 --> 00:48:24.040] And I think a lot of what code teaches you is to think systematically, methodically, and to interface with the computer.
[00:48:24.040 --> 00:48:27.240] Basically, understand how to write syntax.
[00:48:27.240 --> 00:48:30.040] And so I think that's a skill that's valuable for life.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:38.600] But for a lot of people, because it's so daunting, because it's a bit, you know, it's a bit slow to learn, it's slow to pick up as a skill.
[00:48:38.600 --> 00:48:42.200] It's like, also intellectually, I think it's a little, it's hard.
[00:48:42.200 --> 00:48:42.680] Code is hard.
[00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:45.080] It's very hard, as you know, intellectually.
[00:48:45.480 --> 00:48:51.560] So the vast majority of the people may not self-select themselves out of this game completely.
[00:48:51.560 --> 00:48:54.200] And I think that's the missed opportunity as a human race.
[00:48:54.200 --> 00:49:05.920] The other analogy that comes to mind is I grew up in India and I didn't see any female grandmas or aunts, my aunts driving a car, you know.
[00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:11.080] And one thing I noticed when I moved to the US when I was 21, I was like, a lot of grandmas driving cars.
[00:49:11.080 --> 00:49:11.880] I was like, what?
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:12.440] How?
[00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:24.160] And I realized the biggest difference is the majority of the cars in the US are automatic transmission, which is a pain in the ass to have a stick, to drive a stick when you're 85, you know?
[00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:24.800] Yeah.
[00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:27.360] So that to me is no-code in a way.
[00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:33.120] So if no-code is the automatic transmission, then I suppose AI is the self-driving car.
[00:49:33.120 --> 00:49:33.520] Yeah.
[00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:35.280] Yeah, that's pretty good.
[00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:35.920] Yeah.
[00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:38.960] I remember no-code, like, being all the rage a couple years ago.
[00:49:38.960 --> 00:49:39.600] Who do I have on?
[00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:44.480] I think I had Ben Tossel, who started MakerPad, and he was doing like a no-code debate versus Sahel Lovingia.
[00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:47.200] I think I did two or three different No Code episodes on Indie Hackers.
[00:49:47.200 --> 00:49:49.520] People were like getting sick of it, but also couldn't get enough of it.
[00:49:49.520 --> 00:49:52.800] And everyone wanted to talk about, like, is this going to replace people's jobs?
[00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:54.800] And now it seems like no one talks about that anymore.
[00:49:54.800 --> 00:49:57.120] Like all those companies, the No Code tool companies are still out there.
[00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:06.880] Like Zappy are still doing well, but like everything every day is just about chat GPT, GPT-4, DALI, AI, just AI, AI, AI.
[00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:08.800] Even no-code is just like AI.
[00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:19.040] And it's not just putting coders out of a job or threatening to, but it's like threatening to put artists and writers and interior designers and just about everyone else out of a job, or at least like force them to change their jobs drastically.
[00:50:19.040 --> 00:50:19.760] So what are your thoughts?
[00:50:19.760 --> 00:50:24.160] Do you think AI is just like eating up all the other no-code tools?
[00:50:24.160 --> 00:50:34.560] I mean, it's like I saw a video of a guy who drew a picture of a website on a napkin and took a photo of it and then put it in chat GPT and it generated like all the HTML and CSS for like that website.
[00:50:34.560 --> 00:50:36.080] And he literally had like a part of it.
[00:50:36.160 --> 00:50:41.680] Oh, put a funny joke here and then put a button here and then here's where the joke will be revealed after you click the button.
[00:50:41.680 --> 00:50:43.200] And the AI just did it, right?
[00:50:43.200 --> 00:50:46.560] And it's like, is there any better no-code tool than that?
[00:50:47.200 --> 00:50:47.680] Right?
[00:50:47.680 --> 00:50:56.480] I mean, I think the AI is kind of forming the superset over, you know, no-code tools and low-code tools.
[00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:04.040] So it'll be interesting to see if the no-code tools will sort of align with that superset use case that AI is kind of creating.
[00:51:04.360 --> 00:51:08.840] Like, for example, CODA is doing a Coda AI, you know, Notion has done the Notion AI, right?
[00:51:08.840 --> 00:51:15.480] So the immediate, obvious mode that they're doing is embedding the AI features into their core skill sets.
[00:51:15.480 --> 00:51:18.040] And I think that's one way to kind of like be AI friendly.
[00:51:18.040 --> 00:51:25.880] But if you're not already thinking about your AI strategy as a no-code tool, you're not going to last this revolution.
[00:51:25.880 --> 00:51:29.880] This is a huge sweeping evolution that's coming out.
[00:51:29.880 --> 00:51:39.960] And yeah, I mean, I think the analogy around self-driving cars, people would probably still want some level of control in the product.
[00:51:40.120 --> 00:51:44.840] So let's say if I built a Webflow website, I didn't write code, but AI did it for me.
[00:51:44.840 --> 00:51:46.120] It shows me the landing page.
[00:51:46.120 --> 00:51:52.200] Maybe I still want to mess around with this little animation at the bottom or some level of CSS control.
[00:51:52.200 --> 00:51:56.920] So maybe there's still value to learn a little bit no-code tools like Webflow.
[00:51:56.920 --> 00:52:00.520] But I think code will be the last resort, unfortunately.
[00:52:00.520 --> 00:52:09.880] So we will, which is, which sometimes worries me because thinking intellectually deeply and critical thinking will be the last resort for humanity, which is great.
[00:52:10.760 --> 00:52:12.120] Kind of like before writing, right?
[00:52:12.120 --> 00:52:14.360] Like people memorized everything.
[00:52:14.360 --> 00:52:18.600] A bunch of things were just taught through song because it's easy to memorize songs and poetry.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:23.400] And then suddenly everyone's literate and everybody has the memory of a goldfish because we just don't need to actually do it.
[00:52:23.400 --> 00:52:30.200] And it's the same now where it's like, if a computer could just do everything for me, why should I learn any skills?
[00:52:30.200 --> 00:52:37.560] You know, I have a two-year-old at home, and I'm always curious to see when he's like 25, 26, like what the world will look like then, or when he goes to college.
[00:52:37.560 --> 00:52:40.200] Like what is he gonna, like, what is there to teach him?
[00:52:40.200 --> 00:52:40.520] Right?
[00:52:40.520 --> 00:52:41.720] Like, everything is AI.
[00:52:41.720 --> 00:52:43.640] Like, you know, how to write AI prompts.
[00:52:43.640 --> 00:52:45.440] How to write good AI prompts.
[00:52:44.920 --> 00:52:49.440] I'm gonna take the opposite side of this, though, because I understand this fear.
[00:52:49.760 --> 00:53:01.280] You know, hey, listen, all of this work that we currently do requires us to do a lot of intellectualizing and a lot of thinking and a lot of effortful work on is going to get replaced by AI.
[00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:05.760] I mean, to Cortland's point, people said the same thing when the printing press came out, right?
[00:53:05.760 --> 00:53:08.720] People said the same thing when books were widely distributed.
[00:53:08.720 --> 00:53:12.400] People said the same thing when computers were kind of coming into favor.
[00:53:12.720 --> 00:53:24.320] And what always happens is it's almost like we have the same amount, the same like, you know, whatever, seven hours of like real rigorous thinking that any individual person can do in a day.
[00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:28.160] And it's like, well, what are you spending that seven hours doing?
[00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:38.320] And I think over time, the ideal as technology advances is that we spend our intellectual hours doing less and less menial work.
[00:53:38.320 --> 00:53:45.440] And it's like, right now, I do a lot of code, but a lot of the code that I do is like setting myself up to do real work, right?
[00:53:45.440 --> 00:53:49.520] I'm like spending time downloading a lot of packages, setting up the project.
[00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:54.320] Whereas I really just want to spend my creativity and my judgment time thinking about what I want to do.
[00:53:54.320 --> 00:53:56.720] And then it's like making little edge case changes.
[00:53:56.720 --> 00:53:59.360] I'm like, see, how does it look in this format?
[00:53:59.360 --> 00:54:01.280] And how does it look in that format?
[00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:09.120] And if we had, like, I don't know, GPT-5 comes out, you know, and like none of us are sitting here doing almost any of the normal jobs that we're doing on the computer.
[00:54:09.120 --> 00:54:15.200] You still have eight hours of like highly leveraged, creative, and like expressive work that you can do.
[00:54:15.200 --> 00:54:16.880] So I'm really optimistic.
[00:54:17.280 --> 00:54:23.120] I don't think that there's any like real fear that like you're, you know, you're like, what is the creative work you're going to do?
[00:54:23.120 --> 00:54:26.400] Like for any hackers right now, I'm making this profile thing.
[00:54:26.400 --> 00:54:32.120] So indie hackers can have really awesome profile pages because indie hackers have better things to do than build their own profile pages.
[00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:35.560] And so we're going to give them a profile page builder where they can show off all their indie hackers work.
[00:54:35.880 --> 00:54:40.280] But if in like six months from now, they can just go to an AI thing and say, hey, here's my projects.
[00:54:40.280 --> 00:54:47.400] Build me an amazing profile page, then suddenly all of this work I've done for the last month to create a profile page builder is shitty.
[00:54:47.400 --> 00:54:49.400] It doesn't make any difference, right?
[00:54:49.800 --> 00:54:56.840] But I feel like, you know, the beauty with just us humans is that we will figure out a way to find problems to solve.
[00:54:56.840 --> 00:55:08.760] And I think what those problems that we will solve is probably not apparent to us right now, but will be very apparent to us in eight months or nine months, whenever those situations happen, right?
[00:55:08.760 --> 00:55:26.440] We will always have something like, you know, when, like you said, the printing press thing, if everybody's literate, then like, what's the use of, you know, we could have argued the same thing, like, but every time we had a new technology revolution, people found new avenues and new areas to work on, right?
[00:55:26.680 --> 00:55:38.120] The fact that I'm sitting here, you know, using my thumbs to tweet ideas and the things I'm saying, like vulnerability and like, you know, putting yourself out there, which would spook the heck out of my ancestors.
[00:55:38.280 --> 00:55:39.240] They'll be like, what the heck?
[00:55:39.240 --> 00:55:39.800] Is that work?
[00:55:39.800 --> 00:55:43.400] Like, we were like toiling our asses off in these oil fields and shit.
[00:55:43.400 --> 00:55:45.240] Like, you're like, you know, does that work?
[00:55:45.240 --> 00:55:46.040] Like, come on, man.
[00:55:46.600 --> 00:55:49.880] So that's my biggest concern as of right now.
[00:55:49.880 --> 00:55:52.920] Like, how do I get customers on Stripe notification, which is so easy?
[00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:59.880] Like, if you think about it, it's actually damn easy to get someone to buy something right now on the internet for you if you have some decent service.
[00:55:59.880 --> 00:56:01.640] 50 years ago, it was impossible.
[00:56:01.960 --> 00:56:06.440] So, 50 years from now, I think we would have something like that that would make it easier.
[00:56:06.440 --> 00:56:09.320] And look, I don't even think that we need to think 50 years in advance.
[00:56:09.320 --> 00:56:16.640] There's Mark Andreessen was describing Web 3.0 when everyone was talking about Web 3.0 and it was kind of new and it was hard to understand.
[00:56:16.720 --> 00:56:18.240] He's like, look, here's how you think about it.
[00:56:18.240 --> 00:56:19.760] There's like three different phases.
[00:56:14.920 --> 00:56:26.000] Web 1.0 was this idea where individual people had websites and there weren't all that many websites.
[00:56:26.320 --> 00:56:30.560] Everyone wasn't able to have their space on the internet because you kind of had to code or learn how to code.
[00:56:30.560 --> 00:56:32.000] And that many people could do that.
[00:56:32.000 --> 00:56:33.760] Then Web 2.0 comes along.
[00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:43.520] Now you have these big platforms, Facebook and Twitter, kind of allow you to have your own space on the internet, but you're kind of renting out the territory that is owned by Facebook, et cetera.
[00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:45.920] So you've got an upside, got a downside.
[00:56:45.920 --> 00:56:53.920] Web 3.0, in theory, was going to be a place where all of these non-technical people were suddenly going to be able to have their own space that they kind of owned.
[00:56:53.920 --> 00:56:56.000] So far, it hasn't really turned out to be that way.
[00:56:56.000 --> 00:57:00.320] But it's like, to Cortland, to your question, it's like, well, what kinds of things are people going to build?
[00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:15.840] I bet if everyone felt that they were technically capable of just creating their own place in the internet and they could use their creativity to make it have the bells and whistles that reflected their personalities and their likes and their tastes, a lot more people would get into it.
[00:57:15.840 --> 00:57:19.360] But even no code in its current incarnation is kind of intimidating.
[00:57:19.520 --> 00:57:23.840] I watched my girlfriend her eyes crossed trying to figure that stuff out.
[00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:26.640] So I mean that's just one idea.
[00:57:26.640 --> 00:57:28.160] Everybody wants to get along.
[00:57:28.160 --> 00:57:29.440] Everybody wants to get ahead.
[00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:30.720] That's just human nature.
[00:57:30.720 --> 00:57:43.680] Isn't it Naval or someone who was saying the more technologically advanced we become as a civilization, the meaning of work shifts from, it went from already menial labor, like the menial work that you talked about, to knowledge work.
[00:57:43.680 --> 00:57:45.520] Like all of us are doing knowledge work right now.
[00:57:45.920 --> 00:57:53.040] Many of us, I mean, there's still people who are, you know, but and now it'll shift from knowledge work to creative work alone, right?
[00:57:53.360 --> 00:58:00.680] And even with creative work, to your point, like AI can only do so much creativity because the definition of creativity will shift.
[00:57:59.920 --> 00:58:03.640] It would no longer just be enough to have a painting.
[00:58:03.960 --> 00:58:08.680] It has to have some piece of view that's like authentic and AI can copy that.
[00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:13.720] Naval speaks about this, but cognitive neuroscientists talk about it a lot as well.
[00:58:14.040 --> 00:58:16.680] And a lot of computer scientists speak about it.
[00:58:16.680 --> 00:58:26.120] Like the big differences between what computers do well and like what human brains do well largely comes down to like humans are really good at creativity and judgment.
[00:58:26.120 --> 00:58:26.680] Yeah, judgment.
[00:58:26.840 --> 00:58:30.120] And judgment here is like, you know, it's almost like improvising, right?
[00:58:30.120 --> 00:58:31.720] Like what is a computer not necessarily?
[00:58:32.040 --> 00:58:33.400] AI is good at judgment.
[00:58:33.400 --> 00:58:35.880] If you ask AI any judgment questions, you can go on there.
[00:58:35.960 --> 00:58:36.440] No, no, no.
[00:58:36.680 --> 00:58:36.920] It's good.
[00:58:39.880 --> 00:58:42.920] But the judgment of, I think what Channing's referencing is different, though.
[00:58:42.920 --> 00:58:45.160] I think judgment's not like decisive judgment.
[00:58:45.160 --> 00:58:49.160] It's like, what will KP's next project be?
[00:58:49.160 --> 00:58:50.040] That's judgment.
[00:58:50.040 --> 00:58:52.920] Like, I'm deciding based on the factors of what I want to do.
[00:58:52.920 --> 00:58:54.040] And humans have intuition.
[00:58:54.040 --> 00:58:54.600] That's the thing.
[00:58:54.600 --> 00:59:00.200] Like, it's hard to fake or copy because humans do weird shit, like the Brian Johnson thing.
[00:59:00.680 --> 00:59:05.560] It's just impossible to get AI to predict what he might do next, you know?
[00:59:05.560 --> 00:59:09.560] So I'm slightly more bullish on AI than both of you.
[00:59:09.560 --> 00:59:19.000] I think that AI is in its early, like the useful large language models we're seeing are in their infancy and are already shocking what they can do.
[00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:22.360] And another year or two from now, it's going to be insane what they can do.
[00:59:22.360 --> 00:59:26.120] But I'm also on the same page as the two of you, which is that that doesn't mean it's doom and gloom.
[00:59:26.120 --> 00:59:32.200] It just means that our job as founders is to figure out how do we use these new tools, because there's still going to be problems.
[00:59:32.200 --> 00:59:35.720] There's still going to be creative things and challenges for people to do that need to be solved.
[00:59:35.720 --> 00:59:38.040] They just might look very different than what we have now.
[00:59:38.040 --> 00:59:40.520] And so, as an ending hacker, it's very, very rare that this happens.
[00:59:40.680 --> 00:59:46.240] A new technology comes out that's so revolutionary that you actually should stop and think about how to implement it.
[00:59:46.240 --> 00:59:47.520] When was the last time you had a lot of different things?
[00:59:47.680 --> 00:59:49.920] I'm curious, when was the last time you guys had to go through something like this?
[00:59:44.680 --> 00:59:51.840] I mean, I haven't even thought about that.
[00:59:52.080 --> 00:59:57.440] Like, in our lifetime, like mobile, maybe, but like, besides that, like, I can imagine.
[00:59:57.840 --> 01:00:00.080] Mobile, you mean like the 2007 iPhone moment?
[01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:00.560] Yeah, exactly.
[01:00:00.560 --> 01:00:02.480] The iPhone moment, like, oh shit, I can't just make web apps.
[01:00:02.480 --> 01:00:03.200] I have to think about mobile.
[01:00:03.200 --> 01:00:06.400] But even then, it took like a long time before it was like, I had to do mobile first.
[01:00:06.400 --> 01:00:08.800] And I still don't do mobile first a lot of the time, and it's fine.
[01:00:08.800 --> 01:00:10.880] The web itself is like a really good one.
[01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:16.480] Like, a lot of newspaper companies, for example, who did not adapt to the web, like are toast.
[01:00:16.480 --> 01:00:21.920] Like, they do not have, like, you look at the New York Times, who makes hundreds of millions of dollars from subscribers, like, they adopted to the web.
[01:00:21.920 --> 01:00:25.120] It was a new technology that just solved people's problems better.
[01:00:25.120 --> 01:00:29.920] I think the normal advice is like, don't focus on technology, don't have a solution in search of a problem.
[01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:36.960] But when there's like a paradigm shift, you have to actually re-examine all those problems and be like, can I make a radically better solution?
[01:00:36.960 --> 01:00:47.760] The way that we've actually dealt with changing technology at Indie Hackers is: look, crypto happened, like, you know, a lot of Web3 ideas came out.
[01:00:47.760 --> 01:00:49.280] NFTs were a thing.
[01:00:49.280 --> 01:00:51.760] Like, we thought about NFTs.
[01:00:51.760 --> 01:00:54.480] We thought about an indie hacker coin, right?
[01:00:54.480 --> 01:01:00.560] Like, we've looked at all these different changes in technology and we've seen them as opportunities.
[01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:02.880] Like, hey, can we do anything with this?
[01:01:02.880 --> 01:01:10.160] The difference now is that it's not so much of a can, it's like, shit, like, we need to figure out what's going on here.
[01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.560] And, like, it's the adaptation question, right?
[01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:14.800] It's not like an opportunity, it's like a requirement.
[01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:16.880] Yeah, it's a necessity, yeah.
[01:01:16.880 --> 01:01:18.000] And a lot of it is prediction.
[01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:21.200] Like, with the crypto stuff, it was like, oh, this is getting big.
[01:01:21.200 --> 01:01:23.520] The world in the future might be this different world.
[01:01:23.520 --> 01:01:27.520] So maybe we should do crypto stuff so that when that world arrives, like, we're good.
[01:01:27.520 --> 01:01:29.960] And then we just looked at it and we're like, I don't know if that world's going to actually arrive.
[01:01:29.960 --> 01:01:31.560] So we did zero things with crypto.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:33.560] Whereas with AI, it's like, hey, this is already here.
[01:01:33.880 --> 01:01:38.680] There's already cool shit that you can do right now that's amazing and will be useful.
[01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:43.240] You could have an AI help people write a post on indie hackers or edit their posts or come up with business ideas.
[01:01:43.720 --> 01:01:45.320] You could do that months ago.
[01:01:45.320 --> 01:01:47.240] And so it's not even a predictive thing now.
[01:01:47.480 --> 01:01:49.960] There's no question about whether it'd be useful.
[01:01:49.960 --> 01:01:52.280] Anyway, KP, we've kept you for way too long.
[01:01:52.680 --> 01:02:01.240] Thanks a ton for coming on here and talking about no-code and building in public and being a founder and AI theories and weird longevity stuff.
[01:02:01.960 --> 01:02:04.120] You've been an indie hacker for several years.
[01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:10.200] You have, I guess, hit these milestones and then felt that, hey, it's a little strange to hit these milestones that you once dreamed about.
[01:02:10.200 --> 01:02:13.880] A lot of people listening, I think, want to be where you are.
[01:02:14.200 --> 01:02:15.400] What would you say to them?
[01:02:15.720 --> 01:02:17.320] What should they learn from the fact that you got there?
[01:02:17.320 --> 01:02:19.800] And it wasn't necessarily what you expected.
[01:02:20.120 --> 01:02:30.360] I'd say it's definitely way more possible now to be an indie hacker and design life that you want.
[01:02:30.360 --> 01:02:36.280] So you don't have to, you know, be, like I said earlier, like you don't have to be at the mercy of someone's strategy shifting.
[01:02:36.280 --> 01:02:45.080] You know, that's like one of the craziest things about being in a job or tied to a W-2 is that, like we saw with Meta layoffs, right?
[01:02:45.080 --> 01:02:50.280] Meta announced that layoffs last, I think, I don't know, six months ago, saying this is the final layoffs.
[01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:52.440] This is it, this is it, the strategy is this, blah, blah, blah.
[01:02:52.600 --> 01:02:57.480] And then Zuckerberg had a new change of mind and strategy shifted again, and then 10,000 people were laid off.
[01:02:57.480 --> 01:03:03.880] And I think I can't even imagine what it feels like to be in one of those 10,000 because the last six months must have already felt like hell.
[01:03:05.160 --> 01:03:19.440] So, I mean, what I would say is just figure out a way to carve out 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a day, you know, an hour a week here and there if you're at a full-time job, like what I did in 2018, and get out of the conveyor belt.
[01:03:14.520 --> 01:03:21.760] You know, build your own little venture.
[01:03:22.480 --> 01:03:25.520] Like, you know, Danny Vasalo talks about small bets, like try a bunch of shit.
[01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:26.560] We are in the hits business.
[01:03:26.560 --> 01:03:28.960] As indie hackers, nobody remembers your failures.
[01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:30.080] This is all about hits.
[01:03:30.080 --> 01:03:32.800] If you just have one or two good hits, you're good.
[01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:33.520] You know?
[01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:37.600] So give yourself the permission to try a lot, fail a lot.
[01:03:37.600 --> 01:03:42.080] Nobody remembers the, you know, the early phases of your career, so don't worry about it.
[01:03:42.080 --> 01:03:48.000] And once you get to the point where you're a full-time founder, like I was, maybe then think about getting business cards.
[01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:51.280] But no, just remember that it's an infinite game.
[01:03:51.280 --> 01:03:51.600] Yeah.
[01:03:51.600 --> 01:03:53.120] Thanks, KP, so much for coming on.
[01:03:53.120 --> 01:04:00.080] Can you tell people where they can go to find you and your 40,000 followers on Twitter and wherever else you might want to direct listeners?
[01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:03.520] You can follow me on Twitter at thisisKP underscore.
[01:04:03.520 --> 01:04:06.240] My website's thisiskp.com.
[01:04:06.240 --> 01:04:11.120] But the Building Public stuff is all at buildingpublic.xyz.
[01:04:11.120 --> 01:04:12.400] And that's your podcast as well.
[01:04:12.400 --> 01:04:12.960] It's called Buildin Public.
[01:04:13.040 --> 01:04:14.080] Yeah, that's where the podcast is.
[01:04:14.080 --> 01:04:15.760] The fellowship is, newsletters, everything.
[01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:16.960] Check out KP's podcast.
[01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:18.000] It's good.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:07.280] What's up, dude?
[00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:08.400] How's it going?
[00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:09.680] What's going on, man?
[00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:11.920] Question for you.
[00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:19.680] Do you think that all this new AI stuff represents any sort of risk to the job that you do, that you and I do?
[00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:24.000] Not just podcasting, but like running indie hackers as a community?
[00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:26.880] No, I don't think so.
[00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:42.880] I'm very optimistic about like AI, the new wave of AI, and basically any technology, as long as I maintain like a relationship with that technology where I'm like, how can I use this?
[00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:47.920] Like, I'm totally fine making myself redundant in any job.
[00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:55.840] It's like, as long as I'm really proactive about it, I currently don't have a lot of concern, but maybe I'm just not, I'm too short-sighted.
[00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:01.600] So you don't have any like thoughts that like, okay, maybe there just won't be any of these jobs.
[00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:02.960] Hey, what's up, KP?
[00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:04.480] Yo, KP.
[00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:05.120] Hi, hi.
[00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:06.160] How are you guys?
[00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:06.480] Good.
[00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:07.040] How are you?
[00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:07.440] Good, great.
[00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:08.480] How are you doing?
[00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:08.800] Great.
[00:01:08.800 --> 00:01:09.920] Great to see you.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.600] We are engaged in a spirited debate on AI.
[00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:14.480] Not really a debate.
[00:01:14.800 --> 00:01:17.840] GPT-4 or GPT-4, the whole thing?
[00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:18.720] GTC.
[00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:20.080] What are your thoughts, KP?
[00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:23.440] Like, do you feel at all threatened by the advent of AI?
[00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:35.920] Not really threatened, but I feel like I have to be sharp on my toes in the sense that I have to readapt and relearn and be open to learning the new way.
[00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:37.760] But this is exactly what I was saying.
[00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.640] It's like, as long as you are adapting, like you're like...
[00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:41.040] Yeah.
[00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:43.840] If you don't adapt, you're going to be royally screwed now.
[00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:47.600] Like, if you weren't screwed 10 years ago, this is the chance.
[00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:57.400] I mean, this is the opportunity for like all of us will feel like the truck drivers we joke, we joke about who, you know, who are worried about the semi-trucks like being automated, right?
[00:01:58.000 --> 00:01:58.880] Exactly, exactly.
[00:01:58.880 --> 00:01:59.360] Yeah.
[00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:05.960] Yeah, yeah, it's like it's, I think, the first time in my adulthood, like the first time in my career, I've ever felt like, oh, should I have to adapt?
[00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:07.640] I kind of felt like that when mobile came out.
[00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:08.040] Yeah.
[00:02:08.040 --> 00:02:08.840] And then I just didn't.
[00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:10.200] I was like, I'll just keep making web apps.
[00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:13.240] And it was actually like the golden age of web apps for like a decade.
[00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:14.600] So it was like totally fine.
[00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:22.520] This is the first time I'm like, if I don't learn AI stuff, like a year or two from now, everything I've built might be obsolete and I might not have the ability to catch up.
[00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:22.920] Yeah.
[00:02:22.920 --> 00:02:28.280] Courtland, you know that Paul Graham article where he says, keep your identity small.
[00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:28.520] Yeah.
[00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:31.560] It's like a really famous Paul Graham article.
[00:02:31.560 --> 00:02:41.560] And I think it mostly has to do almost like with the emotional downsides of strongly identifying as like this kind of person or that kind of person.
[00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:44.760] Oh, I'm an XYZ religion follower.
[00:02:44.920 --> 00:02:45.960] I'm this, right?
[00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:53.240] If you tie yourself to a certain identity, then when anyone attacks you or criticizes you, you're going to like cling to that and not really think logically.
[00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:54.920] But that's purely the emotional side.
[00:02:54.920 --> 00:03:04.520] I think there's also like a like career longevity, sustainability side where if you don't feel as attached to like, what are you, Courtland?
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:05.800] You are a programmer.
[00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:07.160] Like I, Cortland, am I a programmer?
[00:03:07.160 --> 00:03:09.080] I've been programming since I was 12 years old.
[00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:10.920] Someone else might be like, I'm a writer.
[00:03:10.920 --> 00:03:13.560] Like I have great judgment, great creativity.
[00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:23.320] If you have those kinds of identity attachments, I think you're going to be a lot less open to re-evaluating ways that you can provide value to people.
[00:03:23.320 --> 00:03:26.520] It's like if it's 1890 and you're like, I'm a horseshoemaker.
[00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:28.600] I make horseshoes.
[00:03:28.920 --> 00:03:30.760] See, I actually have a question for you guys.
[00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:37.080] You know, do you ever wonder what am I going to be doing 25 years from now?
[00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:37.800] Oh, yeah.
[00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:39.080] All the time.
[00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:44.600] The reason I even bring this up is, and this is a good context for some of the background of our sort of pod.
[00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:53.360] Kirtland, like when I saw both of you, I was so desperate and longing, wanting to be a founder.
[00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:55.360] Founder, founder, founder, founder, founder, right?
[00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:00.480] I know that there's millions out there who might listen to your stuff and my stuff too.
[00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:06.880] There is aspiring founder is such a great place to be because everything feels like you know a hike away.
[00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:08.640] Like if you just take the hike to the top, right?
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.400] You're talking about when we met three years ago.
[00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:11.840] Yeah, three years ago.
[00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:12.480] Yeah.
[00:04:12.480 --> 00:04:15.280] In December 2022, I became a founder.
[00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:18.000] Finally, the identity thing that Channing's referring to.
[00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:23.040] Founder, CEO, felt great for 90 minutes.
[00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:27.200] And then I was like, okay, what next?
[00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:28.480] Where's the customers?
[00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:29.360] Where's the revenue?
[00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:31.280] Where's the ARR, MRR?
[00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:36.800] And I'm like, the biggest shift is like with some of the stuff, especially I started out as consulting, which is like a services.
[00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:39.680] I'm like, I get a distance scale, there's labor hours.
[00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:43.600] I'm like, all these things started like, and then I'm like, it's not as fun.
[00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:46.240] Yeah, this is not as fun as I thought it was fun.
[00:04:46.880 --> 00:04:48.160] And three and a half months into.
[00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:50.640] Being a founder is kind of like doing cocaine.
[00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:51.920] You get a 90-minute high.
[00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:52.800] Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:54.320] You have like a cool high for a while.
[00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:56.320] Shit.
[00:04:56.320 --> 00:04:59.600] And this is funny because I don't have a logo.
[00:04:59.600 --> 00:05:01.120] I don't have a business card.
[00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:05.040] And I thought that when I became a founder, I would have all of these ducks in a row.
[00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:07.360] Like, I would go to stables, I would get a printout.
[00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:09.200] I would get, I had nothing, right?
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:13.680] The moment I got the first Stripe notification is when I really felt a sense of peace.
[00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:14.960] I'm like, oh, okay.
[00:05:14.960 --> 00:05:15.600] All right.
[00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:18.000] Shit, this is legit now and we're in it.
[00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:24.080] But oftentimes, three and a half, four months into this, now I feel like I finally got a little grasp of this.
[00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:30.520] But I'm still having to force myself into this mindset of you're never going to have a salary again, man.
[00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:33.960] Like your job is to make friendship with risk.
[00:05:34.280 --> 00:05:42.120] Your middle name has to be volatility and shit that you can't control, like, you know, like being able to be resilient through the ups and downs, right?
[00:05:42.440 --> 00:05:46.280] So sometimes I kind of wonder, what would I be doing 25 years from now?
[00:05:46.280 --> 00:05:59.320] Like, and because I'm never gonna go back to W-T2, like once you're a founder, it's almost like unless something royally screwed up and like I really, really, really need the job, I don't think I'll ever go back to WTU.
[00:05:59.960 --> 00:06:01.560] I wonder, like, what would I be doing?
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:07.480] And so that brings us to this point around, as a founder, really, your identity has to be small.
[00:06:07.480 --> 00:06:08.040] Yeah.
[00:06:08.040 --> 00:06:09.800] You're just forced to keep it small.
[00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:14.600] If not, you're so attached to one idea, like, oh, one particular problem or whatever.
[00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:18.440] And you're like, if that doesn't pan out, you feel like a big void.
[00:06:18.440 --> 00:06:22.680] So the better version is just keep it small, like what Paul was saying, you know?
[00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:31.240] Well, part of that journey that you had where you were not a founder, you were a W-2 employee and you saw people like Cortland or whatever, right?
[00:06:31.240 --> 00:06:34.920] You see the founders and you go, oh, applying this guy, I want to become that thing.
[00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:41.400] That thing, like the journey to become that is this like big hit of novelty, right?
[00:06:41.400 --> 00:06:46.120] Like you had to like make changes, you probably had to make sacrifices, and then like you became that and that was fun.
[00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:49.400] And then you got there and you're like, okay, like what now?
[00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:52.040] I almost call it like the final horizon myth.
[00:06:52.040 --> 00:06:56.920] It's like this idea that when you get to that thing, it's just like the horizon is just going to be gone.
[00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:04.760] But like as a founder, the really magical thing in my opinion, is that like, all right, do you have no more products that you can build?
[00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:07.480] Do you have no more like markets that you can tap into?
[00:07:07.480 --> 00:07:13.080] Do you have no more parts of the business that you are like that like represent weaknesses for you?
[00:07:13.080 --> 00:07:15.680] A lot of people are good at coding, but they're not good at marketing.
[00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:19.120] A lot of people are good at writing, but they're not good at talking to people, right?
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.360] For me, that's the fun thing.
[00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:26.000] I was talking to a friend the other day about this, and he has a, he's a, it's our buddy Brandon Channing.
[00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.800] He has a good quote on this, which is just like, if you like something, do it again.
[00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:32.240] And then Charlie Munger has another quote.
[00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:34.800] He says, the fundamental rule of life is to repeat what works.
[00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:47.760] If there's something that made you really excited, whether that was building stuff with no code, whether that was like making money for your startup, whether that was doing marketing, and then you like accomplish whatever goal you were trying to hit with that thing, like you shouldn't change your life and stop doing that thing.
[00:07:47.760 --> 00:07:48.960] Just go back and do it again.
[00:07:48.960 --> 00:07:54.400] And chances are you'll actually like it just as much as you did the first time around because the goal was never really the point.
[00:07:54.400 --> 00:07:55.040] Yeah.
[00:07:55.040 --> 00:08:03.360] And so it's become weird now where there was a big change shift in my mindset too, because for 12 years I was on W-2 in America.
[00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:05.200] But I always felt that I had the founder DNA.
[00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:06.800] I know a lot of people think this, right?
[00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:08.320] They're like, I know I want to be a founder.
[00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:08.960] Like, I knew it.
[00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:10.080] I knew it.
[00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:18.240] Now that I'm here, and when you're in W-2, and especially in corporate life, because both of you, if you guys remember, when I met you, I was working at Delta Airlines.
[00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:28.080] It's another thing that a lot of people, a big part of their brain's bandwidth goes into how do I balance my full-time job and my passions?
[00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:28.320] Yeah.
[00:08:28.960 --> 00:08:31.360] For me, that was the biggest thing to solve at the time.
[00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:32.960] It was like, how do you balance as if there was.
[00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:34.480] And you have a family too, right?
[00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:35.520] I have a family too.
[00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:38.000] And now I look back, I'm like, that's the easiest shit.
[00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:39.360] That's like literally shit.
[00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:41.680] Right now, like what I'm going through is a full.
[00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:46.000] Now it's like I can't, like, I look in the mirror and I can't escape.
[00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:50.800] Like, I'm the full responsibility for the company, and there's no way to hide.
[00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:53.200] I can't even blame, I can't even say, oh, I have an identified job.
[00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:58.640] Like, my full-time job is getting customers, building services, the fellowship, and whatever.
[00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:01.320] So I'm like, oh, there's no escape being a founder.
[00:09:01.560 --> 00:09:09.720] So the horizon thing, back to channeling, it feels like now I'm spending a lot of time not worrying about what's my next goal.
[00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:12.520] That used to be my whole default for the last 10 years.
[00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:16.120] Now I'm thinking about it's almost an infinite game.
[00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:19.000] What is the next three, four months thing that I want to chase and pursue?
[00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:20.600] Like with fun.
[00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:21.720] Because it's an infinite game.
[00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:26.200] Like I'm never gonna, we will never gonna have a day where I'm not worried about having a customer, right?
[00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:31.400] Unless like you, I don't know, you hit like a billion dollar outcome, like, you know, like Figma, right?
[00:09:31.400 --> 00:09:36.200] But even they're worried, like, the Adobe deal is being pulled out or something, I think.
[00:09:36.200 --> 00:09:38.680] So it's like, there's never certainty.
[00:09:38.680 --> 00:09:49.080] So my friends, who I still have friends with from Delta Airlines and when I was a tunner, they always think that when they have all the answers, they can be a founder.
[00:09:49.400 --> 00:09:52.840] Because they think that certainty is like what leads them to being a founder.
[00:09:52.840 --> 00:09:58.840] And what I've learned is that just being a founder is just being friends with uncertainty.
[00:09:58.840 --> 00:09:59.720] That's it.
[00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:01.880] So we should probably introduce you at this point.
[00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:02.520] Okay.
[00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:04.600] Who it is we're talking to.
[00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:09.000] You are KP at this is KP underscore on Twitter.
[00:10:09.240 --> 00:10:15.480] Like you mentioned earlier, we all met in Atlanta in 2019, back before we even know how to spell pandemic.
[00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:16.200] We're very NSA.
[00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:17.720] Oh my God, that was pre-pandemic.
[00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:19.400] Oh my God, that's right, that's pre-pandemic.
[00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:21.800] Yeah, a lifetime ago, it feels like.
[00:10:21.800 --> 00:10:24.440] And you were running, I think, the ND Hackers Atlanta meetup.
[00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:26.920] And so you were very ambitious, you're very starry-eyed.
[00:10:26.920 --> 00:10:31.240] And I just read a tweet on your profile this morning where you said, you know, my life then versus now.
[00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:33.640] So, in 2018, you said you were stuck in a corporate job.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:35.480] You had no revenue, no exits.
[00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:41.000] You published no podcast episodes, you'd started zero side projects, and you only had a couple hundred followers on Twitter.
[00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.800] And then today, you've got over 42,000 followers on Twitter.
[00:10:43.800 --> 00:10:48.640] You've built 16 projects with no-code tools, and you're kind of an authority on no-code.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:52.000] You're a writer, you're a podcaster, you're also an authority on building in public.
[00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:53.680] You've had two exits.
[00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:57.920] You're a founder, she said, you're a CEO, and you've done hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
[00:10:57.920 --> 00:11:02.960] So, you've come a long way as a sort of indie hacker who, like, in a way, feels like you have your hand in every pot.
[00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:07.600] Like, I don't know if you're the build in public guy, or the no-code guy, or the writing guy, or the community guy.
[00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:09.520] You're like, all of these guys.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.720] All of them.
[00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:12.880] And I want to say thank you.
[00:11:12.880 --> 00:11:19.280] And back to Channing's point about keeping my identity small, I actually identify as none of them.
[00:11:19.280 --> 00:11:26.240] I think I'm just the same guy awestruck about entrepreneurship as the game, the meta game itself, right?
[00:11:26.400 --> 00:11:32.000] And I'm trying my best to go back to those shoes of like the day I met you both.
[00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:33.200] And you guys don't even know.
[00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:34.480] And I have to say this on air.
[00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:35.760] I'm recording, right?
[00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:36.240] Yeah.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:39.120] Oh my God, I was so starstruck.
[00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:40.560] I was so starstruck.
[00:11:40.560 --> 00:11:43.200] And I was so happy to see your faces.
[00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:54.160] And I was like, first of all, Courtland, like for anyone listening to this, the background story, which I have to narrate from my vantage point, is that I was running these meetups in Atlanta.
[00:11:54.160 --> 00:11:57.280] And I think we ran like eight or nine in a series.
[00:11:57.280 --> 00:11:58.800] Every month was a meetup.
[00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:03.920] And I finally negotiated my way to get a free venue at Atlanta Tech Village.
[00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:06.880] And that became a one-year contract for us for the venue.
[00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:07.360] And I was saying.
[00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:09.600] And you're building as a Calendly, I think, right?
[00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:10.720] Yeah, they have Calendly.
[00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:13.040] They have Sales Loft and a few others.
[00:12:13.040 --> 00:12:14.480] So we were doing this.
[00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:23.280] And then I think out of the, I don't know where, maybe in Indie Hacker Slack or somewhere, I mentioned that I'm doing the meetup and you said, oh, yeah, KP, I'm going to be in Atlanta.
[00:12:23.280 --> 00:12:26.160] Maybe we can align our dates to have the meetup where I'm there.
[00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:27.680] So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:31.400] I will remove our calendar update.
[00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:35.240] I will make it so that the meetup happens on the day you're here.
[00:12:35.880 --> 00:12:42.840] And what I didn't know was that you were going to show up with your entourage, which is like you showed up with Channing, you showed up with your mom.
[00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:43.160] Yeah.
[00:12:44.760 --> 00:12:47.640] I'm so happy to go here that she was called our entourage.
[00:12:47.960 --> 00:12:51.160] Shout out to we grew up in Atlanta, so our mom is there.
[00:12:51.160 --> 00:12:51.560] So we got to do that.
[00:12:52.200 --> 00:12:53.880] That was the part that I was like, what?
[00:12:54.200 --> 00:13:00.600] And, you know, I think it was hot coming off of like a lot of press interviews of you guys and about the Stripe acquisition and everything.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:05.720] And I was like, all these outcomes sounded so awesome.
[00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:10.680] But what really made an impact on me was that I could relate to you guys.
[00:13:10.680 --> 00:13:11.960] And I thought that was so cool.
[00:13:12.520 --> 00:13:16.840] And I was like, man, I saw a little bit of me in you at the time.
[00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:25.560] And so I owe it to you that it made me feel like, yeah, I can maybe push myself a little bit, put in the work and just keep at this.
[00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:31.640] Because if these two guys have done it and they're so relatable and they're so humble, maybe I could do this too.
[00:13:31.640 --> 00:13:34.520] And so a lot of my success, I owe it to influences like you.
[00:13:34.520 --> 00:13:34.920] Wow.
[00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:35.640] That's wild.
[00:13:35.640 --> 00:13:36.040] I have to say.
[00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:38.520] That's sick that you were just starting out.
[00:13:38.520 --> 00:13:40.040] Like, I didn't know that until now.
[00:13:40.040 --> 00:13:40.360] Yeah.
[00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:43.960] So that happened at the tweet that you were talking about.
[00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:47.320] Like, that was in the same time zone, the same time period.
[00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:47.720] You already saw that.
[00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:49.080] People saw that.
[00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:50.120] And you were running shit.
[00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:50.520] Yeah.
[00:13:50.520 --> 00:13:50.680] Yeah.
[00:13:51.400 --> 00:13:52.840] KP seems to have Atlanta locked down.
[00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:54.360] He's like the entity here.
[00:13:54.360 --> 00:13:56.120] It was a sick meetup spot.
[00:13:56.120 --> 00:14:00.440] There was like a roundtable of all these successful founders, successful indie hackers.
[00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:02.520] You were sitting there like with the presentation.
[00:14:02.520 --> 00:14:05.720] You're like, all right, first person, like, go, next person, go.
[00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:08.760] And now, looking back on it, you're like, oh, yeah, I was just getting started, right?
[00:14:08.760 --> 00:14:11.240] I still had still my full-time job.
[00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:15.520] Yeah, that was crazy because I was trying to make it happen, you know, with whatever I could.
[00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:16.800] I was also on a visa at the time.
[00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:17.760] Now I have my green card.
[00:14:17.760 --> 00:14:18.240] Shout out.
[00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:18.800] Thank God.
[00:14:18.800 --> 00:14:20.400] Immigration, you know, thank God.
[00:14:14.600 --> 00:14:21.600] God left America.
[00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:31.040] Man, it was so many obstacles at the time that were like, mentally in my head, were almost like, oh, you can't be a founder.
[00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:34.000] Like, there are all these obstacles and all these limiting beliefs.
[00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.480] And so I was looking for any ray of hope, I guess.
[00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:42.480] You know, and when you guys showed up in Atlanta, I was like, with the entourage with mom, I was like, well, you know, this is still.
[00:14:42.720 --> 00:14:47.200] So this is why I thought of you as like a community organizer because of like the indie hackers meetups that you're running.
[00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:54.240] It's not easy to run a meetup and to like recruit members and to get the space and provide for food and make sure it's entertaining and everyone learns.
[00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:56.720] So it's like, that's like a vocation in and of itself.
[00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.280] I think simultaneously we're like this no-code guy.
[00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:02.080] Like you were just like, we're getting really into no-code.
[00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:06.080] And then now, like in more recent years, I've seen you do a lot of build and public stuff.
[00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:11.520] And so I guess I want to ask you, like, if these are your babies, which one is your favorite baby?
[00:15:11.520 --> 00:15:14.400] Like, which one wins out over all the rest?
[00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:15.840] Oh, that's a tough one.
[00:15:15.840 --> 00:15:16.000] Yeah.
[00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:18.960] Maybe which one has made you the most money as an indie hacker?
[00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:21.120] Oh, which one has made me the most money?
[00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:22.640] I think community organizer.
[00:15:22.640 --> 00:15:25.120] It's massively underrated, that skill.
[00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.800] Also, first of all, I didn't even know that was a skill.
[00:15:28.800 --> 00:15:35.920] Like, to me, the skills were very clearly defined, like sales is a skill or programming is a skill, right?
[00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:40.000] And so, shout out Drew Riley, who's also from Atlanta.
[00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:41.760] You guys know him.
[00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:49.760] He would come to these indie hacker meetups in Atlanta, and he would stop me one time and said, Kippi, you realize you're a pretty good community builder.
[00:15:49.760 --> 00:15:51.760] Like, you should look into this thing.
[00:15:51.760 --> 00:15:52.960] And I was like, come on, man.
[00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:54.720] Like, I'm just getting pizzas for us.
[00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:56.320] I'm just like, you know.
[00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:57.760] And he's like, no, no, no.
[00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:01.800] This, like, this kind of human router thing, I've felt that all my life.
[00:16:02.120 --> 00:17:34.880] But I never really realized it's a skill that's valuable to others until I started doing indie hackers meetups and became intentional about tech and realized tech is one of those industries where you know there's a lot of introverts and there's a lot of like freaking influential people who don't by choice come out and hang out and do a lot of networking like the salesy greasy networking right i was gonna ask you are you a you an introvert or you an introvert i'm an ambi ambivert i think i'm yeah but i used to grew up as an introvert so i can relate to same yeah same exact here i grew up thinking i was an introvert yeah telling myself i'm an introvert and then like as i've gotten older like yeah they keep the mouth now now if i say an introvert they're like no you're not no you're not they'll they'll kill me but but i can relate to them so i can understand how an introvert thinks i understand like this bullshit like salesy like you know shaking hands and like trading business cards bullshit that used to happen all around atlanta and i was like there has to be a better way to do community and my sort of canvas was indie hackers didn't have any consistent streak of atlanta meetups i was like okay clearly there's an opening here i'll dive in and the bar is actually much higher to convince and impress developers as opposed to maybe an average joe in tech the developers are so prudent and they're so like they're like picky as fuck you know they're like yeah they're like here i'll put on my developer hat for a second because it'll kind of answer a question i'm curious about which is developers often are like, they see things very functionally and they're like, What's the point?
[00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:35.520] What's the purpose?
[00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:37.360] And that's exactly.
[00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:46.320] And like, that's the thing that uh sort of has people have tension with when they don't want to just go and glad hand and go network for reasons where they're just like, What's the point of it?
[00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:53.840] So, when you first started trying to build this community and get these meetups going, like, did you have a value proposition?
[00:17:53.840 --> 00:17:57.840] Were you like, here's what you're gonna get out of it, or were you just like, hey, let's all just like meet up?
[00:17:57.840 --> 00:17:59.200] Yeah, what was your approach?
[00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:00.720] Farmer, former.
[00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:06.400] And I knew that I will get lashed out, I will get like kicked out of the meetup space if I was doing any of this stuff.
[00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.680] Because I knew indie hackers, I knew the persona, I knew the kind of people there.
[00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:12.240] So, I said, okay, what's the real utility?
[00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:17.840] You know, what would make someone get in the car, drive up to this thing, and then really spend an hour?
[00:18:17.840 --> 00:18:24.000] And my answer to that was: number one, was actual accountability and vulnerability, which is missing.
[00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:29.040] Because a lot of developers, like, you know, they get roasted when they post something on hacker news.
[00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:31.920] They're like, people come at you, right?
[00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:37.200] And so, I was like, is there a more vulnerable but candid way to share feedback?
[00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.040] That wasn't my number one thing.
[00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:46.080] And I thought I could model this myself, where I would look at someone's landing page and they would ask me sales copy feedback, and I'd be like, this sucks, but this can be better.
[00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:48.400] Or this, look at Harry Dry's example, or whatever.
[00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:48.960] Number one.
[00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:55.120] Number two was accountability in the sense of how do we build a very simple routine.
[00:18:55.120 --> 00:19:00.000] So I would publish three-step prompts that were kind of like mastermind questions.
[00:19:00.320 --> 00:19:02.560] Basically, like a stand-up, what have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:06.800] Which is an infamous question now because Elon Musk also asked this to Parag, right?
[00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:08.480] What have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:11.920] I think it's a pretty strong prompt.
[00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:21.200] If a bunch of indie hackers meet every Friday for 18 months, which we did, and just ask each other, what have you shipped since last week?
[00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:23.400] I think all of them were going to be bangers and ballers.
[00:19:23.120 --> 00:19:24.040] Dude, I got to do that.
[00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:25.760] That's YC on a nutshell.
[00:19:25.760 --> 00:19:27.280] That's what you do in Y Combinator.
[00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:30.680] You got to, and you're in a room full of other smart people, and they ask, what did you do last week?
[00:19:30.840 --> 00:19:32.200] And you don't want to feel dumb.
[00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:34.760] So, like, yeah, you can't buy it.
[00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:36.280] Yeah, it doesn't work.
[00:19:36.280 --> 00:19:38.440] Dude, Courtland, I'm hitting you up with that like tomorrow.
[00:19:38.440 --> 00:19:39.880] Like, what did you ship yesterday?
[00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:41.400] Like, what the hell did you ship yesterday?
[00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:43.000] Well, we had the podcast.
[00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:45.880] All right, like, well, that was at 4 p.m.
[00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:48.440] What did you do before you went to bed?
[00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:51.880] So, we had that as sort of the main anchor.
[00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:54.840] I didn't call it mastermind, it was just a prompt.
[00:19:54.840 --> 00:19:59.080] And then I would say the third part was show, don't tell.
[00:19:59.080 --> 00:20:02.280] So, if you build something, you know, get on the stage, show.
[00:20:02.280 --> 00:20:05.160] That's what I was trying to route people to Courtney when you were there.
[00:20:05.160 --> 00:20:12.920] I was trying to get as many people who were building cool shit to show you because I knew that they would feel the way that I felt about showing it to you, right?
[00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:28.600] And so, they all, like, after you left, you guys left, they were like, KP, this is the best meetup we had, you know, because it's one thing to say, yeah, yo, we had like, you know, Indie Hacker's founder here, but it's something else to say, he actually saw the shit that I was building, you know, and he liked it or he resonated with it, you know.
[00:20:28.600 --> 00:20:39.160] So it's fascinating to me that, um, in a way, like to go back to your sort of Hacker News comment, like it can be scarier to put your work out on the internet than it is to share with people in person.
[00:20:39.160 --> 00:20:41.160] When I was younger, I would have thought it was the exact opposite.
[00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:43.800] Like, internet, nobody can see your face, you're anonymous if you want to be.
[00:20:43.800 --> 00:20:46.680] Like, no, like it's just random usernames, like, let me just put my stuff out.
[00:20:46.680 --> 00:20:49.880] But in person, it's like you're on a stage, you know, like that seems scary.
[00:20:49.880 --> 00:20:52.120] But the reality is, it's almost always the exact opposite.
[00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:55.560] Like, a small room, 10, 20 people, you see them present.
[00:20:55.560 --> 00:20:57.800] You know, there's a lot of empathy, there's a lot of connection.
[00:20:57.800 --> 00:20:59.800] Hacker news or Twitter, it's cutthroat, right?
[00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:01.240] People don't know you, they don't care about you.
[00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:05.960] If you do anything slightly wrong, they're just gonna cut you apart and then you know, link to their own product.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:07.400] That's a competitor of yours or something.
[00:21:07.880 --> 00:21:09.960] It's a dog-eat-dog world online.
[00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:24.800] Well, there's also like the fact that you're in person when people are reviewing, like they feel more pressure to like, number one, give it the time of day, really think about what you're trying to do, et cetera, as opposed to getting like off-the-cuff responses.
[00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:34.800] Like, there was a very famous, I don't know if it's famous, but Peter Levels posted on Hacker News and said, like, hey, you know, I don't even know what product he was launching, but he like kind of posted about it.
[00:21:34.800 --> 00:21:36.720] And it was like, you know, I make a lot of money.
[00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:38.640] Here's my this or that.
[00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:42.480] And there was a negative comment that was just like, oh, great.
[00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:45.600] Another guy who like talks a talk but doesn't walk the walk.
[00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:48.640] He's famous for talking about how you can become famous.
[00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.160] And then Peter literally just commented in response to that person.
[00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:55.360] He's like, well, actually, I've done like these five products, right?
[00:21:55.360 --> 00:21:57.440] Like, I really do walk the walk, et cetera.
[00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:01.440] And the person, it was like the only time ever where someone on Hacker News has apologized.
[00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:04.320] He was like, oh, I didn't really read anything.
[00:22:04.560 --> 00:22:07.280] Now that I look and see, your stuff is pretty sick.
[00:22:07.280 --> 00:22:08.640] I am sorry.
[00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:09.040] Right?
[00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:14.080] And it's like, that would never have to happen if someone's sitting in a room with you.
[00:22:14.080 --> 00:22:14.480] Right.
[00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:24.640] The most classic Hacker News comment is the one on Dropbox's launch in 2007, where they launched Dropbox, and the first comment was like, I have a few qualms with this app.
[00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.160] Number one, it doesn't seem very viral or income generating.
[00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:30.880] Number two, I could build this myself as a little week user.
[00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:32.720] Yeah, I could build this in a weekend.
[00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:36.880] And it turned out like Dropbox made billions of dollars and was like one of the most viral apps of all time.
[00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:38.640] But the Hacker News trolls don't care.
[00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:39.280] Yeah.
[00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:44.560] It's almost like if you don't get roasted, it's almost like that's when you should worry on Hacker News.
[00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:47.440] Yeah, even a real founder, if you didn't get roasted on Hacker News.
[00:22:47.440 --> 00:22:47.840] Right.
[00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:51.040] So, this, I think, rolls into something that you're super good at, KP.
[00:22:51.040 --> 00:22:54.240] You're an expert on building in public.
[00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:57.360] This is something that's near and dear to my heart as an indie hacker.
[00:22:57.360 --> 00:22:58.880] Indie Hackers is all about transparency.
[00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:03.480] It's all about not only talking about how much money you make from your projects, but also building them in public.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.800] But I don't even have a definition for build in public.
[00:23:05.880 --> 00:23:09.320] Like, what does it mean to build in public, and why would anybody do that?
[00:23:09.320 --> 00:23:15.400] So, I'm curious, you're the guy, like, how would you describe to listeners why that's a thing that matters?
[00:23:15.720 --> 00:23:19.640] I feel like there's as many definitions of this as there are indie hackers.
[00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:24.680] So, I'll just kind of say that, you know, make what you want to make out of it.
[00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.560] But here's my sort of reflection on it.
[00:23:27.560 --> 00:23:31.640] I think it's really the philosophy that I think is more important.
[00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:36.840] You know, the philosophy of transparency and the philosophy of openness and putting yourself out there.
[00:23:36.840 --> 00:23:39.640] So, it's not just transparency for the transparency's sake.
[00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:41.160] There has to be some skin in the game.
[00:23:41.160 --> 00:23:44.440] There has to be some level of vulnerability when you're building in public.
[00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:47.160] Otherwise, it's just, you know, it's too fake.
[00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:49.960] Like, everybody on Instagram is not building in public.
[00:23:49.960 --> 00:23:50.840] They're just social.
[00:23:50.840 --> 00:23:53.160] They just have a lot of social media posts.
[00:23:53.160 --> 00:24:10.120] The way I think about it is: it's a combination of, you know, sharing your journey as it unfolds and sharing not just the highs, you know, the real sort of Instagram, like just the top 1% situations, but things that really affect you, things that really were top of mind for you.
[00:24:10.120 --> 00:24:17.480] And documenting this journey, putting things out there, and co-creating with a group of audience who care.
[00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:25.640] Now, how do you get people to care is like the same question that I had when how do I get people to come show up to the indie hackers meetup?
[00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:27.960] It's by giving value, right?
[00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:31.320] Doing the things that they would feel compelled to come attend.
[00:24:31.320 --> 00:24:36.120] So the same thing when people say, oh, I posted about the fact that I had a banana at 4 a.m.
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.840] and nobody cared and nobody liked my building public tweets.
[00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:40.040] I'm like, nobody gives a shit.
[00:24:40.040 --> 00:24:44.600] Like, the point is, what's in it that's valuable to somebody else?
[00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:52.640] With Peter Level's example, he constantly tweets about sort of the new things he's doing with AI, the photo AI and a few other products.
[00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:57.200] It's super compelling for someone developer who's like, how is this guy doing this in a PHP file?
[00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:58.080] How?
[00:24:58.080 --> 00:25:00.000] Like, what are some new plugins he's using?
[00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:02.320] What are some new things he's touching on?
[00:25:02.320 --> 00:25:07.040] So I think there has to be an element of utility, not just content for the sake of content.
[00:25:07.040 --> 00:25:08.320] So that's how I would define it.
[00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:15.520] What do you think is the difference between building in public and just being transparent?
[00:25:15.520 --> 00:25:16.800] Because I'm a fan of both.
[00:25:16.800 --> 00:25:18.480] Sometimes I kind of confuse them.
[00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:27.920] I feel like there's a lot of overlap, but I feel like transparency can oftentimes just mean numbers with no narrative.
[00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:38.720] And like, for example, if I just posted a bunch of my screenshots of, you know, retention charts or MRR or whatever, that's transparency, extreme transparency.
[00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:44.320] And if I post like customer names and like, you know, where they're joining from, what locations, all of that stuff.
[00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:46.160] Plain text, passwords.
[00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:47.280] Yeah, like all this stuff.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:49.680] I think that's all transparency, right, for the sake of it.
[00:25:49.920 --> 00:26:05.600] But I feel like building in public is kind of like as a founder, you know, using these numbers and screenshots or whatever pieces of your story and putting it out there and almost seeking connection and trying to like build with others in a way.
[00:26:05.600 --> 00:26:07.360] I think the build part is important.
[00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:10.720] And so I think that's the difference, you know, in my view.
[00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.280] I mean, there's so many social media accounts I see like on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.
[00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:24.240] And they're like talking about, oh, here's the story of how McDonald's, whoever the guy created McDonald's, and like there's all these like shit posts.
[00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:25.840] I think his name is Ronald.
[00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:26.640] Ronald.
[00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:27.440] Sorry.
[00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:30.360] Someone's going to roast me on this and I deserve it.
[00:26:30.360 --> 00:26:32.600] You know these Instagram accounts that they're like pseudonymous.
[00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:36.920] Like there's like 7,000 tweets a day and they're like anonymous.
[00:26:37.160 --> 00:26:40.040] And they're talking about architecture around the world.
[00:26:40.040 --> 00:26:41.320] I don't think they're building in public.
[00:26:41.560 --> 00:26:43.880] They're like posting a lot.
[00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:45.400] But that doesn't mean they're building in public.
[00:26:45.400 --> 00:26:49.720] I took a bunch of notes on building in public a couple years ago and I was like, I should know more about this.
[00:26:49.720 --> 00:26:52.040] And then I promptly never did anything with it.
[00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:53.240] But I still have my notes.
[00:26:53.560 --> 00:26:55.960] I feel like you already naturally built in public, though.
[00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:58.600] I think that's the way you're building the podcast.
[00:26:59.320 --> 00:27:07.560] Not only the podcast, I remember when you did the new redesign of the website and you wanted new suggestions and feedback on how you wanted to.
[00:27:08.920 --> 00:27:11.640] I'm like a little league build in public guy.
[00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:12.040] Yeah.
[00:27:12.040 --> 00:27:12.520] But that's it.
[00:27:12.520 --> 00:27:13.400] That's exactly it.
[00:27:13.400 --> 00:27:22.680] So you were asking feedback, if anyone remembers this, Cortland, or I don't know if both of you or one of you, you were asking feedback on indie hacker profiles, like how you want the profile page to be.
[00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:23.000] Yeah.
[00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:23.400] Yeah.
[00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:30.440] I think this is kind of where I fall down on building public because my natural tendency is to just like build everything in secret.
[00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.360] I don't even like launching stuff, KP.
[00:27:32.360 --> 00:27:36.680] Like my, like the way I launch most stuff is I build it and then I silently release it and I don't tell anybody.
[00:27:36.680 --> 00:27:40.440] And then six months later, if it's like going okay, then I put it on product hunt or something.
[00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:45.560] I'm like, look at this new thing that's not even new anymore because I just don't want to put it out there.
[00:27:45.560 --> 00:27:47.080] I call this the launch ladder.
[00:27:47.080 --> 00:27:51.000] I haven't published a post on this, but I want to, like, I've been made a bunch of tweets on this.
[00:27:51.000 --> 00:28:08.120] But I feel like, you know, building in public, if it feels like too daunting or it's just not your personality, then I have this launch ladder thing where I'm saying, like, okay, launch it to four of your besties, like, launch it to, you know, your four best friends in a group chat.
[00:28:08.120 --> 00:28:16.000] Then go from there and launch it to your Telegraph channel or if you have a, you know, Slack channel.
[00:28:14.600 --> 00:28:17.840] Then launch it to a bigger group.
[00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:20.160] And then, of course, launch it to a product hunt, right?
[00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:27.840] At every turn, make sure that you're seeking feedback and just seeing like what resonates and then iterating based on the feedback.
[00:28:27.840 --> 00:28:32.640] We're in kind of an unfair position that's awesome where we have our own community that we can build in public too.
[00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.800] Very similar to you having like your Atlanta meetup, where it's like, this is a safe place to come.
[00:28:36.800 --> 00:28:43.360] Post your stuff, and these people already like you before you put it on Twitter or happen to use a Reddit or product hunt or somewhere where like people don't know you.
[00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:43.840] Yeah.
[00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:51.200] But I think when I look at like the world heavyweight like champions of building in public, like Peter Levels is obviously one.
[00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:52.320] Tony Denn is really good.
[00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:53.520] Jean Furry is really good.
[00:28:53.520 --> 00:28:55.040] Like there's just a lot of people who are great.
[00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:56.240] Who inspires you?
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:58.080] Who do you think is like doing it the best?
[00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:00.640] And what do you think makes them so good?
[00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:06.720] Because when I see someone who's really good at building in public, they're not just doing it for shits and giggles and not just doing it to feel good and authentic.
[00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:13.840] They're also like crushing it with their products and making millions of dollars because they have such a huge engaged audience that they can launch to.
[00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:14.320] Yeah.
[00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:16.880] I mean Danny Postman comes to mind.
[00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:20.160] He's crushing it along with Peter Levels.
[00:29:20.160 --> 00:29:26.960] Peter Levels, I feel like, is one of my favorite examples because he's just, the guy is sort of relentless, you know, and I want to be like him.
[00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:30.160] Like, he's just made so much money and he won't quit, man.
[00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:30.880] Come on.
[00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:32.800] And he doesn't care about threads.
[00:29:32.800 --> 00:29:34.640] His feed is not manicured.
[00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:38.400] People have taken this too far and then they've gotten into the threadboy category.
[00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:42.960] And then there's like manicuring and like lawn care that's going on in people's tweets.
[00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:48.080] And the other day, somebody I reacted to, I was sharing one of my friends, and it's like, hey, Dick, have you seen this thing?
[00:29:48.080 --> 00:29:51.200] And he was like, no, no, no, I don't retweet anybody's stuff anymore.
[00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:51.760] I was like, why?
[00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:53.760] And he goes, no, no, no, I just want to keep it clean.
[00:29:53.760 --> 00:29:54.480] I'm like, what?
[00:29:54.480 --> 00:29:56.080] I don't want to loot my feed.
[00:29:56.080 --> 00:29:56.960] Are you a gardener?
[00:29:56.960 --> 00:29:57.600] Like, what's going on?
[00:29:57.600 --> 00:30:00.120] Is this your, like, have you been at a nail salon?
[00:30:00.120 --> 00:30:01.720] Are these your toenails?
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:02.040] What's this?
[00:30:02.280 --> 00:30:06.440] I think I've literally heard of people referring to their feeds as like a garden.
[00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:21.560] Here's my thing: as the guy who went from 414 followers to 42,000, my comment is: if I don't get to tweet whatever the F I want to tweet in whatever format I want to tweet, what was the point of building an audience?
[00:30:21.560 --> 00:30:29.960] The same thing with some of these people who, some of these indie hacker friends that I have who are like, you know, crushing over seven-figure businesses, ARR.
[00:30:29.960 --> 00:30:32.840] And I call them and they're like, no, no, I don't take calls.
[00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:36.360] I just, you know, and I look at my calendar and they're so busy.
[00:30:36.760 --> 00:30:42.520] And my thing is, this, like, if you're working Wall Street hours as a founder, you're doing it wrong, man.
[00:30:42.520 --> 00:30:56.040] Like, you know, the point of being a founder is you're trading certainty and peace of mind and like just paycheck and W2, you know, mortgage piece to this autonomy to work from anywhere.
[00:30:56.040 --> 00:30:56.440] Yeah.
[00:30:56.440 --> 00:31:01.720] And to take off the day if you want to and pick up a phone call from Courtland if he calls you, like, goddamn.
[00:31:01.720 --> 00:31:05.640] I called Bru Riley and he's in Brazil and he's like, hey, KB, let me know what's going on.
[00:31:05.640 --> 00:31:05.960] Right?
[00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:07.320] That's what we want.
[00:31:07.320 --> 00:31:12.520] There has to be some upside to being, you know, taking on this treacherous path.
[00:31:12.520 --> 00:31:17.480] But anyway, back to, yeah, I think Peter Levels is so hungry and I love that he just doesn't care.
[00:31:17.480 --> 00:31:26.840] You know, even like the nuance, the photo AI and some of the new ones he's building, he truly shows you that it's the same loop that everyone has to go through.
[00:31:26.840 --> 00:31:30.040] There's no shortcuts to product validation.
[00:31:30.040 --> 00:31:34.600] You may have some audience, but you still have to take the brunt of someone's harsh feedback.
[00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:36.680] Like, people still roast him on his feed.
[00:31:38.200 --> 00:31:39.160] Regardless of how much success he's doing.
[00:31:39.320 --> 00:31:41.520] He created his own little hacker news bubble in his own product.
[00:31:41.520 --> 00:31:42.080] Right, exactly.
[00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:43.160] People just roast everything.
[00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:44.040] It never goes away.
[00:31:44.040 --> 00:31:44.640] So I love that.
[00:31:45.040 --> 00:31:46.400] I think it keeps his.
[00:31:46.560 --> 00:31:49.120] Arvid Carl is another, you know, I don't know if you're Arvid's on the podcast.
[00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:49.840] Arvind's awesome.
[00:31:44.520 --> 00:31:50.080] Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:51.040 --> 00:31:52.960] He's also grown his following a ton.
[00:31:53.600 --> 00:32:02.960] And I think one of the things that I see from looking at Peter, I'm not sure if it's still penned at the top of his Twitter, but it's kind of like, you know, hey, I've released like 70, 80 projects.
[00:32:02.960 --> 00:32:05.040] Yeah, and like, you know, only four of them make any money.
[00:32:05.040 --> 00:32:08.480] And the cool thing about building in public is nobody remembers the ones that failed, right?
[00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:09.520] I remember he was writing a book.
[00:32:09.520 --> 00:32:11.120] I have no idea how much money his book made.
[00:32:11.120 --> 00:32:12.320] He never talks about it anymore.
[00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:13.040] No one cares.
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:15.040] He was making like a Slack clone.
[00:32:15.040 --> 00:32:16.240] No one even remembers that.
[00:32:16.240 --> 00:32:18.480] He was tweeting about it like it was going to be the best thing ever.
[00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:19.520] Now it's just gone.
[00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:21.520] And everybody only remembers his hits.
[00:32:21.520 --> 00:32:23.200] I was also looking at Tony Denny.
[00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:23.840] He's the same thing.
[00:32:23.840 --> 00:32:26.720] He's been building these AI chat products.
[00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:30.560] And he's had a few of them that just didn't go anywhere.
[00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:32.000] He's got like 80,000 followers.
[00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:36.720] So it's not like having a bunch of followers means everything is an instant hit any more than it is for anybody else.
[00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:40.000] But like his second or third try, he made, what's it called?
[00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:40.880] Typing mind, I think.
[00:32:41.040 --> 00:32:41.120] Right.
[00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:44.400] Yeah, it's a new user interface for ChatGPT.
[00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:46.880] And that one is just making money hand over fist.
[00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:52.080] And it looks like everything somebody touches turns to gold when you see them posting in public about that success.
[00:32:52.080 --> 00:32:56.320] But they literally could have been posting like a month ago about all of their failures and people just forget.
[00:32:56.320 --> 00:32:56.800] Yeah.
[00:32:56.800 --> 00:33:00.560] I mean, I'm a practical walking case study of like, I said the same thing.
[00:33:00.560 --> 00:33:14.640] Like if you go back to 2018 tweets, there were some tweets where I would say the like it's the same message and then I would repost it now and there'd be like a bunch of replies and a bunch of people like, you know, like liking, sharing and like, yeah, comment, engagement.
[00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:15.760] And I'm like, what?
[00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:17.920] It's the same content, same piece of content.
[00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:25.840] What the difference, I think, is, you know, I've become a lot more relaxed at this game.
[00:33:25.840 --> 00:33:28.720] I've built up a lot of social capital with this game.
[00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:34.760] And so when you give a lot to a set of people for a long period of time, they're just bound to reply.
[00:33:34.760 --> 00:33:37.080] They're bound to reciprocate.
[00:33:37.080 --> 00:33:42.680] And so oftentimes in the beginning, we just think that it's the meritocracy of the ideas we have, the insights we have.
[00:33:42.680 --> 00:33:43.720] It doesn't matter.
[00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:45.240] Just help people.
[00:33:45.240 --> 00:33:49.000] They'll thank you in the long run and they'll want to be around you.
[00:33:49.240 --> 00:33:50.680] What you're doing is building it public.
[00:33:50.680 --> 00:33:56.200] But I also think that there's some value in just pure transparency, pure like, hey, this is a purple cow.
[00:33:56.200 --> 00:33:57.160] Come look at it.
[00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:02.360] But you just have to know the use case that you're addressing there is like you wanted to sort of market.
[00:34:02.360 --> 00:34:05.000] You're not necessarily trying to have like deep connections.
[00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:13.960] And I just speak from experience because I love seeing when people are really transparent about super weird, extreme shit.
[00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:15.320] Like I love purple cows.
[00:34:15.320 --> 00:34:17.640] Like every single week, I feel like I find a purple cow.
[00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:19.160] But give us a couple examples.
[00:34:19.640 --> 00:34:22.440] A couple examples are, have you ever heard of Brian Johnson?
[00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:24.200] He's the founder of Braintree.
[00:34:24.520 --> 00:34:28.920] So Brian Johnson is like one of the wildest, weirdest people ever.
[00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:31.240] He's number one, he's like, you know, multiple hundred million dollars.
[00:34:31.240 --> 00:34:32.120] He sold Braintree.
[00:34:32.120 --> 00:34:34.280] He's a founder of a bunch of different things.
[00:34:34.280 --> 00:34:40.760] And what he's done with that money is, if you've heard of longevity, it's like there's new science where you're trying to like live forever.
[00:34:40.760 --> 00:34:47.880] Brian Johnson is the number one like guinea pig of all of this science that's just coming down the pike.
[00:34:48.280 --> 00:34:51.000] He was on the news for a while, for a month ago or something, right?
[00:34:51.160 --> 00:34:51.480] Yeah.
[00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:51.960] Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:51.960 --> 00:34:53.000] So he was on the news.
[00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:55.880] Like a lot of people interviewed him, and you'll get little snippets.
[00:34:55.880 --> 00:35:01.480] But he himself will post the most transparent things, which is actually where the most interesting stuff is.
[00:35:01.480 --> 00:35:08.200] So, for example, he has on YouTube, anyone can YouTube it, it's called My Anti-Aging Protocol Broke a World Record.
[00:35:08.200 --> 00:35:25.040] And this thing has like 300,000 views, and it's literally just a like two-hour video where he and his like main biologist, his main doctor, he spends two million dollars or something a year, like rejuvenating every single cell in his body.
[00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:32.400] He wakes up, he eats like exactly 1,977 calories per day, all vegan.
[00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:42.560] He like, it's like, and you, and he takes a 45-year-old biotech CEO, may have reduced his biological age by at least five years through a rigorous medical program that costs two million dollars a year.
[00:35:42.560 --> 00:35:49.920] And it's just him staring blankly at the camera and like a perfect caricature of like every dystopian sci-fi show that shows like Silicon Valley billionaire.
[00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:51.040] Impact billionaire, right?
[00:35:51.040 --> 00:35:55.120] Yeah, injecting like stem cells with small children into their arms so they could live like that.
[00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:57.920] But it's like, hey, take my take my YouTube view, right?
[00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.720] Like, I'm the first person to watch that, right?
[00:36:00.720 --> 00:36:01.680] And there are tons of other people.
[00:36:01.680 --> 00:36:04.000] So, I mean, look, and I don't like Brian Johnson.
[00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:05.360] I don't know Brian Johnson, right?
[00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:10.880] I don't feel like attached to him or familiar with him, but that's like pure transparency, right?
[00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:12.160] I think there's something to it.
[00:36:12.160 --> 00:36:16.800] Like, I feel like humans are just innately so curious about the process.
[00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:26.480] I feel like a lot of the time when you're living through the process of something and the journey of something, it sucks for you, but it's so much fun for others.
[00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:28.400] So, like, you know what I'm trying to say?
[00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:30.960] Like, you know, being a founder sucks shit for you.
[00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:33.920] Like, God, you know, like, it's so mundane, so boring.
[00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:35.680] You have to do the same seven things over and over.
[00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:43.440] Like, debugging, let's say, for example, when you like publish the code base, you're just going through stuff is so boring as hell for you and your peers.
[00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:46.720] But for someone out there, this might be the Brian Johnson moment.
[00:36:46.720 --> 00:36:48.080] Like, they are looking for this shit.
[00:36:48.080 --> 00:36:51.600] Like, how do you, like, what do you go to the, you go to the start?
[00:36:51.600 --> 00:36:52.240] Do you go to the middle?
[00:36:52.240 --> 00:36:52.880] Like, where do you start?
[00:36:52.880 --> 00:37:01.240] And so, there's a lot of fascination we have as humans, you know, like the gameplay thing, the whole Twitch gameplay as a genre is crazy.
[00:37:01.240 --> 00:37:04.760] Like, you kind of would have thought people want to watch people play video games.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:05.000] Right.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.920] But we're fascinated by these random things.
[00:37:07.240 --> 00:37:11.560] That's sort of where sort of desire to build stuff in public comes out.
[00:37:11.560 --> 00:37:16.440] Like, because I actually don't know what the heck I'm doing right now, guys.
[00:37:16.440 --> 00:37:17.800] Like, I'm just trying to figure it out.
[00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:19.960] Like, I have no clue where my career is right now.
[00:37:19.960 --> 00:37:21.160] You're in the explorer phase.
[00:37:21.480 --> 00:37:22.360] I'm the explorer phase, yeah.
[00:37:22.520 --> 00:37:24.280] I was on decks for two years.
[00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:28.200] And I, okay, I saw the inside of a rocket ship startup.
[00:37:28.200 --> 00:37:30.200] And then I joined day one.
[00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:32.600] And I was like, okay, maybe it's my time to take the plunge.
[00:37:32.600 --> 00:37:34.680] I took the plunge in December 2022.
[00:37:34.680 --> 00:37:36.360] I have no freaking clue what I'm doing.
[00:37:36.360 --> 00:37:42.840] Everybody wants, like, you know, when you have an audience, I think there's a thing that, oh, you must be around smart people.
[00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:45.560] So you must be smart and you must have smart answers.
[00:37:45.560 --> 00:37:49.560] And I'm like, you know, I don't have any answers.
[00:37:49.560 --> 00:37:50.200] You know, like that.
[00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:53.480] That's just a funny proposition, right?
[00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:58.440] So as you figure things out, it just sucks because your ego is taking a daily beating.
[00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:07.720] But I still force myself to still hit publish and still tweet about what I'm thinking that day because I will know that somebody out there is my Channing Allen.
[00:38:07.720 --> 00:38:11.800] Somebody out there is reading that shit and be like, yeah, man, this is awesome.
[00:38:11.800 --> 00:38:12.360] Like, you know?
[00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:13.880] So two things.
[00:38:13.880 --> 00:38:17.560] I think number one, do you enjoy being in the exploratory phase?
[00:38:17.560 --> 00:38:19.000] Like, do you like it?
[00:38:19.560 --> 00:38:24.280] I like it more than the alternative, which is being in W-2 and like being a slave with somebody's Mercy.
[00:38:24.440 --> 00:38:24.840] Yeah.
[00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:25.160] Okay.
[00:38:25.160 --> 00:38:34.360] Because to the point we were discussing earlier, like, if you can find a way to explore and you like exploring and you can find a way to financially support yourself continuing to explore, like, that's an awesome life.
[00:38:34.760 --> 00:38:38.840] There's such a pedestal about what it must look like to be a successful entrepreneur.
[00:38:38.840 --> 00:38:40.760] You'd have one company that's killing it.
[00:38:40.760 --> 00:38:41.000] Yeah.
[00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:46.480] Like, my buddy Greg was tweeting the other day about how he moved to Silicon Valley and he started an agency.
[00:38:46.480 --> 00:38:50.080] And then someone he really looked up to and respected was like, Greg, that's not ambitious.
[00:38:44.520 --> 00:38:50.960] It's not what we do here.
[00:38:51.200 --> 00:38:52.480] You need to go for the gold.
[00:38:52.480 --> 00:38:57.360] And so he had all these other more ambitious projects that did okay, but he wasn't happy.
[00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:58.320] And now what is he doing?
[00:38:58.320 --> 00:38:59.360] He's back to running an agency.
[00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:01.280] Then he just spun up two or three more agencies.
[00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:06.560] And yeah, that's not like what we stereotypically hold on a pedestal, but like that's what makes him really happy.
[00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:10.480] And he gets to get paid money for doing it and designing the exact lifestyle that he wants.
[00:39:10.480 --> 00:39:13.600] So if you like exploring, you should explore.
[00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:25.280] I made a tweet recently about this and I was talking to some folks in the fellowship and they were like in this pressure because they think that the other friends who went to Harvard and other ones who went to Stanford, they're all building this hyper-growth startup.
[00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:28.960] They're like, KP, I'm feeling not living the life I went to Harvard.
[00:39:29.040 --> 00:39:35.760] I was like, here's the thing: take all the energy you have in ambition and put that into joy.
[00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:44.160] Because some of the greatest things the world has ever seen were built because purely somebody pursued their joy, you know, in art, programming, whatever, right?
[00:39:44.160 --> 00:39:48.240] And so I don't know if you know if you guys feel this way or not.
[00:39:48.240 --> 00:39:53.520] Maybe I'm just, it's so hard to be ambitious and humble, you know?
[00:39:53.520 --> 00:39:56.960] Like, it's so freaking hard because everybody wants so much out of you.
[00:39:56.960 --> 00:39:57.360] Yeah.
[00:39:57.360 --> 00:39:57.680] Right?
[00:39:57.920 --> 00:40:02.240] Like, everybody, by the way, Courtney, every time I go to the ATV, they're like, KP, what are you doing, man?
[00:40:02.240 --> 00:40:03.440] Like, chicken can't say, what?
[00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:04.880] You're crushing that tutor, man.
[00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:05.920] He's doing so great.
[00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:06.640] What's your startup?
[00:40:06.640 --> 00:40:06.960] What's it?
[00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:07.840] Is it Canada?
[00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:08.960] What is it?
[00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:12.000] And so I'm like, I'm doing a fellowship.
[00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:12.960] And they're like, what?
[00:40:14.560 --> 00:40:16.000] But that's what I'm trying to say.
[00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:22.240] Like, being like okay and secure with whatever part of your life you are.
[00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:29.720] And also, I noticed a lot of people, um, channeling to your point, like a lot of people wait until they get to the pretty parts of their career to start sharing in public.
[00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:36.600] You know, and I think that's a disservice to the world because you're making it seem like Cortland woke up one day and he started indie hackers like that, right?
[00:40:37.240 --> 00:40:47.960] Or channing, or like, you know, so we all go through the process, and the process is humbling, including two Peter Levels, Arvid Call, whoever, second time, third time, four-time founder.
[00:40:47.960 --> 00:40:58.440] The process sucks as you're going through it, but you should have to find the process that sucks less for you or feels like you know, somehow weirdly fun for you.
[00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:10.520] But make it transparent that people see this, that it's not a pretty ambient slide deck, you know, it's so emergent and changes every day, and you have to react to it.
[00:41:10.520 --> 00:41:18.680] I know on the um on the topic of not necessarily gardening and grooming your Twitter and being too serious about it, there is some strategy, right?
[00:41:18.680 --> 00:41:23.400] Like, you did something to grow from 400 Twitter followers over 40,000.
[00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:27.320] Because I know a lot of people who tweet a lot and they try to put their heart into it, and they don't get there.
[00:41:27.320 --> 00:41:31.480] Um, what is your advice for somebody, especially like an indie hacker, who's like, okay, I'm out here.
[00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:33.240] Uh, maybe they're in a similar situation to you.
[00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:43.960] They don't have one huge killer startup, they're trying lots of different things, they're exploring how can they, I guess, do a better job building in public and build some sort of an audience for themselves.
[00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:46.120] Just use the Donald Trump 3 a.m.
[00:41:46.200 --> 00:41:48.520] on the toilet tweet strategy, right?
[00:41:48.520 --> 00:41:48.920] There you go.
[00:41:50.120 --> 00:41:51.080] That's what I would recommend.
[00:41:51.080 --> 00:41:52.520] I don't know, I'm not an expert.
[00:41:52.520 --> 00:42:01.080] I mean, a lot of the strategies are so obvious, which are spend a lot of time studying other tweets that inspire you.
[00:42:01.080 --> 00:42:06.760] The thing is, people think that you all you always have to write like the four thread boys that are winning today, right?
[00:42:06.760 --> 00:43:55.720] My thing is, you have to study and learn the formats, you have to study and learn the presentation of a certain idea, but you could choose who you want to learn from so in my early days i remember i would like look at like ryan hoover's tweets i would look at you know greg's tweets some of the guys that i really liked and admired you know uh amanda's tweets and see like okay how are they framing the you know the opening line how are they framing this stuff and um i still do it now because part of us also i'm lazy i'm like i don't want to start from scratch i like look at what they're doing and like okay this format seems to be working so this what then the tweet that you read out earlier in the beginning um kotlin the me then me now is a very popular format you know that right like it's yeah of course and so i took the format but the the difference is you still get to be you in the so the stage is twitter and you get to be whoever you want to be on the stage so if you see most of my tweets 99 of the tweets are stuff that i would say to someone in real life it's my personality it's who i am it's authentic so i don't so i think that's a that's a big hack is that i used to sound like somebody else in the beginning and i shifted that over to being very me i'm very reflective as a person and journal every day so my journal brings out five tweets a day easily in the morning um number two is the big tip that i had was i actually in 2020 i was at 2000 followers or something i genuinely saw the power of being prolific where i think i was holding back trying to like you know trying to like only put out the smart tweets or the good sounding ones and then in 2020 july something happened and i think over the weekend i had like 100 new followers which i was like oh my god, this is crazy and and from then on, I just thought, I'm just gonna be prolific at this, like every day consistent and not holding back, having fun.
[00:43:55.720 --> 00:43:56.760] I say this a lot to people.
[00:43:56.760 --> 00:43:58.760] Like the internet's kind of an open book test, right?
[00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:00.280] You can like, you're allowed to cheat.
[00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:05.160] You're allowed to go look at someone else who's succeeding and then like reverse engineer what's working for them.
[00:44:05.160 --> 00:44:08.120] So if you're trying to get big on Twitter, you don't just have to just figure it out from scratch.
[00:44:08.120 --> 00:44:15.720] Go find someone else who's good at Twitter and scroll down their Twitter timeline, which if it's not too well manicured and gardened, you'll find some good stuff.
[00:44:15.720 --> 00:44:18.520] A good example is that tweet you said that, you know, it's a format, right?
[00:44:18.520 --> 00:44:24.040] You say a year and then a colon, and then you type what you did in that year, and then you say like this year and then a colon.
[00:44:24.040 --> 00:44:27.240] John Yonku had a good play on this tweet today, too, that I saw.
[00:44:27.240 --> 00:44:31.160] He said, 2018, quit job, take a risk, try to build a tech business.
[00:44:31.160 --> 00:44:34.440] 2022, built tech business into something sustainable.
[00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:37.800] 2023, AI makes all tech work obsolete.
[00:44:37.800 --> 00:44:38.760] There we go.
[00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:39.160] Right?
[00:44:39.160 --> 00:44:42.680] But that's like, it's literally such a common format that people can parody it.
[00:44:42.680 --> 00:44:43.240] Yeah.
[00:44:44.040 --> 00:44:46.040] There's so many meme formats too, right?
[00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:50.680] So I think your formats are so important when it comes to Twitter.
[00:44:50.760 --> 00:44:58.680] And Twitter is also my other strategy or my other tip is follow the right kind of people.
[00:44:58.680 --> 00:45:00.440] Don't follow a lot of people.
[00:45:01.240 --> 00:45:02.600] But also don't have zero followers.
[00:45:02.600 --> 00:45:05.000] That's, I think, a little too snobby.
[00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:13.560] But follow the right kind of people who are three, four steps ahead of you or 10 steps ahead of you and you want to sort of learn from them what their thoughts are, what their ideas are.
[00:45:13.800 --> 00:45:15.560] So that helps you with the curation.
[00:45:15.880 --> 00:45:18.840] I'm actually interested in talking about the technology side.
[00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.160] Courtland just mentioned AI.
[00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:25.640] And one of your other personalities is the no-code space.
[00:45:25.640 --> 00:45:28.680] And I don't know, maybe soon to be the AI space.
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:31.400] All my no-code friends have jumped the wagon.
[00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:32.360] They're already AI friends.
[00:45:33.160 --> 00:45:35.800] Yeah, it's kind of non-indistinguishable at this point.
[00:45:35.800 --> 00:45:36.360] Yeah.
[00:45:36.360 --> 00:45:38.840] I have kind of an interesting relationship with no-code.
[00:45:38.840 --> 00:45:45.600] I mean, first off, I know how to develop, I know how to build apps, and I really like coding, and I'm fairly fast.
[00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:48.160] So I feel like I'm not really the market for no code.
[00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:51.680] I mean, I can build a website probably in whatever, half an hour, have it online.
[00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:57.040] But I also had this interesting experience with, I was teaching my girlfriend how to code two years ago.
[00:45:57.040 --> 00:45:58.560] She was looking for a job.
[00:45:58.560 --> 00:46:06.000] And I was like, oh, I kind of had this opportunity where I can teach her the sort of traditional HTML, CSS, JavaScript stuff.
[00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:12.560] And then I can also let her play around with Bubble, let her play around with some of these other no-code tools.
[00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:20.000] And it was interesting because on the one hand, I saw her get stuff out the door with no code tools in like a week.
[00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:21.760] But then she was sort of frustrated.
[00:46:21.760 --> 00:46:23.760] She kind of hit a plateau.
[00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:27.760] And slowly she was chugging along with the actual code.
[00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:30.400] And it took like a month before she could do anything.
[00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:32.400] Like she was completely fish out of water.
[00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:33.360] She was really frustrated.
[00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:34.480] She cried a couple of times.
[00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:36.320] I'm not going to tell her about this podcast.
[00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:37.280] I don't want her to yell at me.
[00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:48.800] But then once that flame got sparked, there was this takeoff where she sort of had this linear progression that quickly kind of had plateaued with no code.
[00:46:48.800 --> 00:46:51.200] So I wonder if, like, how to think about that.
[00:46:51.520 --> 00:46:52.000] Yeah.
[00:46:53.200 --> 00:47:02.640] The thing that comes to mind with code versus no code is like, you know, IKEA Furniture versus building tables and like real carpentry, right?
[00:47:02.640 --> 00:47:14.960] For a certain kind of persona and a certain kind of founder, especially maybe a non-technical founder, domain expert, someone who's in climate tech, and they just have this particular marketplace they want to manifest.
[00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.680] But they're just like so impatient.
[00:47:17.680 --> 00:47:20.640] They want to show the prototype and show like how it looks and stuff.
[00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:24.400] I think for that person, no code is the right move, right?
[00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:36.280] Get a Dallo or Bubble marketplace template quickly or software quickly and then tie it to a table data and then just show how it looks and maybe even grow it to a decent extent.
[00:47:37.480 --> 00:47:39.560] You can connect stripe payments and stuff.
[00:47:39.560 --> 00:47:45.720] So I think to me, no code has always been a great way, assembling IKEA furniture, right?
[00:47:47.000 --> 00:47:52.120] You're not a car printer just because you followed instructions and assembled a desk.
[00:47:52.440 --> 00:48:01.640] But true development and true building, true code and true programming, I think are lifelong skills.
[00:48:02.040 --> 00:48:03.160] And it's a craft.
[00:48:03.160 --> 00:48:05.640] And you guys know this, more than me, it's a craft.
[00:48:05.640 --> 00:48:10.680] And so you can never confidently say, oh, yeah, I've reached the horizon of code.
[00:48:11.240 --> 00:48:12.280] You're always learning.
[00:48:12.280 --> 00:48:14.680] And AI shows up and you have to relearn now.
[00:48:14.680 --> 00:48:16.280] So you're always learning.
[00:48:16.280 --> 00:48:24.040] And I think a lot of what code teaches you is to think systematically, methodically, and to interface with the computer.
[00:48:24.040 --> 00:48:27.240] Basically, understand how to write syntax.
[00:48:27.240 --> 00:48:30.040] And so I think that's a skill that's valuable for life.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:38.600] But for a lot of people, because it's so daunting, because it's a bit, you know, it's a bit slow to learn, it's slow to pick up as a skill.
[00:48:38.600 --> 00:48:42.200] It's like, also intellectually, I think it's a little, it's hard.
[00:48:42.200 --> 00:48:42.680] Code is hard.
[00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:45.080] It's very hard, as you know, intellectually.
[00:48:45.480 --> 00:48:51.560] So the vast majority of the people may not self-select themselves out of this game completely.
[00:48:51.560 --> 00:48:54.200] And I think that's the missed opportunity as a human race.
[00:48:54.200 --> 00:49:05.920] The other analogy that comes to mind is I grew up in India and I didn't see any female grandmas or aunts, my aunts driving a car, you know.
[00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:11.080] And one thing I noticed when I moved to the US when I was 21, I was like, a lot of grandmas driving cars.
[00:49:11.080 --> 00:49:11.880] I was like, what?
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:12.440] How?
[00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:24.160] And I realized the biggest difference is the majority of the cars in the US are automatic transmission, which is a pain in the ass to have a stick, to drive a stick when you're 85, you know?
[00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:24.800] Yeah.
[00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:27.360] So that to me is no-code in a way.
[00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:33.120] So if no-code is the automatic transmission, then I suppose AI is the self-driving car.
[00:49:33.120 --> 00:49:33.520] Yeah.
[00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:35.280] Yeah, that's pretty good.
[00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:35.920] Yeah.
[00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:38.960] I remember no-code, like, being all the rage a couple years ago.
[00:49:38.960 --> 00:49:39.600] Who do I have on?
[00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:44.480] I think I had Ben Tossel, who started MakerPad, and he was doing like a no-code debate versus Sahel Lovingia.
[00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:47.200] I think I did two or three different No Code episodes on Indie Hackers.
[00:49:47.200 --> 00:49:49.520] People were like getting sick of it, but also couldn't get enough of it.
[00:49:49.520 --> 00:49:52.800] And everyone wanted to talk about, like, is this going to replace people's jobs?
[00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:54.800] And now it seems like no one talks about that anymore.
[00:49:54.800 --> 00:49:57.120] Like all those companies, the No Code tool companies are still out there.
[00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:06.880] Like Zappy are still doing well, but like everything every day is just about chat GPT, GPT-4, DALI, AI, just AI, AI, AI.
[00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:08.800] Even no-code is just like AI.
[00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:19.040] And it's not just putting coders out of a job or threatening to, but it's like threatening to put artists and writers and interior designers and just about everyone else out of a job, or at least like force them to change their jobs drastically.
[00:50:19.040 --> 00:50:19.760] So what are your thoughts?
[00:50:19.760 --> 00:50:24.160] Do you think AI is just like eating up all the other no-code tools?
[00:50:24.160 --> 00:50:34.560] I mean, it's like I saw a video of a guy who drew a picture of a website on a napkin and took a photo of it and then put it in chat GPT and it generated like all the HTML and CSS for like that website.
[00:50:34.560 --> 00:50:36.080] And he literally had like a part of it.
[00:50:36.160 --> 00:50:41.680] Oh, put a funny joke here and then put a button here and then here's where the joke will be revealed after you click the button.
[00:50:41.680 --> 00:50:43.200] And the AI just did it, right?
[00:50:43.200 --> 00:50:46.560] And it's like, is there any better no-code tool than that?
[00:50:47.200 --> 00:50:47.680] Right?
[00:50:47.680 --> 00:50:56.480] I mean, I think the AI is kind of forming the superset over, you know, no-code tools and low-code tools.
[00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:04.040] So it'll be interesting to see if the no-code tools will sort of align with that superset use case that AI is kind of creating.
[00:51:04.360 --> 00:51:08.840] Like, for example, CODA is doing a Coda AI, you know, Notion has done the Notion AI, right?
[00:51:08.840 --> 00:51:15.480] So the immediate, obvious mode that they're doing is embedding the AI features into their core skill sets.
[00:51:15.480 --> 00:51:18.040] And I think that's one way to kind of like be AI friendly.
[00:51:18.040 --> 00:51:25.880] But if you're not already thinking about your AI strategy as a no-code tool, you're not going to last this revolution.
[00:51:25.880 --> 00:51:29.880] This is a huge sweeping evolution that's coming out.
[00:51:29.880 --> 00:51:39.960] And yeah, I mean, I think the analogy around self-driving cars, people would probably still want some level of control in the product.
[00:51:40.120 --> 00:51:44.840] So let's say if I built a Webflow website, I didn't write code, but AI did it for me.
[00:51:44.840 --> 00:51:46.120] It shows me the landing page.
[00:51:46.120 --> 00:51:52.200] Maybe I still want to mess around with this little animation at the bottom or some level of CSS control.
[00:51:52.200 --> 00:51:56.920] So maybe there's still value to learn a little bit no-code tools like Webflow.
[00:51:56.920 --> 00:52:00.520] But I think code will be the last resort, unfortunately.
[00:52:00.520 --> 00:52:09.880] So we will, which is, which sometimes worries me because thinking intellectually deeply and critical thinking will be the last resort for humanity, which is great.
[00:52:10.760 --> 00:52:12.120] Kind of like before writing, right?
[00:52:12.120 --> 00:52:14.360] Like people memorized everything.
[00:52:14.360 --> 00:52:18.600] A bunch of things were just taught through song because it's easy to memorize songs and poetry.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:23.400] And then suddenly everyone's literate and everybody has the memory of a goldfish because we just don't need to actually do it.
[00:52:23.400 --> 00:52:30.200] And it's the same now where it's like, if a computer could just do everything for me, why should I learn any skills?
[00:52:30.200 --> 00:52:37.560] You know, I have a two-year-old at home, and I'm always curious to see when he's like 25, 26, like what the world will look like then, or when he goes to college.
[00:52:37.560 --> 00:52:40.200] Like what is he gonna, like, what is there to teach him?
[00:52:40.200 --> 00:52:40.520] Right?
[00:52:40.520 --> 00:52:41.720] Like, everything is AI.
[00:52:41.720 --> 00:52:43.640] Like, you know, how to write AI prompts.
[00:52:43.640 --> 00:52:45.440] How to write good AI prompts.
[00:52:44.920 --> 00:52:49.440] I'm gonna take the opposite side of this, though, because I understand this fear.
[00:52:49.760 --> 00:53:01.280] You know, hey, listen, all of this work that we currently do requires us to do a lot of intellectualizing and a lot of thinking and a lot of effortful work on is going to get replaced by AI.
[00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:05.760] I mean, to Cortland's point, people said the same thing when the printing press came out, right?
[00:53:05.760 --> 00:53:08.720] People said the same thing when books were widely distributed.
[00:53:08.720 --> 00:53:12.400] People said the same thing when computers were kind of coming into favor.
[00:53:12.720 --> 00:53:24.320] And what always happens is it's almost like we have the same amount, the same like, you know, whatever, seven hours of like real rigorous thinking that any individual person can do in a day.
[00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:28.160] And it's like, well, what are you spending that seven hours doing?
[00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:38.320] And I think over time, the ideal as technology advances is that we spend our intellectual hours doing less and less menial work.
[00:53:38.320 --> 00:53:45.440] And it's like, right now, I do a lot of code, but a lot of the code that I do is like setting myself up to do real work, right?
[00:53:45.440 --> 00:53:49.520] I'm like spending time downloading a lot of packages, setting up the project.
[00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:54.320] Whereas I really just want to spend my creativity and my judgment time thinking about what I want to do.
[00:53:54.320 --> 00:53:56.720] And then it's like making little edge case changes.
[00:53:56.720 --> 00:53:59.360] I'm like, see, how does it look in this format?
[00:53:59.360 --> 00:54:01.280] And how does it look in that format?
[00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:09.120] And if we had, like, I don't know, GPT-5 comes out, you know, and like none of us are sitting here doing almost any of the normal jobs that we're doing on the computer.
[00:54:09.120 --> 00:54:15.200] You still have eight hours of like highly leveraged, creative, and like expressive work that you can do.
[00:54:15.200 --> 00:54:16.880] So I'm really optimistic.
[00:54:17.280 --> 00:54:23.120] I don't think that there's any like real fear that like you're, you know, you're like, what is the creative work you're going to do?
[00:54:23.120 --> 00:54:26.400] Like for any hackers right now, I'm making this profile thing.
[00:54:26.400 --> 00:54:32.120] So indie hackers can have really awesome profile pages because indie hackers have better things to do than build their own profile pages.
[00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:35.560] And so we're going to give them a profile page builder where they can show off all their indie hackers work.
[00:54:35.880 --> 00:54:40.280] But if in like six months from now, they can just go to an AI thing and say, hey, here's my projects.
[00:54:40.280 --> 00:54:47.400] Build me an amazing profile page, then suddenly all of this work I've done for the last month to create a profile page builder is shitty.
[00:54:47.400 --> 00:54:49.400] It doesn't make any difference, right?
[00:54:49.800 --> 00:54:56.840] But I feel like, you know, the beauty with just us humans is that we will figure out a way to find problems to solve.
[00:54:56.840 --> 00:55:08.760] And I think what those problems that we will solve is probably not apparent to us right now, but will be very apparent to us in eight months or nine months, whenever those situations happen, right?
[00:55:08.760 --> 00:55:26.440] We will always have something like, you know, when, like you said, the printing press thing, if everybody's literate, then like, what's the use of, you know, we could have argued the same thing, like, but every time we had a new technology revolution, people found new avenues and new areas to work on, right?
[00:55:26.680 --> 00:55:38.120] The fact that I'm sitting here, you know, using my thumbs to tweet ideas and the things I'm saying, like vulnerability and like, you know, putting yourself out there, which would spook the heck out of my ancestors.
[00:55:38.280 --> 00:55:39.240] They'll be like, what the heck?
[00:55:39.240 --> 00:55:39.800] Is that work?
[00:55:39.800 --> 00:55:43.400] Like, we were like toiling our asses off in these oil fields and shit.
[00:55:43.400 --> 00:55:45.240] Like, you're like, you know, does that work?
[00:55:45.240 --> 00:55:46.040] Like, come on, man.
[00:55:46.600 --> 00:55:49.880] So that's my biggest concern as of right now.
[00:55:49.880 --> 00:55:52.920] Like, how do I get customers on Stripe notification, which is so easy?
[00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:59.880] Like, if you think about it, it's actually damn easy to get someone to buy something right now on the internet for you if you have some decent service.
[00:55:59.880 --> 00:56:01.640] 50 years ago, it was impossible.
[00:56:01.960 --> 00:56:06.440] So, 50 years from now, I think we would have something like that that would make it easier.
[00:56:06.440 --> 00:56:09.320] And look, I don't even think that we need to think 50 years in advance.
[00:56:09.320 --> 00:56:16.640] There's Mark Andreessen was describing Web 3.0 when everyone was talking about Web 3.0 and it was kind of new and it was hard to understand.
[00:56:16.720 --> 00:56:18.240] He's like, look, here's how you think about it.
[00:56:18.240 --> 00:56:19.760] There's like three different phases.
[00:56:14.920 --> 00:56:26.000] Web 1.0 was this idea where individual people had websites and there weren't all that many websites.
[00:56:26.320 --> 00:56:30.560] Everyone wasn't able to have their space on the internet because you kind of had to code or learn how to code.
[00:56:30.560 --> 00:56:32.000] And that many people could do that.
[00:56:32.000 --> 00:56:33.760] Then Web 2.0 comes along.
[00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:43.520] Now you have these big platforms, Facebook and Twitter, kind of allow you to have your own space on the internet, but you're kind of renting out the territory that is owned by Facebook, et cetera.
[00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:45.920] So you've got an upside, got a downside.
[00:56:45.920 --> 00:56:53.920] Web 3.0, in theory, was going to be a place where all of these non-technical people were suddenly going to be able to have their own space that they kind of owned.
[00:56:53.920 --> 00:56:56.000] So far, it hasn't really turned out to be that way.
[00:56:56.000 --> 00:57:00.320] But it's like, to Cortland, to your question, it's like, well, what kinds of things are people going to build?
[00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:15.840] I bet if everyone felt that they were technically capable of just creating their own place in the internet and they could use their creativity to make it have the bells and whistles that reflected their personalities and their likes and their tastes, a lot more people would get into it.
[00:57:15.840 --> 00:57:19.360] But even no code in its current incarnation is kind of intimidating.
[00:57:19.520 --> 00:57:23.840] I watched my girlfriend her eyes crossed trying to figure that stuff out.
[00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:26.640] So I mean that's just one idea.
[00:57:26.640 --> 00:57:28.160] Everybody wants to get along.
[00:57:28.160 --> 00:57:29.440] Everybody wants to get ahead.
[00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:30.720] That's just human nature.
[00:57:30.720 --> 00:57:43.680] Isn't it Naval or someone who was saying the more technologically advanced we become as a civilization, the meaning of work shifts from, it went from already menial labor, like the menial work that you talked about, to knowledge work.
[00:57:43.680 --> 00:57:45.520] Like all of us are doing knowledge work right now.
[00:57:45.920 --> 00:57:53.040] Many of us, I mean, there's still people who are, you know, but and now it'll shift from knowledge work to creative work alone, right?
[00:57:53.360 --> 00:58:00.680] And even with creative work, to your point, like AI can only do so much creativity because the definition of creativity will shift.
[00:57:59.920 --> 00:58:03.640] It would no longer just be enough to have a painting.
[00:58:03.960 --> 00:58:08.680] It has to have some piece of view that's like authentic and AI can copy that.
[00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:13.720] Naval speaks about this, but cognitive neuroscientists talk about it a lot as well.
[00:58:14.040 --> 00:58:16.680] And a lot of computer scientists speak about it.
[00:58:16.680 --> 00:58:26.120] Like the big differences between what computers do well and like what human brains do well largely comes down to like humans are really good at creativity and judgment.
[00:58:26.120 --> 00:58:26.680] Yeah, judgment.
[00:58:26.840 --> 00:58:30.120] And judgment here is like, you know, it's almost like improvising, right?
[00:58:30.120 --> 00:58:31.720] Like what is a computer not necessarily?
[00:58:32.040 --> 00:58:33.400] AI is good at judgment.
[00:58:33.400 --> 00:58:35.880] If you ask AI any judgment questions, you can go on there.
[00:58:35.960 --> 00:58:36.440] No, no, no.
[00:58:36.680 --> 00:58:36.920] It's good.
[00:58:39.880 --> 00:58:42.920] But the judgment of, I think what Channing's referencing is different, though.
[00:58:42.920 --> 00:58:45.160] I think judgment's not like decisive judgment.
[00:58:45.160 --> 00:58:49.160] It's like, what will KP's next project be?
[00:58:49.160 --> 00:58:50.040] That's judgment.
[00:58:50.040 --> 00:58:52.920] Like, I'm deciding based on the factors of what I want to do.
[00:58:52.920 --> 00:58:54.040] And humans have intuition.
[00:58:54.040 --> 00:58:54.600] That's the thing.
[00:58:54.600 --> 00:59:00.200] Like, it's hard to fake or copy because humans do weird shit, like the Brian Johnson thing.
[00:59:00.680 --> 00:59:05.560] It's just impossible to get AI to predict what he might do next, you know?
[00:59:05.560 --> 00:59:09.560] So I'm slightly more bullish on AI than both of you.
[00:59:09.560 --> 00:59:19.000] I think that AI is in its early, like the useful large language models we're seeing are in their infancy and are already shocking what they can do.
[00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:22.360] And another year or two from now, it's going to be insane what they can do.
[00:59:22.360 --> 00:59:26.120] But I'm also on the same page as the two of you, which is that that doesn't mean it's doom and gloom.
[00:59:26.120 --> 00:59:32.200] It just means that our job as founders is to figure out how do we use these new tools, because there's still going to be problems.
[00:59:32.200 --> 00:59:35.720] There's still going to be creative things and challenges for people to do that need to be solved.
[00:59:35.720 --> 00:59:38.040] They just might look very different than what we have now.
[00:59:38.040 --> 00:59:40.520] And so, as an ending hacker, it's very, very rare that this happens.
[00:59:40.680 --> 00:59:46.240] A new technology comes out that's so revolutionary that you actually should stop and think about how to implement it.
[00:59:46.240 --> 00:59:47.520] When was the last time you had a lot of different things?
[00:59:47.680 --> 00:59:49.920] I'm curious, when was the last time you guys had to go through something like this?
[00:59:44.680 --> 00:59:51.840] I mean, I haven't even thought about that.
[00:59:52.080 --> 00:59:57.440] Like, in our lifetime, like mobile, maybe, but like, besides that, like, I can imagine.
[00:59:57.840 --> 01:00:00.080] Mobile, you mean like the 2007 iPhone moment?
[01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:00.560] Yeah, exactly.
[01:00:00.560 --> 01:00:02.480] The iPhone moment, like, oh shit, I can't just make web apps.
[01:00:02.480 --> 01:00:03.200] I have to think about mobile.
[01:00:03.200 --> 01:00:06.400] But even then, it took like a long time before it was like, I had to do mobile first.
[01:00:06.400 --> 01:00:08.800] And I still don't do mobile first a lot of the time, and it's fine.
[01:00:08.800 --> 01:00:10.880] The web itself is like a really good one.
[01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:16.480] Like, a lot of newspaper companies, for example, who did not adapt to the web, like are toast.
[01:00:16.480 --> 01:00:21.920] Like, they do not have, like, you look at the New York Times, who makes hundreds of millions of dollars from subscribers, like, they adopted to the web.
[01:00:21.920 --> 01:00:25.120] It was a new technology that just solved people's problems better.
[01:00:25.120 --> 01:00:29.920] I think the normal advice is like, don't focus on technology, don't have a solution in search of a problem.
[01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:36.960] But when there's like a paradigm shift, you have to actually re-examine all those problems and be like, can I make a radically better solution?
[01:00:36.960 --> 01:00:47.760] The way that we've actually dealt with changing technology at Indie Hackers is: look, crypto happened, like, you know, a lot of Web3 ideas came out.
[01:00:47.760 --> 01:00:49.280] NFTs were a thing.
[01:00:49.280 --> 01:00:51.760] Like, we thought about NFTs.
[01:00:51.760 --> 01:00:54.480] We thought about an indie hacker coin, right?
[01:00:54.480 --> 01:01:00.560] Like, we've looked at all these different changes in technology and we've seen them as opportunities.
[01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:02.880] Like, hey, can we do anything with this?
[01:01:02.880 --> 01:01:10.160] The difference now is that it's not so much of a can, it's like, shit, like, we need to figure out what's going on here.
[01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.560] And, like, it's the adaptation question, right?
[01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:14.800] It's not like an opportunity, it's like a requirement.
[01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:16.880] Yeah, it's a necessity, yeah.
[01:01:16.880 --> 01:01:18.000] And a lot of it is prediction.
[01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:21.200] Like, with the crypto stuff, it was like, oh, this is getting big.
[01:01:21.200 --> 01:01:23.520] The world in the future might be this different world.
[01:01:23.520 --> 01:01:27.520] So maybe we should do crypto stuff so that when that world arrives, like, we're good.
[01:01:27.520 --> 01:01:29.960] And then we just looked at it and we're like, I don't know if that world's going to actually arrive.
[01:01:29.960 --> 01:01:31.560] So we did zero things with crypto.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:33.560] Whereas with AI, it's like, hey, this is already here.
[01:01:33.880 --> 01:01:38.680] There's already cool shit that you can do right now that's amazing and will be useful.
[01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:43.240] You could have an AI help people write a post on indie hackers or edit their posts or come up with business ideas.
[01:01:43.720 --> 01:01:45.320] You could do that months ago.
[01:01:45.320 --> 01:01:47.240] And so it's not even a predictive thing now.
[01:01:47.480 --> 01:01:49.960] There's no question about whether it'd be useful.
[01:01:49.960 --> 01:01:52.280] Anyway, KP, we've kept you for way too long.
[01:01:52.680 --> 01:02:01.240] Thanks a ton for coming on here and talking about no-code and building in public and being a founder and AI theories and weird longevity stuff.
[01:02:01.960 --> 01:02:04.120] You've been an indie hacker for several years.
[01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:10.200] You have, I guess, hit these milestones and then felt that, hey, it's a little strange to hit these milestones that you once dreamed about.
[01:02:10.200 --> 01:02:13.880] A lot of people listening, I think, want to be where you are.
[01:02:14.200 --> 01:02:15.400] What would you say to them?
[01:02:15.720 --> 01:02:17.320] What should they learn from the fact that you got there?
[01:02:17.320 --> 01:02:19.800] And it wasn't necessarily what you expected.
[01:02:20.120 --> 01:02:30.360] I'd say it's definitely way more possible now to be an indie hacker and design life that you want.
[01:02:30.360 --> 01:02:36.280] So you don't have to, you know, be, like I said earlier, like you don't have to be at the mercy of someone's strategy shifting.
[01:02:36.280 --> 01:02:45.080] You know, that's like one of the craziest things about being in a job or tied to a W-2 is that, like we saw with Meta layoffs, right?
[01:02:45.080 --> 01:02:50.280] Meta announced that layoffs last, I think, I don't know, six months ago, saying this is the final layoffs.
[01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:52.440] This is it, this is it, the strategy is this, blah, blah, blah.
[01:02:52.600 --> 01:02:57.480] And then Zuckerberg had a new change of mind and strategy shifted again, and then 10,000 people were laid off.
[01:02:57.480 --> 01:03:03.880] And I think I can't even imagine what it feels like to be in one of those 10,000 because the last six months must have already felt like hell.
[01:03:05.160 --> 01:03:19.440] So, I mean, what I would say is just figure out a way to carve out 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a day, you know, an hour a week here and there if you're at a full-time job, like what I did in 2018, and get out of the conveyor belt.
[01:03:14.520 --> 01:03:21.760] You know, build your own little venture.
[01:03:22.480 --> 01:03:25.520] Like, you know, Danny Vasalo talks about small bets, like try a bunch of shit.
[01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:26.560] We are in the hits business.
[01:03:26.560 --> 01:03:28.960] As indie hackers, nobody remembers your failures.
[01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:30.080] This is all about hits.
[01:03:30.080 --> 01:03:32.800] If you just have one or two good hits, you're good.
[01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:33.520] You know?
[01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:37.600] So give yourself the permission to try a lot, fail a lot.
[01:03:37.600 --> 01:03:42.080] Nobody remembers the, you know, the early phases of your career, so don't worry about it.
[01:03:42.080 --> 01:03:48.000] And once you get to the point where you're a full-time founder, like I was, maybe then think about getting business cards.
[01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:51.280] But no, just remember that it's an infinite game.
[01:03:51.280 --> 01:03:51.600] Yeah.
[01:03:51.600 --> 01:03:53.120] Thanks, KP, so much for coming on.
[01:03:53.120 --> 01:04:00.080] Can you tell people where they can go to find you and your 40,000 followers on Twitter and wherever else you might want to direct listeners?
[01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:03.520] You can follow me on Twitter at thisisKP underscore.
[01:04:03.520 --> 01:04:06.240] My website's thisiskp.com.
[01:04:06.240 --> 01:04:11.120] But the Building Public stuff is all at buildingpublic.xyz.
[01:04:11.120 --> 01:04:12.400] And that's your podcast as well.
[01:04:12.400 --> 01:04:12.960] It's called Buildin Public.
[01:04:13.040 --> 01:04:14.080] Yeah, that's where the podcast is.
[01:04:14.080 --> 01:04:15.760] The fellowship is, newsletters, everything.
[01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:16.960] Check out KP's podcast.
[01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:18.000] It's good.